Prologue: The Great Plateau
Chapter 2
"Not in Aselia?"
"How can that be?"
"Where else would we be?"
"Why would you say that?"
All eyes were on Genis, and he turned to his sister once the initial clamor died down. "You've noticed it, too, right?"
Raine nodded grimly. "You can't sense it either, then."
"Can't sense what?" Lloyd pressed.
"Mana," Genis answered. "I can't sense any mana anywhere - even inside me." His expression was carefully neutral, but his tone betrayed the uncertainty he felt.
"In which case there are two possible conclusions," the professor added, preemptively silencing the others. "Something might be repressing out ability to sense mana. The only alternative is that there really is no mana here."
The only sounds while the party processed this was the breeze rustling the grass, birds singing, and insects chirping.
For once, Presea gave voice to her thoughts first. "The existence of this verdant landscape in the absence of mana would indicate that some other source of energy fuels life here. Either Aselia was radically changed while we slept..."
"Or Genis is right, and this place isn't Aselia at all," Sheena said grimly.
Zelos scowled in thought. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, time-out. If Professor Hottie and the midget can't sense mana because there isn't any, that includes all of us. We should all be dead in that case. It'd make a lot more sense if their senses were on the fritz."
"This is making my head hurt," Lloyd complained, shaking his head. He turned away from the rest of the group to check out the view again, taking his time to take in all he could see. The view to the left was hidden by a high mountain; to the right, the distant mountains continued on to what looked like two halves of a single peak that had been cleaved down the middle. Then, much closer, past a bend in the cliffs looming over the valley below, he noticed a large, weathered structure, not unlike the Martel temples and cathedrals he was familiar with. "Hey, look at that!" he blurted, pointing at the ruin. He immediately regretted it; he could practically feel Raine switching to Ruin Mode when the others turned to see the building.
Suddenly, Colette grabbed Lloyd's arm with one hand and pointed with the other. "Look!" she exclaimed. "There's someone down there!"
Lloyd lowered his gaze from the dilapidated building to a point in the curving path down the hill they stood on, where there was a small hollow at the base of the hill with a glowing fire. Sure enough, a lone figure could be seen, and even as Lloyd spotted him, he turned and walked back toward the fire.
This person had been watching them.
The others also saw the stranger, and Raine's mind shifted out of Ruin Mode. "There are probably others nearby, then," she reasoned.
"Mm, I don't know if that's comforting or not," Zelos cautioned.
Regal eyed the meager camp the mysterious figure was sitting in. "Whoever it is was expecting us, it would seem."
"If they knew we were in there," Sheena thought aloud, "they might know why."
"Even if they don't, maybe they can at least tell us where we are," Genis pointed out.
Lloyd was quiet for a moment longer. On one hand, he knew firsthand that anyone could turn out to be more powerful than they appeared to be at a glance. Approaching this stranger carelessly could prove disastrous. On the other hand, he and the others had questions they could not answer on their own. They were in an unfamiliar wilderness; they could not even hope to get their bearings by themselves. Sooner or later, they would need to reach out for help and hope for the best.
He nodded once. "Then let's go ask him," he suggested, and he began walking down the path.
"We should send two down to begin with," Regal asserted calmly, and Lloyd stopped to listen. "Going alone would be unwise, but we don't want a potential ally to feel threatened by us."
Raine nodded and folded her arms. "That's a good idea. Lloyd, why don't you and Presea go and talk to him?"
Genis suddenly appeared much more concerned than he had a moment ago. "What? Why Presea?!" he exclaimed.
The professor managed to not roll her eyes. "Because," she explained, "she's small and unassuming, yet perfectly capable of fending for herself."
The younger half-elf clammed up, abashed, while Lloyd nodded in agreement. "All right, then let's go, Presea."
"We'll be right behind you," Colette called after them as they started walking away. "If something bad happens, we'll help you!"
