Before The Storm

Afternoon of Sunday, May 5, 2019

Before The Storm

As I stand in the field....

The Piano plays The Legend of Zelda theme, small at first, delicately....

A muffled:

“...

Link...

Link.

You have recovered all of your memories

of us from 100 years ago...”

Her voice sounds.... weary. A weary kind of relief.

“I am here...inside Hyrule Castle.

It is now time for you to defeat Ganon.”

And the Piano stretching across many octaves resounds the last refrain.... as I clench my firsts and set my brow against the storm to come.

I am ready.

*

Lost Memories – Complete

*

WHERE IS THE LAST SHRINE?

I searched all around Nirvata Lake, suspicious of that line of three trees up on the cliff above the waterfall. Nothing.

I CLEANED OUT the Deplian Badlands, killing three Lynels along the way, but found no shrines there either. (That first Lynel didn’t even land a hit on me. Noice.) I did find some Koroks though. That Korok circle back by the east Lynel.... I had to kill the Lynel to get the rock for the circle. Well, to get it safely at least.

And west into the Drenan Highlands was the third Lynel. Forgot it was there; I hadn’t left a stamp for it.

Killed it. In the rain. With Shock Arrows. I had rather a lot of those. They come in handy.

I went east to west across the entire Deplian Badlands. And then some into the foothills. But couldn’t find any shrines, or any explodable rockfaces.

Got a few pieces of Dinraal, though.

And I was getting better at killing Lynels.

Hm, how about the Eastern Reservoir Lake? Vah Naboris had blocked a shrine when it was running wild; maybe Vah Ruta had done so, too....

Mm, but I didn’t explore the reservoir too deeply.... I drifted into the Domain proper and....

Well, it was my bedtime.

For once.

I was short on sleep the previous night. I did need it tonight. Had some goob shadowing me the next day about Top-Up, in which I just was not an expert.

Oh well.

No new words of wisdom from Prince Sidon or King Dorephan.

But lots of familiar faces I hadn’t visited with in ages.... Rivan, Dunma, Torfeau; Tula, Toma and Laruta, the Prince Sidon Fan Club.... little Tumbo and Keye running around the square.... Tumbo more full of energy, Keye more.... low key. And he said he hoped, if anything ever happened to them again, that I would be around to help again, aww.... ^_^ .... Mei.... Ledo.... good old Bazz. Was it Tula’s or Toma’s older brother Cleff who ran the inn? No, some other shop. I love that name....

And Cleff had married.... Kodah, who 100 years ago had asked me to choose between Mipha and her.

She apologized for doing that.

She still calls me Linny.

Went to the Seabed Inn, It was 3:something in the afternoon.

I slept on a regular bed until morning.

The Eldest Fairy

Waking of Saturday, August 4, 2018

The Eldest Fairy

I warped back to Outskirt once again to hit up Trott.

Plus three hundred rupees.

Then to Goron City to see if Ramella had changed her mind, but she still wanted Sapphires.

No way.

From there I warped.... to Gut Check Rock. Perhaps there wasn’t a plethora of rupees this way, but being on the volcano had reminded me....

The last time I had crossed the Deplian Badlands, my shrine-detector had not been active. I wanted to comb the north skirt of the volcano again—I thought there MUST be another shrine somewhere that I had missed! For it was a difficult area to get to, and bordered only by the shrines at Gut Check rock far to the east, and the dark Thyphlo Ruins far to the west—and that shrine wasn’t even worth warping to for the dark way you would have to make out of the maze and over the bog! Dang you, Ketoh Wawai, what were you thinking?

I started westward from Gut Check Rock and climbed up and down all over the mountainside. I killed overly-ready supplies of baddies and collected tons of loot; I got a great pictograph of the Eldin Great Skeleton for those chumps at that Akkala Stable; I nicked off two shards of Dinraal’s horn! didn’t play with the Lynels, though, nope—but still.... I could not find another shrine.

Deplian Badlands.... Too bad even for any Sheikah monks?

....!

Hm. Only now do I consider how the cliff descends into the northern chasm.

I wonder what’s down there....

