Waking of Friday, April 14, 2017 ~ 10
A circularish bog.... with a bunch
of wooden platforms in it....?
I pulled out my Sheikah Slate and
opened the pictograph album.... one
of these.... one of Zelda’s pictographs.... THERE IT WAS.
The roundish body of water with all
the platforms.... on top of a hill?
With a river running nearby and there was the castle behind it?
“OH MY GOSH THAT’S HERE!” I shouted.
I looked at the pictograph—I was
too low and to the right—I needed to be up and to the left—Forget the forest,
forget Akkala! I needed to climb the mountain!
I paraglided from the hilltop,
across the road, and into the red, red stone of the foothills of Death Mountain.
And I scrambled for it.
It was a place called Eldin Canyon,
and it was easy enough to ascend—especially with my Climber’s Bandana.
Quickly, quickly, up, up, up! I was in such a hurry to try
and unlock my memory I barely gave myself time to take in what oddities and
little terrors I passed. There were glowing-hot rocks—fiery versions of those
creepy little golems I’d run into outside Hateno. Infantile Taluses, I think. I
blew them up with bombs. And there were big, plump birds—Eldin Ostriches—that
looked delicious.... And dangerous! Those legs looked
powerful.... But they were afraid of my presence, and fled. I didn’t try to
catch any.
I HAD MORE PRESSING MATTERS TO
ATTEND TO!
The temperature rose as I climbed
higher and higher—the baking oven heat just next to intolerable. But not quite. Not quite dangerous. I could take it....
But as I scaled one cliff wall, and
just reached the lip of its top and looked over—I briefly saw the glare of lava—
And whatever wooden weapon I had
slung across my back burst into flame.
I backed up immediately, shielding my
face below the rock again—I hadn’t known I was so close to the open magma flow!
Dropping back down to the dirt below, I quickly put out the fire.
I paused, considering.
From the neck down, I was still
wearing full Zora Armor. So sleek, formfitting, made for the water.... I didn’t
want to damage it....
Perhaps it was time to switch back
to my Hylian attire, which I did.
Though I passed up the Hylian Hood and just kept the Climber’s Bandana on my
head.
Maybe it made no difference, but it
somehow seemed.... more fitting for the terrain. Rugged.
Ah, I’d missed this stuff....
And up I went again.... being
careful to take a different
avenue....
Near the crest of one great lumpy crag of the mountain—my
gosh the whole thing just went on forever—it
was like traversing the Superstitions from Peralta Trailhead all the way to
First Water all over again—plus about sixty degrees of incline and ending in
a fiery explosion—
UH, near the crest of one of the
innumerable regular-sized mountains
that somehow comprised the foothills of this gigantic.... unbelievably huge....
oh the word “mountain” just doesn’t seem to encompass it....
Anyway ON TOP OF A BIG ROCK I MET
SOME RED LIZALFOS.
I ran in to cut them down, but....
they moved differently, these ones.... Instead of darting in low over the
ground like a snake to end up right next to me, they paused at some distance away—and simply breathed fire at me, in front of a slow, pressing march.
I couldn’t get close; I had to
withdraw and change tack.
Running back down the hill a ways,
I tried to stay as high as I could on a sort of side-slope that arced up
concave from the hillside where I was.
Fire-breathers,
huh?
I had never purchased specialty
arrows before, but I had found and acquired a few in my wanderings. And I had a
good many ice arrows on my person
just then....
It was a trick to get close enough
to see the lizalfos, but remain far enough away for them not to notice. It was
trickier still to aim over such
distances—and angles. No flat ground
here. I must say, I startled them with a few misfires and made them dart about
a bit, but in the end.... with one arrow apiece, they shattered into frozen
crystal fragments that melted right away in the burning heat.
The way was clear. I moved all over
the hill where the lizalfos had stood, looking down at the bog. Was this right? No, I had to be higher.
I got on the rock where the first lizalfos had scorched me. Was it high enough?
I took pictograph after pictograph
but they didn’t line up. The parallax bend of the river was off.... and there
was a rock somewhere in the foreground that I was missing.
I climbed higher, up to the craggy
pinnacle of the concave side-slope I had sheltered on.
This was it.
And.... there was a Korok hiding.
I flushed him out and took his
seed, and then walked to the edge, looking out at the Training Camp, and the
Castle beyond....
The sun was rising.
No, the sun was setting. And there were scads of slain monsters littering the
hill I had just climbed. Bokoblins. Moblins. I could have sworn I even saw the
severed head of a Black Lynel, still
glowering in a frozen snarl.
Zelda’s voice was sounding.... something
about me overdoing it....
I
wasn’t immortal, she reminded me.
And she was seeing to some minor
injury I had sustained, but it wasn’t bad. Just a little scratched up is all.
She was some Princess, to go
climbing all the way out here with me—and through the midst of so many enemies....
She wore clothes like mine. Blue
tunic. Dun trousers. Boots for easy movement. A pretty braid of her
dusky-blonde hair banded over the top of her head.
She was worried.
No, she wasn’t worried; her voice
and her manner were too steady for that.
But she expressed a kind of
concern. An unsettlement.
About the increasing frequency of
these monster appearances—and the exceedingly more powerful breeds that manifested.
Something about the Calamity....
Something about the Calamity impending....
Was
it closing in?
I spent all day on that rock.
I’d almost started down as the
morning got on—indeed I did start
down—but....
No. I wanted to wait. Until the
right time.
I climbed back up, and stayed there
a long time after.
Just the Korok and his circle of
stones for company.
Until sunset, when I took a few
more pictographs.
And that was enough.
Everything was so tiny below me:
the Sheikah Tower, the Training Camp, and waaaay down there in the valley, the
little horsehead shape of the Woodland Stable.
I paraglided from crag to crag back
down the mountain, and soon found myself to be sailing over some enormous
switchbacks.
So there’d been a road I could have
used.
But there were also a few black
moblins scattered along it—sleeping mostly—and one ice wizzrobe, whom I would not
have cared to run into.
No, I preferred the avenue of my
own making: right up the hills near the forest (Yay Bandana), and right down the hills through the air.
I sailed right down to the Woodland
Stable, and for twenty rupees booked a bed to sleep in.
It had been a long day.
A long few days.
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