#this is my first time writing anything zelda related and i hope im writing teba ok and in-character kjsgdjksdgndsg

[linzerj]

Y'all I did not expect over 100 people to be interested in this idea somehow, but hi hello! I promise I am actually working on a fic for this, it just takes me forever to write - especially when I accidentally start at the end, then the beginning, then have to fill in the middle hghghghghg. Anyway, just for all of you, here is a snippet from the middle of the fic - so like. Spoiler warning? but its the first thing I wrote for this and I like it a lot and want to share it. So enjoy!

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Teba watches Tulin continue to grow, watches him improve in his training and progress his skills – both with the bow, and with the winds. He and Harth go over the intricacies of the Great Eagle Bow, so that they can recreate it again should it ever break. He visits and is visited by Riju and Yunobo and Sidon, at least as often as four people with so many responsibilities can escape from their duties for something as trivial as catching up with friends. He settles into the routine of day-to-day life again.

And then, one day, the world shifts.

The first alert any of them have to something being wrong is the way Vah Medoh suddenly halts in her normal holding pattern above Rito Village, locks onto the castle, and lets out a screech as loud as she once did when the Blights had infected the Beasts.

The sounds makes everyone in the Village flinch from the memory, and Teba is calling for everyone to “stay here!” and launching himself from Revali’s Landing in a burst of Gale before he’s even fully aware of what he’s doing. All he can think is not again, please, not again –

He lands atop Medoh, who is still glowing that soft safe blue and showing no signs of infection - no flecks of Malice, no Blight manifesting before him, nothing. That matter settled, he looks out to the horizon beyond the Divine Beast, to see what could have caused Medoh to act in such a way, and thus he witnesses the chaos taking part across Hyrule.

Hyrule Castle is lifting into the sky, waves of what appear to be Malice (but is actually now called Gloom, not that he knows this right now) helping to hold it aloft. He can also see yawning pits cracking open in the earth, swirling with the same dark magic surrounding the castle once again.

Medoh cries out once more, and as she opens their connection to let Teba hear what she hears, he looks across the region and sees.

Vah Naboris falls from Spectacle Rock. Vah Rudania tumbles into the maw of Death Mountain. Vah Ruta sinks beneath the waves of what he’d thought was just a shallow reservoir lake upon an unnamed mountain in Lanayru.

And in the back of his head, thanks to his connection to Vah Medoh, Teba can hear the calls for help as the three other Divine Beasts fall.

. . . – – – . . .

“S.O.S.” – Save Our Souls.

A signal Revali had taught him, in the time-that-wasn’t, just in case he ever needed it – just in case. (He’d hoped he never would need it, never have to hear it. He wonders if this is the last thing the Champions of this time heard – their peers calling for help, none of them able to respond, all of them succumbing to Ganon and his Blights.)

As the clouds above Hebra begin to swirl with anger and the first snowflakes begin to fall, Teba stands on the back of the last Divine Beast, and tries not to be sick, tries not to wonder about all the why’s and how’s and what if’s, tries not to let out his own mournful cry as Vah Medoh does when the S.O.S signals finally fade into oblivion. (He doesn’t succeed on that last part.)

Just getting this idea out there so that maybe I'll actually finish writing it one day, but -

I've been on a Legend of Zelda kick recently. Currently replaying BOTW. Never played AOC but I've watched gameplay and all the cutscenes so I know what happens. Planning to play that and TOTK again soon. But I've got this idea cooking in my head.

Theres a post that talks about "what if you could find the Divine Beasts in the Depths", and another funny post that was just "what if Teba was the sage of Wind and not Tulin?" And I remembered when BOTW had just come out, and then AOC after, and people were speculating about the characters, like Teba, being the New Champions and getting to bond to the Divine Beasts.

That didn't happen in canon, but. Hear me out. What if even just one of the Divine Beasts bonded with a New Champion... like say, the one who doesn't become a Sage?

