The Collected Hero

Waking of Saturday, July 28, 2018 ~ 5

The Collected Hero

This was different, too. I’m sure of it.... I think in other Divine Beasts I had never been able to make actual contact to the main control unit with my Sheikah Slate. But now I stood and placed the Slate against the console with a definitive clack.

Nothing.

Link doesn’t need a voice. He has eyes.

You could see him anticipating the rebuff.... and it came, with its repellent explosion of swirling blue light, which coalesced into . . . . a most hideous and grotesque apparition, like the others.

Lither than the Fireblight Ganon had been. Tall—like Urbosa....

And only now I wonder if there will have been a correlation in all their physiques—OH HYLIA, he didn’t—

Their spirits had been trapped?

. . . . . . .

I will not pursue the thought.

There is no time.

Thunderblight Ganon was come for me.

One cruel, sullied-magenta hand was free, the other limb bore a large and vicious kind of Thunderblade—it crackled hungrily.

Urbosa’s voice came to me again—this was the thing that had ended her life one hundred years ago. It was powerful, and fast. She told me to be very, very careful—“Don’t let this place become your grave,” she said, or something like it.

I was ready.

But first, as soon as I was able, I raised my pictobox and took a shot.

My Compendium registered the subject....

But the image was a blur.

Oh dear, what would happen when I unpaused....?

I couldn’t stay still forever. I was the Hero and I had a job to do.

When I came back there was only a very rapid Whoosh-whoosh-WHOOSH-WHOOSH—sha-WHACK! and I was tumbling through the air off the platform—the blow had come from somewhere behind me—a few hearts gone—

Blurs. That’s all he was. A flurry of rushing sounds, streaks of dark color, and then SHRACK! the slice would come and send me sprawling. But I saw that though he was fast, his blows were relatively weak, and electric shock never made me drop my weapons—that was a blessing.

Sometimes—rarely—I was able to dodge it, and come back and get a few hits in.

Sometimes I was able to pelt him with a Bomb Arrow to the face.

Urbosa spoke strongly in my ear time and again, spurring me onward—Be cautious. Stay strong. Fight! Some such words—

Rush-rush-rush-POW! I spun through the air.

“Oh my gosh, what does he WANT?” I howled to David.

“Block it with your shield!”

But I didn’t want to waste Daruk’s power....

Some beloved weapon shattered and I swiped through my pockets for another....

The Master Sword glowed stronger. Sixty damage.

Why did it do that? Why was it sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker?

Was it stronger now because it sensed the evil around it? Did it only manifest its power when it was most needed?

Then again why did I keep refusing it? It was there for me to use. And I couldn’t ignore it forever. This was what it was made for. To be a Bane against Evil....

I switched to the sixty-strong Master Sword—Daruk gave me an opening—and sliced-sliced-sliced against Thunderblight Ganon while I was close enough—

And then came the point when he had had enough. What would he do now? I wondered as I peered from behind a distant strut.

And a glistening metallic tablet like an overly tall tombstone appeared in the cracked surface beside me so suddenly that I was unsure whether it had slammed down from above or sprung up from beneath. It gleamed with a sharp electric charge....

Then more tablets fell—I could see the trailing lightning now—they were definitely falling, one after another in perfect succession, chasing me at a crisp hundred and twenty beats per minute as I fled from their rhythmic onslaught.

When Thunderblight Ganon had laid enough of them into the bulkheads, I gather he must have set an explosive current arcing through the lot of them to fry anything caught in their web—I gather. I couldn’t tell exactly because I was too busy putting distance between myself and that trap.

And so Thunderblight Ganon had another go—and I had another run. These crude lightning rods were more dodgeable than his rushing attacks. But.... I had to gain some points of my own.... Urbosa urged me on.

I claimed a higher spot and, as the monster detonated another web of electric death, sent him my love in the form of a Bomb Arrow.

There was no effect.

Great.

What could I—?

I thought, as I ran. My arrows were now ineffective. I couldn’t hit him. And I couldn’t get close enough to him to try any melee weapons either—that might bring me too close to those lightning rods.

What could I do?

Well, what did I have at my disposal?

What had this Divine Beast given me?

Nothing. Only the weapons from those Guardian Crawlies.

But I couldn’t use my weapons.

What else did I have?

Well.... I had a Sheikah Slate.

Those lightning rods looked like they were metallic.

Oman Au—Magnesis!

Oh great, I thought, this is gonna be tricky....

But I turned around in my flight, and as the lightning rods were planted but before they could be charged, I activated the Slate’s Magnesing power—the nearest lightning rod glowed pink in indication—I could grab that.

And I did, the Magnesis rippling out of the Slate far too slowly for my liking—it latched onto the rod with a clean electrical snapping—Where was Thunderblight Ganon?

