At Jeddo Bridge

Waking of Tuesday, May 2, 2017 ~ 2

At Jeddo Bridge

Toffa was the man’s name. The old man at the stable who had asked me to go find the white horse.

I didn’t dare show him until after I’d registered him though; he is willful.

A proud and powerful beast. <3

Toffa was shocked and delighted and dumbfounded and just full of joy. The sight of the pure white horse!

“Son, you just made my life,” he said, “I guess staying alive in this godforsaken land was worth it after all.”

The stories from his grandfather were true. This must have been some grandchild of that stallion from long ago, and it was magnificent. He became wistful. “They say the sight of the Princess riding her white horse was a beauty beyond all words,” he said.

He was so happy to have seen the white horse, that he gave me—the Royal Family’s saddle and bridle?

They were the very same. The same from my memory.

Augh, and how splendid Memory looked wearing them.

Regal and handsome.

I do wonder where and how Toffa came by that tack....

I rode Memory over the road north, all the way to the base of a big hill where we saw a moblin lurking around a bit higher up, and then back again to the stable. Just for us to get a bit more used to each other. The piano rollicked along in our wake all the way like sunlit raindrops, cadencing perfectly when we stopped.

But after that I boarded him again; there were no guarantees of flat ground where I was headed. The Stables would take good care of him while I was out.

I headed north again on foot, crossed Manhala Bridge, crested Sanadin Park Hill, and jogged across the skirts of Satori Mountain. A wide green field lay at its foot to my left—it again looked like a gorgeous place to have a row with something big and mean....

I didn’t stray into it, but kept near the river.

It was quite a long trek, and the rain came again before the end of it, this time with lightning. Strange, it’s become second nature to just switch to non-conductive gear; and if the ground beside me is flash-fried in an earthshaking bolt of electricity, I hardly even bat my eyes anymore at the little grassfires that may be left over.

I neared a very sticky bridge—I mean the sight of it made it seem comprised of just such a mess of sticks.

Was this the rickety-looking bridge I’d seen from below....?

Jeddo Bridge it was called. And shortly before I set foot upon it, I heard once again the sweet, poignant little waltz played on an accordion....

Through the downpour’s haze I could just make out, on the other side of the bridge, perched atop a big craggy hillock like a one-man stage.... Kass. Joying out his song to the wild wild rain in sweetloving abandon like he does. I love that guy. <3

As I crossed the bridge I could tell it wasn’t as rickety as it looked—but did it ever look it. If I didn’t know any better I’d say something huge had taken bites out of it.

Come to think of it, I guess I really didn’t know any better. o.O

I could see the river far below. This was the split that I had been looking for! Excellent.

But I had little time to celebrate because just before I reached the other side of the bridge, three stalmoblins burrowed up out of it and laid me out flat. I very nearly plummeted into the gorge, but only just managed to cling onto the stone just below the bridgeplanks—but I wouldn’t be able to hold on for long in this rain....!

But I looked, and there was a little ledge just below me. I dropped down onto it and sheltered beneath the northern end of the bridge for a while, the stalmoblins jabbing stupidly in my general direction with their spears. But they lost track of me momentarily and only snorfled around for some sign of anything else to harass.

I couldn’t very well climb back up.... I’d make a beautiful target until I reached the top. And besides that it was still raining.

I guessed I’d just have to wait for a change in the weather, or daybreak. Or both.

At length the stalmoblins disappeared and I did make it up to see Kass.

He hadn’t heard me come up on him; he was thinking about his teacher, who had passed away a long time ago. He played me the last song his teacher had taught him, and it spoke a riddle of a single arrow passing through two rings to make a shrine appear....

“Do you suppose it means all these strangely-shaped rocks?” Kass suggested, for there were numerous rings carved from jutting stones all around.

An Odyssean challenge!

Well! :D

I went to it.

It was tricky, as the land was so hilly and angled, and some blue chuchus interrupted me, but eventually I found a couple of rings I could thread a single arrow through. And as I did, the shrine of Sheem Dagoze rumbled out of the earth....

