Hi, everyone! Thank you as always, and sorry for the delay!
About people falling off the islands, I figure there must be a small but fairly steady fall rate. Sometimes birds just can't. Sometimes storms happen. Sometimes the edge of an island crumbles. Sometimes some shitlord locks your bird in a box (okay, maybe that's a bit more rare, but also it's definitely like cutting your car's brakes when you live on a mountain with hairpin bends on the only road). Zelda may be a fluke, but Orielle was basically done for except for that teeny tiny scrap of island. And yeah, many people won't survive that drop – but every now and again someone does survive a completely ludicrous fall that probably should have killed them (and usually makes the news!), and if there's one thing sky islanders know it's how to fall as slowly as humanly possible. So a few of them, here and there, I reckon must survive, and the Sheikah will make a habit of trying to collect them before Ghirahim does.
Chapter 42: City of Sand
Link had continued along a wide, steadily climbing passage, occasionally passing other robot corpses along the way, always following what looked like the 'main' rail at junctions. In response to his questions, Fi had explained as they went: the robots were restored to temporary activation while within the distortion field of a Timeshift Stone. It was, she'd said, indistinguishable from their original state, and for as long as the distortion lasted, they would remain fully functional. As soon as it ended, however, their components would return to their deteriorated state: they would once more cease to be. The thought made Link a little uncomfortable, and he'd walked in silence for a while after that, thinking through it all. He could bring them back to life, but only briefly, and only within the field. Should he have told them? Would it have helped them, or only hurt?
Eventually, the passage, now containing three separate rails, had steepened drastically, and Link had walked up and out into the heat of the late desert afternoon. Shading his eyes against the light, he looked around: he stood at the base of a low, sandswept bluff, and the tracks curved around to his right to climb it, held at intervals on brackets protruding from the rock. Some of them had fallen away, and none of the three tracks were complete; still, Link's eyes followed them to the top, where tall buildings loomed over the edge, windowless and strange, battered and crumbled by time. There was no motion, no sound beyond the sighing of the sand in the wind, and when he turned his back to the bluff, all he could see was the trackless desert extending westward beneath the lowering sun, shining with almost its full intensity through the thin clouds.
The faint sense of direction Fi gave him pointed roughly northwards, along the edge of the bluff. Link turned that way once more, parallel to the broken rails, and wondered whether he should try to climb the rock face or walk at its foot.
"Fi?" he murmured. It seemed almost out of place to speak loudly in the strange land of dead robots, ancient buildings, and whispering sands. Fi sprang from the sword with her usual faint chime to hover before him, regarding him calmly.
"Yes, Master?"
"Do you think I should go up, or…?"
Fi seemed to consider for a moment, faster than he could have followed. "The data are inconclusive, Master. I possess a schematic layout of the city above as it was designed. Your primary purpose in this location is to reach a means of transportation enabling you to travel to the Gate of Time, to the north-north-west. There is a levirail station in the north of the city. I estimate a probability of 85% that you will be able to activate a levitrain and use it to continue your journey. This station can be accessed both from within the city and from the sands outside it."
Link glanced towards the sinking sun, and, perhaps following his motion, so did Fi.
"There'll be more shelter up there, in the city, right?"
"That is correct," she confirmed. "Although it may also provide shelter for the small number of hostile lifeforms that are able to survive in the deep desert, the benefit to you will be significant. However, you may not be able to follow a direct course to your destination, since it is certain that some of the buildings will have fully or partially collapsed with time." She paused. "Additionally, there is a possibility that water remains stored within the city's reservoirs. However, the passage of one thousand years since those reservoirs were last accessed renders that probability below 20%. Should they prove empty, the time you will take to determine that fact would drastically decrease your probability of survival, since you would deplete the water supplies that you have brought with you in the process."
"Is there a reservoir anywhere near this… levirail station?" Fi's words made a grim sense. The longer Link spent searching for water, the more he would have to drink. He'd already got through more than half his first water bottle underground, even in the cool cavern air, even rationing it.
"Your projected path through the city can be made to pass one with a deviation of less than 15%. Shall I adjust my guidance to incorporate this as a destination?"
Link smiled a little, nodding. "Please."
He felt his sense of direction shift, pointing him up the rails and into the silent city atop the bluff.
"Thanks." Link paused for a moment. "Is there anything else I should know about this city?"
"The majority of my information is unlikely to be significant at this time, Master. I recommend that you begin the ascent while the angle of the sun remains favourable. I will return to the sword to avoid visual distraction."
Fi suited actions to words, vanishing in a flash of light, and when Link nodded it was to empty air.
"You can tell me more when I get to the top, huh?
As he started walking along the rails, he was certain he could feel her silent assent.
Link pulled himself up onto the last segment of rail, holding on grimly tight as he swung one leg over it and let his weight rest. The bluff itself hadn't been too difficult to climb, for the most part, but the structures built along its edge had, and Link had ended up climbing crabwise below them to the point where the walls dipped low enough for the rail to enter… the angles of which had sent him out terrifyingly onto the rails themselves. Climbing out over the open sky was one thing, his bird a whistle and a thought away – here, where there would be no time for the bird to arrive even if he were somehow flying nearby, he was far enough above the ground that his only hope of survival if he fell would be to whip out the sailcloth very, very quickly. Fi had helped, her calmly melodic voice in his mind warning him about parts that were unsafe before he could even touch them. This last jutting piece of rail was the final safe piece that she had identified, and if he could just… edge… forward…
Link's reaching fingers met the section of rail embedded in solid rock a single hitching motion before his knees knocked against it. Murmuring a reflexive thanks to the goddess, he crawled onto solid ground and rolled onto his back, staring up at the increasingly gold-clouded sky, mouth dry and skin sweaty and grinning just a little in relief.