The little lumberjack paused while Lloyd trotted on ahead and peered over her shoulder at the others. "Aside from Regal," she pointed out, "we are all without our weapons. If we encounter hostiles, it would be better to flee."
They watched the two continue down the trail in silence, until Regal muttered to himself, "I suppose I could fight with bare feet, but..."
"How long do you suppose we were inside that cave?" Presea wondered aloud, half-jogging to keep up with Lloyd's longer strides.
The teen slowed down a bit as he answered, silently noting the rotting fence and overgrown paving stones they passed. "I dunno," he said absently. "Probably a while. Waking up didn't really feel the same as it usually does, you know? It felt... slower, heavier. More like waking up after Yggdrasil knocked us out, or that time Zelos drugged us..."
Something was off. Lloyd looked down to find that Presea had slowed to a halt a few paces back. She stared at the ground, eyes hidden by her bangs.
The young man frowned. "Hey, what's wrong, Presea?"
She did not respond for several seconds, and when she did, she sounded small and miserable. "...How much time have I lost now?"
Immediately understanding, Lloyd walked back up to her and put one hand on her shoulder; standing on the lower ground meant they were a little closer to the same height. "Hey, it'll be all right. The important thing is that we're all here," he said softly. "We're gonna get to the bottom of all this, okay? Where we are, how we got here, all of it."
His hand rose and fell with Presea's shoulder as she took a deep breath. When she had released it, she raised her head again and nodded, expression firm. "Very well. Let us go search for answers."
Lloyd gave a reassuring smile, and they continued on toward where the stranger was sitting. On closer inspection, it was, in fact, an old man in dingy brown clothes, face obscured by a hood pulled down to his eyes and an enormous, bushy white beard. He sat holding a staff with a lantern hanging from it beside a little campfire underneath an overhanging ledge.
As they approached, Lloyd caught a sweet, smokey scent coming off the campfire, and he felt his stomach rumble more than he heard it.
"Well met, strangers!" the old man laughed when Lloyd and Presea reached his camp. "It's rather unusual to see other souls in these parts."
Just as Lloyd realized what this meant, a loud gurgling noise filled his ears, startling him and making him jump. As his heart rate returned to normal, he looked down once again at Presea, who was holding her midsection, her face beet red.
If the old man was surprised at the sound, he did not show it; he just chuckled quietly, and Lloyd noticed a glint in his eye. "Why don't you have a baked apple, young one?" he offered, gesturing to a steaming, darkened fruit on the ground beside the fire.
Presea hesitated for only a moment before picking up the apple. "Thank you," she murmured as she ate it, leaving Lloyd to ask the questions.
"Who are you?" the teen asked, more curious than suspicious at this point.
"Me?" the old man answered. "I'll spare you my life story. I'm just an old fool who has lived here, alone, for quite some time now." He glanced away, and Lloyd realized he was looking back at their companions up the trail. "What brings bright-eyed young men and women like you to a place like this?"
Wait - he doesn't know why we're here?
"What is this place?" Presea asked between mouthfuls of apple.
The old man nodded once to her. "Answering a question with a question. That's fair enough." He paused, as if in thought. "As I cannot imagine our meeting to be a simple coincidence... I shall tell you. This is the Great Plateau. According to legend, this is the birthplace of the entire kingdom of Hyrule."
"High Rule?" Lloyd echoed. "What's that?"
He was answered with a chortling noise. "You must be quite lost to not know that." The old man rose to his feet and made a sweeping gesture toward the horizon with his lantern. "Everything you can see from here and more - the wastelands and the Gerudo Desert to the west; the Lost Woods and Death Mountain to the north; and the seas to the east and the south - all of it and everything in between is Hyrule."
"And Hyrule is a kingdom?" Presea queried. "Does that mean civilization is near?"
The old man bowed his head a little. "I'm afraid not," he sighed. "Hyrule has been in a state of ruin for some time now."
There was such deep sadness in the hermit's tone that Lloyd found himself scrambling for something of comfort to say, but the old man turned away before he could think of anything. The teen followed his gaze to the ruined building, now a short distance away across a pond.