“Kass, look what I did!” I ran back to show him. He was politely astounded. ^_^

I had a warpable right at the root of the split I needed to search. Excellent!

Off-White Memory

Waking of Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Off-White Memory

I stepped out of the Outskirt Stable, it was five o’clock in the morning, the sun was shining.... Time for a new adventure!

Time to go find that other split of the river!

After consulting my compass and buying every arrow Beedle had in stock (it was my first time purchasing arrows), I took off northward, crossing to the west side of the river when I came to Manhala Bridge.

I didn’t care for the path, as usual, but instead scrambled almost straight up the rocky sides of this big hump of earth. Always head to high ground!

It was grassy on top, and—wouldn’t you know it—as I continued north, I did catch a glimpse of a white horse off to my left, just trotting through the rolling flowers. Very pretty.

It wasn’t pure white—its mane was a kind of cream-color.

But I’d say it was definitely a one-color horse.

Still.... I had my own business to attend to. I didn’t change course as it came trotting in my general direction. Would it see me and stop? Whatever it did, I had to keep moving north.

But I paused when I saw some structures just ahead on the other end of this big hill.

Baddies?

I didn’t see any movement. I came closer.

The place was called Sanadin Park Ruins. But it didn’t seem very ruinous. On the contrary it looked.... well quite pleasant still, even after all these years.

Maybe monsters had never come here.

And then, up on top, in the center of the structures, I saw a bit of statuary—a horse.

It was the horse statue from one of Zelda’s pictographs!

I climbed up and took a few more pictographs myself. I’m not sure how the Princess must have managed the angle she got before, but I tried to recapture it as best I could.... I fell over the railing a couple of times.

After one of these times, I ran back round to get on top again, and—

“Glendo?”

Glendo was there on his horse! Out of nowhere! I often saw him at the Outskirt Stable, warning me of the monsters that come out at night....

“Glendo could you clear off, please? I’m trying to have a moment here....”

I milled around on the grass for a while until he finally scooted his horse back toward the stable, muttering something about “something seems off....”

I stopped, thinking to ask him about it, but.... in that moment he got too far away.

I turned back to the statue. Now that I was properly alone with it again, I could get a few more good pictographs....

But very shortly after Glendo had gone, the daylight began to dim. The blue began to brood into a creamy haze, and then a light grey, and then a dark grey, and then.... rain began to fall.

Well.

Not the picturesque reunion I’d been hoping for, but....

Hhhh and all the gay little flowers so sodden.

-_-

But I couldn’t wait there forever.

I stepped in front of the statue, and looked at Zelda’s pictograph....

The sun hung low and the sky was shot with gold. Sunset I think.

Princess Zelda and I rode our horses along that very hill above Manhala Bridge, toward Sanadin Park. Just at a walk.

Her horse was white—it was just like that one I had seen.... all white with a creamy mane. My own horse.... heh, looked kinda like Brown, actually. Dark, with four white socks.

She was just talking. About her horse’s saddle and bridle—very lovely tack, all gleaming and befitting a horse who bears royalty on his back. She said he wore it well.

My horse’s gear wasn’t so splendid—I even had a bedroll behind my saddle. What kind of life did I lead?

She thanked me for some advice—about riding I guess—and then we came to the little deck by the statue, and dismounted.

She stepped toward the railing, and the sun’s light haloed her in a brilliant red glow.

“Do you see that mountain? That is Mount Lanayru, named for the Goddess of Wisdom....”

It was far away.

Zelda said she had prayed at both the Spring of Power and the Spring of Courage, but that neither instance had awoken anything inside her.

She also said that no one under the age of seventeen was allowed to—

She looked again at Mount Lanayru, at whose top was the Spring of Wisdom.

It was a tall mountain, I knew. Treacherously tall.

And then she turned to me again and told me that tomorrow was her seventeenth birthday.

Would she climb the mountain, then?

Her hair was so red....

Rain dripped down my face, and the grass was wet and the flowers were soaked under the grey, grey sky.

Under cover of the downpour, I found the white horse again. The white horse I hadn’t thought much of. But now that I knew what it was.... And it looked just like him, too.... Just like him....