"We made it!" He let out a long, slightly shaky breath. "Thanks, Fi. I wouldn't have wanted to do that without you."
Her words came silently after a brief moment. You are welcome. Do you still wish me to impart more information about this city?
"Yeah… please." Link rolled over and pushed himself to his feet. The buildings around him were all taller than anything on Skyloft except the Light Tower, and the three rails he had climbed each veered into closed doors on the ends of enclosed passages that emerged from the base of a particularly complicated-looking building.
As you are able to observe, the city is built upon an outcrop of rock that has prevented it from being swallowed by the desert. In ancient times, it was called Cronellon. The mine that we traversed was dug in anticipation of the eventual need of the deep-buried Timeshift Stone beneath this region of the desert, but at the time that this city ceased to function, it would have been relatively unused.
"So they were using the mine a little, but it was mostly just there to be ready when they really wanted it?" Link had come to a pair of gates, ancient and timeworn, and set his shoulder to one to push it open with a squeal of reluctant, corroded metal.
That is correct, Master. Fi paused, and Link wondered how much she was condensing and summarising. Some regions of the city, primarily in a strip from the southeast to the north, were visited long ago by servants of the goddess. At that time, it was still possible to reactivate inactive robots provided that they had been sheltered from the elements. The robots restored in this fashion also became servants of the goddess, and some of them ascended with the islands to aid your people.
"Really?" The empty sand of the road seemed unmarked, save by Link's own footprints. The largely windowless buildings loomed over him blankly, their long shadows cloaking the streets in cool shade. Despite how long he'd spent underground, it was a welcome relief after the climb in the desert heat.
Yes. Multiple robots were present at the raising of the islands. There is a 100% probability that the inactive robot we observed towards the rear of the smithy was one of them.
For a short while, Link fell silent. He'd always known that in a distant sense: the piece of scrap that had maybe, if you believed the legends, been a moving thinking person was as old as the islands, so people said. But it had always been a legend, far away and not quite real, maybe true and maybe just another story.
He turned a corner without really thinking, following the subtle tug in his subconscious, glancing from side to side at the strange, foreign buildings, some of them half crumbled, others just eroded and abraded to blocky featurelessness. Their doors were largely shut, a few here and there standing open, sand blown into the dark spaces beyond.
"Fi, were you there when the islands were raised?" he ventured.
Yes, Master Link.
It made sense and yet it stunned him all over again.
"What was it like?"
The power of the goddess, used in guardianship, was great enough to tear multiple large chunks of rock and soil from the ground, raise them into the sky, and enchant them to permanently float. You are descended from the people whom she had gathered in the chosen locations.
"I guess that makes sense…" His attention was held more by her first sentence than her second. "I don't think I can even imagine it."
Fi once again found herself evaluating her options. His curiosity had a high probability of being simple to satisfy: she could offer to expand upon her description with a fuller and more accurate account of the levitation of the islands, an offer he would almost certainly accept. If, however, he accepted the offer, she would run multiple risks. There was a small risk that a minor detail would prove significant, releasing additional information contained within his subconscious, and she had detected a small number of desert predators lurking in the shadows and the sands, awaiting the moment that the sun went down. Her master's mere presence – his footfalls in the sand; the sound and scent of his breath; his very spirit would draw them to him, awakening from torpor to hunt this strange prey and all the nutrition and moisture contained within. If he were to be distracted, it would potentially slow or alter his reflexes. In addition, there was another risk that Fi could not calculate: that she would once again encounter a critical error while relaying the information, rendering her unable to assist him.
I am able to impart further information if you desire it, Master. However, I do not recommend requesting such information now. I have detected multiple predatory animals that are likely to emerge during the night should they detect your presence. Since the sun is already setting, I recommend focusing on your surroundings until we reach a secure location.
"Right." Link's hand went to the sword automatically, blue eyes keen as he searched the shadowed sands and empty nooks with an alert wariness, his steps landing more lightly, more cautiously.
Fi observed the instant adjustment in his behaviour, and found it a positive development. Though it had only been four days since he had accepted the blade and descended to the sealed lands, he had already developed as a warrior, building on the training that he had already had with the necessities of survival. Every such improvement increased the probability that he would complete the tasks and challenges that the goddess had set him, and ultimately fulfil his – and Fi's – destiny.
Sorry it's taken so long! But look where we are now! ;-)
Saina couldn't have used these mines even if she had known that they existed (in her iteration, the mining region didn't even connect to Cronellon directly, and was accessed via a surface facility that was actually atop it, none of which would have been built until a good 200 years into the Cycle), since they were really only just beginning excavations when Something Mysterious* happened to all the robots of the Cycle.
Patch Notes
- Desert can no longer be crossed in an afternoon: size significantly increased.
* I suppose there's another possible reason, in a version of the setting that isn't this one, for all the robots to have simply… stopped: if, the moment that their objectives were complete, their creator (Hylia?) simply switched them off as having served their purpose. That would be a very different story to this one, though – in some ways, anyway. She will turn out to have form for just switching people off when she's done with them, after all. In this version of the universe, that's mostly through a lack of forethought in a certain sense (we'll go into this in great detail at the correct times, so I won't go on about it now), but in others, well, it could be anything. (In the wonderfully terrible dark AU the Floor Owl made me, the thing she became so very definitely would just do that.)