Statement taken directly from subject via written statement on July 22nd, 16:52, Pumpkin Hollow. Statement begins.
From a very young age, I was aware of my destiny. From the moment I was born, everyone knew that I was made for the purpose of greatness. That I was privy to a holy power, passed down to me from a human incarnation of the goddess herself, through all the women in my bloodline, along with the name "Zelda."
As a child, my training was rigorous. Countless hours of study, learning my lineage and their history. Entire days of prayer, asking the goddess to bestow her blessing, wisdom, and voice to me. Practice at the techniques of controlling energy and breath that would help me manipulate my holy magic when at last it arrived. But all my prayers fell on deaf ears. For seventeen years, I prayed, focused I begged, I screamed, I cried, I fought. I knelt at the foot of every statue of Hylia I could find and I pleaded with the goddess to please, please, let me hear her voice, let me fulfil my birthright, let me protect my people.
Silence.
I hated them. I hated all of them that came before me. Who played their parts in their legends, who sealed Demise away and had exactly what they needed. I hated Link, another chosen one who never seemed to question or doubt his destiny, never faltered. I hated my parents for thrusting this name on me when I wasn't worthy. Sometimes, I even hated the goddess.
On the day of my 18th birthday, I tried one more time. I went to the goddess statue at Lake Lanayru, said to be the birthplace of wisdom and forbidden to children. I stood in that freezing lake and I prayed and prayed. And when my prayers still went unanswered as dawn broke, I wept.
It was that very next morning that the apocalypse came. A huge cloud of swirling black and red bloomed in the sky like a sickly flower, lightning cracking down from it in flashes of nauseous magenta. Its body erupted from the ground, serpentine and noxious, but it roared with the face of a monstrous boar. It was larger than the palace, wrapping its hideous form around the stone titan of a building I had once called home. Once called safe. Creeping tendrils sprawled across the castle, the ground, the sky, covering everything in poison. Horror and despair sucked the breath from my lungs. Apocalypse.
In a matter of hours, all the preparations we had done were reduced to naught. The Divine Beasts and Guardians, machines of the ancients we had spent years learning to use to protect ourselves, stolen. The Champions, who spent their lives honing their own holy powers, murdered. Thousands of innocent Hyruleans lay slain. And it was all my fault.
As Link and I fled for our lives, a bitter rain making the night grow dark earlier than it might have and drenching us in cold water and mud. All at once, I felt myself grow unable to go on, falling to my knees. What was the point? Why did I even deserve to live when those who had done so much more than me lie dead? Why did Link have to turn from his own glory to protect one useless princess?
He should have scolded me. Should have dragged me along. Should have left me behind. But instead, he knelt before me, and he held me. And in the rain I wept in his arms.
That was when the corrupted Guardian came for us. And it was only in saving him that I finally, finally claimed my power. Far too late. But it wasn't over yet.
I would need Link to stand by my side in order to have the power to seal the darkness, but he was hurt. I had no choice but to enshrine him until his power and life was restored. I sent him with my trusted attendants, and finally I stood to meet my own fate.
I stood before the castle. I called to it, trying to look brave. But I was more terrified than I ever had been in my life. I channeled every trace of the goddess' light that I could pull from the heavens into my heart. I glowed with ferocity. And the monster rushed me. At the moment of contact, we were transported, ascending beyond the physical, I a being of pure light, and Calamity Ganon, of pure darkness. I felt the gloom and sickness coil around my soul, trying to rip it from me, trying to creep into the cracks of my divine light and rip me apart.
And so we would remain for one hundred years. A century of stalemate, tearing each other apart and building ourselves back, pressing against each other, formless and divine, numb to all but my divine agony.
Statement of Princess Zelda of Hyrule, regarding her confrontation with Calamity Ganon
From a very young age, I was aware of my destiny. From the moment I was born, everyone knew that I was made for the purpose of greatness. That I was privy to a holy power, passed down to me from a human incarnation of the goddess herself, through all the women in my bloodline, along with the name "Zelda."
As a child, my training was rigorous. Countless hours of study, learning my lineage and their history. Entire days of prayer, asking the goddess to bestow her blessing, wisdom, and voice to me. Practice at the techniques of controlling energy and breath that would help me manipulate my holy magic when at last it arrived. But all my prayers fell on deaf ears. For seventeen years, I prayed, focused I begged, I screamed, I cried, I fought. I knelt at the foot of every statue of Hylia I could find and I pleaded with the goddess to please, please, let me hear her voice, let me fulfil my birthright, let me protect my people.
Silence.
I hated them. I hated all of them that came before me. Who played their parts in their legends, who sealed Demise away and had exactly what they needed. I hated Link, another chosen one who never seemed to question or doubt his destiny, never faltered. I hated my parents for thrusting this name on me when I wasn't worthy. Sometimes, I even hated the goddess.
On the day of my 18th birthday, I tried one more time. I went to the goddess statue at Lake Lanayru, said to be the birthplace of wisdom and forbidden to children. I stood in that freezing lake and I prayed and prayed. And when my prayers still went unanswered as dawn broke, I wept.
It was that very next morning that the apocalypse came. A huge cloud of swirling black and red bloomed in the sky like a sickly flower, lightning cracking down from it in flashes of nauseous magenta. Its body erupted from the ground, serpentine and noxious, but it roared with the face of a monstrous boar. It was larger than the palace, wrapping its hideous form around the stone titan of a building I had once called home. Once called safe. Creeping tendrils sprawled across the castle, the ground, the sky, covering everything in poison. Horror and despair sucked the breath from my lungs. Apocalypse.
In a matter of hours, all the preparations we had done were reduced to naught. The Divine Beasts and Guardians, machines of the ancients we had spent years learning to use to protect ourselves, stolen. The Champions, who spent their lives honing their own holy powers, murdered. Thousands of innocent Hyruleans lay slain. And it was all my fault.
As Link and I fled for our lives, a bitter rain making the night grow dark earlier than it might have and drenching us in cold water and mud. All at once, I felt myself grow unable to go on, falling to my knees. What was the point? Why did I even deserve to live when those who had done so much more than me lie dead? Why did Link have to turn from his own glory to protect one useless princess?
He should have scolded me. Should have dragged me along. Should have left me behind. But instead, he knelt before me, and he held me. And in the rain I wept in his arms.
That was when the corrupted Guardian came for us. And it was only in saving him that I finally, finally claimed my power. Far too late. But it wasn't over yet.
I would need Link to stand by my side in order to have the power to seal the darkness, but he was hurt. I had no choice but to enshrine him until his power and life was restored. I sent him with my trusted attendants, and finally I stood to meet my own fate.
I stood before the castle. I called to it, trying to look brave. But I was more terrified than I ever had been in my life. I channeled every trace of the goddess' light that I could pull from the heavens into my heart. I glowed with ferocity. And the monster rushed me. At the moment of contact, we were transported, ascending beyond the physical, I a being of pure light, and Calamity Ganon, of pure darkness. I felt the gloom and sickness coil around my soul, trying to rip it from me, trying to creep into the cracks of my divine light and rip me apart.
And so we would remain for one hundred years. A century of stalemate, tearing each other apart and building ourselves back, pressing against each other, formless and divine, numb to all but my divine agony.