Fort Hateno Again

Waking of Friday, March 10, 2017 ~ 2

Fort Hateno Again

As I was saying, there were a series of old pictographs of different locations around Hyrule stored on my Sheikah Slate. Purah recommended I go talk to Impa about them.

So I did. Brown and I went back to Kakariko, and Impa had a look. And she recommended I try and reach some of these locations, and perhaps that would unlock some of my memories. Because Princess Zelda had probably taken these pictures herself, and I had been her appointed Knight. So it was quite possible I had been to those locations with her.

Maybe I’d find something....

One picture showed a view of the Dueling Peaks as seen from the west, featuring a body of water with aspens in the foreground. I tried to line myself up and have a look at all the bodies of water I could find, but.... nothing seemed to fit. I needed to be further north. And that would take me off my map. I wanted to first see if I could find anyplace I’d already charted....

Next I tried a picture that featured a statue of a horse. It looked kind of like the centerpiece of an ornate fountain. I recalled that I had seen a fountain back among the ruins on the Plateau. But when I went there and compared the two.... it didn’t line up as well as I’d thought it might.

There was another picture that showed some kind of gatehouse or enclosed turret along the top of a battlemented wall. I thought of Fort Hateno.

I’d done all this through warping and left my horse in Kakariko, so I warped to Dueling Peaks Stable and it was another long jog through the Valley of Terror to get to the old fort.

But when I got there, those ancient structures didn’t line up either. There were more stone buildings in the pictographs.

I felt just a little bit deflated. I’d been excited at the prospect of learning what might have happened to me here, if everything Garill had said about the old Champion were true.

Ah well. I climbed about a bit, found another Korok (they’ve been hiding everywhere), and just.... thought.

I didn’t know where else to look.

It started to rain.

I turned about, and looked again on the field of frozen Guardians crawling toward the fort. I was standing on a raised turret, above the lower parapets. This.... seemed like the highest point on the wall.

Had I stood here before? This very place?

Shouted commands to others in my charge, perhaps?

The rain fell harder.

Flashes in my mind brought the imagined past into vibrant, terrifying focus, and the great lumps on the battlefield moved and lurched, slowed but still coming, and their lights pulsed dangerous blues and reds, and their terrible lasers cast crimson explosions into the stone, into the air, in cacophonous minglings with the storm’s thunder.

And the same flashes—lightning or my mind?—brought me back to myself, made me shake my head and rub my face as the rain slicked down my hood, skin and clothes.

Did I have such Courage once?

A Rocky Path

Waking of Tuesday, March 7, 2017 ~ 2

A Rocky Path

There was a shrine on top of the southern mountain of Dueling Peaks, and I wanted to get there.

And boy, was it a long climb. And wet with pouring rain.

I had wondered just how well my hood would protect me from the elements, as the shop in Kakariko had advertised. But.... as it turned out, it did not shield me from the cold all that well.

I had climbed so far, so high, on such slick, steep surfaces.... and I must have been so close.... But.... I turned around.

Running downhill was definitely easier.

I saw one little field below me, all grassy with a huge stone in the middle. And the thought honestly occurred to me, You know, that looks like some kind of boss-arena.

I kept running, and leapt up onto the big rock in the center of it.

And the rock started moving.

The whole gigantic boulder juddered to life and stood up on unseen little boulder legs and with stubby little boulder arms—like that creepy little golem I had encountered when I went to chop wood!

Music started.

Oh great, I thought.

Nope!

I was out.

I ran for the edge nearest the other peak and jumped onto the wind.

The boss’s name even appeared before I made it too far away—TALUS.... “Junior”, did it say?

Even the music followed me around the great mounded corners of the mountain. The pouring storm took a long while to swallow it up.

Would Talus too follow me down the mountain?

Oh gads....

This is why all Heroes are called Fools

Waking of Saturday, MARCH FOURTH, 2017 ~ 14

This is why all Heroes are called Fools

The rain slicked over my Hylian Hood.

Brokka [Toma] and I walked on, soaked, our horses’ hooves endlessly clopping, clopping, clopping over the dirt and slush.

There was so much we were passing by, so much that.... I would have wanted to explore. But I somehow felt safer in Brokka’s company. Safer in the footsteps of a sprite for which the game must always have an escape, surely....

As we passed by some towering cliffs on the other side of a wide river to our right—the Cliffs of Quince, beneath which some bokoblins capered about their campfire—I saw a woman sobbing by the side of the road.

Brokka didn’t stop.

I paused.

Brokka kept going. I didn’t want to lose her.

But who was this crying woman?

This didn’t feel right. This didn’t feel right at all.

Surely this woman needed help.

But I wanted to stick together with Brokka.

What if this was a trap?

Brokka moved further and further ahead through the rain, without me.

Two Roads Diverged.

“All right Brown stay here,” I murmured, and dismounted. I wanted to make this quick.

But the woman had no name.

She was only a Traveler.

Uh-oh....

She was crying because she wanted some salmon.

“And.... and also....” she stuttered.

“The life of the Hero!”

She transformed just the same, into the lithe and lanky thing, reddish, quick, deadly.

Well I’d taken the scythe of the last one—and his bananas and his rupees!—and we fought blade against blade.

Or was this where my Eight Fold Blade finally wore out and shattered?

I don’t remember....

I defeated her. And took her scythe and bananas and the rupees she dropped.

The bananas were from somewhere called Faron.

I wondered if that’s where this Yiga Clan was based....

I climbed back on Brown and raced ahead to find Brokka again.

A New Quest

Waking of Saturday, MARCH FOURTH, 2017 ~ 11

A New Quest

Impa also looked at my Sheikah Slate, and told me some of its functionality was.... off. She said to go see her mentor away in Hateno Village, at the end of a very long road to the east. All I had to do was go back southward the way I had come, and then turn left at the crossroads, just before the stable.

But I decided to stay near town for a bit to gear up first. It would likely be another long, long road.

I played with some little girls, Cottla and Koko, the children of.... was it Cado or Dorian? One of Impa’s doorguards anyway. I helped Koko cook a dish (“KOKO’S KITCHEN”?? I SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE. XD) and I tried so hard to play hide-and-seek with Cottla, but.... gosh I could never find her.

I also went to see a Great Fairy the villagers told me lived above the village.

Her name was Cotera, I think, and I was nervous and cautious as ever as I entered her high forest. I moved so slow, treading so carefully and far away from that thing I saw in the water over there in the middle....

As it turned out, it was only a frightening-looking cocoon of some kind the fairy was buried in. Her power seemed to have dimmed and she would not come out.

Not until I brought her a hundred rupees anyway. And then! Out she leapt, blonde, pretty, face all made up, covered all over by the gaudiest jeweled chains and links and scales and ornaments, and.... only a little on the husky side. Huh!

Well no matter. In return for my generosity, she offered to upgrade my clothing, granting it better defense against unfriendly attack.

I told her to hold that thought, and went into town and bought some new clothes. I’d found some Hylian Trousers long ago on the Plateau, in a chest, but now I got a Hylian.... tunic? A top anyway, and a Hylian Hood.

And then back up the hillside I went, and she blew her fancy magic all over my clothes, blessing them with stronger defense.

The roads were long and scary.

I figured I’d best be prepared.