As a reminder, you can find MORE of this on my SubStar (dot adult slash KajaWilder), it's posted up past chapter 75 there... And if you guys haven't seen an update in at least a week, please let me know! I have a busy life, and I get distracted and forget things. This story (and PTaL) are supposed to be updated WEEKLY from now until they're both caught up with each other (like I was doing with FwB until this weekend).
And if you're just interested in discussing things with other readers, of course, you can go to my DISCORD here: h- t_ t_ p-s -: -/ -/ -discord . g-g / N9yDA8t6Cw (taking out hyphens, underscores, and spaces of course).
Finally, you can also read my ORIGINAL FICTION on Kindle. If you've got Kindle Unlimited, they're all free. Here's my author page, h-t_t_p-s -:- /-/ tinyurl _._ com /- 4ffb7wph with links to everything published. (Remove all Hyphens, Spaces, and Underscores, of course... 'cause Ffnet.)
AND A REMINDER: NEXT chapter (not this one) deals with some pretty heavy elements. Monsters, non-con assault, etc. (It might actually be the one after, I think, but it could be both and the one after that, as well- I forget exactly when it stops). It is central to the story, but will not be for everyone. Be warned.
Chap. 39: Hateno Beach
Not half a mile down the path after it split further uphill to the Research Laboratory, or down toward the beach from the pastures, Zelda found herself on a wide, mostly-flat ledge covered in soft, lush grass and beautiful wildflowers. There was evidence that many of the people of Hateno used the spot as a place to rest or have a picnic on days off, for there were no fewer than five carefully maintained firepits, each with their own ring of stones or cut logs for sitting, arrayed along the area.
She could see at once why. Not only was the ledge itself a pleasant place, with a salty sea breeze coming in off the water far below, which blended with gray storm clouds to the south and southeast far in the distance, and with the silver-blue sky to the north and east even further off... but the nearer view was spectacular.
Rocky cliffs and bluffs moved up and down the shores to the south, from about as high as Hateno Village, up a few hundred more feet, and nearly down to the ocean itself. But dominating that direction's view was a massive promontory point which stretched like a fortress wall high into the air, rising well over a thousand feet or more before dropping precipitously into the sea below. At its end was a soft, orange glow she could just see in the bright daylight. The familiar orange glow of a Shrine. But that was not the only one she could see.
Closer to the shore, perhaps a half-mile off the rocky strand below Zelda, a grouping of six, eight, maybe ten pillars or stones (it was hard to make out which was which, aside from the central spire) rose from the water, churning the waves as they came in and out. Miles beyond that, almost in a line, another Shrine stood atop an island barely large enough to hold it near the center of the huge bay. Beyond that by another dozen or so miles was a larger island, far enough off that it was a misty blur on the horizon beneath the edges of the same distant storm clouds.
East of her, the path wended down the south-east face of the mountain making several switchbacks, though it was at no point a gentle climb. The first switchback occurred at what looked like the only easier slope, a small meadow where a stand of trees surrounded a pool fed by a waterfall that sprung from the bare cliffs above, five hundred feet or more below the Research Lab's peak.
The path's terminus seemed to be at a spit of land, the left, western curve of an almost horseshoe-like shape ringed in soft white sand unlike the rockier coast directly below her. Zelda could not quite make out any details from here, not even with her Sheikah Slate's scope at maximum magnification, but she could tell there were definitely monster-made structures there, on the eastern peninsula.
Further down, toward the coast, the trees transitioned from firs and pines to palm trees, and the princess could just make out another small bay or promontory, far below and smaller than the one to the south, which seemed to end the long string of peaks coming down off the great Mount Lanayru, which lay to Hateno's north.
It was going to be a long trek, for certain, but Zelda felt herself up to it. There didn't seem to be any monsters on the trail itself, most of which she could see from the ledge, so it would give her a relatively peaceful, quiet walk, even if it took a few hours to make the journey to the beach.
After the last few weeks, she felt she deserved it. While Hateno seemed safe, the events immediately preceding her arrival at the Village, from the Yiga Clansman who had drugged and raped her to the wholesale slaughter of Bokoblins in Ginner Woods that had ended with another innocent woman being raped by the beasts, had warranted a long break in her opinion. Even her night with Prima, which was amazing in its own right, had largely been precipitated (at least in her mind) by the urging of... whatever happened to her every time she offered up Spirit Orbs to the Goddess Hylia.
