Bane of Grace

Waking of Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Bane of Grace

DRATBLAST IT I’M GONNA PLAY IT DAVID GET OUT HERE.

He did.

I played.

For an uncounted time I bid farewell to Piaffe the stablehand in Gerudo Canyon, and from there warped to the Sho Dantu Shrine in Satan Canyon—er, Karusa Valley. There had been no Blood Moon; the Yiga did not reappear. Even so, I moved cautiously....

The door to their lair was open.

I stepped inside.

I do not know what I was expecting—When I had stopped outside the open door before, I had seen the yellow-beige of some back walls, the flicker of torchlight, a kind of box or platform.... cover to hide behind?

But no, it was more than just a box—more like a pedestal, or an altar. There were stairs hewn into it, and a Duplex Bow rested on top.

Hm.

Encompassing braziers flickered like the entrance to the Shadow Temple. This room seemed too grand for the likes of a tribe of betrayers and assassins.... I daresay it was taller than it was wide. It was perfectly circular, and at symmetrical intervals around its edge there were towering statues of the Seven Heroines—No, were there eight? It was all octagonally symmetrical....

Their faces were covered with the grotesque inversion of the Sheikah Eye.

I nocked an arrow, passed the tip through a lit brazier, and tried to burn down their face-coverings, but they wouldn’t come down.

The Yiga didn’t make this place. It must have been something else, once.

So I guessed the grandeur had simply been hijacked.

DANG I wished I could read Gerudo! There was carved script everywhere....

Between the Heroines, on every side except where I had come in, were seven short staircases leading up to the walls—Ah, except for there, on my left; that one led to a small cavity of some kind.

There were a few barrels in it, just storage.

I looted it.

I walked up a few of the other staircases until a flickering glimpse at one wall’s base made me pause: there was a gap along the floor there! If I stood lower down the staircase.... I could see through it. Were those more storage boxes? Treasure chests?

I tried a Bomb before David reminded me of all the braziers in the room. There was a spare torch as well. I grabbed it.

They weren’t walls between the Heroines, they were hangings. I burned them one by one, revealing hollow after hollow, flushing out squeaking keese and breaking into barrels and cracking the occasional treasure chest—until one of them opened onto something greater....

But I finished my round of the room first; I am nothing if not thorough.

The staircase second from the right did not end in a store-hole, but continued upward in a narrow passage before veering off at a right angle, away behind tall stone walls. Maybe it was the lack of torchlight, but the stone there seemed colder, more weathered and cracked, dinged with dust and a chill.

I followed it—carefully. The feeling in the circular Heroines’ Hall had merely been one of staying on my toes, but this passageway.... there was a dread here that wakefully sought for things to devour.

I moved slowly until the tall and narrow passageway leveled and came to an opening. I glanced left and right but could see no enemies—I could see, however, straight across the small, dark space, a rough cell carved into the opposite wall, portcullised with thick wooden beams. And behind those beams, on the floor, sat.... a Gerudo!

I donned my Stealth Suit and crept slowly toward her. “Are you Pokki?” I whispered. But her name was Barta. I’d known there were two Gerudo missing, but I couldn’t remember the other name....

Barta told me to get out of here. She said if I were caught they’d call their friends. I couldn’t take them all. It was dangerous.

I glanced to my left at the tall, broad-shouldred Yiga patrolling a section of hallway in a lower level. Those stairs to my right must have led down and around under the stone floor to where he was....

I stayed low and looked to Barta again.

But she only hissed, “Why haven’t you escaped yet??”

When I pressed her again she only repeated her insistence that I escape, and went on to say that she hadn’t seen the Yiga do anything but patrol around and eat bananas.

....Huh.

There didn’t seem to be anything I could do to help Barta just then.

And there was only one way to go....

I watched for the Yiga guard’s torchlight, and waited for him to come around and make another pass—he seemed to be on a circuit.... clockwise.... Out from the left around the far corner, forward toward me, always sweeping his torch this way and that, inspecting every crack and crevice.... and then left again, around the near corner, and out of sight.

Sometimes it took him longer to reappear.

Hoooo....