He bucked me off once, and as the rain thinned out and stopped, it was a long crouch through the moonlit grass to sneak up on him again.

The second time I didn’t let go.

It took nearly every stamina-based meal and elixir I had to stay on his back—but I did.

He is strong. He is fierce.

He is WILD.

And I brought him back to the Outskirt Stable. And I registered him there, and I called him....

Memory.

The Entry With No Name

Waking of Saturday, April 22, 2017 ~ 6

The Entry With No Name

“They’re ALL DEAD ENDS??” I howled.

I sputtered, trying to think. What had I missed? WHERE WAS THE LAKE?

“No, there was still that other split,” said David, “Open your map.”

I did.

“Right here.” He pointed to some squiggle of map line north of where I was.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

(Actually it wasn’t until the next day (technically later that same day) that I realized he meant that first split: between the flow that followed the map line southward, and the flow that wandered off west between the tall cliffs.)

(I was very, very tired.)

I ran around. Somehow there was stable music. David might have steered me toward it. The Outskirt Stable. To think there were people living so close to that dread coliseum....

My head was full. I couldn’t take in anymore.

I met a guy named Trott. He was so exhausted.

Ha, me too, buddy.

He worked at the stable, but the stable meals he said were all vegetarian. He really needed some meat to help him feel better.

Gourmet Meat he asked for. Maybe we could share it he said. I think? Did he?

Did we even share it?

I don’t know.

But I did have one Gourmet Meat. The one and only Gourmet Meat I’d ever harvested. Fresh from the wolves of the Elma Knolls.

I handed it over.

I’ll just say we each ate half and felt like kings.

I like that story better. <3

Another of Staysi’s Rumor Mills was inside on a table. Volume three this time, and it spoke of the mystical creatures known as Koroks.

Hm.

That’s pretty neat.

I also spoke to a lady who stood under a nearby tree—was it raining at the time? She was liable to be struck by lightning if she wasn’t careful....

But she just clapped her hands and jumped for joy and said, “I knew the Hero of Legend would meet me under THIS TREE.”

Ever unassuming, I just gave her a bleary “What?”

“Oh,” she said, “Come to think of it, you do look a bit scrawny to be the Legendary Hero.”

Scrawny?

“And you don’t seem to have his legendary weapon, either....”

Aw geez would this broad just lay off, I was doing the best I knew how....

Another person at the stable told me about Satori Mountain, and the “Lord of the Mountain” that lived there. Hm, may have been Quince’s glowing beast....

Satori Mountain was that dun, conical mountain I had seen through my scope. The one with the occasional glow at its crest at night. I was quite close to it here at the Outskirt Stable.

And I could see there was a shrine up there, too....

Yet another person told me about some place nearby where I could find an elusive pure-white horse. He guessed it might have been descended from a horse that once belonged to the Royal Family.... and he asked me if I could bring it to him.

I agreed without even thinking.

People told me what was around. Hyrule Ridge. Rito Village? Was it here that someone mentioned a Rito Village?

Where even was I, that a Rito Village could be so close?

And what was Hyrule Ridge?

I didn’t retain any of the directions people gave me. Everything went in one ear and out the other.

I wanted to start back up the river, keep looking for Mei, trusting in David’s imagined split that I could still follow, but....

It was so late....

And I was so, so tired.

I had to think about tomorrow. I had to go to bed. I had to get up in five hours to get ready for church. The sun would be up soon anyway, oh gads....

I’d done three shrines along the way I think.... no towers, though.... But no matter, I just wanted to hurry....

But wouldn’t maps prove so useful?

“Hey what’s that? That tower down there?”

David kept taking the most transparent SUDDEN NOTICE of this tower on the plain that he wanted me to go climb.

He’d told me earlier that that one had been.... most intimidating.

Just scary.

Do I go back up the river? Or do I do the intimidating tower to get another map? Or do I climb Satori Mountain? Or do I chase a white horse?

All of Hyrule was my oyster.... I mean.... my shellblade....

But....

But I needed to sleep. I needed it....

I had to stop.

I had to stop.

I wandered back to the Outskirt Stable....

And booked a bunk.

And slept.