Obviously, she thought the inn-girl was attractive, and had enjoyed the time immensely. But somehow, Zelda thought she would not have been quite so quick to jump into bed with her if it hadn't been for that influence. Even arranging the meeting in the first place had only been because Zelda had felt the urge rising. An urge which had triggered with her prayer as a catalyst.
Zelda's feet moved steadily downward as her mind raced, finally able to devote itself to what she thought she should do best: just thinking.
She might have been blessed with great good looks before the sunburst-shaped scar that marred her left eye, and might be friendly and kind. She might have forgotten the vast majority of all that she ever knew. Still, Zelda knew her mind was sharp and quick, and it would not lie still without significant effort. It was accustomed, she knew, to working things through. To solving mysterious and puzzles. To learning.
It was simply what came most naturally to her, even more than holding a bow.
As she entered the more level section of the trail near the grove below, Zelda found out her easy, quiet, peaceful trek would not quite be without its dangers. A single Chu, the blue ooze monsters, dropped out of a tree on her left.
Still, it was a simple matter as it reconstituted itself from the fall her the princess-warrior to free the worn farming hoe she still carried from Ginner Woods. She swung it with both hands from right to left almost like a scythe, and her whole, slender body carried through to add a little more force to the blow. There was another quiet crack, and the tool's long handle splintered a little more, but it still held. The Chu did not. It splashed into acidic blue goop that hissed and steamed against the tree the Chu had fallen out of, which made her wonder even as her brilliant green eyes swept around for more danger.
How had the Chu been up there, if its acid caused such harm? Surely it would have eaten through the branches that supported it?
Or did the Chu, somehow, turn their acidic properties off, perhaps with a force of will? Did their attacks, and their deaths, then reactivate the acid? Or were they something else, and tearing the central core apart release whatever chemical turned the rest into a corrosive material?
She supposed it didn't matter, not really. It was certainly a curiosity, and it would niggle at her brain for days if she let it, but Zelda considered the matter a relatively low priority. So she added its jelly-like core to her satchel's numerous contents, and kept exploring, this time with the hoe already in her hands.
Just in case.
What she found was not danger, but clearly a spot that, at least in the past, many citizens of Hateno had used for picnics, or even overnight camping a short ways outside of the town. Certainly, she suspected many of the younger adults or older teens used it as a trysting spot, for their were old bedrolls still hiding among the grasses, nestled behind several bushes, and even stashed in a pile behind a large rock. Among there were dozens of clay jugs, pots, and the occasional glass bottle with aged, faded labels that denoted wines, spirits, or beers.
Thinking about it was getting her dander up, but Zelda couldn't help it. Aside from a single ring of lilies that she used a nearby stone outcropping to jump into in the center of the pool for a quick cool-down, without even removing her clothes this time, there was little else to distract her.
There weren't even any fish that she could see in the pond, just the one lonely, probably voyeuristic Korok.
Half-way down the next leg of the path, she startled a group of blue-winged herons into flight, and her quick reflexes with a bow netted her dinner after she quickly freed a couple of legs with her belt knife and left the rest for local scavengers with a silent thanks to the Heron and the wondrous world that had provided it.
Slightly more surprising were a pair of yellow-clawed, teal green-shelled crabs that hunted through sea-worn grass nearer the bottom of the trail. She was still a hundred feet or more above the shore and a quarter mile away, so it seemed a bit strange they were there. She didn't hesitate to add the tasty-looking seafood to her supply, though one of them pinched her finger as she snatched it up, making her yelp in pain before it entered her satchel along with the first.
The cries of gulls soon made themselves known, along with islander hawks that circled further up ni the atmosphere, and then she was there, her Sheikah tabi boots shuffling quietly in soft, warm sand. Zelda let herself take a long, slow breath, inhaling through her nose as the first true breaths of clean, salted air hit her nose. She had been getting faint hints of the coast for weeks, but now, here, with the water just a couple of hundred feet away, it was overpowering. And she loved it.
Without hesitating, knowing- or at least hoping- that the nearby area was monster-free, Zelda quickly removed the tabi boots, suneate, the shin guards, and the outer layer of her leg armor to get a better feel of the warm, soft sand that shifted beneath her toes. It...
"It's divine," Zelda moaned to herself, her eyes drifting shut in ecstasy. As if a skilled masseur were working her feet over, she imagined, without knowing what the word meant. A massage, she knew, and equated the sand to a dry, oil-less but heated massage performed by a master. The grass, high on the spit of land, was still present but sparse with occasional stones peeking through. Otherwise, everywhere she stepped was bliss.
