The Maddest Dash

Waking of Saturday, April 22, 2017 ~ 2

The Maddest Dash

Every stride down the riverside road took me closer to the castle, and the swirling, looming Calamity trapped within its grounds.

I didn’t know what I would find.

The way was barren for the most part. The hills began to mount and roll all grassy on the right side, to the north, while on the left side, lower down, the land looked as pleasant and natural as ever.

I even saw a shrine down there. Just the glimmer of orange, inside a hidden cavern it seemed. But heck no way was I gonna give time for it now! Especially as it lay across the river. No fooling around in there. Not right now.

I had a Zora to find.

I passed charred wooden ruins and smashed timbers on the right—a few new bogs had formed there. And I saw a wolf sniffing around one of them. I snapped its pictograph before moving on. My Compendium told me they traveled in packs, and would surround their prey; but this one walked alone. Hmm.

I didn’t bother with it.

Past the ribcage remains of a few overturned wagons, I saw two Hylians having a row with two Bokoblins, and bolted ahead to even the odds....

The man’s name was Mils, and woman’s either Mina or Nina. Nina I think; I don’t recall their names forming an alliteration [they did; it was Mina].... Actually Nina [Mina] looked like a Sheikah come to think of it. White-haired.

Well it was encouraging to see other people out here at any rate.

They thanked me for the assist and we parted ways, they back the way I had come, at a healthy jog; and I ahead to the northwest, a little faster.

Molo had mentioned some docks by which one could reach the land where the castle stood, and I saw the road that led down toward them. It looked like a wooden bridge. And a six-legged Guardian sat camped out on the other side like a cheapskate.

But hadn’t I seen....?

I looked at my map again.

I had mistaken something else for Molo’s “docks”: a great jutting bit of land, all square and elevated above its surroundings. I’d thought it was perhaps made of stone, but....

Well I’d see when I got there I suppose.

The rolling hills piled steeply to my right—the Elma Knolls. And I soon discovered them to be infested with wolves. Eventually one appeared unavoidably close to my path.

I kept running. Straight for it.

I’d been a wolf before! I thought, remembering Twilight Princess, I’ll best you....

And I did—and was rewarded with a thick slab of Gourmet Meat.

But the wolves did fight dirty, circling and circling and keeping back from my sword strokes. But once one of them was killed the rest left off in a hurry—true to the Compendium’s word.

It was only a minor slowing inconvenience—I had to keep going.

And to my left I saw one of those flying terrors—the same kind I had seen near the tower north of Upland Zorana. Hovering and shining red lights down below....

I snapped a pictograph.

It was a flying Guardian.

FANTASTIC.

There were a few of them near the castle, as it turned out. I always found it alarming whenever they seemed to be hovering in my general direction, and you bet your pants I hightailed it into the hills on those occasions! Between Guardians and wolves, I’d take the wolves.

But the Guardian Flyers would eventually make a sharp turn—following a set patrol pattern it seemed—and I would bend cautiously back toward the road, and the river, cutting my corners as fine as I dared....

The castle—the castle grounds—were.... enormous. I did reach what I had thought was the dock, or half of a bridge. But it was not a dock.

It was, in fact, one of a number of immense, black, cubicle stones, shot with magenta light in archaic designs, which surrounded the castle, all jutting inward like the teeth of a baited trap.

Perhaps.... a part.... of whatever apparatus bound the great Calamity to its prison in the castle grounds.

This one just happened to be on my side of the river. The side my Sheikah Slate had downloaded into its map. That’s why it was showing up.

I would not touch it.

It was a long, long trek across the Elma Knolls. Sun and moon arced. Rain came and went. I passed a Hinox slumbering in the middle of what looked like a lumber yard—I considered killing it, but.... my arrows were running low after that Woodland Tower. And I didn’t fancy getting smacked in the everything by one of those logs.

I killed wolves, I startled birds and foxes, I grabbed plants on the go, I ran from a mounted bokoblin—thought about killing him too, but he was packing some kind of super arrows and I had to keep running.

I just had to keep following the river.

That Mei might have passed so close to the castle, so close through the unholy darkness, beneath those undulating clouds of purest evil....

I just had to keep following the river.

I just had to keep following the river....

And I did.

And after a long, long time, it began to bend away from the castle and the Calamity, so blessedly away.

And I followed it.

It had been a big, big castle, and ground, and maybe a town. Perhaps once the bright center of the land. Maybe I should have known it would take such a long, long time.

I followed the river, running and running and making only brief stops—mostly involving Koroks. One of them led me on a merry game of hide-and-seek through the few standing walls of a ruin on a high plateau overlooking the water.

The place was wide enough that it had seemed like boss-room bait, but there were only a few fat blue chuchus lurking in the ground. I dispatched them easily, and played the Korok’s game, as a mighty thunderhead brooded in the western distance, lightning strobing in its shadowy depths....

I ran on.

Bridges spanned into the dangerous ground on my left at whiles—now I was more west-northwest of it.

I ignored them.

Through the darkness of rain I came to a great crack in the earth, with jutting crags like teeth on either side. Things were nesting in the dangerous paths at the bottom it seemed.... But I only paraglided across to the other side—and kept on running.

Stalmoblins burst from the ground and chased me—I had no time for them.

The grass began to give.

Rocks showed through the terrain.

I passed a Sheikah Tower high up away on the rocky hills to my right.

It looked close, but....

Later.

I came to great bald mountains and cliffs of bare stone and—

THE RIVER SPLIT?

David laughed at me.

He’d been with me for a while now.

“Ugh, which way?” I lamented.

“Try the left one; it follows the map line.”

I swiveled between the two in agony.

“Uhhhh.... Okay....”

And so I took the left fork.

I just had to keep going....