Higher Than Thou

Waking of Thursday, April 6, 2017 ~ 5

Higher Than Thou

I don’t know why I didn’t just warp directly back to Zora’s Domain. I was practically there anyway. Maybe I just wanted to be thorough.

I climbed the dam.

Actually the ground mounded at its base was quite manageable up to a considerable height, and after that.... Well the dam wall itself was a bit sheer and slow-going, but the cliff face to my right seemed.... maybe.... like it was.... doable.... perhaps....?

I was still wearing my Climber’s Bandana. Even so I had to drink two stamina elixirs on the way up, but I made it. And only a little more scrambling got me on top of the dam itself. I was back in the Reservoir. I was on one of the distant docks I had seen when I’d stood on the other shore with Prince Sidon.

My but this world was large.

I headed north along the top of the dam, toward the Domain. I wanted to find Fronk. But as I scrambled over the rockfalls and high meadows of those mountains, something else caught my eye: back across the river, on the south cliffs, down a bit from the top, something glowed....

There was a little shelf of grass there. Was it another historical tablet?

I regarded where I was and where I had come from. It had been a long climb.

But that shelf across the river wasn’t so low that I’d have to drink more elixirs to return to where I was now.

It was so far distant though; the canyon was wide....

Still.... I had to investigate.

Out came the paraglider and I watched my shadow as I floated between the mountains....

I touched down on the far shelf and started running up toward where I had seen the glow. There was an overhang there, it had to be just beneath those rocks, nestled into the mountain, surely—

It wasn’t.

It was just the glassy indigo stone that juts up so often around Zora’s Domain, shimmering in the dimness.

There was nothing here.

Oh, nothing but a treasure chest....

It was stuck in the ground and I had to dislodge it using Magnesis—a bit startling when it came free so suddenly and shot into the air—I almost lost it into the river.

But I magnetized it up into the little alcove where I’d seen the glow, and opened it there.

I don’t even remember what it contained.

But the area was looted, and it was time to climb back.

As my path was slightly different this time before I reached the top of the dam again, I passed a bit more closely to an area I hadn’t been—and heard a Hinox snoring there.

I crept closer inland and saw its huge black form.

You know, I’ve been saying black, but my Compendium informs me they’re actually blue. As are the “black” moblins and bokoblins I’ve been seeing.

I suppose they do have a bluish tint.

Heh, like blue tigers....

Anyway, I saw where the Hinox was lying, and I saw that there was a handy clifftop nearby to the left, the dam-ward direction. It could be an easy kill.... I decided to go for it.

I headed for the high ground, but when I finally came to the crest of that shelf.... I heard a troop of lizalfos croaking and rumbling to each other! I crept closer and saw through the grass: the lizalfos had the high ground.

However.... to the left again, the dam-ward direction once more, the mountain shelves just kept on mounting. And so I backed off and away for one more scramble to the higher ground. And when I came to THAT shelf.... it was empty.

Oh-ho-ho-ho it was empty.

I walked on over to the edge and peered down into the lizalfos camp. No fewer than five of them sat chirruping around their fire. And I saw a powder keg, how excellent.

I produced a single bomb and chucked it over the edge with a little Hup!

I didn’t give them time to notice or to contemplate their predicament, but detonated just before impact, and the whole lot of them went up in a searing fiery ball that rocked the mountains.

All except for one, and just a few more bombs took care of him.

I floated down on my paraglider and collected all the spoils I could find before walking over to the next precipice, and there below me was the Hinox.

I had plenty of arrows, and so got to work. The big brute got to his feet, the fatshnazzy brass band started up with its drums, and it was on.

And it was here that I accidentally discovered something supremely useful:

An arrow to the eye of a Hinox was substantially more damaging than an arrow anywhere else.

I suppose I should have known.

Every time I hit him in the eye, he winced and clutched his face and shook horribly! I almost felt bad for him. Almost, but not quite. My aim was getting quite good now, and with only a few more arrows, I brought him down.

And it was another paragliding float down, another mess of spoils to collect. Ah, felt good; I do love raining terror from above!

I’ve not yet cooked anything with Hinox Toenails in it.

Hard to believe those actually qualify as elixir ingredients. Ughuhuh.... 9__9

Bad Blood

Waking of Thursday, April 6, 2017 ~ 4

Bad Blood

I came upon three of them camping on a south beach near a little dock with a boat. Favoring stealth, I threw bombs at them from an overhang until I became impatient, whereupon I dashed in and just brought it all to fisticuffs. When they’d been dealt with I searched all over their campsite but there was still no Korok Leaf to go with the boat!

Where in Hyrule was I going to find one??