"That temple there..." the old man reminisced. "Long ago, it was the site of many sacred ceremonies. Ever since the decline of the kingdom one hundred years ago, it has sat abandoned, in a state of decay." He turned away from the structure to face Lloyd and Presea again, though he stared at the ground as he did so. "Yet another forgotten entity. A mere ghost of its former self..."
"... I'm sorry," Lloyd finally managed. A lame response, he knew, but what could he possibly say?
The hermit waved a hand dismissively. "No apologies necessary." He finally looked up at his two guests again. "I shall be here for some time. Please let me know if I may be of service. Be sure to let your friends up there know: you may help yourselves to anything you find up here."
Lloyd blinked. "Oh, right. Okay." So he stepped out of the shadow of the overhang and waved with one arm to the others, who soon started moving down the hill toward them.
Once all eight companions had gathered, Lloyd relayed to them everything the old man had revealed so far.
"So, basically, we're out in the wilderness with no food and no weapons." Zelos put a fist on his hip, grimacing. "What are we supposed to do?"
"We'll just have to forage for what we need," Raine answered none too confidently.
"That may be just as well," Regal pointed out. "Without any currency, we couldn't hope to buy anything, anyway."
"I think this will be fun!" Colette chirped, eyes closed with a grin plastered to her face. "We camped out all the time during the World Regeneration. It'll be like old times, without monsters or Desians to worry about!"
Lloyd and Genis' eyes met, and they gave each other a knowing frown. They knew best when Colette's optimism was a front; her uncertainty was no less than that of any of the others. Still, the façade served its purpose.
"Colette's right," Sheena said with a grin. "This won't be too different from before. In fact, I have some Mizuho survival training I can share with all of you."
"Hey, that's great, Sheena!" Lloyd exclaimed, pumping his fist. "We'll definitely be able to-"
"Hey, Presea," Genis called out, "what are you doing?"
The little lumberjack had continued down the path past the old man's camp and was wrenching a large axe from the top of a tree stump.
"That must belong to the man who lives here," Raine observed as Presea dragged the oversized tool back up the hill. "Shouldn't we ask him before we use his tools?"
"Hey, is it okay if we-" Lloyd stopped short when he turned around and found the old man had slipped away. "Hey, where'd he go?" he wondered, glancing up and down the path.
Presea did not stop, or even bother looking at her companions as she passed them. Her eyes were fixed on a stand of apple trees off the path. "He said we may feel free to use whatever we find, and I want another baked apple."
Zelos laughed aloud. "Watch out, guys! Presea's hangry!" Right on cue, his own stomach growled audibly, startling him.
"Sounds like you'll be joining her pretty soon," Sheena teased.
Tethe'alla's Chosen opened his mouth to retort, but someone cut him off.
Zelos...
Zelos tensed up and whirled around, to no avail; there was still no sign of the invisible speaker. "All right," he growled, "what does this creep want with me now?"
"With you?" Raine echoed. "I distinctly heard her call my name."
Before Regal could assert that he had also heard his own name, he heard it again: Regal. Head for the point marked on your map in your Sheikah Slate.
One by one, they each retrieved their Slates to find this map - Colette first, Zelos last. Eight yellow arrow-shapes marked their location on a blank background; a yellow pinpoint stood some distance away to the northeast.
"Well," Lloyd said, looking up from his Slate, "what do you guys think?"
"Don't get me wrong, now. Normally I'd be all for tracking down a beautiful-sounding babe," Zelos answered with a smirk. "This, though... it doesn't sit right with me."
Sheena rolled her eyes while Colette hung her Slate on her belt to fold her hands together. "She led us out of that cave, didn't she? I... I think we should trust her."
"I agree with Colette," Genis asserted. "Presea," he called in a louder voice, "what do you think we should do?"
There was a crash as the pink-haired girl felled an apple tree. "As I said, right now I just want to eat."
