Calatia Castle Town spreads out below me. The outer bounds of the plateau are visible. The castle and town share a peak, a pillar of sorts thrusting out of the mists. Thick even in the middle of the day, these mists blanket the entire kingdom. Having an unobstructed view north, east, and west, I see half a dozen more towns rising into sight on their own plateaus many kilometres away.
The town itself is layered with smog. Where the mists look silver from above, almost shining in the morning sun, a dark haze of smoke renders the town fuzzy and dim. Innumerable smokestacks vent the acrid stuff, and the rising wind from the edges of the plateau blow it all into a column, only gradually thinning out into transparency. One giant building on the west side of town hosts hundreds of vents and chimneys jutting out at odd angles, contributing as much pollution as the rest of the town combined.
I'm procrastinating. I'm about to die.
Paltry falls of three or four meters won't hurt a soul. Five to ten can injure you. This is – my eyes blur from the town's reek, and my gift for measuring distances fails me – more than that.
In my last second of life, I pull out of my spread-eagle fall and point my feet down. I'm ready to roll and break my fall as best I can. I've read that it's possible to survive falls from extreme height this way; I may get lucky and merely break my bones. There's a good roof below me, steeply slanted. Maybe I can slide a bit, bleed off some momentum before my final, perpendicular fate?
The gauntlet pulses. A burst of air sends soot swirling from the rooftop in crazy eddies, and rattles windows below. I land hard, but not painfully. I stagger, anticipating pain and broken bones and elaborate acrobatics to reduce the damage that never comes.
Good to know, I think, clamping down on a maniacal laugh. The magic of the gem has an active effect, the Gale Leap, and a passive effect it performs without thought on my part. Muffled voices sound below me. My heavy landing attracted attention.
The smog shields me from view from the keep, but I have to assume pursuit. This roof overlooks an abandoned alley. I leap across it to the building on the far side, scuttle up the shingles and finally sit to rest against the north face of a chimney.
My heart pounds. My breath is tight in my chest, and I force a deep lungful. I cough on the tangy city air, and the cough turns into a sob. The fine sleeves of the prince's purloined tunic muffle my coughs and dry my tears. It still smells like the fresh pine of his wardrobe, smells like the only pleasant place in that whole damned castle.
I don't think I can escape the city. Maybe my Gale Leap could carry me through the winds blowing up the cliffs and the gauntlet would let me survive the fall, but I would be lost without food or direction. The mists swallow any traveler who attempts to traverse the shifting mire without a guide.
Though there has been no sound of rooftop investigation, I need to keep on the move. I'm a fugitive here. Grandmother told me to find someone named "Professor Quinlan". I will ask him to help me escape this place.
These roofs are all the same; steep shingles, chimneys at regular intervals, narrow cobbled alleys. Doors, windows, small personal touches in the street below tell me this is a dense block of housing. The long buildings in this town must be like whole rows of conjoined houses. A sort of "town house". Remembering how many buildings I saw from the air, my mind reels at the size of this place. It must house hundreds, maybe thousands of people! Dozens of the towns of the mist could live here!
At the end of the alley, I see people going about their business in a wider road. Peering through the haze, I see larger profiles of a pair of clockwork soldiers on patrol. I'll need to be careful.
Drawing behind my chimney, I think back to my aerial view. Now that I have time to process, I make a mental map.
I landed in the south-eastern quarter of the city. I saw row after row of these long, low buildings, broken up by the occasional plaza. The smoke is thick here, and the whole place colourless. I name it the Workers' District.
Immediately above it in the north-east quarter the plateau slanted down, almost into the mist. It looked terraced, and there were hints of brown and green. They must be farms, though I'd hate to eat food grown in this choked environment. I dub it The Terraces.
To my left, in the south-west quarter, the smog was thinner and the buildings larger. I saw white stone, no doubt scrubbed daily, and the green of parks. Surely, homes of the wealthy and privileged. I'll think of it as the Noble Estates.
The whole north-west quarter was filled with a tangled, smoke-belching labyrinth of industry around one giant block of a building. A factory? A pier peered out over the mist on the western edge, and airships were moored there. Possibly another way out of town. My creativity exhausted, I call it the Industrial Zone.
I decide to strike west, thinking that the title of "Professor" implies prestige and wealth. Dropping into the alley and sneaking near the main street, I realize that I'll stand out like a giant cracked stone in the prince's clothes. Backtracking, I Gale Leap to the rooftops with a loud surge of air and disappear before anyone investigates the noise. I need to explore a few blocks before finding what I seek. Sprawled on my front and reaching down from the eaves, I reel the washing line in and snag a large shawl. Grey by design or from soot, it will render me anonymous here. I hesitate for a second, but slip the Sheikah wallet from my shadow and manage to clip the ten-rupee coin to the line with a clothes peg.
Dropping back to the street, I sigh. Inventory: one set adventuring clothes, one shawl, one wallet, zero rupees. Well, and two ancient magical artifacts of unknown power and immeasurable value. Clutching the shawl closed, keeping the gauntlet hidden, I hurry west.
Everyone here is dirty and soot-stained. All clothes are a shade of grey, black, or brown. Nobody makes eye contact. Most are streaming to the farms or the factory or coming from there with dirty hands and faces.
Passing through a small plaza, I overhear the first chatter in this eerily silent town. Desultory citizens haggle over sad vegetables at the dingy market stalls. A clockwork soldier stands at each corner; they're still as statues, but too clean to have been that way for long. All of castle town's people rush past them and avoid eye contact and I do likewise, pulse pounding. They take no notice.
