Waking of Sunday, June 4, 2017 ~ 2
When I first spoke to him, Robbie
was skeptical of my identity. It wasn’t until I stripped to the skivvies so he
could see my scars that he believed I was the Champion Link. Though the Shrine
of Resurrection seemed to have healed many of them over.
It turned out Robbie and Jerrin had
a fifty-year age gap between them, and they were married. They also had a son,
Granté, whom Jerrin had asked if I’d met anywhere. I said no, but.... hm, maybe
he’s that plume-haired Sheikah I see painting around the stables sometimes....
didn’t commit that one’s name to memory....
Jerrin seemed like an upbeat
lady—she even did a pretty funny impression of Purah! Striking a pose, doing fancy
jazz-hands and grinning, “Check it out!”
Robbie seemed very pragmatic, and
quite the go-getter. Talked about defeating the Calamity as if it were a
difficult shopping trip I’d be taking on the very next day.
Well, I appreciated his optimism.
And expectation.
And then there was Cherry.
Cherry was actually the first thing
I had seen upon entering the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab. It was that big
pot-bellied machine. Kind of a dark, grey-green-bronzy color with Shrine-blue
highlights.
I learned Cherry was named after
Robbie’s first love, and that if Jerrin ever heard Robbie call it that, she
would start yelling and throwing things. And so Robbie had taken instead to calling it simply “The Ancient Oven”
or something like that.
The only problem was that the
laboratory’s furnace wasn’t lit, and so Cherry wasn’t functioning.
Which meant it was time for me to
take a walk.
Akkala seemed a pretty hilly place.
Well.... most places in Hyrule
seemed like pretty hilly places.
But this instance was just
ridiculous.
I’d gotten outside and found a
clear spot where I could take a look around (there were so many trees). And there I could finally see
the burning blue of the Ancient Furnace on a nearby hill to the west—that was the fire that could get Cherry
up and running. And as I moved toward it, nearing the edge of the hilltop where
the Tech Lab was, the parallax of the
geology revealed a little dip in the land between the two hills . . . . no, a
dell . . . . no, a gorge . . . . no, it was . . . .
I came to the edge of my hilltop
and looked down. A river ran way down at the bottom of a huge chasm between me and where I wanted to
go.
“What,” I said, and looked at my
map.
That was a lot of topo lines.
There were no high bits connecting
the two hills, and their inward-facing sides were sheer; it was like a
miniature Dueling Peaks. To get from one to the other, I would have to pick a
trail, north or south, and descend down almost to the level of the river in a
wide arc.
Robbie had a torch in his house,
but I didn’t want to drop any of my weapons to switch out. There were a lot of
Moblins down there.... Maybe I could just steal one of their clubs whenever the
spear I was using gave out. Or find a tree branch. There was no shortage of
trees.
This
fetchquest was a bit more.... involved
than the one at Hateno Village had been. The land was so folded and twisted, I
decided on my way to the western hilltop to mark the positions of the
intervening lanterns between the Furnace and the Tech Lab. And then there were
all those Moblins.... and Keese.... and Stalthings.... Ugh, the road was peppered with them.
And on the way back to the lab I wished I’d grabbed Robbie’s torch! I
should’ve known Moblin Clubs weren’t meant to stay lit for long. Or tree
branches for that matter. But I made do.
Except when it rained. Then there
was nothing for it but to wait it out near the last-lit lantern, and beat up
any monsters that got too close.
During one long shower I actually
decided to go a bit ahead and clear up some of the Moblins in my way. One of
them I took out playing Bomb-Golf, but the other....
Well, I tried bombs again, but I
guess I was too close. I dropped it in the grass and backed up, waiting for him
to approach.
And oh, he approached all right,
and just as I was about to detonate,
he kicked the bomb back in my face!
My finger was already going down on
the button!
Ja Baij doesn’t distinguish between
friend or foe.
Ja Baij just makes stuff splode.
I took the blast right in the
face—I think the Moblin caught some of it too—and corkscrewed back through the
air in a sailing arc to land in the wet grass and roll to a stop.
“Oh man!” Ben laughed.
I laughed too. Impressive....
Freakin’ Moblin.
I got back up and let him have it
with the sword instead, and he went down.
Finally
the rain cleared up and I was able to carry on from the lanterns, and light
Robbie’s furnace with the ancient flame, so that inside the laboratory, Cherry
the Ancient Oven powered up.
It seemed Cherry had the ability to
forge Ancient Materials. 8D
But they were a little expensive.
:c
Cherry needed ancient parts to
start with, and Robbie needed rupees. They needed the funds to
continue their important research! he insisted.
I looked at what all Cherry could
offer me.... Ancient Arrows, Ancient Spears, Ancient Swords.... weapons....
shields....
But I could feel how impermanent
everything was.... That was a lot of rupees for something that wouldn’t last
forev—
Ancient
Cuirass?
Why that was.... that was armor. Ancient Armor.
And there was a helm and some
greaves to go with it!
And they had a resistance to Guardians!
Cherry
could make Ancient Armor.
That
wouldn’t be so impermanent! :D
The armor pieces were still deucedly expensive, though. At least a
thousand rupees a piece, plus more ancient cores and ancient gears than seemed
possible to acquire and still go to bed happy.
Which gave me another horrible feeling deep in my gut . . . .
Cherry in essence seemed to
function like a shop. A merchant.
She required both money and materials in exchange for her wares.
Those materials . . . . Ancient Materials . . . . came from Guardians.
Cherry didn’t seem to have a limit
to the number of items she could forge.
Which meant . . . .
The game . . . . surely had
to provide allowances for the player: No limit likewise to the number of
Ancient Materials to be collected.
Which MEANT
. . . .
Ancient Materials had to be harvested
from somewhere. Indefinitely.
My Guardian-Slayer heart still
fluttered high, and wanted to stay there.
But I couldn’t help but feel an
inescapable premonition about the next Blood Moon . . . .
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