Teba, Sidon, Riju, and Yunobo return from their adventure in the past/alternate timeline/whatever, having saved those Champions and that Hyrule from destruction. Their own timeline is still the same, but they continue on as they do in canon.

Except they all meet up shortly after returning home, and one of them (Sidon or Riju maybe) asks "hey did anyone else try going to the Divine Beasts only to get rejected" and while the rest are like "yup wonder what that's about, sad" Teba is like "no wtf are you all talking about I was settling back in with my wife and kid."

But something about it sticks with Teba. He goes home, looks up at Vah Medoh, and thinks, 'it probably won't work but I may as well try just to confirm.'

...Vah Medoh accepts him as its new pilot.

I'm unsure as to whether or not Revali's spirit will still be there for a quick hello - but if he is, he'd be like "whomst?!" And Teba would be like "if you were still alive I'd definitely adopt you because thanks to some time travel shenanigans i know that you desperately needed a parental figure in your life".

Mostly everything else proceeds as is canon up to the start of TOTK - except for the other Divine Beasts continuing to chill at their resting places, because upon hearing about Teba successfully bonding with Medoh, the others want to keep trying.

But, for whatever reason, Hylia decided that you cannot be both a Sage and a Divine Beast pilot, so the Beasts acknowledge them but never quite accept them as their pilots.

Then, TOTK. Then the chasms. Then, the other 3 Divine Beasts taking a plunge into the Depths.

Teba freaks out a little bit, but Medoh is circling Rito Village and is fine, except now there's these random floating islands but also a fuckass blizzard that's making it almost impossible to keep everyone fed, and Teba's just been saddled with Elder status so he's super in charge and Tulin is in a bit of a "I can do anything let me prove it let's go" phase and is trying to convince Teba to use Vah Medoh to fly up and stop the blizzard, but Teba is way too busy trying to keep the village from falling apart to go right now -

Then Link shows up, and Tulin runs off, and Link follows him, and the two go up and find the Stormwind Ark and fight Colgera and as the magical blizzard finally ends, Teba is just like "what the fuck".

Tulin tells him he's become a Sage, and isn't that cool dad?! And Teba is like "you're 12 and you're going to help fight a demon king?!?! Wtf?!"

But then at some point, Tulin (who knows the other Sages from that time he was in AOC, and meeting them a few times with his dad after) one day looks up from his breakfast and says "oh hey Sidon just became the Sage of Water! I saw it through my connection with Link!" And that's when it clicks into place for Teba why the Beasts never quite accepted the other "New Champions" - because they were destined for something else.

But Vah Medoh is still here. And it's pissed that it's fellow Beasts are gone and it also wants to blast Ganondorf in the face.

Unfortunately, Teba can't let it blast the castle when Link and co go to confront the Zelda illusion, because Tulin is there, Link is there, Sidon and Riju and Yunobo are there, and it's not the real demon king yet anyway.

Teba is grumpy about it, about letting Tulin go off and risk his life when he's a child and Teba is an adult, but then a huge dark dragon explodes out from the chasm below the castle and Vah Medoh is all too happy to fire upon it, knowing it's Ganondorf and wanting some sweet revenge of its own.

Teba's just surprised he can see the dark dragon, it's huge but he'd heard tales of only the young, or those chosen by thr goddesses, could see dragons. Maybe it's because of Vah Medoh that he can see this one, and the little light dragon that comes in and - hey is that Link?!

Maybe it ends with Teba going down to the Depths with Link to visit the other Divine Beasts, and suggesting that the locations stay known so that future generations may try to awaken them. They don't really need the Beasts anymore since both Calamity Ganon and Ganondorf have been defeated, but Medoh doesn't want to turn off and is happy just chilling at Rito Village with Teba. The end.

I have like 2.5k of this already written, I just wanted to use this post to write more of the ideas for the fic structure before I go to bed lol. And this idea probably doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense canon-wise, but it doesn't need to because the only reason this exists is because i love Teba and wish he'd gotten more screntime (or at least some spoken dialogue in the cutscenes!) in TOTK.