And in my dreams, the Princess’ voice came back to me again, warning me it was another Blood Moon, and I had to be careful....

Never slept through one of those before. Excluding the previous century of course.

And in my actual dreams, in my actual bed, I was fighting a lizalfos, and I killed it, and its awesome weapon and AWESOMER shield went tumbling down, waaaay far away from me, into this sunny little grassy dell beneath a tall grey cliff, where no fewer than FOUR Sheikah Shrines sat very close to each other amid the shallow pools of water at the bottom.

I had been hunting EVERYWHERE for that shield....

I ran down, rooting here and there to find it, batting away more lizalfos and caring nothing for activating the shrines—I WANTED THAT SHIELD.

“That shield is an army of swear words,” I grumbled in my sleep.

Dead End with Dai

Waking of Saturday, April 22, 2017 ~ 5

Dead End with Dai

“Where’d you get all those rupees anyway?” said David.

I had well over four and a half thousand at this point.

“I dunno, I’ve just been around. Sold stuff. Monster parts.” And then I thought— “Why, how many rupees do you have?”

He named some hundred. Four hundred something maybe?

“Four hundred?” I drawled and rolled my eyes so hard at him.

He laughed.

The left fork of the second split of the river seemed to SPLIT YET AGAIN.

I couldn’t take much more of this.

Between these newest forks of the river, on a towering mound of land, there stood a tall, circular structure of light stone—a coliseum—globbed upon by a great pool of malice near its base.

And beyond this coliseum was the old Plateau.

I had come quite close to it—its River of the Dead had even emptied into that lake beneath Digdogg Suspension Bridge. Strange, such a big circle I’d walked in it seemed....

At any rate, this third split of the river seemed to girdle the coliseum on both sides, perhaps even making an island of it....

I wanted to keep an eye on both splits for as long as I could.

There was a long dark bridge I could access which would take me to the coliseum.

It looked scary, I couldn’t see its top or any bad guys that might be patrolling it, and it just reeked of trouble.

But I was the Hero, and it was time to be Foolish.

So up I ran, up the little hill to the bridge. And the bridge, though worn a bit, was empty.

I ran ahead. And when I skipped past a few malice-pools and came to the other side, amid all the crumbled bits of walls and other things rubbled around on the grassy sward, I saw—

“What is that?” said David.

I looked carefully through my scope. “....It’s a backpack,” I said.

It was someone’s back.

And that someone was trembling.

I approached carefully, and I saw, quite clearly, the most probable reason for the man’s distress:

Prowling around inside the coliseum.... was what appeared to be a Black Lynel.

It stalked backward and forward, pausing at whiles to roar in challenge to the air....

Oh gads....

“What is that?” asked David.

“It’s.... I-It’s a-a—”

I legitimately could not speak.

I moved to where the man stood behind a weathered bit of light-stoned wall.

I didn’t think he was a Yiga.... He looked too terrified and his reason for it was too real.

I spoke with him.

His name was Dai, and he was evidently having second thoughts about facing whatever was in there, despite the untold riches rumored to then be found.

I discouraged him most heartily from his endeavor, and continued to follow the left fork, trying to keep low and out of sight of that Lynel if there were any more gaping holes in the coliseum walls....!

I found a Korok on the way. Cheery as ever and giggling its little “Twee-hee!”

Man....

Just....

Not something you really expect to hear in close quarters to a Lynel.

I was very close to the actual walls of the Great Plateau now, and before I got there.... the river ran out.

“Maybe the other one keeps going! Just gotta go around the horn....” I said hopefully.

I ran in a rightward curve until the coliseum walls pressed too close and the ground ran out from beneath my feet, I paraglided off the great mound of land and sailed round its sheer earthy sides, I hit the ground running, I came to the other split, the final split—

And it was a dead end too.

KAAM YA'TAK

Waking of Saturday, April 22, 2017 ~ 4

KAAM YA’TAK

The right fork of the river had been a dead end.

Drats!

I found some land to climb back up, and head back to the split above the little waterfall. The place where the bokoblins camped.

My old raft was gone.

DOUBLE drats!

But no matter, I could follow the left split of the river on foot. And I did.