Although.... doesn’t my sensor detect in lateral directions just the same despite any differences in altitude? Surely I would have heard something already.... Though I’ve never put that to a rigorous test....

As I meandered back to Goron City on foot, I was at least grateful for one thing—there had been a HECKTON of rare ore deposits on the north side of the mountain. And with my new supply of baddie-bits I went to visit Tanko again and sold him a bunch of stuff, and even some Topaz.

That kicked me over ten thousand.

Okay.... hoo.

I warped back to the Gerudo Great Skeleton, and the Great Fairy Tera’s cocoon.

“I got the stuff,” I said, “....This has not been easy.”

I held it out....

The way they always grab the money from you—and just like that—

My hard-sought ten thousand rupees disappeared.

I was poor again, in goods and money.

It was the thinnest I’d felt in a while.

The Great Fairy was rejuvenated, and her cocoon pulsated and opened into a white flower with pink-orange speckles!

And up came Tera AND HER HAIR WAS SO BIG it just wouldn’t STOP—VICTORIAN—WHAT A POMPADOUR! White hair, looming in a HUGE and luscious poof to lean into a dip on her right side—and she had bigger fairy-fin ornaments behind her ears than I had seen on any of her sisters! <3

She was decadent.

She gave a watery cough before properly introducing herself as the eldest of the Great Fairy Sisters. And she said that she had seen my efforts from within her bud.

Well that was heartening. :]

She said that she sees everything. In fact, she said, she was going to predict what I was thinking at that moment!

...

...

And after a moment she said, “I bet you’re probably thinking, ‘Can’t we just get to the part where she enhances my clothes?’”

Haaa lawl. |D

“What an impatient person,” she said. But she impressed that she really did appreciate what I had done for her. And she said that now.... she could enhance my clothes TO THE MAX.

But.... I’d noticed this pattern with the clothing enhancements. My wardrobe was becoming quite extensive, and whenever I took something to a Great Fairy for an enhancement, the item was returned to me waaaay at the back of my inventory. This made it a little difficult to keep the various sets near each other and together, but I was managing that pretty well.... mostly.

I had never employed the Sort button within those menus.... Not on purpose that I can recall anyway. But you know how it is when you accumulate so many messy piles—you know where everything is.... until you clean.

But this was getting to be a lot of messy piles....

Hrmmmrmm....

Maybe I’d try it.... I walked toward the shrine until I got an autosave, after which I entered my menus and sorted my clothes.

Heh, sounds like a chore I’d been neglecting.

I observed the results, which came in two orientations: one by body part.... and oh! one by sets! :) Well that was nice! Perhaps I could utilize that....

Oh I should just do it, I thought. Besides, Tera could work on seventeen of the forty-two items of clothing I had.... I may as well.... eh?

But.... I just.... couldn’t. Not yet.

I paused again, reloaded from just before I had sorted and kept my messy closet.

Mmmmm but to start I would let her enhance the Climber’s Bandana—that one wasn’t part of any set that I had....

It was already up to the third level, so this should have maxed it out then.

So I turned it over to Tera and she leaned in close and HER MOUTH WAS OPEN WIDE AND OH MY GOSH SHE JUST GRABBED ME IN HER GIANT FIST AND SNOODLED ME SO HARD AGAINST HER SWEETLOVING FACE AND THEN PLUNGED BACK DOWN INTO HER WATER INSIDE HER FLOWER WHAT—

Link’s scream so quickly faded away and the screen went black.

My mind instantly conjured up the deep blue, rippling, colorful world inside her home, and I wondered.... What would I see? Inside her flower?

But the screen only came back a moment later, above ground as ever.

When I came to, I was lying face down on the petally platform where would I normally speak to any Great Fairy.

I got up with a groan.

My Climber’s Bandana was enhanced.

“Want me to enhance any others?” she asked me in some such words of her own verbiage.

And I would have imagined the answer to be NOPE NO THANKS, THANKS BUT NO.

OH MY GOSH I THOUGHT SHE WAS GONNA EAT ME.

But.... I upgraded a bunch of clothes anyway. And those pieces ended up all out of order in my inventory but.... that was okay. I couldn’t complain with the results; they were so strong.

