Unwarranted Reserve

Waking of Friday, June 29, 2018

Unwarranted Reserve

Mary and Dorothy were over, and they wanted me to play, but I didn’t want to do the main quest.... And so from a save I had cast at the entrance to Chief Riju’s palace, I warped to the Forgotten Temple, and PROCEEDED TO CLEAN—IT—OUT.

It was awesome. Always good to get more practice in parrying Guardian shots. c: ....Though I must say it does tend to run my shield supply down right quick.... :c It’s harder when they’re far away.... and Daruk’s always having to help me.... I find the timing much easier when they’re.... hahhh.... RIGHT ON TOP OF YOU. 8(

It was a lovely hard drudge pushing the infestation out toward the canyon.... but well worth it. Did you know there are treasure chests down there in hidden cavities beside the air-fountain cracks in the ground? Rich ones, too! :D To say nothing of the treasures of Ancient Tech leftover from the slain Guardians.

It was nice to have my own run of the place when they were all gone. So spacious and cool.... It must have been a retreat most beautiful and serene once.

I paraglided back to the giant Goddess statue at the back, and offered a long overdue prayer, to receive another Heart Container. That was nice. :)

That particular exercise bumped me up to twenty-two gears, and so it was time for another visit to Robbie’s place.... and Cherry.

I spoke to her and she beeped and bwopped and I got through her menus and I scrolled down and—

....

I could get the pants. If I wanted to.

I could afford them.

But.... wait.

I quickly warped to Kakariko to check with Cotera, to see if there were anything else to which I could put my gears.... Oh, what was I thinking of? The difference betweeen a strong but partial set, and a weak but complete set? The Great Fairy told me what materials I needed.... But it looked like the higher Ancient upgrades would require more cores.

And I was short on cores.

....

Sooooo I warped back to Robbie’s, spoke to Cherry, dropped another great honking wad of cash.... and got the Ancient Greaves.

I had the set! 8D

My gosh when I put them all on I looked.... all dark and awesome and intimidating! ^_^ Especially when I put on the helm and you couldn’t see my eyes. X-)

So cool. XD

I had enough lesser parts to have Cotera upgrade my new Greaves by one level. But I only had two Ancient Gears left, and would not be able to upgrade further until I’d done a little.... mmmm.... shopping.

Or rather, a lot of shopping. A lot of shopping between Dueling Peaks and Hateno, looking for Teli and his miraculous wares....

I also took a moment every day to check with Hino in regards to the next Blood Moon. But I never did catch him at the right lunar phase.... there was a shrine waiting for me on Washa’s Bluff, I was SURE of it.... If I could just be there on a Blood Moon Midnight....

One thing I was very happy to discover was that, if I found Teli on the Hateno road, and it happened to be raining.... to lift the gloomy mood he would put out all his best wares! Including gears and cores! 8D

Ah, the rain in Hateno would be so sweet to me now....

....

Hateno Rain should be a song.

. . . .

Didn’t the Hateno Rain so depress and spook me once?

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

I do believe it did. Back on that long, weary road punctuated by my first Yiga Clan encounters.

Ah but I needn’t’ve let the rain spook me anymore. I was braver now, and the road was haunted anyway, rain or shine.

Because.... the Yiga were attacking me in the open now.

I guess my little trespass in Satan Canyon and the whole incident with Kohga must’ve.... not sat well with them.

I’d be jogging along a path, and that telltale orange glow would coalesce off to one side or another, that wicked cackle would clatter through the air.... Once in the bottleneck west of Teli’s Slope, I employed the Meteor Rod to fend off a Yiga Clansman, and the ricocheting fireballs nearly killed us both.

Travel was going to become a whole lot more.... interesting.

....

Well.... they wanted me to go full Curare—

I’d go full Curare.

I visited Kakariko to buy some carrots for one of my upgrades, played an arrow game for one Rola, and as long as I was there, decided to visit Impa.

She saw right away that I had reclaimed the Master Sword—my sword, she called it—and impressed upon me that Princess Zelda had sacrified everything to protect that sword and me, and told me not to forget it.

Well that was a sobering note.

Hhhh, in truth, I had not been using the Master Sword much, or at all. Barely.

I hunted Lizalfos, I hunted more Guardians....

Maybe I was subconsciously treating it like one of my other special weapons, like Mipha’s trident or Daruk’s hammerclub—no wait did I even pick that one up? I never used them because I wanted them to last, to stay pristine. They took up my pocket space.... If I bought that house in Hateno, would I be able to stow them there?

I bought more gears and another core. Or two.

I knew the sword wouldn’t break like any of my other weapons. I knew it could briefly lose its power.... But I had never taken it to that point. Why was I leaving it alone so much?

