The Badlands

Waking of Saturday, July 8, 2017 ~ 2

The Badlands

From Gut Check Rock, I began a counterclockwise circumnavigation of Death Mountain. Dinraal looked like he got to some pretty low altitudes.... and if Farosh dropped things when you shot him with arrows.... then surely Dinraal would, too.

I paraglided, I jogged, I climbed—sometimes I would see the DIVINE BEAST crawling in a parallel course higher up the mountain. My gosh it was so big . . . . its feet were on fire . . . . and it had four eyes oh my gosh....

Madly inhaling Rock Octoroks.... Eldin Ostriches.... a few Red Lizalfos.... Ice Arrows took care of them.

And I saw....

Hhhhh.

There was land, over there. North of the volcano, across a huge gulf. Beyond the northern edge of my map.

I’d seen the distant mountaintops. Maybe from all the way back on the Plateau. There were some far, far peaks whereupon if you centered your scope.... the central reticle would remain empty, instead of lighting up red.

You couldn’t place markers there.

I’d always imagined they’d be just part of the grand scenery beyond as soon as I came up against the impassable mountain borders, which surely would be there....

Well.... I suppose the gigantic gulf was border enough. Though it still made it somehow more tantalizing.... Agh there was grass over there; there were hills and slopes and plains and mountains and . . . . hhhhhhh . . . .

It was comforting, and a little heartbreaking, to know and see that there was land over there.

Hahhhh. </3

I tracked Dinraal’s course through the most barren landscape of any I had yet visited. Naked stone and crusted spills of ash. No Koroks.

None.

Only monsters. And ostriches.

And a queer little breed of pigeon I took a pictograph of—apparently it’s no good to shoot it for game; it burns away when killed.

Okay so perhaps the land was not so barren. But the utter lack of Koroks was disconcerting.

The Deplian Badlands.

That’s what this place was called.

I stayed high, working from jutting crag to jutting crag, until I saw something . . . . unexpected, unbelievable, impossible: far away, in the lowest reaches, the farthest skirt of the volcano, right up against the dropoff into the impassable chasm, in a place with grass . . . . a long, broad, crestlike slab of bleachy grey: a skull.

And behind it, vertebra after vertebra, and great bowed ribs spidering into the earth. It was too big. It couldn’t be that big.

I thought of the StalHinox of Satori Mountain.

It couldn’t be that big. It was too big to be allowed!

And on his very occasional slow twining westward passes, Dinraal would snake low through the air above it, a crocodile, and he only the python.

How could it be that big . . . .

A Dodongo, I thought, it had to be a Dodongo, long-dead from some forgotten age, some terrible forgotten age.... And memories of Volvagia, and what would have happened had he not been killed.... And those giant bones I had seen in the dusty desert.... And visions of the volcano erupting endlessly, and lava covering the land, and dread colossal Dodongos reigning in blood and fire . . . .

What a terrible, terrible world.

It turned out the skeleton really was that big—I hiked for what felt like ages, and it seemed barely to come any further into my view. So slowly it crawled by at my passing....

But after a very, very long time, I did manage to get somewhat above it.

I thought again of the StalHinox, and was afraid to go down there. But.... at David’s encouragement....

I paraglided in.

Crag by crag, anyway. And then I was close enough to know: this was called the Eldin Great Skeleton.

IT WAS NOT A STAL-CREATURE. OuO;;

Well that was a relief.

I floated down onto the great mountain-shelf of its head.

There were baddies camped out beneath its spine! Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfos.

Well. The high ground was already mine. All I had left to do was appeal to Ja Baij.... I picked a nice angle and chucked my bombs one after another through the gap between two of the skeleton’s ribs. The monsters ran around in an irate fret, trying to find the source of the commotion, but they never failed to either come back toward the center, or run in to try and kick the bombs away.

Either way.... they blowed up real good.

And they left me a few presents! I snagged another Great Fireblade, a few bundles of arrows, and plenty of monster bits.... until these latter treasures began rolling away toward the skeleton’s tail with a sudden gust of wind.

David directed my attention upward: Dinraal was making another pass! I ran but could not catch his head. And so I fired an arrow at the only place I could—his underbelly.

I still had Ice Arrows equipped—sorry, Dinraal!

And a scale streaked glowing toward the earth like a falling star.

“What?” said David, but I didn’t answer him; I just collected the scale.

Cool. X-)

I had quite a time exploring the entire giant skeleton, let me tell you. I climbed back up the tail and jumped from vertebra to vertebra—each singular bone took a few jogging strides to cross! And I crept up the neck beneath the huge armored skull—almost fell all the way through to the front but climbed back up and went backward again.

How could it be this big.

But after a time I moved on, and continued my counterclockwise traversal of the mountain.

And I saw something else. Something that seized my gut and just about made my heart stop—a White-Maned Lynel.

That’s what my compendium called it. I snapped its pictograph just as it threw a startled question-mark glance in my direction—and then I ducked back down behind the rock I was on.

Oh my gosh.... 8C

Its body was black and white. Striped. Like a zebra!?

So that was what was up with that thumbnail I kept decidedly ignoring in my DeviantArt messages.... there really were zebra-Lynels....

Yeah it was time to get high again. Oh that came out so wrong. It was time to get to high ground! I climbed up the backside of a large jutting rock, away from the Lynel’s view, until I was back amid the ashy crags of the mountain’s side.

And I continued round the mountain.

From my high road I saw Dinraal make another low pass over the farthest skirts of the mountain—this time over the barren piece of earth the White Lynel haunted. Anywhere else I might have sailed in to try for another scale or shard, but here?

Hah, NOPE! C8

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.