Chills

Waking of Saturday, May 27, 2017 ~ 4

Chills

“What’s that screaming?” I asked.

“It’s a Bokoblin,” said David, “Being scared by a Flying Guardian. Repeatedly.”

Oh. .__.

It was.... a long time before I was ready to make that dash. David meanwhile kept assuring me that that was the way he went, and he made it just fine.

And I made it up all right, too. But dealing with the Bokoblins was a little more troublesome—didn’t want to be seen by the Guardians while I beat around on the staircase with the lower lifeforms. But I eventually got them out of my hair, undetected.

Seemed the Guardians didn’t patrol this section of the spiraling stone stairway.

They did the others, though, and so it was to be another scramble up the red, red rock to get past them.

The only trouble was that it started to rain, which gave my nerves plenty of time to boil over at the thought of what ungodly horrors I might find waiting for me over the last high ledge....

At length the rain went away, and I started climbing again. I had a few close calls with my stamina, but I did make it to the top—just on the other side of a low wall from a rusted Guardian.

“Oh for Satan, that thing is alive—!”

I could tell it was alive for my Champion’s Tunic.

“Oh that guy?” David shrugged. “I never dealt with him.”

Oh gads.... it was RIGHT THERE....

I believe this was when my condition began to deteriorate.

I backed away from it, trying to stay in the sight-shadow of a tall stone pillar.

Dark embers rose from the ground—

Oh no—it wasn’t a—?

But I looked at my clock. It couldn’t be a Blood Moon. It was far from midnight.

And then I heard the sound. A constant kind of gurgling like a guttering drain.

Malice pools. And they were close.

I peered round the edge of another wall and saw the great, gelatinous mass of it—dark, glistening, evil. Glowing and hungry to burn.

The huge, bulbous pool seemed to surround the entire ruin about the base of the tower, and I could see only one way for me to go: to the right, in front of the rusted Guardian. D8

There was a metal box there.... maybe I could hold it up so the Guardian wouldn’t see me as I moved—

“No, don’t go that way!” said David, “Go the other way.”

“What?” I was already shivering. The other way?

I looked.

Leftward around the edge of the summit was a clear lot of dirt to be sure, but—

Those propellers.

A Guardian Flyer patrolled just off the edge over that way.

My breath came in quivering gasps.

David laughed and asked if I were okay.

“Oh yeah—yeah I’m good.” Whispers punctuated by juddering lungs.

I squatted down and crept.

What in the world were herons doing here? How could birds even live here?

The sound of those propellers as I traipsed along so close to the edge....

And then a path inward, away from the edge, presented itself—an old.... red.... carpet?

What kind of place had this been?

Somewhere nice I imagine.

But it was the opposite of nice now....

“Oh gads, oh gads....” I kept breathing as I moved slowly forward up some stone steps—I did not want to be higher.

“Maybe this isn’t the game for you!” David laughed.

Don’t think I haven’t thought that before, David.

“No no, I’m good—” I breathed in another trembling whisper....

One Malicious Eyeball, a bit of precarious Magnesis, a few stray Bokoblins and a Blood Moon later....

“Okay that’s a bad place, don’t wanna go there, oh my gosh, don’t touch that thing, that is a bad thing, okay careful careful, hhhhh, now now now come to me my love I want to shoot you, don’t fight with me, OH GEEZ, okay okay okay over we go careful now oh gads—”

My rantings were not improving.

“Oh my gosh, Andrea, you sound like a wreck!” David kept saying.

“No no no I’m great,” I insisted in a half-mad rasp.

“I didn’t even think this tower was that bad!” he said.

It was a tight snail’s shell maze with many rooms, and the floor was lava. Or close enough.

Maybe it would’ve been better if it was lava; a couple of the Bokoblins I disarmed and knocked into it stayed alive.... just moving around in the stuff....

Ughuhuh....

When I finally made it to the top of the tower, I was heart-stoppingly confronted by another rusted Guardian.

Much like the skull-rock at the Military Training Camp, it must have been carried up by the tower’s bursting from the ground.

However, this one was quite dead.

Just serendipitous I happened to come up the tower-chute directly facing it. .__.

Gads.

I downloaded the map.

This was Akkala.

I studied the finer details.... that dark spot up north.... there at the end of that road....

“I’m pretty sure that’s what you think it is,” said David.