I showed Nebb the Duplex Bow. He gave me fifty rupees.

There’s a good lad.

I suppose there was the point that some of my other weapons were, in fact, stronger than the Master Sword.

But why was that?

I hunted still more Guardians.

I had seen David play, and his Master Sword had a damage-dealing level of sixty.

But my Master Sword.... had only a level of thirty.

No but sometimes it glowed with a brighter strength and a higher level....

No but then it was weak again.

Why did it do that?

Not that thirty was all that weak, mind; for a single-handed weapon that was pretty good....

But why did it change?

What was the pattern?

I visited.... Kaysa, to upgrade my greaves one more time; I had amassed the ten required gears. She kissed her giant finger and bopped me with it in a small explosion of magical dander, and that brought my third of three Ancient Armor pieces up to level two....

I put them all on.... Full sets of clothing that were double-enhanced came with a perk.... usually....

And this perk was.... Ancient Proficiency?

What did that even mean?

Or was it really a perk after all? Or simply a pronouncement of my own skill? I’d killed a lot of Guardians to get this far....

I supposed I’d find out soon enough.

I checked with the Great Fairy to go over my shopping list: Naydra horn, Molduga fins, diamonds, and cores.

I’d just figured Naydra was the name of the third dragon, the one I had not met.

For surely there must be three.

Well, I knew where to find the diamonds easily enough, and warped to Zora’s Domain. But before I found Ledo, I came across Prince Sidon not on his usual balcony above the square, but down near the fountain, before the statue of his sister Mipha.

I heard him murmuring to himself.... or to her....

“Mipha, are you still inside the Divine Beast?” He looked so heavily pensive. “Are you aiding Link in his fight?”

And then he turned—

“Link!” He started at the sight of me. But he made no pretenses. “So you heard that, huh? I’m afraid you caught me in a moment of vulnerability.”

He said.... something more, about his sister, though I don’t remember the words.

He was just a man missing a loved one.

And that’s all right.

“I’m sorry you had to see me in a weak moment,” he finished, or some such words, and I moved away.

Everyone’s weak some time. Even the Prince of the Zoras.

Even my sword....

Sure, I wielded it now, but did I really own it?

I needed to figure this out....

I found Ledo, traded him some Luminous Stones for a Diamond, and saved.

The Devil Sympathetic

Waking of Wednesday, June 20, 2018 ~ 3

The Devil Sympathetic

It was the other side. I had come out on the other side. The Death Hole Arena.

And a round-bellied Yiga appeared.

I gasped.

“YOU!” I said. It had to be him.

David was confused, and asked if I’d seen this person before.

No I hadn’t but it had to be him. That traveler, the one I crossed on my way to the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab for the first time, north of Chariots of Fire Beach. She had talked about him. Fawned over him. Gushed about his belly-dancing skills....

I hadn’t bothered to remember the name—Lord Somebody or something—but this had to be the guy.

“What are you doing in my napping spot?” the round-bellied man asked.

I blinked. Well at least he was up for talking....

“Oh! That thing on your hip, could it be...? A Sheikah Slate?”

Yeah.

“Then YOU MUST BE.... that Link guy I’ve been searching for! Oh this is wonderful! My scouts are out everywhere looking for you, and here you come waltzing right into my lair!”

Or some such words. And then he blustered something like, “Oh but I’m getting ahead of myself—I haven’t even introduced myself.” He drew himself up.... “The mighty, the powerful....” and up— “the ONE, the ONLY....”

So many grandiose gesticulations.... and camera angles to match.

“Master Kohga!” he finally finished.

Ah.... I remembered.... That had been the name....

Unfortunately, even after all the niceties, he still wanted to beat me up, and he told me so in as many or more words.

He had a cordiality about him that I rather liked.... A kind of honest openness. I like it when they talk; to me it always seems to signify a measure of refinement, regardless of the tone of the message. Indeed, couldn’t we all try a little civil discourse before resorting to fisticuffs?

Not that there was much discourse I guess. I am a mute.

....

Link is the best Hero.

David suggested I take a pictograph, and I did, phewf. It was distorted as the Yiga Lord had cast a very blue protective shield in front of himself just at that moment, but it was enough for my Compendium to go on.

There were three phases to this battle, and it, like Master Kohga’s banter, was refreshingly light.

In the first phase, Master Kohga conjured above his head a large, round stone with wicked markings on it. These he hurled at me one at a time, and they were blessedly easy to dodge. But I soon found the window wherein he briefly dropped his magical guard, and used it to shove an arrow down his throat. The rock fell and landed on his head, and down he went and in I ran and gave him a hefty what-for.

