Waking of Friday, January 19, 2018 ~ 8
In the dark of the night I sailed
out west behind my rented sand seal, skirting giant bones and Lizalfos
habitations.
My trajectory was vague at best and
I had no idea what I was looking for—what did Moldugas look like?
Were they gigantic and woolly? Did
they walk on their knuckles? Did they have tusks? Would I know one when I saw
it?
As it turned out I did—I knew it before I saw it.
The music gave it away.
Like the Talus and its pounding
percussion, the Hinox and its fatshnazzy brass band—the Molduga’s name and
life-meter appeared at the top of the screen, accompanied by an insistent,
repetitive, Phrygian ambush of
cellos, arpeggiating sans the third beneath a dancing tambourine pacesetter as
if it had been a race!
I banked hard in a panic—the arc was too wide and slow—and charged
back the way I had come—!
And the music did not follow me.
I try to be a good steward; I did
not want to bring the sand seal to any harm, especially as it was not my own.
But I think it would be a lie to
say I was not also fleeing to save my own skin.
Once I was sure I had put a
sufficient distance between myself and the monster, I stopped, and had a look
back.
The Molduga was somewhere in among
those stones, I was sure of it: Great, gargantuan juts of sandstone pushing up
out of the earth like enormous toadstools. —And
there was movement.
I scoped in.
As the day began to dawn I could
see: Something large was.... swimming
beneath the surface of the sand, casting up a wake. Burrowing. I could see the
hump of earth rolling along, indicating where it was.... but what did the thing itself actually look—
It breached the surface. Whale. Crocodile. Jaws. Teeth. Spoonbill. Little arms waggling.
Manatee tail. Thrash. Twist. Snap. Huge—HUGE—
And it was down burrowing again.
Oh my Hylia that thing was—how could I—so big—could it sense me even
here?
I watched it. A long, long time I
watched it; and it did not stray beyond the confines of its great stone
toadstool ring, but only cycled around within it.
It must have been moving so fast and yet.... every circuit took....
what seemed like several minutes.
With a few breaches along the way.
So
big.
Was the Compendium lying, when it said the Hinox was the
largest monster to call Hyrule home?
Or was this not a part of Hyrule after
all?
I eased my sand seal toward it
again, timing our pace to arrive at one of the gigantic rounded rocks just as
the monster was on the far side of its circuit from us.
The cellos were nowhere to be
heard.
I left the sand seal near the
stone, on the outside of the ring. Removed enough to be out of harm’s way, but
close enough to be called at short notice.
I meanwhile climbed up on top of
the squat rock formation, and watched.... and waited.
I dared not move a muscle as the
Molduga came pummeling back round the circle, clockwise, coming in hard from
the right.
It would pass near me soon; I would
have an opportunity to strike. And given the enormity of the circuit, I could
see just how sparse and precious that opportunity would be. No time for test
shots here—it would be imprudent to attempt anything less than maximum damage.
I selected the strongest Lynel Bow
I had, nocked a Bomb Arrow, and prepared to demand the attention of a carnivore
one hundred times my size....
And with perfect timing the Molduga
flew up out of the sand before my
eyes, blue-grey-green and enormous, huge jaws snapping, tiny limbs flapping
pointless, and I took my best guess at distance, at arcing, at my quarry’s
momentum, and let fly—
I wonder how much was skill at this point, and how much was luck.
At least in part, the tripled Bomb
Arrow connected! and the huge whale of a creature slammed onto the surface of the sand and lay there heaving in its blubbery vastness.
My
gosh I couldn’t believe it! A direct hit on the first go! Great shot! ^_^ And I looked at its
life-meter.... It had gone down a bit! Maybe not an overly substantial amount, but—
What
was I doing it was immobile I could hit it again—
In the folly of my hesitation I got
off only another shot or two before the Mulduga regained itself and burrowed
back into the sand, safe and untouchable once more.
And off it went around the circuit.
And the music went with it.
The day became lighter and I was alone.
On a few of the other sandstone towers to my right and left and into the
distance, little camps of monsters could be seen. On the central hub, a large,
wide stone like my own but on a greater scale, seemed to be the biggest party
of them all, with a fire, a few storage crates, and no small supply of boomers. On the sands in between,
camouflaged Lizalfos crouched still as statues.
The Molduga breached away in its
course.
The timing was off—it did not
breach in the same places on every revolution. It wouldn’t breach directly in
front of me again for . . . . I didn’t know how many cycles.
Landing
those hits really had been fortuitous.
But
how long was this going to take?
I waited for it to pass by me
again, and the arcing sun grew stronger.... I watched my thermometer tip
further and further toward the red until it was too hot for me to stay where I
was. My clothes could not protect me. I didn’t want to guzzle elixirs, not that
I had that many. What could I—
Hm.
The Molduga was far away. I stepped
forward and dropped onto the sand on the inside of the ring, landing in the
shade.