“Sometimes I’m so good it’s scary,” Tera said.

Afraid of the Dark

Waking of Saturday, July 8, 2017 ~ 3

Afraid of the Dark

As I continued around Death Mountain I offhandedly scoped out a few of the mountains in the distance and saw.... my blue marker? But I had left that far northwest of the Elma Knolls!

It seemed I was already north of the volcano.

Well, I had followed Dinraal’s course, and that was the whole reason I had come this way, to track where he went. And I did get a piece of him out of it, too.

I’d wanted to go to find.... that Kilton fellow....

But this place had its sirens, too.

Could I reach my blue marker and pick it up? I didn’t even remember what I had seen out there....

I kept going west, and passed another White Lynel my gosh.... Maybe this was the place Joseph meant when he said he knew where all the Lynels were....

And beyond the Lynel, a single, solitary Korok—the first I had seen in ages—hiding at the top of a dead and blasted tree in a dead and blasted ruin that shone like Eden for the starkness of the encompassing wasteland. Even the puzzle it offered seemed tired. But its presence was refreshing.

A little further and more blessed vegetation began to appear—including what seemed to be an epic treehouse in the distance. But I didn’t want to go play with any bokoblins just now; I was more interested in.... what looked like an enormous, fat black boe.

A strange, large dell was before me. Water filled its bottom and tree branches bloomed from its middle, but—

Everything was obscured by a thick blackness.

Perhaps it would have been less maddening if it were only mist, but—it was so black. The sheer unnaturalness of it made it just . . . . Augh how I wanted to see! The laws of nature demanded that daylight, even moonlight, penetrate those depths and yet . . . .

All remained concealed.

I considered trying to paraglide in, but was glad I didn’t when I came closer and found the water to actually be a bog.

However—I was back on my visible map, now, the Woodland Region, and I could see if I just circled a little bit farther around the dell, there would be a bridge I could use to access the center.

So I found the bridge, crossed it, entered the blackness, and....

A monk named Ketoh Wawai invited me to find the shrine in the middle of the darkness if I could. The Shrouded Shrine. It was a Shrine Quest.

Remembering David’s island off the Hateno coast, not wanting to be trapped, I immediately backtracked and—

Found that I could easily come out on the bridge and back into the light.

I went back in again.

Ketoh Wawai did not address me this time.

Mmmm maybe that was lame of me. It definitely killed the drama, that’s for sure. But.... that’s okay.

I walked on ahead.

It was so dread dark in here. Two lit bird-shaped torches flanked the inner end of the bridge, but beyond that....?

Nothing. Just blackness.

I couldn’t even see my own person.

An unlit torch rested nearby, but.... I had no more room in my inventory. Not caring to enter another which-weapon-do-I-discard fit, I walked ahead using the light of my Great Fireblade, step by step into the darkness.

Barely-discernible shapes loomed in the shadows, punctuated at long whiles by glowing mushrooms or ore. I tried following one boundary, hugging weathered stone and bubbling shore to see where it would lead me, but.... the place was a maze.

In truth I was reminded of Faron Woods, and the crumbled dragon-head statuary I’d seen there, for there seemed to be more of it here. Was this a similar kind of place, or the ruins of one, just.... dedicated to Dinraal instead of Farosh?

There were also more bird-statues standing here and there, unlit, and I realized.

Hahhhh, and I decided I’d better go back and get that torch; it’d be easier.

I don’t remember what I dropped in order to pick the torch up, but the bird-lights were handy. The beak of every one I lit pointed the way to the next one.

Heh, thanks, Zelda. X-) I turned off my HUD just to make it more interesting....

It was a bit alarming when I heard a wolf howl from the darkness—I ran back to the last torch I had lit and readied a sturdier weapon....

My gosh their unseen forms prowling the black just beyond the edge of the fire’s light.... the wicked shine of their hungry eyes.... I couldn’t see them—

There was something primal there. That encounter.

That was a well-conceived encounter.

But it wasn’t what struck me deepest.

What I thought most wondrous and beautiful.... was the Piano.

