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.