"I am definitely visiting the beach more often," Zelda told the empty air and distant surf. "I've never felt anything like this. At least, not that I can remember."
She passed several sparse trees, strangely bare of green with spiked, sharp scales that pointed upward and long, sometimes sway-curved trunks with even stranger branches. Each tree had somewhere between five and twelve in total, and they were long and thin, almost leaf-like themselves, though each branch had fifty or more, perhaps a hundred, long, feather-like leaves that hung from each side of it like a fan. Atop most of them were wide, pale green fruits of some sort that Zelda thought were roughly the size of her head. Below one tree, a fruit had fallen and now lay, broken and fermenting with a cloud of insects around it.
As she approached to investigate, the smaller bugs, most of whom were not of an interesting variety, began to land on her skin, but she was no stranger to nature and thought little of it. The smell... it was sweet, but overpowering. "Perhaps if I can get a fresh one that's also ripe...?"
She thought briefly about trying to shimmy her way up the trees, but she was not the best climber and simply touching the sharp upper side of the trees' scales had her think better of that. Perhaps with some very sturdy boots and leather pants, along with gloves. Not the thin Sheikah armor, or the shorts she was currently wearing which were even less protective.
But there were ways. She had an abundance of arrows, and she suspected a good shot would tear one from its stalk, even if it caused a bit of damage to the flesh. And if she didn't care about making some noise, a Remote Bomb would bring down a whole tree, and the fruit with it. Yes, it might make the fruit splatter on the ground, but at least she could taste one that way, and not waste an arrow.
She debated for over a minute, waffling back and forth as she enjoyed the feel of warm sand between her toes, and had all but decided on the arrow when a peculiar hissing sound caught her attention and she looked up.
Only to throw herself backward as a large pseudopod lashed through the air. A blue one, accompanied by an amorphous mass of goo with two huge, yellow eyes and a dense core.
The largest Chu she had ever seen- and there were two other smaller ones, still larger than most she had encountered, flanking it.
Her decision was made in an instant, and less than a second later, she dropped the round, glowing blue sphere of a bomb toward the ground. With dexterity she would not have known she possessed, the princess used the curved top of her bare foot to kick it forward, already regretting removing even a bit of her armor.
The bomb sunk deep into the goopy mass of the Chu, which neither slowed it down nor seemed to register as a threat. Its mistake, Zelda thought almost gleefully as she turned and ran. Of course the Chu followed, surging forward as the insects and algae or whatever else was living in the sand boiled in the wake of their passing. But she was always a decent runner, and far more fleet than a slimy monster like a Chu. It took less than ten seconds for her to be well clear of the blast radius, and she turned to watch, still skipping backward, as she made it explode.
The Chu she had blown up was blasted apart with several wet, large chunks landing in a half-dozen spots around a wide circle. The other two, smaller but further away, rippled and rolled, but didn't seem much damaged. They kept coming, but Zelda was no longer worried by such a minor threat as even three big Chu. It wasn't like she had to fight them to a stand-still. She could almost outwalk them, and having access to Remote Bombs was more than enough if she was careful to maintain her distance. They also weren't smart enough to avoid them, unlike most Bokoblins that had seen them before.
The second Chu was erased in with a bang that left no single piece larger than her fingertips, aside from its singular core. Zelda grinned as she called up a square bomb this time, since it took the Slate time to recharge after calling up one. That one she spun in an arm by the ring at its top and gave it a long, underhanded toss. Too hard, as it turned out, and it sailed past the last Chu. But no matter. Even though it lurched toward her with the detonation behind it, Zelda's third round Bomb was ready and already rolling toward it.
For the first time, she almost thought she saw a look of fear in the Chu's simple, red-yellow eyes before it exploded, too.
Flush with a fierce joy at her easy victory despite being ambushed, Zelda hurried to use another bomb to bring down one of the nearby trees, and was rewarded with three of the large palm fruits to add to her food stores with the Chu jelly.
Of which there was a lot. By the time Zelda had gathered up the larger bits, she found not three but ten cores, most of which had come from the largest one. Even the others had two or three each, which was the most she'd ever obtained at once. Zelda grinned, then used her boot knife to cut into the large, heavy fruit she had saved for last.
