Fooling Myself

Waking of a Saturday, February 3, 2018 ~ 2

Fooling Myself

There were too many people around.

I tried to figure out the password to that place behind the clothing shop again. And who was Pokki? Nobody in town that I could find.... or at the Ice House.

And why wouldn’t that other Gerudo in the bar wake up? I wanted to talk to her....

I went to the Ice House, I went back to town, I went to the Bazaar, and somehow.... found that I could take the heat in my Gerudo clothes now? I thought I couldn’t before.

I couldn’t find out the password.

Mmm not all my clothes were enhanced. A trip to Cotera remedied that.

I didn’t want to do anything important with all these people around.... and so decided.... to just look for Mister Hestu.

I rode Memory from Dueling Peaks to Faron Woods, and walked him cautiously in among the trees.... But after a while of encountering a few too many Bokoblins and other nasties, I rode him back to the Highland Stable to board him—No more endangering the horses.

After that I warped back to that shrine in the woods I had unlocked so long ago—the one near which I’d saved Tye and Sorelia in the shallow, dappled water—it was near to the path—and continued into Faron Woods on foot.

I wandered around and onward, meeting a few other travelers, some of whom claimed to hail from a nearby village. And I was sorely, SORELY tempted by the prospect of discovering a new, friendly habitation, but.... Hestu.

And I could see on my map—there was something about this forest that had piqued my curiosity every time I looked upon it: the river which twined through it in great looping curves and which ended in (or sprang from; I wasn’t really paying attention to the direction it flowed) a box canyon....

It had always looked like a dragon to me. The long course of it like a serpentine body, and the last distant pool of it shaped like open, toothy jaws. Perhaps more akin to a typical charicature of a venus fly trap than anything else.... but drawn there in the geography and hinted at all the same.

I had often imagined myself traveling into this forest, wondering what I might find at the dragon’s maw. But now that I was here, my intentions of being so straightforward began to melt away, and I was longing to maintain a stealthy distance from the road as is so my wont.

The deciduous trees gave way to palm trees, tall and thick, and a racket of birds and bugs began to fill the air. This was the jungle I had always seen from the Talus’ sporting field on the slopes of the southern Dueling Peak.... but never ventured into.

There were a few more Bokoblins; a lady called Meeshy, whose words and wants I didn’t really catch because I was giggling at her name—it’s the name I call the neighborhood cat (an Anglicized variant of the Spanish for “Kitty”) when she comes around and wants something to eat; and—

That accordion!

Kass!

He treated me to a song about a dragon’s mouth, and I was sure of it then—something important had to be at the end of that river.... And I wanted to find it for certain, but.... the road to get there twined among the trees in almost as circuitous a route as that of the river. Great place for an ambush or three....

I was wary of roads.

Leastways those upon which I’d never traveled.

But then again.... what else was new?

Pausing only to solve an INFURIATING Korok Puzzle involving metal balls tethered together by a chain like enormous bolas—infuriating!—I plunged into the foliage to the left and kept well off the track, clinging to the hills on the edge of the giant jungle-bowl instead.

The whole valley seemed to be nestled between the foothills of the Dueling Peaks and an appreciable red mountain of steps and buttes which I had never explored. Or at least, that’s what I had always surmised by the view from Talus Junior’s Field.

I set the high rim to my left and the cascading, sweltery depths to my right, and crept forward, ever cautious. Tropical rain came down in sheets to claps of thunder and lightning, and I quickly found myself having to unequip anything metal. The palm trees rattled in the din. They really were huge, and they grew more and more thickly as I pressed on.

And then of a sudden I emerged from the leaves and was confronted by a level clearing set with a weathered old square of foundation ruins.

It positively stank of Korok to me.

A number of large, flat paving blocks made up a hollow square shape on the ground, with grass and foliage filling its wide center. On three of the cornerstones of this formation sat three very large stone boulders. Where was the fourth....?

And at each corner of the grassy central space, a huge pillar towered out of the earth. Three of these were empty, but atop one of them—SOMEHOW—was the fourth boulder.

Oh boy....

Stasis and arrows didn’t make it budge. And I didn’t want to spend any specialty arrows.... Or maybe I just didn’t have any left after that last Lynel encounter. I would need something more powerful....

I didn’t want to throw any of my heavier weapons and damage them in the process. A Bomb would do, but.... I couldn’t throw them so high. Mm, but I could drop them....

I set myself to climbing the pillar in the rain, slipping again and again, but forcing myself onward. This course was made even more difficult by the fact that the boulder was so huge and the column just thin enough that there would be no place to stand until I had scaled the boulder itself, crawling up around to its top like a spider!

It took a few tries, but I made it, standing at last in sodden triumph at the top. The view from up high was nice, even in the rain. I could see over some of the trees and deeper into the valley....

But now for this boulder.

What I did next also took a few tries, to get the timing right. But fortunately Ja Baij is a gernerous chap, and I had an infinite number of Bombs to play with.

I Stasised the giant boulder beneath my feet, took out a Bomb, rolled it over the edge, and detonated it while it was close enough to exert some force upon the boulder, but far enough away that it wouldn’t blow me up!

And when the Stasis let go.... over the boulder keeled and finally fell to the ground (I paraglided down after it) where I could manage it with a bit more ease.

Ha, yeah—ease. Surely. The thing was still huge.

I tried pushing it toward the empty cornerstone. No good; it was too big. So I tried Stasis and another Bomb. Not enough force. Stasis and two more Bombs.... got it on the square!

And the Korok appeared!

YES! ^_^

That had to be the heaviest Korok I’d ever chased up. Epic.

There was something supremely satisfying about that one.

Really made you work for it.