Another Storm

Waking of Sunday, June 25, 2017 ~ 2

Another Storm

Vah Naboris was so far away now....

The desert below was vast.

Still I clung to the bottom of the frost line, high on the mountain range.

David was absolutely boggled why I didn’t just go to that place out in the desert, the one with the shrine right next to it.

But I didn’t want to.... not yet.... I felt more drawn.... to the Volcano. The breadcrumbs seemed to pull me there.

These Gerudo Highlands? This was just a lark, this was exploring....

Mmmm this was not the determined Hero I thought I’d be playing....

Sometimes I wonder if it’s because I let myself slip from being the farthest along in the game. I know it’s not a race, but.... there’s something in that, I think....

Hm.

I ventured into the freezing snow to solve a magnetic Korok puzzle. I climbed up the back of a Talus to show David how it’s done. I didn’t even know how many Talus kills that was for me. Felt like a boss.

Creeping shrinelight shone from the desert floor far below, looming out of a gigantic ribcage lost in a cloud of sand.

“Why don’t you go get that one?”

“You mean that shrine that got eaten by some giant thing?”

No, David, I wouldn’t even go get that one—

A sandstorm blustered up out of nowhere and obliterated the world. Everything was lost in a greenbeige haze.

The map in my HUD went static.

“What?”

David groaned a knowing groan.

“Have you seen this?” I asked him.

He had.

I opened up my Sheikah Slate.

Static. Blue-on-black static.

Nothing. It was nonfunctional.

I put it away.

I couldn’t see anything. Only the ground for a few yards around me.

I pressed on, forward into the raging din, but then—

That soft little xylo-cowbell tap, that chime that means No.

And

You can’t go any farther.

Words at the bottom of my screen.

“Nooo!” I howled, running against the press of nothing, feet not going anywhere.

I paused and—if my map was malfunctioning, how did I place that stamp?

I marked the spot with a Star.

And with nowhere else to go.... I headed down the mountain.... and with a new spot of ground to stand on veered hard into the west once more!

And once more I could not move any farther.

And I marked that spot with a Star.

One more drop in elevation, another press against the edge, another Star....

Could I even see these stamps on my static map?

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. Everything was gone. Storks flew away into the howling wind. Wolves loomed out of the airborne murk. My Great Thunderblade became my flashlight.

I came to a rock ledge overlooking the desert I could not see.

“I’m at the edge of the universe,” I said.

There was nowhere left to go but back counterclockwise around the mountain. I had to jog quite far before the sandstorm let up and the air cleared enough for me to see.

My Sheikah Slate came back to life and I looked at the stamps I had placed.

They formed a perfectly vertical line near the western edge of my map.

“You should do what I did,” said David, “I just went to my map, scrolled aaaall the way down to the bottom-left corner, and put a marker, then I unpaused to see where it was!”

Ugh! “Nooo!” What a ghastly thought!

So that was the end. I couldn’t circumnavigate the Gerudo Highlands after all. The highest, westernmost plateau continued off into spaces and areas over which I could not pan.

And I felt a little sadness again . . . . but not like before.

Before, when I saw the sea, there was something more awful there. Woeful. An empty isolation.

But here on the sandblasted mountainside.... something inside me joyed to know that....

The land went on.

I don’t know, I just....

I liked that thought.

There was a kind of dread finality when the border was the sea, but when you can see the land goes on?

There’s something hopeful there.

When more is left to the imagination.

I went back round the mountain. I found more Koroks here and there. I saw the lower entrance to that Satan Canyon with all the frogs.

I paraglided to the other side of it—boggling David further still as to why I did not just go down and explore the sandy desert floor.

I did take a look at a couple of treasure chests down there. One of them was Magnesable, but the other....

“Maybe you’re not close enough,” said David.

“Oh, I’m close enough,” I said, and it was my turn to have a knowing groan in my voice.

David was confused. “What, are there things that disguise themselves to look like treasure chests?”

I only narrowed my eyes as I regarded the chest on the screen. Oh I’d love to see his first encounter with one of those....

I climbed further up the rocks, still counterclockwise back around the mountain, and found some amazing ruins haunted by three Lizalfos and an Ice Wizzrobe. I bombed the Wizzrobe from a nearby cliff, and killed the Lizalfos up close; looting the place turned over a bunch of SWEET bows, man. I left a bow stamp there for later.

A hop, skip and a jump further around the mountain and all at once the screen flicked to an interrupted connection message from my WiiU.

My controller had run out of batteries.

Well.... it was just as well. It was getting pretty late, and I had to pack anyway.

I set the controller in its cradle and set to filling my suitcase....

I’d never run my battery completely dry before. I checked in every few minutes until there was enough juice to at least put Link safe in the pause screen for a while. And there he sat while I went through my packing list.

And by the time I was done.... I really should have just gone to bed. But instead I justified myself in playing just a little bit more by reasoning that after all that packing, I really deserved a little cool-down time....

But I played much like I got ready for the family reunion: with much procrastinatory wandering.

I only wended my way back toward the Gerudo Tower, exploring some of the lower reaches of that spiral path around the Tower hole—I really think there must not be a floor there—finally just warped back up to the Tower platform, saved.... quit.... and went to bed.

I got a good twenty minutes before my alarm went off.

The Long Way Back

Waking of Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The Long Way Back

I shared a somewhat.... irksome exchange with David the other day, as I lamented to him about all the dead-ended rivers I had searched. I told him I had searched every waterway downstream from the wetlands, and that none of them led to Lake Hylia.