He was up there to the left—

You can’t run as fast when you’re holding something in Magnesis. I took a few steps, turned, raised the rod higher, shot it forward, casting all my hopes into the trajectory—

I had worried for my aim, but somehow.... the rod connected! And Thunderblight Ganon came tumbling out of the air at the counterattack!

Now—

I paraglided from the platform and sailed in—the Master Sword glowed so bright—and I gave no quarter as I swiped and sliced and cut—

The monster leapt upright again—was I hit?

“Link!”

It was Urbosa. Only calling my name.

None of the Champions had done that before.

Their words had always been urges and suggestions and hints and encouragement, but this brave Gerudo Warrior only calling my name in the heat of a terrible and ferocious battle....

I appreciated that.

Of all the Champions thus far she seemed the most.... real and invested.

Thunderblight Ganon’s one evil eye glared at me fiercely.... and then began to glow.

The laser settled over my heart.

I backed up.

“What are you—?” came David’s voice.

I only had a few seconds—was everything in order? It seemed to be.

The laser glowed hotter, began to beep.... and beep....

. . . .

And beep . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

The shimmer appeared in the air, and I swung my shield as the blast came—

Khing!

Time slowed as the bolt rebounded off my shield and flew back into Thunderblight Ganon’s face!

“You parried it??” says David.

“Well I’ve had a lot of practice!” says I and my heart was a bold roaring lion as I ran back in and walloped away on Thunderblight Ganon where he slumped against the curving wall—Slicing and slicing and slicing as his life-meter dropped—

He spent his all in a final cinematic leap from my last attack—and he writhed and shriveled and died in the air with the same piercing scream as the others had done. High and keening as an exploding kettle.... but no more horrific in my ears.

Only wretched.

The Piano's Rival

Waking of Saturday, June 2, 2018

The Piano’s Rival

David was with me when I started up in Kakariko!

He’s always so far ahead but now I would show him something he’d never seen or done before!

Maybe a few things! :D

Those Guardians would have come back after the Blood Moon—I went out back and approached the one in the Pit. And when I paraglided down to the little hilly rockpile, below the line of safe escape, facing the monstrosity even as it glowed hot angry pink and lasered in to take careful aim at my heart and the Piano pounded indignation at this brazen affront.... David could not believe what I was doing.

BUT I HELD MY GROUND!

Careful now.... CAREFUL NOW....

“What are you doing?” David gasped.

The targeting laser steadied, the Guardian beeped.... beeped....

....

. . . . . . .

BEEPED . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

It always took longer than you thought or wanted . . . .

But it was not until the FLASH—and absolutely no later than its first shining—that I swung my shield as the blue-white bolt of death-made-light came streaking in an instant up the field!

KHING!

And the satisfying slow-down so that I could see the reflected bolt almost frozen in the air, bounced back, its trajectory sure....

“Whaaaat?” said David.

And the normal flow of time resumed and the Guardian took the hit in the face!

“WHAAAT?” said David.

And then, riding over the deadly triplitive Piano came a swell of Strings, shining against the terror, just for a moment. At each successful hit they came back, breathing cool strength into the sound. The Guardians were not the only terrors to be reckoned with on this earth!

And this time, my Perfect Parry really was perfect. And in three hits.... the Guardian was down.

MAN THAT FELT SO GOOD! As I sailed down to collect all the bits left behind! So many gears! ^_^ So cool.

And what was more.... when I checked my inventory.... MY SHIELD WAS STILL SPARKLY!! 8D I’d come in with a new shield—and the Perfect Parry had upheld its quality, prolonged its life!

AWESOME! XD

I climbed up over the PitGate to see if I could sneak up on the other.... and we saw it creeping around below, quite close to the vertical rockface. I paraglided down.... and landed on its head.

“David! Look!”

The Guardian continued to crawl around, flicking its juddering, hundred-year-old gaze over the grass. Evidently it didn’t know I was there.

But every time it started and turned and started again, I had to readjust my footing on top of its can-head, even as Link bent slightly in that spring-ready stance he takes whenever an enemy is near....

Got kinda tricky when the Guardian wouldn’t get away from the wall, and started tipping....

Oh my gosh.... XD

I hopped down at some point and tried to have it out proper with this one too, but—

Well, my practice wasn’t perfect yet.

In the rolling confusion of close fire I warped away to the Wetland Stable....

That one was close enough to the Honeydell....

Turning the Tables

Waking of Thursday, May 31, 2018 ~ 2

Turning the Tables

Many, many moons ago, before any moons I could remember, before moons were moons, I hurried with a shake from the cold and entered into the Keh Namut Shrine, high on the Great Plateau, and found myself face to face with a three-legged devil terror that wanted to kill me.

