Bad Blood

Waking of Thursday, April 6, 2017 ~ 4

Bad Blood

I came upon three of them camping on a south beach near a little dock with a boat. Favoring stealth, I threw bombs at them from an overhang until I became impatient, whereupon I dashed in and just brought it all to fisticuffs. When they’d been dealt with I searched all over their campsite but there was still no Korok Leaf to go with the boat!

Where in Hyrule was I going to find one??

Just a couple of hills more brought me to a small, weathered ruin with a few more lizalfos, alert and patrolling this time. I was grateful for the din of the rain; it made it easier to stalk the nearest one and cut him down in one stroke as he lay camouflaged in the blustered grass. The one by the little inlet was trickier as the land was so folded—and his Eightfold Longblade slipped into the water with him before I could grab it, drats!

There was just one more across the ruin and against a hill that I had it out with before I could properly inspect the shrine. It seemed to be surrounded by a hedge of briars—much as that other shrine on the Floret Sandbar had been surrounded by flowers.

But something told me a careful footing would be much more crucial here—those briars looked sharp.

At one point there was a lull in the rain, and so I attempted to burn the hedge out of the way—I’d wondered if the weather would prevent that, but luck was on my side it seemed.

But I broke two flints trying for a spark, and so instead went back and set off the powder-keg I’d seen in the ruin, and then used a torch to carry the flame over to the hedge.

For a time this worked quite well, but then the rain came back and quenched the flames I had started.

This was going to be tricky.

I didn’t know the half of it—

That sound.

That tone with the soft crescendo and a dead stop. The eerie echoes of whole-tone flutes. Ash and embers rose from the ground.

Oh no....

She’d always told me to please be careful....

But I’d never been in the middle of a hostile camp when the hour of Blood Moon struck.

I ran for it as the deep piano strings began to roar and rumble, up the hill slick with wet grass, just hoping for a clear patch of ground to claim, hoping there were no more lizalfos up here.... Oh I could kill them. But I preferred to do it from a controlled approach, and one at a time if I could manage it. I didn’t want to be thrust into the middle of a fresh gang of them....

The Blood Moon glowed ripping hot and the world turned crimson—

And all my work was for naught.

The dell crawled with lizalfos again. Alive. Armed. Healthy.

Just.... back.

How frustrating.

But there was nothing for it.

I moved in again, I killed them again, and I finally made it through a path in the briars to the shrine.

Five Flames.

That was the challenge offered by the monk.

A tricky one. Most invigorating.

But when I came back out, when I climbed a small pillar to paraglide out of the briars, when I dispatched the last mean lizalfos and scanned the final end of the water beneath the towering Reservoir wall....

There was no Mei.

She wasn’t here.