AN UNEXPECTED AND IMMEDIATELY URGENT DETOUR

Waking of Friday, April 14, 2017 ~ 10

AN UNEXPECTED AND IMMEDIATELY URGENT DETOUR

A circularish bog.... with a bunch of wooden platforms in it....?

I pulled out my Sheikah Slate and opened the pictograph album.... one of these.... one of Zelda’s pictographs.... THERE IT WAS.

The roundish body of water with all the platforms.... on top of a hill?

With a river running nearby and there was the castle behind it?

“OH MY GOSH THAT’S HERE!” I shouted.

I looked at the pictograph—I was too low and to the right—I needed to be up and to the left—Forget the forest, forget Akkala! I needed to climb the mountain!

I paraglided from the hilltop, across the road, and into the red, red stone of the foothills of Death Mountain.

And I scrambled for it.

It was a place called Eldin Canyon, and it was easy enough to ascend—especially with my Climber’s Bandana.

Quickly, quickly, up, up, up! I was in such a hurry to try and unlock my memory I barely gave myself time to take in what oddities and little terrors I passed. There were glowing-hot rocks—fiery versions of those creepy little golems I’d run into outside Hateno. Infantile Taluses, I think. I blew them up with bombs. And there were big, plump birds—Eldin Ostriches—that looked delicious.... And dangerous! Those legs looked powerful.... But they were afraid of my presence, and fled. I didn’t try to catch any.

I HAD MORE PRESSING MATTERS TO ATTEND TO!

The temperature rose as I climbed higher and higher—the baking oven heat just next to intolerable. But not quite. Not quite dangerous. I could take it....

But as I scaled one cliff wall, and just reached the lip of its top and looked over—I briefly saw the glare of lava—

And whatever wooden weapon I had slung across my back burst into flame.

I backed up immediately, shielding my face below the rock again—I hadn’t known I was so close to the open magma flow! Dropping back down to the dirt below, I quickly put out the fire.

I paused, considering.

From the neck down, I was still wearing full Zora Armor. So sleek, formfitting, made for the water.... I didn’t want to damage it....

Perhaps it was time to switch back to my Hylian attire, which I did. Though I passed up the Hylian Hood and just kept the Climber’s Bandana on my head.

Maybe it made no difference, but it somehow seemed.... more fitting for the terrain. Rugged. Ah, I’d missed this stuff....

And up I went again.... being careful to take a different avenue....

Near the crest of one great lumpy crag of the mountain—my gosh the whole thing just went on forever—it was like traversing the Superstitions from Peralta Trailhead all the way to First Water all over again—plus about sixty degrees of incline and ending in a fiery explosion—

UH, near the crest of one of the innumerable regular-sized mountains that somehow comprised the foothills of this gigantic.... unbelievably huge.... oh the word “mountain” just doesn’t seem to encompass it....

Anyway ON TOP OF A BIG ROCK I MET SOME RED LIZALFOS.

I ran in to cut them down, but.... they moved differently, these ones.... Instead of darting in low over the ground like a snake to end up right next to me, they paused at some distance away—and simply breathed fire at me, in front of a slow, pressing march.

I couldn’t get close; I had to withdraw and change tack.

Running back down the hill a ways, I tried to stay as high as I could on a sort of side-slope that arced up concave from the hillside where I was.

Fire-breathers, huh?

I had never purchased specialty arrows before, but I had found and acquired a few in my wanderings. And I had a good many ice arrows on my person just then....

It was a trick to get close enough to see the lizalfos, but remain far enough away for them not to notice. It was trickier still to aim over such distances—and angles. No flat ground here. I must say, I startled them with a few misfires and made them dart about a bit, but in the end.... with one arrow apiece, they shattered into frozen crystal fragments that melted right away in the burning heat.

The way was clear. I moved all over the hill where the lizalfos had stood, looking down at the bog. Was this right? No, I had to be higher. I got on the rock where the first lizalfos had scorched me. Was it high enough?

I took pictograph after pictograph but they didn’t line up. The parallax bend of the river was off.... and there was a rock somewhere in the foreground that I was missing.

I climbed higher, up to the craggy pinnacle of the concave side-slope I had sheltered on.

This was it.

And.... there was a Korok hiding.

I flushed him out and took his seed, and then walked to the edge, looking out at the Training Camp, and the Castle beyond....

The sun was rising.

No, the sun was setting. And there were scads of slain monsters littering the hill I had just climbed. Bokoblins. Moblins. I could have sworn I even saw the severed head of a Black Lynel, still glowering in a frozen snarl.