In the second phase he leapt into the air and HOVERED OVER THE DEATH HOLE. Oh my.... He then readied two rocks, and these he set into an orbit around his person, on a plane that faced me like a clock. At first I just went back to taking potshots at him, whereupon he would lose the spell and the rocks would drop.... But then David pressed the idea into me that maybe if I just waited a little longer....

I did, and didn’t loose an arrow until one of the rocks was directly over his head.... and then fired.

That did a little more damage. ^_^

Between the phases of the battle he just got hoppin’ mad....

In the third phase he forgot the rocks and conjured a giant metal ball with spikes on it.

Metal, huh?

It was a little tricky to catch, but I was able to stop the ball with Magnesis, and then thrust it back in his face!

Down he went again, onto the edge-ground before the Death Hole.

“Ugh, I can’t go out like this... what to do, what to do...”

I almost felt pity. “What do you want to.... get me for so bad, Master Kohga?”

And then brilliance seemed to strike him. “I know!” he said, “I’ll prepare my most powerful attack, the secret technique taught by my father’s mother’s father!”

Not quite against my will, I felt a rush of fondness for the man—well done knowing your heritage!—and thought of my own father’s mother’s father, Silas. I think he was the only one among his siblings to be born in town. The older ones had all been born out on their homestead near Decker Wash. But the Indian attacks were just getting to be too much....

I was pulled back into the game when Master Kohga employed this “technique”, and summoned an ENORMOUS spiked ball of metal, which sank down through the air until it settled ponderously onto the ground in between us, so that we lost sight of each other completely.

Wut.... Is it heavy? I wondered.

Master Kohga went on about his mighty technique, and how it was definitely going to destroy me.... I think. I’m afraid I can’t remember exactly, because it was just so.... ridiculous.... Because as he was talking, the ball very slowly began to roll toward him....

I guess the ground was tilted....

And in a shock he tried to leap out of the way, but there was nowhere left to retreat except backward—into the pit.

“I’ll be remembered!” he shouted as he fell with a howl, giving me Batman Beyond flashbacks.

“The Yiga Clan will track you to the ends of Hyruuuuule!”

Thud.

Distant and muffled.

....

And I wondered.... I truly wondered.... whether I would ever meet Master Kohga again.

A treasure chest poofed into being above the edge of the pit, in that orange glow and cloud of fluttering paper signs the Yiga are so fond of.

It was the Thunder Helm.

Yes.

The Fool Cautious

Waking of Wednesday, March 29, 2017 ~ 3

The Fool Cautious

A traveler stood on one of the nearest hilltops to my right.

I felt.... as if I could see right through him, but I went to speak to him anyway. I felt like I needed the practice....

He tried to sell me bananas. Twice.

I declined both times.

And either he took offense at that or he just plain hadn’t liked me all along, because he tried to kill me shortly thereafter. But I killed him first, and then I took his bananas anyway. And his rupees!

Nice of the Goron traveling likewise north along the road to stop and just kind of look on while I crossed blades with a murderous assassin. I suppose it was either a nod of confidence to my strength.... or a supreme display of apathy.

Well.... I guess stopping and staying was a step up from the flailing retreat I’ve seen most self-respecting Hylians take.

Anyway I don’t know the Gorons’ ways.

Yiga! YOU KEEP COMING FOR ME I WILL GO FULL CURARE ALL OVER YOUR—

Hhhhh....

I had a Zora to find.

But she wasn’t anywhere.

It started to rain, and I pressed on until I came to a bridge. I was off my map now. I ventured out onto the planks, but couldn’t really see anything through the haze. Except another octorok a little downstream. I dropped a bomb into the water and dodged his shots while I waited for it to float closer to him—did you know octoroks have the mind to lead their targets? And quite skillfully at that.

How interesting, I thought, and then blew him up.

I kept moving.

A little further along the road, I came across a young woman running through the rain. “I have the worst luck...” I heard her mutter.

Well, everybody gets caught in the rain some time, I thought.

But that wasn’t what she was running from—a black bokoblin was chasing after her.

I ran in and killed the thing, and the girl stopped. She had brown hair, and she wore a pink tunic and a timid, weary kind of posture, a little hunched and bowed beneath the downpour.

I didn’t speak to her, but only followed after her as she started to run up the road again. Pulling back from my full jog, I kept pace by her side; I would at least escort her until she reached.... whatever orange glow that was that I had seen in the distance. Flickering and indefinite, far ahead behind some trees.... maybe a fire’s glare.... Another house like Doctor Calip’s, perhaps? Maybe that’s where this girl was headed....

And then as we neared, and it came looming out of the gloom with its gentle flute and soft guitar, I saw the mighty horse’s head.

It was a stable.

And on the other side of the road, off to the left by the river, standing beneath a large tree was....

Mister Hestu??

8D