The aroma was indeed sweet, pungent, and rich... and it tasted delicious, both sweet and tart. Zelda smiled, then set the palm fruit down to climb a nearby boulder and have a gander. She found nothing nearby. No threats, no ripples in the water from anything larger than a fish or crab- several of which crawled around the beach, mostly ignoring her- or even other Chu. The day was warm, and it was close to lunchtime.
Yes... she could afford to be a little risky. Surely other monsters would've come upon her while she was already fighting, right?
With a happy sigh, she stripped off the rest of her armor, caring only to keep the boulder between herself and the distant laboratory, which only someone with a spyglass could have used to see her with anyway. Then she sat down, nude, on the sand and buried her toes in the beach. Leaning back against the rock, Zelda largely closed her eyes aside from opening them to slice off another piece of the delicious fruit that was now going to be her lunch, and possibly dinner.
The sea breeze was gentle and warming, the sun nearly too much so, and the sound of the waves regular and soothing. Perhaps it was no surprise that Zelda soon drifted off to sleep.
Stupid girl, she cursed herself as she hurried to dress once more. She didn't really care to be nude when monsters were strolling the beach. They were already horrid, and didn't need the temptation. It was just two red Bokoblins, thankfully, and neither seemed to have spotted her impromptu resting place yet, but it was just a matter of time.
It was only through luck that their arguing had woken her up before they did, and Zelda did not want to think about what would have happened if it had not.
She was just pulling on the mask that covered the lower part of her face when the Bokoblins, arguing about who would eat more fish for dinner, of all things, came around the rock. That was also the exact moment she vanished in the other direction. Zelda circled it quietly, then, when she reached a more angled side, shifted direction to climb atop the large, pointed boulder. She lay flat against it while the Bokoblins stopped. One turned to face the ocean and moved its loincloth to piss into the water, while the other idly picked its nose.
Disgusting creatures, she thought.
Then they moved on, their argument never ceasing. Fortunately, they didn't seem to have noticed her, her footprints, or the remains of the fruit still there on the sand below.
Zelda exhaled a sigh of relief as they passed out of sight, moving toward the distant rocky pillars and the stonier beach below the lookout she had used earlier that morning. "That was too close. Keep your guard up, girl..."
An hour later, the sun started to drop low in the sky, as she moved further east. A strange rock formation had confused her at first, until the yellow stone, which rose from the beach sand despite being of the same color, had shifted and she spotted it.
A single eye. A slitted, single eye that stuck out a little from a horned, frilled head. Lizalfos.
It was camouflaged, blending in with the sand, but poorly. Not in the color of its scales, those were nearly perfect, but simply by appearing to be sand colored when it was not buried or otherwise hidden. Perhaps this was a particularly idiotic example of the lizardfolk?
Zelda didn't care. All she really cared was that the Lizalfos she had seen, so far, all seemed to serve the Calamity... and that it was armed, perhaps laying in wait for an innocent visitor from Hateno.
Its green eye opened as she crept closer, and she knew it was too late. With spring-like legs, the Lizalfos shot into the air, dozen feet or more so its legs and tail were well above her head, then, spitting and hissing in a reptilian way, turned the head of its spear downward.
Two halves of some great fish or lizard's jaw, maybe even a Lizalfos' judging by the size and shape of it, were lined with teeth in a pincer shape. It smashed into the sand she had vacated a moment later. Zelda felt the world tumble as she did, afternoon sky blending with yellow-orange sand, tinted grass, and crystal-blue water in a torrent of disorienting color.
She was dizzy and actually had to shake her head to clear it as she rose to her feet. The cerulean-scaled Lizalfos spat again as it fought to pull the spear free of the sand. Zelda didn't give it much of a chance. She kipped backward once more, dropping another round bomb onto the beach. That one she kicked as hard as she could, her finger already on the detonation button. As it rolled past the spear, she twitched, and the explosive went off between the Lizalfos' blue-scaled legs.
But it was no Bokoblin, or Chu. While the Lizalfos was thrown into the air, somehow it kept its grip on the spear. Even when it landed on its back fifteen feet away, the creature was able to use the pole shaft to lever itself to its feet while she pulled out a square bomb and threw it forward, too. Long, thin toes splashed, throwing water to the sides and forward as the Lizard-man charged, spear forward. Zelda waited... hurled, and bang once more. Again, she was too late. The radius of the explosion did not hit Zelda, but the Lizalfos, on the nearer side of it, did. Not with the spear, but with one thickly-muscled thigh as it blasted past her.