It was only the second Guardian I had ever faced, the first having appeared before me in the Shrine of Oman Au.

But in engaging that second one.... somehow....

....Somehow I blocked that one with my shield and learned something called the Perfect Parry.

Hopefully I’ll be able to employ this more purposefully in the future....

That was it....

I checked my list of skills. It was actually called the Perfect Guard, but I think I preferred the alliteration.

That was it. That was what I was remembering.

I.... had never taken the time to finesse my swordplay—I’d always imagined I would, in the future, at some point....

But I never had.

But now....

Well I wanted to show David something but he wasn’t coming and I dared not do anything important in the meanwhile but I could go hunting because I needed those gears for the Ancient Cuirass—

AND I WAS GOING TO PLAY THIS GAME FOR THE PRESENT ANYWAY.

I needed gears. And only Guardians had gears.

So....

Up to my aid came the memory of an accidental parry, and....

I wanted to test it.

I wanted to try doing it on purpose.

Perhaps it had only been foolish to think of making the attempt in the middle of that basement full of nightmares, but.... where could I....?

I knew.

Back to Robbie’s place—The Decayed Guardian down the hill would suffice for the experiment. I floated down to say hello....

I.... stood my ground.... and held my shield....

No was it a two-handed weapon in my grasp? What was I doing—Daruk’s protection wore thinner....

I had come in too fast without a plan—And then as I could not take much more I made a dash for the other side of the stone, falling shamefully back to a panicked mashing of buttons.... I was Z-targeting, but I was facing away. The blast came. Daruk roared again.

But—

....

And the Guardian died?

How had—?

Was it because the shield had been on my back?

That happened to me in Majora’s Mask.

But if the shield were not actually deployed (for it was a Guardian shield)....

....

This needed more practice.

I collected the Guardian’s remains—there were no gears.

Cheapskate.

I was out of Ancient Arrows anyway. I didn’t want to go charging up against any more Guardians, decayed or not, without some backup. So it was back to Robbie’s again, where I bought ten more arrows. But I only had eighteen or nineteen gears. Not enough for the Cuirass.

Soon.... VERY SOON....

I warped to Kakariko Village—there were a couple more fairly manageable Guardians near there. I wanted to see if I could get more gears, continue practicing the Perfect Parry and, if need be, put my new arrows to use.

Oh my gosh I was hunting Guardians.

My first target was that one in the pit out back, at the top of the Sahasra Slope.

That first live one I’d ever seen....

Where was this Courage coming from?

....

I guess.... the lightning strikes near you often enough, and makes the earth to shake....

At some point you just stop trembling.

....

But you try not to get struck nonetheless.

My timing was very much off, and I lost my footing in the fireballs. One laserbolt destroyed my Guardian Shield and I had to switch to a Knight’s Shield—It wasn’t Ancient Tech; would it work the same?

This was a dangerous skill to practice; there was no padded training arena for this. But Daruk protected me. And Mipha kept watch.

I managed to take the Pit Guardian down using only the Perfect Parry followed up with normal arrows to its eye.

I slew a Guardian without an Ancient Arrow.

And the second one just through the PitGate and out on the grass was almost as manageable! But, as Daruk became exhausted with my poor sense of timing—and, as I also lost my Knight’s Shield to a laserbolt—I did use an Ancient Arrow to finish that one off.

Two Guardians with one Arrow. Heh.

I made one last stop at Cotera’s to see if there were anything I could upgrade—turned out there were—I bumped up the defense on some of my Circlets.

And then it was back to Robbie’s once again because those two Guardians out back of Kakariko had bumped me up to twenty-four gears!

I HAD ENOUGH GEARS FOR THE CUIRASS!

AND CHERRY MADE IT FOR ME!

KhuAGH! My wallet!  >⩄<

But it didn’t matter—I had enough rupees—and now I had two of the three pieces of armor that would defend me from my deepest nightmares!

DANG it, Nintendo! I said it before! Why do they do this!

The only way to acquire the thing that would make your most dreaded trial more bearable.... is to first complete your most dreaded trial without it! OH you cruel ironic building my character so I can—hrrmph!

Back to Cotera’s and I upgraded my new Cuirass, for there were no gears required for the first level. Plenty of lesser parts, but I had enough of those to spare.

There were gears required for the second level of upgrades: ten gears per piece for the Ancient Armor set. I assumed it would be the same case with the Ancient Greaves. After the twenty gears it would cost me to acquire those in the first place....

These things were so expensive.... and not just in rupees.

But.... I was getting better.

Soon I would become better still.

A Blood Moon rose as I ran around Cotera’s forest.

More gears would be ready and waiting for me to collect them.

SOON.

I just needed a few more shields. Mine were running out pretty quick.