The transition from the Workers' District to the Nobles' Estates is abrupt. The blocky buildings dead end. Several meters of quarantine zone separate them from a sturdy stone wall topped with blue, glowing wires. I don't need to test them to know that lightning current runs through them to deter desperate thieves from infiltrating the manors of the wealthy. Fans run constantly, mounted behind and above the wall, to push back the dirty air while vents near the wall's foot pump yet more soot into the Workers' District. This must be where the offgas from the wealthy's furnaces is dumped.
Even from a rooftop, the quarantine zone is too large to leap over. Too large for anyone else, at least.
I pick a chimney. Fingers of my right hand on the lip, both feet braced against the side. My left hand performs the gesture, and I plow through the thick air over the gap, over the wall, into the draft from the fans.
My sideways progress slows, stops, reverses. Not used to course changes in mid-air, I flail for a second as I am pushed back. My upper back hits the lightning wires and my neck whiplashes horribly. Muscles seizing, I manage to jerk forward enough to pull free of the wires and fall, gasping, onto soft grass in the Nobles' Estates.
My whole body tingles and aches from the lightning. It sparks visibly along me for a few seconds more, but I manage to get to my feet. It's good to know the body can tolerate at least a little of this sort of punishment, and does recover on its own.
This seems to be a sort of maintenance alley in the Estates. I take off the dirty worker's shawl, take my hood down. The prince's clothes should fit in better around her. I find a gardener's shed, and splash water from a bucket on my face to clean off the soot. The gauntlet and shawl might be harder to hide. Removing the gauntlet for the first time since I put it on, I wrap the shawl around it, tuck in the corners, brush off as much grit as I can. This bundle under one arm, I set out into the Estates.
Well-paved roads are laid out in orderly lines and artful curves around beautiful homes and upscale shops. Passerby are well-dressed and look happy, gossiping and chatting amongst themselves in small groups. I smile and wave back at several groups but keep my pace quick. I fall into character as a young lady out on an errand of mild urgency.
Half an hour later I'm footsore, sweating in the early afternoon sun, and very aware that I haven't eaten in nearly a day. I sit for a minute by a plashing fountain and stare at the water longingly. It would break character for this young noble to drink from a fountain, but even the iced water at the nearby café costs five rupees. I must have covered half the district with no sign of Professor Quinlan, but how would I find him? How would I even know if a house was his? Normally I would just march into each house in town and ask the occupants, but I don't think that would work here. For one thing, there are more than a dozen or so houses and for another these seem like the sort of people who expect others to enter their homes only on invitation.
The café is quiet. Empty tables with parasols for the sun await lunchtime customers. I approach the red-haired girl at the counter. She seems agitated.
"Hello!" I say as casually as I can. "I'm running an errand for my grandmother and forgot my wallet, but I'm frightfully thirsty. Any chance you could give me an ice water, hold the ice?" I hope my smile is disarming.
"Oh – what?" She smiles back, takes a break from nervously arranging stacks of plates. "Sorry, I didn't hear you come up. I'm not even supposed to be out here, my father should be back by now. Can I help you?"
I slide onto a bar stool and tuck my dirty bundle out of sight. "Where's your father? Is he in trouble?" I ask. What can I say – running errands for villagers is a deeply rooted instinct.
She frowns. "He's in trouble with me! He went to make the rounds delivering milk to our customers and should be home by now. He better be back before the lunch rush! I'm worried he got carried away drinking with a friend and lost track of time." She purses her lips and surveys the square, as if fearing that the passerby could become a ravenous swarm of customers at any second.
"Well, I could check on him for you. Tell him to come right back. Maybe that would be worth a drink on the house?" I offer.
"Are you sure? Didn't you say you were on an errand?" She pulls out a glass, fills it from a faucet behind the bar, hands me an ice water without ice. "That's a down payment. If you can pull him away from the professor, that's worth a free milk!"
"The professor? Is that Professor Quinlan, by any chance? I've heard of him, but I don't know where he lives." I say, not entirely hiding my excitement.
"That's the one," she says, sourly. "Head north from here and stay right as the road bends. He's near the crossroads, not the nicest part of town. Tell him Malon needs Talon to come back to the café immediately." She taps her chest. "That's me, of course, I'm Malon. Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier. What's your name?"
"Um… Ambi," I reply. Belatedly, it seemed like giving Ganondorf my real name might not have been the wisest decision.
"Good to meet you, Ambi," Malon says, bustling around the counter. "Wow, I love your outfit! Do you know, it reminds me of what Prince Link wore to the autumn festival last year!"
"Yes… I, uh, had it made to look like his…" I ad-libbed clumsily.
"Oh, I don't blame you. He's sooo dreamy!" Malon gushes. "But, before we get sidetracked by his dreamy eyes or silky hair, could you go get my dad? Customers could arrive any minute!"
I nod, stand, collect my bundle. As I move to leave, Malon reaches for me and holds me by the shoulders. Looking into my eyes, she says: "You have saved me in my moment of greatest need, like the fairies in stories. Thank you, fairy girl." Her composure breaks, she laughs at her own joke, and hugs me. I hug her back, tearing up a little at the unguarded affection, the sheer normalcy in the gesture. I needed this today, on the most surreal and terrifying day of my life.
She lets me go. I smile weakly back at her. "Thanks for the water, and I'll see you later for that milk!" I flee to the north as the tears come in earnest.