And in a terrible digging voice and with shrewdly narrowed eyes he answered, “Are you sure?”

Well.

I did wonder about that lake beneath Digdogg Suspension Bridge, and I hiked to the actual bridge (upon which I had never set foot) to have a look. In skirting round the sleeping Hinox and peering down over the edge, the water really did seem to come to a dead end just there.

But I wanted to be thorough. I pressed on into the desert landscape of the other side, had it out with a couple of mounted bokoblins—and one of their horses, a pretty, peach-dusty thing with a sandy mane, decided he didn’t want me on his back, and promptly jumped us both into the drink.

David lost it completely.

I just.... blinked.

....

The horse looked like a good mount, but I had no stamina for swimming after him, and so warped to the shrine just away beneath the bridge. After that it was a boat-ride back to the waterfall, a quick ascension in my Zora Armor, and.... I was still quite far away from where I had been....

But, as I was so close to the Great Plateau, I simply put on my Warm Doublet, warped to the shrine on the icy mountain, ENCOUNTERED A STRANGE TREASURE CHEST with the letters “EX” on it—for a moment I was terrified it might be a T-shirt or something.... but it was Bomb Arrows—don’t ask—and PARAGLIDED back to Digdogg Suspension Bridge.

I’d dealt with the bokoblins, and I finished off their friends in a nearby treehouse—David got quite a kick out of the Great Thunderblade I had acquired from Sheem Dagoze.

And after a good look about the place.... I decided that Yes, this really was a dead end to the river.

Ignoring my shrine-locator’s beeping, I ran all the way back to the Outskirt Stable.

It was....

It was time to start back. And set my face toward Akkala. And Robbie.

I did still decide to do this all on foot, however.

“Aren’t you gonna just.... Beam-Me-Up-Scotty?” David asked.

“I don’t wanna Beam-Me-Up-Scotty,” I said.

“You’re gonna walk the whole way?”

Well, maybe I’d Beam-Me-Up-Scotty just a little. I warped back to the Sheem Dagoze Shrine, and started north, for the Elma Knolls.

But first I came to that big toothy crack in the earth, found a shrine in the bottom of it, and completed that—I’m up to nine Spirit Orbs now; I really should find a Goddess statue....

And after that it was a very long jog past that sparse ruin over the water where I’d played hide-and-seek with the Korok—The Ancient Laboratory Ruin or something like that—aaaaall the way across the Elma Knolls with their endless wolves, and those mounted bokoblins with the fire arrows or whatever they were.... Got hit a couple of times there—

I didn’t feel like chewing through my food, but decided that, if I fell, I would just rely on Mipha.

What good is a gift avoided? And Mipha’s was a very good gift.

It was a very long trek, and the bokoblins cut me down to one heart, and a mob of giant blue chuchus cut me down to one quarter heart—but I kept running. And I kept killing wolves, never shying.

And it was raining, and I found Mils and Mina—not Nina, as it turned out—fighting against some bokoblins on the road, and I helped them out, and—

“Well there’s a split off the river,” said David.

I looked toward the castle. Beneath the unholy Calamitous Clouds, one fell fork split off and meandered away into the blackened landscape. It looked just like another part of the moat.

“I don’t think Lake Hylia’s in there,” I gestured to the castle lands.

“But.... open your map; maybe it connects with.... these down here.”

He indicated some rivers along the vein that ran between the Dueling Peaks.

“ . . . . Huh,” I said, “Maybe.” Perhaps.... this warranted some looking in to.

Also I had the feeling David was . . . . mmmm maybe nudging me around a bit.

The sun came out like a bad cliché when I finally jogged onto the friendly grounds of the Woodland Stable. It was 11:15 in the morning. I decided to take a forty-five minute nap to rejuvenate my aching one-quarter-heart body, and at noon, I took Thrice out for a ride.

We took the Thims Bridge road, over the mossy mounded hills and past the Honeydell—saving Leekah from a bokoblin on the way of course. But I stopped at one junction of the road I had never explored.

“Stay here,” I told Thrice, and climbed a bit over the rocks beside the long stretch of a T-junction. The stretch that pointed toward the castle....

“In my experience,” said David, “The closer you are to the castle....”

The farther you are from harm? I thought hopefully.

“The closer you are to trouble,” he finished.

“I’m just gonna take a little look,” I assured him, inwardly thinking how VERY like Famous Last Words those sounded....

I crept among the rocks until I was high enough to peer into the central plain before the castle. There at the base of the hill I was on.... coursed a little river. Flowing north to south. One that very probably could only have come from that split David had shown me earlier, among the big cubic stones surrounding the castle.

. . . .

Maybe....

Maybe....

I looked at my map again.

The river system near the Dueling Peaks.... the river that this one by the Honeydell may have connected with.... was called the Hylia River. And it was joined by the Squabble River from the Dueling Peaks....

But further downstream it was still called the Hylia River....

And then it ran away southward off of my known map.

Could it be . . . . ?

I came back to Thrice, and we pressed on to the Wetland Stable—saving Leekah again on the way—and I stopped.

Oh I was aching to go on. I had arced all the way north around the castle again in a great upside-down U, and I still had the drive and energy to keep going....!

But it was late again, and I did have to get up early.

But to be absolutely sure....

To see those waterways....

There was one more thing I could do in pursuit of the hapless missing Mei.

And it lay at the top of the alleged scariest Sheikah Tower in all the land.