There was something about letting
myself down into the territory, the element, of my enemy that felt....
unnerving at best.
But at least I was protected here.
Well . . . . protected from the sun.
I didn’t like that Lizalfos half a
stone’s cast away from me, though. I took the time to dispatch it before
returning to the little strip of shade beneath the brim of the toadstool rock,
where once again.... I waited.
And waited.
The Molduga slowly arced back
around, breaching, as I had anticipated, well out of range of my arrows. How many circuits would it have to make
before it would breach where I could reach it again?
I considered. I could try for the central stone hub....
But there were so many baddies
there; it could take a moment too long to do away with them all—the Molduga might
very well detect the ruckus, and then what? Or would it just as soon detect me
making a break for that spot in the first place? To say nothing of what to do with
all the Lizalfos in between....
The Molduga’s senses were sharp; I
had stepped and jumped around in investigating this, when I was still on top of
the rock, and my movements had caught its attention over impressive distances. And every time, I had stopped and ducked before
the question mark could develop into anything further, stilling in time to let
the monster be on its way. But I dared not shift my footing again down on the
sand.
The day passed.
My sliver of shade narrowed. But
the cool of the evening returned before it disappeared completely.
I had long since plucked what
scanty plants there were in the vicinity. A Rushroom. Some Safflina.
The monster arced around.
Some breaches were nearer, some I
could hit, away at the edge of my range, where as many arrows missed as hit
their mark. Maybe more. Couldn’t risk a
direct hit with something uselessly weak.
And the Molduga’s life-meter would
drop by a small degree.
Chip by chip, piece by piece.
By and by the thought came to me,
as I employed my projectile weaponry.... The
Molduga responds to the faintest vibrations.... I can’t move when it’s near.... But
perhaps.... my BOW.
The Molduga came round again. Its
breaches would be far out of reach I
could see.
But before it came even with me, I
nocked a normal arrow into a weak, wooden Bokoblin bow, and fired off into the
sand before its path.
The dread question mark appeared
again, and this time—the monster breached
where the arrow had struck!
I scrambled to switch out my equipment for something stronger again! Lynel
Bow! Bomb Arrows! Fire! FIRE!
I
could induce a breach from the beast.
I cut down its life-meter by a much more gratifying portion before it
was able to escape again.... though my bow-work was become a bit sloppy in my
excitement. I knew Bomb Arrows didn’t come cheap, but by this point I would
rather have lost arrows than lost time spent refining my aim. Enough had
connected that I was sufficed.
And I waited for the beast’s
return.
And waited.
And waited.
Round and again the great Molduga
came, and I lured it up each time, unmoving in my pocket of shade, in my refuge
from the chill, and cast arrow after arrow after arrow.
Quivers ran dry. Bows broke. It was
becoming increasingly expensive....
But the desert was not unfeeling
toward my plight.
Once as I stood through the long
and lonely night, watching and waiting as the stars winked overhead and the
Molduga thrashed soundlessly in the far distance, something glimmered over the
sand out in front of me.
There was a kind of twinkling, a little way off, but it
vanished almost at once. And then it came again, in a different spot—and
disappeared once more. Pulsing like a satellite. What in the world....?
Another sparkle, and I could see
faint dark movement against the bluebeige of the moonwashed sand. Something was making that light.
And
it was coming closer.
And then I recognized the
glittering—that was an item I could
grab!
But.... moving? Smooth as a shark-fin—was it a lizard?
And as it came nearer, listing away
to my right, I saw it clearly: The kindly desert breeze had found one of my
stray arrows, and blown it back toward me, rolling it over the dunes.
I ran to collect it as it blew
against a far section of my rock, and then trudged back to the place where I had
chosen to wait.
The sand—it slows you down.
It was in the nighttime that the
mighty Molduga finally succumbed to my Assault
of a Thousand Arrows, writhing in the air on the last hit with an almighty
bellow before crashing to the ground in an ignominious explosion of wasted
darkness.
I was running straight away—already
the fickle wind was beginning to toy with the leftover parts and blow them
about.... I picked up so many fins,
AND . . . . the guts!
Got
it! Molduga Guts! HAHHH, that was a HARD-EARNED PRIZE.
And there were yet a few lingering
Lizalfos from whose claws I had to pry it.
After this I was not waiting for
the next Blood Moon—I stormed and looted the central hub for all that it was
worth. And I realized that while I had been hunting the Molduga, some of my
incendiary arrows must have ignited a few of the boomers strewed about the sand. For there was a great swath of them
missing where I had made my attacks.
Inadvertently handy!
I rejoiced in my spoils, I felt
mighty in my accomplishment, but after days and nights in the wilderness of the
Wasteland.... the time really did feel ripe to head back.
I trudged back toward my squat
little hunting rock to harness up my sand seal once more.
It was gone.