Just a couple of hills more brought me to a small, weathered ruin with a few more lizalfos, alert and patrolling this time. I was grateful for the din of the rain; it made it easier to stalk the nearest one and cut him down in one stroke as he lay camouflaged in the blustered grass. The one by the little inlet was trickier as the land was so folded—and his Eightfold Longblade slipped into the water with him before I could grab it, drats!

There was just one more across the ruin and against a hill that I had it out with before I could properly inspect the shrine. It seemed to be surrounded by a hedge of briars—much as that other shrine on the Floret Sandbar had been surrounded by flowers.

But something told me a careful footing would be much more crucial here—those briars looked sharp.

At one point there was a lull in the rain, and so I attempted to burn the hedge out of the way—I’d wondered if the weather would prevent that, but luck was on my side it seemed.

But I broke two flints trying for a spark, and so instead went back and set off the powder-keg I’d seen in the ruin, and then used a torch to carry the flame over to the hedge.

For a time this worked quite well, but then the rain came back and quenched the flames I had started.

This was going to be tricky.

I didn’t know the half of it—

That sound.

That tone with the soft crescendo and a dead stop. The eerie echoes of whole-tone flutes. Ash and embers rose from the ground.

Oh no....

She’d always told me to please be careful....

But I’d never been in the middle of a hostile camp when the hour of Blood Moon struck.

I ran for it as the deep piano strings began to roar and rumble, up the hill slick with wet grass, just hoping for a clear patch of ground to claim, hoping there were no more lizalfos up here.... Oh I could kill them. But I preferred to do it from a controlled approach, and one at a time if I could manage it. I didn’t want to be thrust into the middle of a fresh gang of them....

The Blood Moon glowed ripping hot and the world turned crimson—

And all my work was for naught.

The dell crawled with lizalfos again. Alive. Armed. Healthy.

Just.... back.

How frustrating.

But there was nothing for it.

I moved in again, I killed them again, and I finally made it through a path in the briars to the shrine.

Five Flames.

That was the challenge offered by the monk.

A tricky one. Most invigorating.

But when I came back out, when I climbed a small pillar to paraglide out of the briars, when I dispatched the last mean lizalfos and scanned the final end of the water beneath the towering Reservoir wall....

There was no Mei.

She wasn’t here.

The Last River

Waking of Thursday, April 6, 2017 ~ 3

The Last River

You know those Stables really are amazing. I’d registered Thrice and boarded him there at the Woodland Stable, but when I went to take him out again, the man said, “Okay, so you want us to take Brown into our care?”

o__o They could do that?

Well.... I answered in the affirmative, and he said, “All right, wait just a moment,” the screen went black, and then I had Thrice and I guess.... they had Brown.

(Though how they fetched him all the way from Kakariko, I dunno. Are they packin’ their own Sheikah Slates....?)

I spoke to the man again, and asked to take out Brown this time.

And a similar scene ensued, and then Thrice was gone and Brown was there.

He looked at me like he knew something.... like I’d been out riding other horses....

“Oh, buddy....” I soothed him. He’s my boy; I still loved him.

But I boarded him again. Kakariko’s a nice place, but maybe it’d be nice in a proper stable too. Besides, the way I was headed, there was definitely no room for horsing around.

I warped back to the Lanayru Tower. There was just one more river to sweep—the long river that curved back east toward the Reservoir.

I clambered over the mountains along the north bank for a time, but the river was so far below me I couldn’t see it. The air seemed too fogged by distance and moisture.

Across the canyon, on the south bank, the mountains seemed almost as high—you know, maybe I shouldn’t even call it a bank; the river was flanked on both sides by sheer cliff walls in a deep ravine.

At any rate the southern cliffs seemed high, but it looked like there was a little grassy shelf a bit closer to the water that I might reach by paraglider. Maybe I’d be able to see more from there. I made sure to get plenty of altitude before I made the attempt to cross. If I came up short and ended up in the drink, I doubted I’d be able to do much besides warp back to the tower and start all over again.

But I made the crossing without a hitch and with a good two feet of landing-zone to spare. Steadying myself on the new surface, I turned around and peered back down into the ravine.

I was still quite high up.

But the river seemed to be empty.

There was nowhere to go but on toward the Reservoir. If Mei wasn’t here.... I scrambled up the cliff face, startling a few herons, and it started to rain. It was a slick run to get to the top but I made it all right—and immediately wondered if I had come up on the clifftop near some kind of settlement, for I heard music. An accordion. Was there some kind of carnival going on? I looked around wildly for some sign—

And I saw, some distance away, near a great jutting crag over the water, a figure standing on a little hump of grass, swaying gently, his arms full of something. That seemed to be the source of the music.

