Forbidden City, Take Two

Waking of Friday, January 19, 2018 ~ 7

Forbidden City, Take Two

I tried again. And this time, I did not remove my Gerudo garb.

Some ladies at the Canteen were driving me nuts—muttering to each other about some secret password to some secret place. But every time I listened in, they shut up about it and told me to get lost.

Fed up I grabbed a loose barrel from the corner of the room and chucked it into their general midst before turning to leave.

I derived a really wonderful juvenile pleasure from their shrieking reactions then.

But on my way into the other room, I met and spoke with one of the few Hylian women I’d seen wandering around.

Jules was her name.

“Say, are you, uhh... I really don’t know how to say it... Might you be... A boy?”

Link jolted back in surprise!

“You are! I knew it!”

Who was this lady?

“It’s really impressive—you getting in here without anyone else noticing!” she said, “No need to worry. I won’t tell a soul. Just a little secret between us Hylian vai, right? Hehehe.”

Oh my gosh this was awesome. X-)

I left the Canteen and continued to climb around, until a guard kept me from inadvertently entering the palace, whereupon I wound up back at the entrance of said palace and saw....

“TRAYSI?”

That was the name. That was her. In the flesh. A Hylian.

The author of all those volumes of the Rumor Mill.

She looked nothing like I had imagined. Her writing sounded more like a hyperactive teenage girl, but she was.... rather a well-filled out, wide-faced woman.

She seemed to be arguing with one of the palace guards, maybe over entry into the building, maybe over something else. I forgot very quickly, because I was more interested in the plight of another nearby Gerudo.

Her name was Malena. But I might have first called her Shorty. Her stature really was quite small, especially next to those guards.

Malena had asked them for help, but they were still on high alert after the theft of the Thunder Helm, and couldn’t spare time or energy for the citizenry.

Malena’s husband had fallen very ill, and I caught from her that only the innards of a Molduga would cure him.

....What the heck was a Molduga?

Malena told me it was a monster so fierce that even other monsters fled before it. She said that it lived to the west, and the south, and that it was impossible to approach for it was sensitive to vibrations in the ground, and that any who drew near it would surely be KILLED.

Wo . . .

. . . was her.

The sidequest banner flashed over the top of the screen.

What the heck was a Molduga?

Dazed, I continued combing the endless city.

I discovered that I could in fact make it to the top of the central stone formation without the aid of the Zora Armor or my Climber’s Bandana—and was rewarded with a Korok at the top for my trouble!

The view from the topmost waterspring was excellent. And I’ve just reached three hundred pages. What in even the heck.

The view from the topmost waterspring was excellent, and after taking a look over the city I sailed down into a partition I had not yet explored—a training area of some kind.

The Captain Teake I met there, and her subordinates, said much the same thing the other guards had been telling me: the Thunder Helm was stolen. Everyone was on high alert.

Aside from this they didn’t say much. Except perhaps for some minor grumbling from the low-rungers now being overworked, and practicing endless spear-jabs.

Further wandering brought me to a little paddock with a few sand seals in it. They were more ruddyrose-colored than the ones out in the dunes, and they wore harnesses.

These ones were domesticated, and wouldn’t burrow away if you left them alone.

Frelly’s mother, Kohm, was renting them out.

Twenty rupees.

....

....Molduga . . . .

“I’ll take one,” I said.