Safety in Numbers

Waking of Saturday, MARCH FOURTH, 2017 ~ 13

Safety in Numbers

I had wandered back into the spread of hills by the stable some time before, looking for I don’t know what. But oh what a beautiful all-black horse I had seen. I followed after it day and night, trying to tame it.

The first time I’d crept up on it, I had approached it from directly behind.

It kicked me in the face before I had a chance to jump on. Sent me rolling and took off some hearts.

I was more careful in the future.

But no matter how many times I mounted it—four? five? six?—I always ran out of stamina before the thing stopped bucking.

I even considered using a stamina-replenishing potion to try and hang on a little longer....

But as I followed it and its fellows deeper into the hills, they began to wander among the big rusted Guardians.

And one of them came to life.

“NOPE. No thank you, goodbye, gotta go, the end, I think NOT.” Or some such ramblings I spat as I crept away backwards, staying in the sight-shadow of a really dead Guardian.

Those hills were bad enough with the octoroks in the river, but.... with Guardians on the other side?

....

I didn’t like that place anymore.

Unfortunately that little valley was right what the road to Hateno Village wound through—Through scads and heaps of these Guardians, on all sides, frozen in their stretching, reaching, crawling.... All of them dead?

Or just waiting?

Brokka [Toma] came along the road again, back on her brown-spotted horse, and I followed her on my own horse at the same walking pace. Surely she, a non-player character, would only tread where those terrible still-living Guardians would not be nor attack.

Brown knew to follow the road. I didn’t need to guide him.

The Guardians loomed on all sides as we walked in silence.

It was a slow and torturous terror passing each one, not knowing as we approached whether its gears would start to grind, its eye would gleam in searching blue, its head begin to swivel looking for things to kill, to incinerate....

Our horses so slow and steady, the air so very still, everything so quiet.... The road felt like a tightrope....

Oh gads I couldn’t stand it....

However, Brokka did make a break for it when a couple of bokoblins jumped out of the brush.

So did I.

I couldn’t stand it! When we had escaped the bokoblins Brokka slowed down again, but I did not pull Brown back from his gallop—through more and more and MORE of the Guardians—until I had passed through the ruin of a portcullis in some kind of large stone wall. There were trees beyond—

I pulled back on the reins, but Brown’s momentum was too great. He had to jump over a small boulder before he came to a halt, whinnying. I patted him, and he gave me a little more love.

He’s a good horse.

The place was called Fort Hateno. There seemed to be some shambling wooden stairs and scaffolds on this other side, I guessed so people could more easily defend it.

Clouds began to brood, and the rain began to fall.

Brokka caught up.

There was a campfire, and plenty to explore.

But I did not want to linger.

Those Guardians, even dead, were too close.

I stayed with Brokka as she continued toward Hateno Village.