Oh gosh I was covering so much ground so fast—gads it all kind of blurs together.... But with David’s guidance, and to generally increasing amusement at my sleep-deprivation.... I think this was where he steered me into the Shrine of Kaam Ya’Tak.

The Trial of Power.

What a racket was going on in that place....

“Tired is the Mormon drunk,” a friend once said to me, and I think I agreed.

I don’t know what inebriation feels like, but I’ve certainly tasted that special kind of loopy you get when you’ve missed a few REM cycles.

I don’t know why that shrine took me so long.

I don’t know how I even survived in there. Feeling so cautious and wary of crawlies and yet moving and acting on ahead with the abandon of the invincible. As if there wasn’t a deadly abyss right behind me as I skirted round a giant morningstar held off by shaky Magnesis....

And when David told me to look at the floor....

“What, that teeter-totter?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

There was a trapdoor spanning the corridor I had to move through.

“I died right there when I was in here.”

“Oh. Thanks!” I said, happy for the tip. ^__^

Poor David just must not have been running fast enough when he crossed it, I thought.

I backed up for speed, started running and took a flying leap onto it—

“What are you doing??” David gasped.

It tilted much faster than I’d thought it would! But I just kept jumping and my second footfall barely made it to the other side of the fulcrum and.... well I made it.

“Or you could just Stasis it!” he said.

“....Oh.”

I was also paranoid when I didn’t have to be—“What kind of Pokémon is that?” I asked when I saw a spinning kind of pedestal in the distance....

“Oh my gosh, you’ve seen it before,” said David.

“I think I’d remember seeing that before....”

“You know, the Apparatus thing?”

“The Myahm Agana Apparatus?”

“Whatever!”

“No....” I was positive if I got too close it would shoot lasers at me for sure.

But it didn’t. It was just an interface. And I used it to control a giant hammer to knock stuff around!

There were an awful lot of weapons hiding in chests in this shrine. And David kept making fun of me for agonizing over which weapons I should drop to make the trades.... I wasn’t going to give up my Korok Leaf! I did have a Traveler’s Sword, brand new but very weak—I’d been meaning to bring it back to somebody in Hateno who’d wanted one.... Ugh but I finally just let it go—I’d find another one later. Its final act was to fly through the air and slice the rope that held a flaming lantern above a floor littered with dry leaves.... the ensuing flames spread so astonishingly fast I almost didn’t notice the huge stone ball that nearly ran me over.... But at least I’d made my peace with discarding a weapon!

There were four treasure chests in there that gave me this fit—not to mention the weapons dropped by the Guardian Scouts—and David laughed every time.

“How much damage does your strongest weapon do?” he asked.

I thought of my Lucky Number 38—the Knight’s Claymore I believe it was called.

“Thirty-eight,” I said.

He rolled his eyes so hard he must have seen his own brain. “Thirty-eight?” he chewed in a haughty drawl.

I only grinned a glare at him.

He didn’t tell me his maximum damage.

I preferred it that way.

I did find a two-handed sword in that shrine that dealt fifty damage—handy! I used it to kill two Guardian Scouts in four strokes.

Because David had said those kinds of Guardians had a hundred hit points each.

I hadn’t known that—how had he?

Maybe he sneaked one of my amiibos....

(Yes, I have amiibos but I’m doing my first playthrough sans any extra helps.)

(Except the DLCs dang you, Nintendo....)

SOMEHOW—

SOMEHOW I CAME TO THE END.

I came to Kaam Ya’Tak, high on a platform above the giant rat race.

“YOU DID THIS TO ME,” I growled at him, and David laughed.

No, no, I tried to be nice, keep my head in the game, now—oh my gosh I was so low on sleep—

This was the best and worst shrine ever at the same time—

I collected his Spirit Orb, exited the shrine, and saw to my deepest distress—

“Oh my gosh!”

“What!” said David.

“There’s an aspen wood! Next to a body of water! With rocks in it! And the Dueling Peaks in the background!”

“You haven’t gotten that one yet?”

“NOOO!” I turned and ran in the opposite direction.

I had to find Mei.