He wasn’t a bokoblin or any other kind of monster. I approached.

But as I came near, I saw through the haze of rain and gasped—there were feathers—blue feathers—cresting from this person’s head; the arms, the forearms were too broad, because they were wings, also blue—and a great grey parrot’s beak so prominent on the front of the face—

(“Rito?” I whispered.)

I approached him slowly—it was a him, right?—and only stood beside him for a moment as he played on. I watched his colorfully striped feather-fingers as they pressed the keys.... This was so weird....

And then I engaged his attention and he startled slightly, blustering something about having thought he was all alone up here—

And then, as so many seem to have done all along my road, he sputtered out, “Wait.... that thing there on you waist!”

My Sheikah Slate.

“No, but it couldn’t be....” And then he caught himself and apologized, “I’m sorry, it’s nothing, I don’t mean to pry.”

It was my turn to say something.

And I wanted so badly to ask him, Are you a... bird?

But....

He had been kind enough to stop himself, to calm down, to try and be polite. I thought.... I would give him the same courtesy.

I only smiled and said, “No worries.”

He introduced himself as Kass—just Kass—and told me about the song he had been playing.

Oh but I sort of wished I’d asked him about his race....

But I did listen to his song. It was a lovely tune, really. Plaintive, melancholy chords; it was just really wonderful. But the lyrics were somewhat cryptic. It spoke of a beast with a crown of bone, running through the lush green, and if you mounted it on its throne, then the shrine could be seen.

The actual rhyme was smoother than that, but that’s something how it went.

Hm, I wondered what kind of “beast” could be roaming around these parts—for it was very green here. Kass and I both wondered, really. And what kind of shrine could be revealed by one mounting a beast on its throne? It all reminded me of Doctor Calip’s research, actually.... hidden shrines....

But perhaps it was a mystery for another day, for I was very near the end of combing through every single waterway of Zora’s Domain.

I bade Kass goodbye, and he played on as I trekked ahead through the rain. The southern cliff-bank gradually began to roll lower and lower toward the water level, until the land became quite flattened out in a little sunken dell and I saw something I’d completely forgotten about: a shrine I had marked!

There was a shrine, just outside the Eastern Reservoir.

There it was, at the water’s end.

And it was surrounded by lizalfos.

Zora's Domain Again

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 14

Zora’s Domain Again

I coalesced into myself near the gates of Zora’s Domain.

Rivan was the first person I saw.

He marveled to me at the clearness of the sky.

I felt different.

I walked inward, passing familiar faces, Fronk, Trello, Laflat....

I showed Laflat the pictograph I had taken of the charging Lynel, and she made a rather undignified squeak at the sight of it. But she was grateful to see it; it would help her scare the young Zoras from going near the mountain.

Scare away, Laflat. The terror of that thing was completely justified.

In return for my high-stakes pictography, she gave me a pair of Zora Greaves. She said they used to be very common—Zoras had gifted them to visiting Hylians after the Hylians had collaborated with the Zoras to construct the Eastern Reservoir wall. Now, however, you didn’t see them all that much, because Hylians didn’t visit so often anymore. The very pair she had given me was the last one in the stock room before her father had to close down their armor shop.

Well, I could certainly look the part now, couldn’t I?

But I didn’t don them just yet. It felt.... a little presumptuous, on my way to see the King once again.

Back in the throne room before King Dorephan. Sidon and Muzu were there, too, as were many of the Zoras I had met. A small throng of blues and greens and reds and blacks—I could pick out a few individuals....

There followed from the King some pomp and circumstance, but.... beneath all that, I think what struck me as perhaps the heaviest honor—or perhaps the most dearly bought by its bestower—was Muzu, repentant. He hoped, he said, that I would be able to forgive him for his words to me before, if not now, then some day.

Many of the elders I passed on my way back into the Domain still resented me for stealing away their princess. And I don’t suppose I can blame them, trying to see it from their side. But.... Muzu’s olive branch was a gracious and most welcome gesture.

The King awarded me with a treasure that had belonged to Lady Mipha—the Lightscale Trident—which reminded him....

“Where is your trusty sword, Link? The one with the power to seal away the darkness?”

I looked at him. “What sword?” I said.

“...So you have forgotten that as well,” he replied mysteriously, his eyes shrewd. He assured me that it was a weapon only I could wield, and that it was no doubt only resting somewhere in Hyrule, waiting for its master’s return.

The King lauded me a little further until the meeting finally dissolved into the cheers and shouts of gratitude and relief from the attending Zoras....