In the darkness of the shrouded island, like a frightened dog the Piano came at once to heel and repetitively pattered only a tiny spread of notes in my wake. Key of G with the eeriest high pedal points lost in the dark.... it was so dark....

Beautiful, beautiful music befitting the range of my sight.

I’d heard the Hinox snoring now and again as I crept through the black. Maybe that was worse than when I actually came upon it. Waiting for something is always worse than the thing itself.

Then I saw that the orb I had to plant in the pedestal across the way was strung up around the Hinox’s neck.

Dandy.

My tactics were.... varied. It’s one thing to shoot arrows at a Hinox from a high and clear vantage point. It’s another thing entirely to do it on level ground at close quarters in the dark. At least its single, huge eye glowed in the dark. Its movements were still deucedly difficult to lead, though. Retreats were frequent.

I tried scaling a row of columns by the light of an Ice Rod—it worked better than my Fireblade—and shooting arrows from this higher point.

It seemed the Hinox had better eyes than I did, though; it pelted me again and again with huge boulders it scooped from the dirt. Dead on. I couldn’t keep this up....

Ice Rod? No. Stasis? That worked, but I didn’t want to stay too close to the thing....

At length, to the left of the main path, I found a slim crack between two tall pillars that I could fit through, but that the Hinox had no chance of penetrating, which opened right onto the Hinox’s clearing. Excellent.

I lured it in close to this crack and then backed up quick; I didn’t want that thing’s giant mitts coming after me! Roarings and rumblings would ensue from the far side of the thick, thick pillars.... and then the Hinox would finally show its bulbous yellow eye peeping through.... closer, closer, closer.... very close.... and I’d fire.

The pattern worked! And I was safe behind thick stone, keeping arrows tightly nocked and reminding myself irresistibly of an art piece by Katsuya Terada. The Hinox roared and stamped and snarled—what was it doing? I could hear it scratching, grabbing, swinging, smashing—was it ripping trees out of the ground, as my Compendium had said was its wont?

During one such obscured wind-up-and-attack, I even saw its life-meter go down a smidge. Did it accidentally smack itself in the face with a tree?

I could only imagine.

A few more carefully shot arrows, and the Hinox was down. I killed a Hinox in the dark. Oh my gosh. And I collected the orb—and all the Hinox’s goodies—placed it in the pedestal, and the Ketoh Wawai Shrine rumbled out of the earth a short way away.

Kinda wanted to call it the Ketoh Wha-WHY? Shrine.

I received Ketoh Wawai’s Blessing, exited the shrine, watched the game auto-save.... and quit.

The Badlands

Waking of Saturday, July 8, 2017 ~ 2

The Badlands

From Gut Check Rock, I began a counterclockwise circumnavigation of Death Mountain. Dinraal looked like he got to some pretty low altitudes.... and if Farosh dropped things when you shot him with arrows.... then surely Dinraal would, too.

I paraglided, I jogged, I climbed—sometimes I would see the DIVINE BEAST crawling in a parallel course higher up the mountain. My gosh it was so big . . . . its feet were on fire . . . . and it had four eyes oh my gosh....

Madly inhaling Rock Octoroks.... Eldin Ostriches.... a few Red Lizalfos.... Ice Arrows took care of them.

And I saw....

Hhhhh.

There was land, over there. North of the volcano, across a huge gulf. Beyond the northern edge of my map.

I’d seen the distant mountaintops. Maybe from all the way back on the Plateau. There were some far, far peaks whereupon if you centered your scope.... the central reticle would remain empty, instead of lighting up red.

You couldn’t place markers there.

I’d always imagined they’d be just part of the grand scenery beyond as soon as I came up against the impassable mountain borders, which surely would be there....

Well.... I suppose the gigantic gulf was border enough. Though it still made it somehow more tantalizing.... Agh there was grass over there; there were hills and slopes and plains and mountains and . . . . hhhhhhh . . . .

It was comforting, and a little heartbreaking, to know and see that there was land over there.

Hahhhh. </3

I tracked Dinraal’s course through the most barren landscape of any I had yet visited. Naked stone and crusted spills of ash. No Koroks.