After a few times of this, knowing there was nothing for it, when his back was to me again, terrified in my Stealth Suit I stepped off the edge of the cell-level and paraglided down after him and—was that really just a big fat pillar he was lapping around? I hadn’t been able to see the entire thick structure of it from where I had crouched with Barta—

Never mind—I grabbed onto it from the air and, sparing no stamina, hoisted myself twenty feet to its top in a trembling trice where I crouched, undetected.... and could study my new surroundings.

The passageway continued to broaden, and descended further still, in yet a lower level. Another big Yiga stood sentry almost right between the posts of the only door I could see out of that area. Unmoving. Masked face alert.

Great. How was I supposed to get past him?

Hmmm.

I took out a bomb and chucked it over the edge of the pillar.

“Wut.... are you—” David stuttered out.

The bomb didn’t clear the small railing between the two guarded areas, only gently bumped against it and remained in the pillar-section.

The patrolling Yiga guard came around again.

He gave an audible.... offputtingly human-sounding start, when he caught sight of the bomb.... and then slowly, slowly advanced to inspect the glowing blue orb.... the World’s Most Interesting Bomb....

And how interesting, for I had listened to that very soundtrack just that morning—first thing that morning—for the first time in.... well ever. Very nice.

I had not heard the music for years and years and YEARS and years and YEARS but.... I’d just out of the blue been so hungry for that epic, sweeping 12/8 track that made you feel like you were flying....

I never did get very far playing MDK. Ben had borrowed it from a friend. I didn’t get to watch him play much of it either, though I think I saw him battle the endboss, high in that office tower.... those binoculars....

I just remember playing the credits video over and over again, just to listen to that sweet 12/8 midi orchestra.... so powerful, so beautiful.... wandering in so many striking modulations what the heck was that some kind of old-timey autopsy—??

Of course, I did get to see Ben employ the World’s Most Interesting Bomb. And we all agreed: that was the awesomest, most hilarious, coolest weapon ever.

BEST.                                    

WEAPON.

                                    EVER.

EVER.

Perched on my pillar in the Yiga Nest, I was beginning to feel more confident as the big guard stopped and leaned down close beside my bomb....

I blew it up in his face.

That put him on his back sure enough, but he hopped up straight away and—whistled.

I tried to duck down low and keep out of sight, but—that glow.

That orange glow as the air swirls before they poof in out of nowhere right beside you—maybe the other guard had seen me, too—

Red-clad fiends started appearing from everywhere—on my level on the pillartop no less. There were too many of them, I got a few hits in, I took a few hits, kept swinging, saw my hearts drop but I was all right, I could stand—

And—

....

They.... they killed me?

The screen began to darken.

But my hearts!

The music began to droop.

And.... I had so many fairies in my pockets! And—

The text showed on the screen, large and red:

GAME OVER

And—

But—

. . . . . . . —

Where was Lady Mipha?

Two options were presented to me: Continue.... or Quit.

It must have been like the Gerudo’s Hideout in Ocarina of Time, I thought.

Everything was too present. I clicked Continue.

One too many hits and you’re automatically down, no matter how many hearts you have....

I should’ve quit. I should have. But I didn’t.

I didn’t know....

Ant Lions

Waking of Sunday, June 25, 2017

Ant Lions

I waited all day on that platform for the Tower’s shadow to find me. Firing a few test shots—and hoping Kass wouldn’t mind me taking potshots at him—I hoped this wouldn’t require a Phrenic Bow, because I was fresh outta those....

But when the shadow crossed over me, a single arrow in the general direction of the sun turned out to be sufficient. Up out of the ground rumbled the Sasa Kai Shrine. A Modest Test of Strength.

I nailed it. Even forgetting until about halfway through that I was still wearing my Warm Doublet instead of the much stronger Champion’s Tunic.

Yes I think I am definitely feeling more confident in my combat skills.

After that I continued my circumnavigation of the mountain, and found a rich weapon cache under a big prominent hill! I took the rupees, the Opal and the Bomb Arrows, but I left the rest for later, and blocked up the entrance again, as I had first found it.

As I continued my trek just below the frost line, I briefly wondered whether my course would take me straight through the mountain range, for there was a lower spot that seemed as if it might cut straight across, and spit me out somewhere near Satori Mountain.