"I think that would be best for all of us," Raine said authoritatively. "Once that's done, we ought to find a place to set up camp."
Regal nodded. "That would be the most prudent course of action." He considered it for a moment more. "The ruined temple would probably provide the best shelter from the elements."
"I'll give you one guess what Lloyd wants to do," Zelos chuckled.
Lloyd shot the Chosen a dirty look before returning his attention to the screen on his Slate. "I think... we should see what that point means."
"We could always split up for a little while," Sheena pointed out. "I can go to the temple with Raine and Regal to help set up camp."
Raine rested her chin on her knuckles. She never did like the idea of splitting up, but it had been necessary - useful, in fact - more than once in the past. "... Very well. We'll go once we're finished eating. Lloyd, Genis, Colette, meet us at the temple once you're done investigating the map."
"What was that?!" Lloyd asked in a hushed tone.
The foliage beside the path rustled as some grunting thing moved closer. After a snack of baked apples, the party had begun moving on together. At the point where the exploration team was about to leave the temple team, Colette had frozen, listening to a noise she had never heard before. Now, it was near enough for everyone to hear.
"Presea," Raine murmured, but the lumberjack was already stepping forward and drawing her axe; she was the only one with a proper weapon.
Finally, the bushes parted and a bizarre, hideous creature charged toward them. It was roughly human-shaped, but larger, with elongated arms ending in clawed fingers, a flat-fronted snout, big, pointed ears, beady eyes, and a single horn atop its head. Its crimson skin was covered only by arm wraps and a loincloth, and it held a tree branch in one hand.
"Monster!" Genis cried in alarm. The word had hardly left his lips when Presea rushed forward, swinging her axe.
"Beast!" she shouted, spinning in a circle and catching the monster in the face with a backhanded strike. It was thrown back into the bushes by the force of the blow, but to Lloyd's astonishment, the ethereal wolf's head that usually accompanied the blow did not appear.
"Presea, it didn't work!" he exclaimed.
"It will suffice," the girl replied as the monster stood back up. It spit out a large tooth, unleashed a grunting bellow at her, and retrieved his tree branch to try again.
"Deadly Destruction!" Presea yelled, hopping into the air with her axe held over her head. The blade slashed the creature as it came down, but the familiar blast of rock the move usually created was absent. "Infliction!" She followed it up with an upward slice that carried her into the air. However, she went no higher than she would have with a normal jump, and though the attack finally felled the monster with a pig-like squeal, it clearly lacked its usual power.
No sooner had the monster's body skidded to a stop than it darkened and vanished in a puff of dark vapors, leaving behind its horn and a few teeth.
"Well, that was freaky," Sheena remarked, warily picking up one of the creature's fangs.
"I'm pretty sure we've all seen worse," Zelos said with a shrug. "What I wanna know is why Presea's techs didn't do what they're supposed to."
"Yeah, are you feeling all right, Presea?" Genis asked.
The lumberjack flipped her axe around and rested its blade on the ground, a thoughtful expression on her face. "I feel... not as strong as usual, but not unwell."
"I had noticed that, as well," Raine remembered. "We are probably experiencing the effects of atrophy."
"What's that?" Lloyd inquired, deciding not to bother trying to pronounce it.
Regal stepped in to answer: "During extended periods of inactivity, the body begins to break down. If you look closely, our frames are not as well-built as they were before."
Sheena scratched her head. "Now that you mention it, you don't look as beefy as you did before, Regal. That shouldn't mean we can't use techs at all, though, should it?"
"There's still too much we don't know," the professor concluded. She gestured to the horn and teeth still sitting in the grass. "In any case, we need to be cautious of things like that."
"It wasn't all that strong, was it?" Colette asked.
"No," Raine said, shaking her head, "not particularly, but there are probably more around here. We should stay together and-"
Lloyd saw where this was going. "We'll be okay, Professor, really!" He took the discarded branch, swinging it experimentally. "The point on the map is pretty close by. We'll check it out, take down any pig-men in our way, and come right back."