The Basement

Waking of Thursday, May 31, 2018

The Basement

NOT—THREE—MONTHS.

I REFUSE.

I AM GOING TO PLAY BEFORE MAY BECOMES JUNE, WHICH IS SOON stop rhyming....

I was in the Great Deku Tree’s Navel.

I talked to Pepp, and as it was evening and he insisted so sweetly, I slept in his bed until morning, whereupon I spoke to some of the other Koroks, just to refamiliarize myself a bit. One of them told me a little about the place—“We’re actually inside the Great Deku Tree’s stomach. Try not to think about it too hard.”

Mm. Good advice.

David has been very far ahead of me in the game for quite some time, but.... I wanted to do something that he had never done, and I wanted him to see it.

But he wasn’t around.

So....

I decided to hunt Guardians in the meanwhile. I needed to save up on Ancient Gears so I could get the Ancient Cuirass from Cherry.

And there were a few Guardians I knew how to handle easily enough....

My first stop was Lomei Labyrinth Island. I still had a couple of Ancient Arrows on me, and I knew just where to put ‘em....

The crawler in the central court was easy enough, and then I tracked down the decayed one in the maze. Blew him up too—and found some pretty neat stuff down the corridors formerly under his lasers!

Actually.... as I approached the one long dead end.... it made me kind of sad. Sword and shield and bundles of arrows, and the Thunderstorm Rod....

Somehow all I could imagine, seeing that scattering of weapons on the floor at the dark end of the tunnel, was how they must have gotten there. And in my mind I saw some poor brave warrior meet his final end....

I did not bother with the Flyers, but after cleaning up the two Guardians (well, one and a half) on the main floor, I warped back to the shrine, and considered the column of air blowing up from a deep, deep shaft before the shrine.

I’d found this place before David, but I had just assumed that the air current came from some door down in the central court. Like an elevator. Guarded by that Guardian.

But when I watched David do the labyrinth, he had decided to explore that shaft for himself.

The bottom of it did not come out into the central court.

It turned out that Lomei Labyrinth Island.... had a basement.

And that basement was full of Decayed Guardians.

Admittedly most of them were truly dead, but that did nothing to lessen the terror of seeing them all like so many spiders in the bottom of a forgotten barrel. Some of them were even Stalkers—they were of the variety that could move, like the one in the central court.

I knew all of this as I climbed down the shaft for myself, dropping short distances and grabbing on again to conserve my stamina. And when I neared the bottom, I dropped out and angled myself just enough to clear the air-column, and then floated with my paraglider directly downard to the floor where I landed in a crouch and did not move.

I considered my surroundings. My pictobox came in quite useful, as I could use it to spot which Guardians were alive. Marking their locations carefully, I gave these all a very wide berth as I combed the gigantic underground room to get at the dead ones.

Wasn’t able to salvage any gears, though.

But when I had satisfied myself with scavenging.... or when I just plum couldn’t take it anymore—I turned my attentions to the last thing I knew I’d be able to touch in peace down here. That’s how it had been for David.

In the center of the chamber was a small rectangular dais, set with torches. And between those torches sat an unassuming treasure chest.

I did just as David had done, dipped into a cautious crouch, and moved slowly—so, so slowly—toward it.

And just as David had done, I made myself stand up for a frightening few heartbeats so that I could get onto the dais.

And crouching once again, I approached the chest....

And opening it I obtained.... a Diamond Circlet, with protective properties against Ancient weaponry!

And.... just as had happened with David.... once that chest was open and the dialogue box showing me my prize had closed....

LASERS.

Four of them. From all sides.

It was here that I had planned to deviate from the course that David had followed; I had no intention of making it back to the entry point and riding the shaft of air back up to the top—I just wanted to warp back out to the shrine!

But.... for some reason, I didn’t.

Some distant memory stirred.... And I had a Guardian Shield on me. Couldn’t those deflect....?

For some reason, right then, I just wanted to see.... if I could manage....

I didn’t. Four laser bolts came in at once and flash-fried me where I stood—but for some reason when I stopped tumbling I noticed I had only lost five hearts. Maybe one of the bolts had blown me clear of the rest....? Or it could have been Daruk....

I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it; I retreated to my Sheikah Slate and told it to warp me the heck outta there. And it did. Usually I’m standing when I do this. It was a little dramatically striking to see Link instead crouching in a protective huddle, with his arms raised over his head, as he coalesced into blue light and teleported away....

When I was safe again I checked my inventory. Yes, the Guardian Shield could defelct Guardian blasts. From Guardian Scouts.

Oh dear. Did Guardian Stalkers and Guardian Scouts have similar weaponry? The Stalkers were everywhere on the map, but the Scouts could only be found within Combat Shrines.

But.... I wanted to test it....

Where in the world was this Courage coming from?