I spoke again with the King after everyone had left, and he asked after his daughter. After all, she had not returned with me. So the King had held out some hope yet....

“I met her spirit,” I told him after a moment.

He leaned forward all at once toward me again—that one his size could move so....

“Her spirit, you say? Did she say anything?” he asked.

And I told him.

“I see...” he said, “so she really is....”

What could I say?

What do you say to a father?

“She really loved you, Link,” he said to me. And he asked me to promise to him that I would remember her always.

“I’ll never forget her,” I said.

ALL MY SKILL

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 11

ALL MY SKILL

I had been in places that kept me on my physical toes. But this place was more a mental exercise than anything else. The powers of my Sheikah Slate were heavily employed; Cryonis, Magnesis, Stasis.... It took all my skill and a dash of mad courage to figure how to access the four terminals I needed to activate.

I suppose the dash of courage came when I realized I would need to trek out onto Vah Ruta’s trunk as it stretched out over the Reservoir. Good gads it had to be a furlong in length at least....

I could manipulate the trunk via the map I had distilled into my Sheikah Slate. But LET ME TELL YOU it was one thing to watch it bend and move according to my commands in its little glowing blue schematic in my HUD. But it was another thing entirely to be standing upon it as it executed my commands.

It was articulated in segments, like an earthworm, but still always sort of curved, you see. I couldn’t venture out from the base to the middle without bending it mostly upward, and I couldn’t move from the middle out to the tip without bending it back down—and there were more darkpools to do away with out there.

But after much puzzling and legwork, and a few Zora-dives up an internal waterfall.... I had activated all the terminals except for one. Mipha’s voice came to encourage me after every one; but the ambient music.... some soft, asymmetrical, delicately chimed thing.... subtly changed after every one as well, and not exactly in a good way.

It did nothing to prevent me from feeling a sense of dread impending doom.

It was like the place was on to me.

The last terminal took me an hour and a half, including interspersed escapes from the game to numb my brain on stupid YouTube videos while my WiiU controller recharged in its cradle. Days passed in the game. Suns and moons rose and set, though I never saw any Blood Moons.... Logic now.... I couldn’t reach the terminal underwater; I had to either drain the water, or remove the entire apparatus. The apparatus didn’t look movable, so to drain the water, I either had to stop the leak in, or spring a new leak out.... but my bombs wouldn’t sink.... the ice arrows wouldn’t stop the inflow.... a Shock Arrow didn’t jumpstart the terminal....

David gave me a much needed helping hand when he came home, and suggested I aim Cryonis on the inpouring waterfall. The one thing I hadn’t tried.

I didn’t think the water was thick enough there to use Cryonis.

And it didn’t look like it would fit, either.

But, as luck would have it, when I took aim with Cryonis, it fat.

And one button later the waterfall stopped.

But the terminal was upside down.

A couple buttons more and I had it.

Mipha directed me then to go to the last terminal.

I already knew where it was.

It was time to return to the Big Room.

TWO HEROIC MEN TOO AWESOME FOR WORDS

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 9

TWO HEROIC MEN TOO AWESOME FOR WORDS

I stood a while with Sidon on the dock before we spoke. When we did he turned and flashed his winning grin at me—a bit more subdued this time.

I don’t suppose waiting would have made it any easier. But then.... somehow, with Sidon there, in all his mad grinning confidence, his unwavering surety.... maybe it didn’t seem like such a hard thing after all.

He leapt into the water, flipping like he does, and called me in. I would ride on his back. He would get me close, and with my Zora Armor I would be able to ascend the four waterfalls spilling from Vah Ruta’s back, to land my Shock Arrows on the orbs above.

And away we went, slicing through the water at incredible speed! Prince Sidon’s dulcet tenor spurring us onward, steady as a rock—that guy could move. And when Vah Ruta reacted to our presence—I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t that!

How it trumpeted, crying out so loudly—pulling huge blocks of ice from the water, hovering them up as if by magic, and hurling them at us one after the other.

“Get rid of that ice!” the Prince shouted to me. Two of the bergs struck us, and it hurt—Sidon punched through—before I got my fumbling bow into my hands, whereupon I started dropping them out of the air one by one as Sidon flew through the water in a wide curve, arcing round the beast. Spray flew, rain slashed at our faces, and when Vah Ruta’s opening volley had run dry, Sidon darted in toward its side—“Do you have those Shock Arrows?” he called.

Man. His voice so fair and princely even here.

I readied them in my quiver. Sidon came right up against the raging beast’s side, maintaining a swift movement—no static targets here—as he bounded back and forth between two of the waterfalls. “Now, Link!”