Zelda’s voice was sounding.... something about me overdoing it....

I wasn’t immortal, she reminded me.

And she was seeing to some minor injury I had sustained, but it wasn’t bad. Just a little scratched up is all.

She was some Princess, to go climbing all the way out here with me—and through the midst of so many enemies....

She wore clothes like mine. Blue tunic. Dun trousers. Boots for easy movement. A pretty braid of her dusky-blonde hair banded over the top of her head.

She was worried.

No, she wasn’t worried; her voice and her manner were too steady for that.

But she expressed a kind of concern. An unsettlement.

About the increasing frequency of these monster appearances—and the exceedingly more powerful breeds that manifested.

Something about the Calamity....

Something about the Calamity impending....

Was it closing in?

I spent all day on that rock.

I’d almost started down as the morning got on—indeed I did start down—but....

No. I wanted to wait. Until the right time.

I climbed back up, and stayed there a long time after.

Just the Korok and his circle of stones for company.

Until sunset, when I took a few more pictographs.

And that was enough.

Everything was so tiny below me: the Sheikah Tower, the Training Camp, and waaaay down there in the valley, the little horsehead shape of the Woodland Stable.

I paraglided from crag to crag back down the mountain, and soon found myself to be sailing over some enormous switchbacks.

So there’d been a road I could have used.

But there were also a few black moblins scattered along it—sleeping mostly—and one ice wizzrobe, whom I would not have cared to run into.

No, I preferred the avenue of my own making: right up the hills near the forest (Yay Bandana), and right down the hills through the air.

I sailed right down to the Woodland Stable, and for twenty rupees booked a bed to sleep in.

It had been a long day.

A long few days.

Not So Simple

Waking of Friday, April 14, 2017 ~ 6

Not So Simple

There seemed to be a rugged but fairly clear path straight up into the foothills and toward the tower. I followed it, but.... not for too long. I soon found myself vaulting over the knolls to the left, keeping to higher ground, wanting to skirt the bare open spaces. I didn’t like to make myself a welcome target.

Left was the wrong choice, though, I soon discovered. Not by any imminent attacking danger—but by hazard of the environment.

Unseeable from the river valley below, pools upon pools of sticky brown bogwater festered in these high sort of paddies or spills.... The land was depressed enough up here to hold them. The landscaping might even have been man-made, for there were ruins up here, too. This was the Military Training Camp....?

Hm, but I am hesitant to call them ruins exactly; everything seemed mostly made of wood. Which I don’t suppose disqualifies it, but.... Well, the majority of it seemed to have been smashed and scattered all over itself, but the thing was it looked as if it could have happened only days ago.

Ruin enough anyway, I suppose.... An enormous tangle of tilted boardwalks, listing platforms.... and deadly spills into the bubbling ooze.

It was also crawling with blue bokoblins, and peppered with high explosives.

I moved carefully, and progressed by my bow.

The bokoblins didn’t pose too much of a threat. But it was a little disheartening seeing so many spoils lost to the bog. There was simply no recovering them. I tried to use my arrows sparingly.

The camp was extensive, to put it mildly. Onward and upward the splintered woodwork and wonky boardwalks led, until I came to one very large brown bog at the crest of the whole dead hill. Rickety wooden spires and questionable platforms spread over its glistening surface in an unpleasantly sun-simmered complex that looked thick and navigable enough from the shore. But moving out amidst it, treading over its narrow planks and planting myself on its sorry little islands of scrap boxes and upturned bridge-segments made into ladders and walls....

No, the ways here were few and constricted. The avenues were sparse, and I’d only have one dimension to move around in. I could see a few blue moblins tromping around on patrol up on some of the higher levels.... and blue bokoblins camped out high on some of the towers.

We may as well have been moving through tunnels. There would be no skirting around these guys. Sooner or later, I would have to face them, and take them down.

Because the Sheikah Tower was jutting from this bog too. And if I could just make my way to that high, high platform beside it.... I could reach it, and scale it.

To make it even more interesting, there were two or three lizalfos churning through the mud below. Dratted reptiles, that they could swim in that muck....

With a little Magnesis to move a large metal box for an extra platform, I got just close enough to take out the lizalfos first, not giving them enough time between my arrows to spit back at me. But there were still plenty of bokoblins to get through on the scrapwood islands—and I did not want to upset any of their explosives!

The sun went down. Rain came and went. The trek was longer than I’d thought it would be. There were so many dead-ended platforms reachable only by paraglider, traps low in the mud.... For where could you go once you landed?

This place would be so much easier to shake down once the tower was activated....