Zelda was thrown to the ground in a spin and landed hard on her side. She was about half-way up when she heard the meaty thunk of the Lizalfos hitting the sand she had been trying to sneak past. There would be no time for bombs anymore, it was already getting to its feet, agile and deadly. Her bombs would take time to recharge, and she could not wait.
The familiar, worn hoe fell into her hands. It would not do much more before cracking, so she started loosening another weapon too, hoping it would save her some time.
Crack. The sharpened ends of the spear ended just nudging Zelda's left breast under the hastily-donned armor, with her arms straining to stop the Lizalfos with the handle of her weapon. It was a losing battle, and the Lizalfos knew it. She simply wasn't strong enough to compete directly with one of the creatures, Goddess-given strength or not.
Her feet dragged furrows in the sand as it pushed, but her back was arching, and her elbows and shoulders aching, burning already. She would not last much longer. Either she would lose her balance and it would be on her, or her arms would give out.
She ducked, spinning the haft in her hands to use the Lizalfos' own momentum and strength against it. The extra force on one end of the hoe made it spin even faster, and the business end whirled up as if it were being shot from a cannon. At the very least, a trebuchet. The scales on a Lizalfos' belly, like with most lizards or serpents, were thick but flexible, able to absorb considerably more punishment than the smaller ones on the back and sides. This blue Lizalfos was no exception, and though it was stronger, faster, and fiercer- not to mention hardier- than any of the green ones she had fought previously, those same scales had also been weakened by two explosions and hard landings.
The hoe dug deep, and Zelda caught the odor of offal for a moment as gore and viscera spewed out the hole torn open in its belly. The blade of the hoe went with the monster, and the broken shards of the shaft, cracked in pieces too short to even make a crude Boko-style spear with, she tossed aside as she reached for her next weapon.
She didn't have a variety of choices, and for a moment Zelda allowed herself to regret letting the two red Bokoblins pass earlier. One of them had a club, and the other a tree branch. Either would have been better than nothing, which was what the hoe was now. Her Moblin spear, gained at great cost- nearly being raped by one of the giant creatures, before she was killed or brought to the Calamity itself- fell into her hands and expanded in size while the Lizalfos, glaring furiously, ripped the steel head of the farming tool from its belly with a snarl. Though blood poured from it, Zelda strongly suspected it wasn't close to being defeated. Even if the wound was lethal, almost certainly a festering intestinal wound, she doubted the Lizalfos would care if it died to infection in a few days, as long as it brought her down first.
She couldn't let that happen.
Fortunately, while the Lizalfos had greater reach and size, was easily stronger than her, and had a more fearsome weapon, she was quite comfortable with a spear in her hands. Far more, at least, than she was even with a broadsword. It was true the Moblin weapon was crude, but it was sturdy and thick, fire-charred for additional rigidity and hardness, and far sharper than the broken-off tips of a Bokoblin's spear. She spun it once in her hand, then readied her grip one- and two-thirds of the way down the haft, just as her mysterious teacher- not the knight she knew was her Champion and now considered a former lover, too, but a woman's voice- had instructed.
It charged forward once more, overextended in a lancer's motion because of the balance provided by its long, muscular tail. Zelda blinked as it closed the distance, then moved as quickly as she could to her right, its weaker side. The first thrust only scored a glancing hit on the Lizalfos' upper arm. The second, faster, as she whipped the head around, ripped a line of scales off its upper back, just above the waist. A follow-up, her body whipping a hundred and eighty degrees around as she did, smashed the thicker bottom end of the spear into the base of the Lizalfos' tail. The last was a final thrust, into the weak spot at the base of their jaws, where...
"See," the mysterious warrior said, increasingly talkative as she had begun to berate him less and less for following her around, "Most monsters have their weaknesses. For a Lizalfos, it isn't much. But at the base of their skull, really the upper back half of their necks, there's very little protecting the spine. You can see it here. Hit them in that spot, thrust if you can, and there's nothing stopping you from hitting the brain or breaking their neck if you've got a heavier weapon."
Another snipped, mid-battle, but it happened so fast that Zelda lost what felt like no time at all. She was still mid-stab, at any rate, and shifted her grip a fraction of an inch to raise the head a little higher. One spine on the sharpened branch skipped across one of the Lizard-man's muscled shoulders, but the thicker spike at the tip rammed straight into the very spot her companion had pointed out, and it dug deep. With a shout of rage and defiance, Zelda pushed harder, and the Lizalfos stumbled, its body shaking madly. The spear fell from its grip, and she pushed on, bearing the thing to the sand beneath her, and pushed again, deeper. Deeper!