None.

Only monsters. And ostriches.

And a queer little breed of pigeon I took a pictograph of—apparently it’s no good to shoot it for game; it burns away when killed.

Okay so perhaps the land was not so barren. But the utter lack of Koroks was disconcerting.

The Deplian Badlands.

That’s what this place was called.

I stayed high, working from jutting crag to jutting crag, until I saw something . . . . unexpected, unbelievable, impossible: far away, in the lowest reaches, the farthest skirt of the volcano, right up against the dropoff into the impassable chasm, in a place with grass . . . . a long, broad, crestlike slab of bleachy grey: a skull.

And behind it, vertebra after vertebra, and great bowed ribs spidering into the earth. It was too big. It couldn’t be that big.

I thought of the StalHinox of Satori Mountain.

It couldn’t be that big. It was too big to be allowed!

And on his very occasional slow twining westward passes, Dinraal would snake low through the air above it, a crocodile, and he only the python.

How could it be that big . . . .

A Dodongo, I thought, it had to be a Dodongo, long-dead from some forgotten age, some terrible forgotten age.... And memories of Volvagia, and what would have happened had he not been killed.... And those giant bones I had seen in the dusty desert.... And visions of the volcano erupting endlessly, and lava covering the land, and dread colossal Dodongos reigning in blood and fire . . . .

What a terrible, terrible world.

It turned out the skeleton really was that big—I hiked for what felt like ages, and it seemed barely to come any further into my view. So slowly it crawled by at my passing....

But after a very, very long time, I did manage to get somewhat above it.

I thought again of the StalHinox, and was afraid to go down there. But.... at David’s encouragement....

I paraglided in.

Crag by crag, anyway. And then I was close enough to know: this was called the Eldin Great Skeleton.

IT WAS NOT A STAL-CREATURE. OuO;;

Well that was a relief.

I floated down onto the great mountain-shelf of its head.

There were baddies camped out beneath its spine! Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfos.

Well. The high ground was already mine. All I had left to do was appeal to Ja Baij.... I picked a nice angle and chucked my bombs one after another through the gap between two of the skeleton’s ribs. The monsters ran around in an irate fret, trying to find the source of the commotion, but they never failed to either come back toward the center, or run in to try and kick the bombs away.

Either way.... they blowed up real good.

And they left me a few presents! I snagged another Great Fireblade, a few bundles of arrows, and plenty of monster bits.... until these latter treasures began rolling away toward the skeleton’s tail with a sudden gust of wind.

David directed my attention upward: Dinraal was making another pass! I ran but could not catch his head. And so I fired an arrow at the only place I could—his underbelly.

I still had Ice Arrows equipped—sorry, Dinraal!

And a scale streaked glowing toward the earth like a falling star.

“What?” said David, but I didn’t answer him; I just collected the scale.

Cool. X-)

I had quite a time exploring the entire giant skeleton, let me tell you. I climbed back up the tail and jumped from vertebra to vertebra—each singular bone took a few jogging strides to cross! And I crept up the neck beneath the huge armored skull—almost fell all the way through to the front but climbed back up and went backward again.

How could it be this big.

But after a time I moved on, and continued my counterclockwise traversal of the mountain.

And I saw something else. Something that seized my gut and just about made my heart stop—a White-Maned Lynel.

That’s what my compendium called it. I snapped its pictograph just as it threw a startled question-mark glance in my direction—and then I ducked back down behind the rock I was on.

Oh my gosh.... 8C

Its body was black and white. Striped. Like a zebra!?

So that was what was up with that thumbnail I kept decidedly ignoring in my DeviantArt messages.... there really were zebra-Lynels....

Yeah it was time to get high again. Oh that came out so wrong. It was time to get to high ground! I climbed up the backside of a large jutting rock, away from the Lynel’s view, until I was back amid the ashy crags of the mountain’s side.

And I continued round the mountain.

From my high road I saw Dinraal make another low pass over the farthest skirts of the mountain—this time over the barren piece of earth the White Lynel haunted. Anywhere else I might have sailed in to try for another scale or shard, but here?

Hah, NOPE! C8