"I will go with them if it will put your mind at ease," Presea offered before Raine could refuse the idea.
The half-elf turned to her brother, her expression unreadable to all but him.
Genis pondered his response for a bit before giving it. "We need answers, Raine, and that voice is the only one who seems to have any."
Raine sighed through her nostrils. "... Meet us at the temple in half an hour."
With this permission and deadline, Lloyd, Colette, Genis, and Presea took off down the gentle slope toward toward plain dotted with rock formations and toppled ruins, while Raine, Zelos, Sheena, and Regal turned aside to make for the temple. The teens encountered two more pig-men as they followed their map, these two wielding bows and arrows. Lloyd quickly found that they did not know how to lead their shots, so he and Presea approached in a zig-zag pattern until they were close enough to dispatch them.
"Genis, Colette, why don't you take these?" Lloyd suggested after examining the crude wooden bows. "You don't have any weapons yet."
"Neither do you, Lloyd - sticks don't count," Genis answered, rolling his eyes. He accepted a bow regardless and scavenged a few arrows left behind.
Colette, as could be expected, was more enthusiastic, her eyes lighting up as she tried bending her bow. "I've always wanted to try one of these out," she confessed. "Ever since we first started seeing archers at Ossa Trail. Thank you, Lloyd!" Lloyd could only grin and hope he was not blushing visibly.
"Everyone, look out!"
Presea's warning was not a moment too early. Lloyd turned just in time to see two more monsters approaching. One held a heavy-looking wooden club, the other a wooden shield and a metal short sword.
The brunette teen cursed as he took on his battle stance. "Colette, Genis, you two should keep going," he decided. "We'll meet you at the point on the map!"
Colette blanched. "What? No! I can't just leave you two to fight! I have a bow now, I can-"
Genis slung his bow over his back, grabbed the young Chosen's hand, and started running, towing her along behind him. "You don't know how to use that thing yet! Let's go, they can handle it!"
As clashes rang out behind them, Colette and Genis continued on toward the mystery location. When their markers were nearly overlapping with the pinpoint, they found themselves standing at the base of a rock formation.
"It reminds me of Hima," Colette reminisced, brushing the stony surface with her palm.
Genis walked around it, looking up and down at it with his forehead wrinkled. "But what are we supposed to do here?" he wondered, agitated. "We're running out of time until we need to head back, and who knows how Lloyd and Presea are- huh?"
He had stumbled upon a crevice in the side of the rock, wide enough for a grown man to walk inside; an orange light glowed from within. He hesitated, looking at his map again. The device was telling him to proceed inside, but everything inside him was vehemently opposed to the idea. Before he could decide whether to go in or walk away, Colette found what had given him pause and ventured inside herself.
She had not yet left his sight before she, too stopped. "Hey, come look at this!" she exclaimed.
Genis sighed, resigned, and went in after her. She was standing before the source of the orange glow: a pedestal, just like the one he had found his Sheikah Slate in back in the cave. This one, however, was empty.
The wheels in the half-elf's head turned, and he reluctantly stepped forward with his Slate in hand and placed it in the empty slot on the pedestal. The device took hold of the Slate and flipped it into place. Glowing blue text appeared on the screen below the eye-shaped design:
Sheikah Tower activated.
Please watch for falling rocks.
Huh? Before Genis could give voice to his confusion, the ground beneath his feet began to tremble violently, knocking him and Colette off their feet and sending little cascades of dust and pebbles down on them.
"Oh, no!" Colette cried, a rare note of terror in her voice.
What have we done? Genis wondered, squeezing his eyes shut.
There was an ear-splitting cracking sound...
And Genis suddenly felt heavier, as if he was being pressed into the ground. At first, he imagined he was dead and being forced into his grave, but the mild nausea he felt made him realize he had felt this sensation before. The Desians, Renegades, and Cruxis had all made use of rising and falling platforms called "elevators," and being on one of these as it went upward felt exactly this way.
"...We're going up!"