I took the fall on the right side, I leapt from his back, spearing upward, upward, leaping in and out of the current like a fish, testament to the handiwork of Lady Mipha—until I broke through the upper surface and shot into the air—high above my target. I drew my bow, looked down, and time seemed to slow.... There was the orb, huge and pink, I drew, pulled back, let fly.... everything crackled and yellow and then I was falling....

I plashed back into the water with jarring violence, back in the tempest, back in the storm, back up to speed—“Nice going!”—there he was—and I grabbed onto the Prince’s back again and he hauled us outta there—Vah Ruta had collected more ice to try and crush us with—grateful I was carrying so many arrows.... though my bows couldn’t take all the firing.... grateful I was packing more than one bow....

Again and again, THAT VOICE.

WHO VOICED THIS GUY?

“Can you stop that ice?”

“Get those Shock Arrows!”

“You did it, Link!”

“Shock Arrows ready?”

And as I plummeted from the final orb—“Marvelous!”

AND YOU KNOW? It’s possible it’s not even a stupendous actor and he’s just lucky to be riding on the writing and animation of a character who already bleeds charisma! But I just like him!

Just channeling through the water like a mad torpedo on the back of the Prince of the Zoras, diving up waterfalls and sailing into the sky for freefalling archery with that friggin’ dulcet tenor still playing the cheer squad and EAUGH!

Do you know how hard I pumped my fists, how high I pranced and skipped as I went to close the curtains because it was getting dark, how convicted my affirmations to the house at large that “THAT WAS SO COOL”?

GAUGH.

Yes, I think the voice acting did add something, thickened the atmosphere of the charged, charged moment.

And as the Divine Beast Vah Ruta quieted, as the waterflow cut off and the sky became brighter.... Sidon took us in close—there was a platform....

“You wanted to get inside that thing, right?”

I did want to get inside it.

I still had to infiltrate its depths, and retake it for Princess Zelda.

“Finish the job, Link,” Sidon urged, low and even from the water below as the Beast began to float higher and I was lifted away, higher and higher....

Shatterback Point

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 8

Shatterback Point

I could see the Lynel down through the pines, still prowling over his meadow.

That was a beast so fierce....

I’d gotten my twenty shock arrows. Plus four more I found stuck in the highest tree on the mountain—near which I saw a sign jutting out of the rock. It read:

JUMP AT YOUR OWN RISK

For there was the precipice.

I still wore my Zora Armor, and was not catching a chill.

Shatterback point, it seemed, was still in an accessible altitude.

The sun was brighter up here, and far, far below in the Reservoir, the Divine Beast Vah Ruta still spewed and churned its endless surge of water up into the air.

My gosh the views from up here.... I could see a few unvisited shrines! But such a strain to look back over the long miles I had traveled since my awakening. The Dueling Peaks lost in the surging waterspout. These were landscapes unfamiliar to me. I was far from.... well anywhere really.

I took several moments to catch my breath.

The force to be reckoned with here....

But.... eventually I had nowhere else to go.... but down.

I knew if I jumped over water, I would arc into a dive.

And this was a good diving spot, Gruve had said. His favorite.

And I could see the Reservoir below me. Misted over by mere atmosphere, my gosh....

And screwing up my courage.... I leapt.

Plummeting, plummeting, spearing down through the air and—a diagonal line of contrast cut across my view almost directly below me. Dark on one side, light on the other.

It was the shore, no, I was going to land in the shallows—Gruve was this part of your diving thrill?

It rushed toward me as I joysticked upward and could not deviate from my course and—no, it was not the shore—it was the mountain’s shadow on the water—

Splash!

I had arrived at the—in the Eastern Reservoir.

Thank goodness there was a shore, though, just a short swim behind me now. I made for it....

Once on solid ground again I hiked back westward over the paths and craggy rocks toward the Reservoir wall above Zora’s Domain. There was a long pier there—one of four, I think, about the Reservoir—hewn of the same light blue stone as all the other Zoran architecture I had seen. A hop, skip and a jump more to a big bald shelf of stone, and I came even with it.

Prince Sidon was standing there at its end, gazing out over the grey water.

I called out to him, but I don’t think he could hear me. Probably the roar of Vah Ruta’s constant waterspouting.

But it was only a few more moments of climbing, and jumping over some guardrails, before I made it to the pier myself.

It was quite nice, broad and spacious, with a kind of ramada on the wallward side, away from the water, with a bed underneath it. A soft bed, sheltered from the rain....

Sidon was keen to my presence by this point, but I’d decided I needed to rest up for a bit before we did this, and he respected that.

It was some time after seven in the evening. I figured a full night’s sleep would do me good—I’d just about had it with that Lynel.

I rested until the morning....