Zelda snarled, furious, as the creature vanished into smoke.
How dare it... How dare it attack her, attack innocents, and then flee into the mercy of death!
She wanted it to hurt more, damn it!
Annoyed at herself for losing emotional control after several seconds, Zelda cracked her neck, rubbed the no-doubt bruised shoulder its impact had left, and bent to pick up the horn, and the reinforced bone spear it had left. Interested in the design, she passed the scope of the Sheikah Slate over it, expecting its analysis.
"A... Dragonbone Boko spear, is it? Well, the bones do indeed seem very hard. I'm not sure if they're going to really be dragon bones, though. Fossilized, at least, I think? Either way, they- yes, they're definitely sharp. Ouch."
Zelda sucked at the minor wound on her finger for a moment as she contemplated. Her Moblin's spear had not held up very well, but throwing it aside would be a waste. It probably had a few more hits in it, at least. The new one was doubtless more formidable, but like most monster's weapons, crudely made and almost the opposite of a durable tool.
In the end, she did decide to keep it, if only because it seemed wasteful to toss it into the water as driftwood, or break it before it finished serving its usefulness against the Calamity that had caused its creation.
With a bit of the creature's thick, muscled tail, a horn, and a talon left behind, Zelda scooped it all up, and her increasingly perverted mind wondered briefly what each of them would feel like inserted into her body. The tail was thick, flexible, and... probably would decay. The horn would not fit properly, it was the wrong shape to go far, but maybe the tip...? She shuddered. What was she even thinking? The talon would... well, in a word, rip her apart. The three spikes on the back would tear her insides to bits. Not a pleasant way to go, she decided, bleeding to death from the vagina. Not worth it, either.
Then she spotted the chest.
The Lizalfos had been laying atop it. Zelda grinned, and stepped closer, already reaching for the Sheikah Slate so she could use Magnesis to free it from the sand more easily than trying to dig it up.
... Only it didn't register. The chest seemed metallic in shape, covered in a fine layer of dust, but it did not show up as metallic, steel or iron, to the Slate.
Zelda frowned. Was it broken...?
No, that was easy to test. Holding it in front of one of the buckles on her armor displayed the bits in the same highlighted violet-pink it always had.
The frown deepened. Tentatively, Zelda prodded it with the end of her Moblins' spear, trying to scrape away some of the sand. Was it bronze, perhaps...?
What came away was not sand, but scales of a different sort, almost like the miniscule scales of a moth's wing.
Along with a huge bulb, as a full-grown Octorok sprang up from the beach. Zelda yelped, and dropped her spear in surprise as the beady but bulbous eyes stared back at her, the tube-like mouth inhaling and exhaling rapidly as it inflated further.
Tentacles writhed around her feet.
She didn't think.
Horror filled her, and Zelda threw herself into a roll. Somehow, her fingers closed around the shaft of the weapon as the Octorok turned to face her, inhaling quickly now, no doubt in preparation to launch a stone her way.
The sharpened, charred wood slashed across the air-sack just once, but that was all it took. With a concussive blast at least as strong as one of her bombs, Zelda was thrown backward to land upside-down in the water. It was a good thing, too, as if she didn't come up drenched, she would likely have broken her neck.
She was dripping when she reached the shore again, but there was no Octorok, and no chest.
Just a few Rupees- green ones- and two remaining, slowly-shrinking air sacs.
Zelda sighed. An Octorok masquerading as a treasure chest was a new one, at least to her. Bushes, grasses, lily-pads, those seemed easy enough to believe. But a chest? That required a level of evolution and growth she would not have expected.
... Or deliberate modification. Had the Calamity done it?
She had no way to know, of course, but she added it to the ever-growing list of questions for later, while she added the money to her pouch.
A single bomb was enough to net Zelda two fish she'd never seen before but that tasted quite good for dinner. The Slate identified them as a Mighty Porgy and an Armored Porgy, the first red- and yellow-striped, the other deep blue with lighter blue spots and face.
Night was about to fall, but that would, she hoped, only make her job easier. It was far more convenient to exhibit stealth, cunning, and guile, when your enemies were sleeping the night away, after all. That was good, because two hours after her dinner was consumed, Zelda was near enough to the camp to see individual monsters even without the Slate's help.
