Waking of Wednesday, May 10, 2017
I shared a somewhat.... irksome exchange with David the other
day, as I lamented to him about all the dead-ended rivers I had searched. I
told him I had searched every waterway
downstream from the wetlands, and that none
of them led to Lake Hylia.
And in a terrible digging voice and
with shrewdly narrowed eyes he answered, “Are
you sure?”
Well.
I did wonder about that lake
beneath Digdogg Suspension Bridge, and I hiked to the actual bridge (upon which
I had never set foot) to have a look. In skirting round the sleeping Hinox and
peering down over the edge, the water really did seem to come to a dead end
just there.
But I wanted to be thorough. I
pressed on into the desert landscape of the other side, had it out with a
couple of mounted bokoblins—and one of their horses, a pretty, peach-dusty
thing with a sandy mane, decided he didn’t want me on his back, and promptly
jumped us both into the drink.
David lost it completely.
I just.... blinked.
....
The horse looked like a good mount,
but I had no stamina for swimming after him, and so warped to the shrine just
away beneath the bridge. After that it was a boat-ride back to the waterfall, a
quick ascension in my Zora Armor, and.... I was still quite far away from where I had been....
But, as I was so close to the Great
Plateau, I simply put on my Warm Doublet, warped to the shrine on the icy
mountain, ENCOUNTERED A STRANGE TREASURE CHEST
with the letters “EX” on it—for a moment I was terrified it might be a T-shirt
or something.... but it was Bomb Arrows—don’t ask—and PARAGLIDED back to
Digdogg Suspension Bridge.
I’d dealt with the bokoblins, and I
finished off their friends in a nearby treehouse—David got quite a kick out of
the Great Thunderblade I had acquired
from Sheem Dagoze.
And after a good look about the
place.... I decided that Yes, this
really was a dead end to the river.
Ignoring my shrine-locator’s
beeping, I ran all the way back to the Outskirt Stable.
It was....
It was time to start back. And set
my face toward Akkala. And Robbie.
I did still decide to do this all
on foot, however.
“Aren’t you gonna just....
Beam-Me-Up-Scotty?” David asked.
“I don’t wanna Beam-Me-Up-Scotty,”
I said.
“You’re gonna walk the whole way?”
Well, maybe I’d Beam-Me-Up-Scotty
just a little. I warped back to the
Sheem Dagoze Shrine, and started north, for the Elma Knolls.
But first I came to that big toothy
crack in the earth, found a shrine in the bottom of it, and completed that—I’m
up to nine Spirit Orbs now; I really
should find a Goddess statue....
And after that it was a very long jog past that sparse ruin over
the water where I’d played hide-and-seek with the Korok—The Ancient Laboratory Ruin or something
like that—aaaaall the way across the Elma Knolls with their endless wolves, and
those mounted bokoblins with the fire arrows or whatever they were.... Got hit
a couple of times there—
I didn’t feel like chewing through
my food, but decided that, if I fell, I would just rely on Mipha.
What good is a gift avoided? And
Mipha’s was a very good gift.
It was a very long trek, and the bokoblins cut me down to one heart, and a mob of giant blue
chuchus cut me down to one quarter heart—but
I kept running. And I kept killing wolves, never shying.
And it was raining, and I found
Mils and Mina—not Nina, as it turned
out—fighting against some bokoblins on the road, and I helped them out, and—
“Well there’s a split off the river,” said David.
I looked toward the castle. Beneath
the unholy Calamitous Clouds, one fell fork split off and meandered away into
the blackened landscape. It looked just like another part of the moat.
“I don’t think Lake Hylia’s in there,” I
gestured to the castle lands.
“But.... open your map; maybe it
connects with.... these down here.”
He indicated some rivers along the
vein that ran between the Dueling Peaks.
“ . . . . Huh,” I said, “Maybe.” Perhaps.... this warranted some
looking in to.
Also I had the feeling David was .
. . . mmmm maybe nudging me around a bit.
The sun came out like a bad cliché
when I finally jogged onto the friendly grounds of the Woodland Stable. It was
11:15 in the morning. I decided to take a forty-five minute nap to rejuvenate
my aching one-quarter-heart body, and at noon, I took Thrice out for a ride.
We took the Thims Bridge road, over
the mossy mounded hills and past the Honeydell—saving Leekah from a bokoblin on
the way of course. But I stopped at one junction of the road I had never
explored.
“Stay here,” I told Thrice, and
climbed a bit over the rocks beside the long stretch of a T-junction. The
stretch that pointed toward the castle....
“In my experience,” said David,
“The closer you are to the castle....”
The
farther you are from harm? I thought hopefully.
“The closer you are to trouble,” he
finished.
“I’m just gonna take a little look,”
I assured him, inwardly thinking how VERY like Famous Last Words those sounded....
I crept among the rocks until I was
high enough to peer into the central plain before the castle. There at the base
of the hill I was on.... coursed a little river. Flowing north to south. One
that very probably could only have come from that split David had shown me
earlier, among the big cubic stones surrounding the castle.
. . . .
Maybe....
Maybe....
I looked at my map again.
The river system near the Dueling
Peaks.... the river that this one by the Honeydell may have connected with....
was called the Hylia River. And it was
joined by the Squabble River from the
Dueling Peaks....
But further downstream it was still
called the Hylia River....
And then it ran away southward off
of my known map.
Could
it be . . . . ?
I came back to Thrice, and we
pressed on to the Wetland Stable—saving Leekah again on the way—and I stopped.
Oh I was aching to go on. I had
arced all the way north around the castle again in a great upside-down U, and I
still had the drive and energy to keep going....!
But it was late again, and I did
have to get up early.
But to be absolutely sure....
To see those waterways....
There was one more thing I could do in pursuit of the hapless missing
Mei.
And it lay at the top of the
alleged scariest Sheikah Tower in all the land.
No comments:
Post a Comment