It was a deep canyon of red, windswept stone—felt like I was suddenly in Sedona—and it cut a great, penetrating swath of blank space into my map. Guess it belonged to a different Sheikah Tower.

I stayed high, as usual, but I was dreadfully curious about the layers below me, for there were many. And there seemed to be a road or path down at the twisting bottom, and it was lined along both sides with small stone frog statues.

This was so unusual....

But I still stayed high. The canyon rock at my level formed immense natural bridges and domes and I contented myself with a bird’s eye view.

One giant hole opened up in front of me into which a ringing curtain of sand was gently spilling, like a gossamer veil in the sunlight. I peered into it; a much more complex arrangement of the frog statues seemed to adorn a wider space below. What did it mean....

I got too close and fell in—I threw up my paraglider and scrambled to turn and get purchase on the stone....!

I stopped about six feet from the bottom.

Well, as long as I was here....

I let go and hit the ground—and some ruckus started up.

It was a Yiga Nest. Three Yiga Archers poofed in and out all around me, laughing and taking shots—but at least they stayed still longer than their blade-wielding brethren. I cut them down, and took their bananas, their rupees and their.... Duplex Bows. Interesting weapons. Two arrows at a shot. Can’t beat the Forest Dweller’s Bow or the Lynel’s Bow, though.

When the area was quiet, I studied the frog statues—the faces of the ones up here had been covered by flags bearing a perversely inverted Sheikah Eye. Yiga. I looked to the end of the canyon—for it seemed to end just right there—and found what I believed to be a door in the stone.

But I could not open it.

Not that I was quite so sure I wanted to.

David turned up again, froze for a heartbeat or two, and went into a transport of excitement. “I know where you are!” he said.

And then he turned to me. “Andrea.”

“Yeah?”

“This is about Zelda.” It was the preface he had designed to alert me to when he really was talking about Zelda, as there had been occasions where I’d heard him say snatches of some completely unrelated things that I’d mistaken for spoilers.

“Okay?”

“This is the part that I have most wanted to see you play.” He was positively aquiver with anticipation.

“Ah-huh....”

I still couldn’t open the door, though.

“What, do I need to walk up through the entire canyon first?”

David helpfully just shrugged.

I walked down the path in the canyon a bit—killed a couple more Yiga Archers—and came to a large platform with a sign in front of it: “Offer a Glowing Blue Stone” it said, or something like it. Would this open the door?

There were four Luminous Stone deposits surrounding it. I blew one up with my bomb, and accidentally landed a fragment right onto the pedestal.

And.... a shrine burst out of the ground.

The Sho Dantu Shrine.

A little too much fun with high explosives in that one.

The door still didn’t open, though. But I was not concerned. I climbed my way back onto the sandy natural domes and arches above it, and continued into the high canyon.

I waited out a Blood Moon and soon came to another giant hole in the ground, this one much more conspicuous—at its center was a deep pit, with sheer, wavy Sedona-rock sides. The perfectly round mouth of it was paved with flat stones above, and lined with hanging flags and draperies below the edge. What did this mean? Was this a way in?

I felt amazingly stupid as I tried to get a better look, stepped too close again and once more fell off the edge.

And again, I scrambled to cling onto the wall before I hit the floor, tasting a great impending danger this time.

But when I finally psyched myself up to let go.... nothing happened. No Yiga Clansmen jumped out at me.

There was another stone door on one side like the one back in the canyon. I was certain some diabolical passage under the rock connected them. What was in there?

And then there was that giant pit in the middle.

David had tried jumping in it.

Eh, I’d try it too.

I floated down for a bit, fell, and the screen went black. Would there be a dungeon?

There wasn’t. I just came to back on the edge above.

A note: don’t jump in the Yiga Pit; it’s just a hole to nowhere and you die. Makes me wonder about that hole where the Gerudo Tower stood, actually....

Well there was nothing I could do here, and so climbed out through the snow, freezing only a little on my way back to some warmer ground where I could stand.

It looked like this cut across the Gerudo Highlands was too high after all, even for my Warm Doublet.

But no matter.... I’d just keep going right around the mountain range....