You can find more of this on by Subscribe/Star (dot adult slash KajaWilder), it's posted past Ch. 110 there. You can find the same on my new (via Discord per their ToS), under /WildErotica. The DISCORD is at h-t_t-p_s-:_/-/_discord-._g-g_/-N9yDASt6Cw (taking out hyphens and underscores, 'cause FFnet). If you prefer direct links, go to my Discord and follow the 'links in general' section to find the ones you want. All of my fics are well ahead of what I post here, often 10-30 chapters ahead.
You can also read my original fiction on Kindle, or Kindle Unlimited for free. My author page: www ._amazon ._com / stores / Kaja-Wilder/ (this time taking out underscores and spaces, but leave the one hyphen).
Enjoy!
Chap. 88: Bones of the Earth
Zelda debated using the relative dry spot beneath the broken, shattered skull-rock and the heated rocks to dry her clothing and hair before continuing on, but two factors changed her mind: the rain wasn't letting up any time soon judging by the thick, rolling, dark gray and slow-moving clouds above, and more importantly, the skull-rock stank with the burned remains of refuse, shite, and Bokoblins.
So she climbed back atop Nightmare, pulled out her traveler's hood as quickly as she could to at least partially let her hair dry, and started riding west-southwest. Up over the hills and meadows, into a small ruined hamlet that might've simply been a large farm with outbuildings, or a once-vibrant ranch, given the horse herds that roamed the area to the north and more locally.
On a lark, purely for fun, she decided to put Nightmare through his paces a bit better, despite the now-pouring rain, as she passed through the ruins. Conveniently, a series of fences along what passed for the central road gave her ample opportunity. The large stallion broke into a run almost immediately as she urged him to, and cleared the first hurdle with a bounding leap that had the princess whooping for joy.
The second made him stumble slightly on landing, as there had been a large puddle neither had seen in the rain afterward, but he recovered and kept running without apparent injury. And on the third, once more, Nightmare performed perfectly, a smooth bound with no hitches at all, that barely even jarred his rider's knees.
"Perfect job, Nightmare, just excellent," she cheered, reaching down to pat his neck a few times, before fishing out an apple as a further prize. "But now I think I need to go look for whatever giggled. I'm guessing it's a Korok."
Sure enough, she found the stick-wielding spirit just a few minutes later, still watching her from atop a burned, blackened beam of wood. With a new seed in her satchel, Zelda hurried from scant shelter to even more scant shelter, while the rain grew steadily thicker, a drowning susurrus against wood and grass and mud that left her wary of threats that might sneak up without her hearing, with her vision hampered by both hood and rain.
Her search revealed little of value, unfortunately, so she mounted up once more and resumed her increasingly drenched ride.
Up and down another hill, from one barely-visible landmark to the next in another huge oak, then a tattered banner-pole, and finally a rocky butte as the sky grew darker still, she and Nightmare moved on. Both, she was sure, equally miserable. Zelda loved the rain… but after being wet and cold for eight, ten hours, or more, it started to wear on a body, both figuratively and literally.
"Hold, whoah, Nightmare," she croaked after a while longer. They were still approaching the large butte, which was little more than a vague shadow since night had fallen, a blot against the distant line of stars on the horizon, which was the only light she could see. "We may as well just wait here. I know it's terrible, but it's getting too dangerous to seek out shelter in the dark."
Zelda slid from the saddle on aching thighs, and climbed up onto a small pile of nearby rocks, hoping for some sign, any sort of shelter nearby. But the closest, she thought, was the distant shadow of an oak behind her. "Damn… we've almost been going in circles," the princess cursed, as she recognized the tree for the one they had passed three hours earlier, before even finding the banner-pole.
She thought about pressing on, as what little light there was seemed to say that there was relatively smooth going between them and the rocky rise they had been heading toward, with just grassy plains broken by rock for another mile or so, but she could see no shelter even against the cliffs, and the rain was coming from their direction. To get any cover at all, they would at least have to circle the entire rise, which might take another two miles or more.
"Haah… I guess it's just a night in the rain. I don't even really have a useful tent."
Before she could pull out her cold-weather gear, which was at least partially water-resistant, like her hood, the ground beneath her moved.
And again, sending Zelda to a knee against the sharp rocks. "Ow!"
Then her stomach swam, as her vision tilted. A moment later, Zelda was a dozen feet in the air, on ground that moved and rocked, and she heard Nightmare cry out in fear, before the sound of his feet galloping away in the wet grass made her groan.
Then her mind, tired from the long day, caught up.
She was in the air because she was on the top of a Stone Giant.
A Talus!
The same sort of monster she'd fled from in the Forest of Spirits, and that had broken her ankle with a well-placed through. The kind that Celessa said took entire platoons and then some to bring down.
A creature of the elements, made of the very rock of the earth, nearly impenetrable to damage.
But her hand was holding on, by instinct alone, to a darker patch on the set, slippery rock. A vein of iron ore, which sparkled as gold and ruby glinted off a flash off lightning some miles off, the first she'd seen that night.
And it thrummed with magical energy, with power.
Like a Chu's core, Zelda thought, agape at the ramifications of the revelation. They aren't unkillable after all. Still stone, I'll need something heavy…
The creature, which seemed to have woken because of her or Nightmare's footsteps, or maybe her words, slowly turned and lumbered after the horse, which easily outpaced it. But though the Talus' short legs were slow, it was tall enough that it still covered ground at least as well as a running man. But it didn't seem to have noticed her atop it.
She pulled herself to her feet carefully, gently, and the rocking motion of the Stone Talus almost reminded her of standing in a cart on the move, though it was a bit less regular. Claymore…? No. The Shiekah's eight-fold…? Too fragile for this, though it's sharp. That… yes!
The most deadly weapon she'd ever recovered from a Bokoblin: a Dragonbone great-club, as long as her whole body, though the spined vertebrate that made up the damaging head were relatively light. Lighter, in fact, than the knight's claymore she had first considered. She enlarged it and held the weapon high, making sure her grip was secure, and took careful aim, moving the bat back and forth through the air as she tried to adjust for the strangely gentle rocking movement beneath her.
Here goes nothing… I have to make this count!
Crack!
Shards of stone and bone alike went flying, pattering against Zelda, the Talus, and flying out into the dark rain. The ground beneath her reeled, and the princess nearly lost her footing despite being ready for it.
Somehow, without a mouth or even a face, she heard the Talus groan, apparently in pain. A low, rumbling sound like a boulder shifting against gravel. "It worked," she whispered, and hauled back again.
Crack!
The Talus stumbled. Fell to one of its short knee, and she fell with it. Somehow, desperately, Zelda kept one arm hooked around a ruby outcropping on the creature's core, and the heavy club and her feet dangled downward for several precarious seconds, a half-dozen feet in the air.
A boulder-like fist- no, that was a boulder- hit the earth, sending up a spray of mud and water, and the Talus pushed itself to her feet.
Zelda fell onto her back on its head, and rolled quickly, glad the air hadn't been knocked out of her, or that she hadn't landed on one of the many sharp edges. She got to her feet as quickly as she could and lifted the club high for an overhead swing. Another strike, and another, and the Talus began to shudder.
The smaller arm smashed into the core from the other side, no doubt in an attempt to dislodge her, and Zelda ducked behind it to protect herself from another spray of shrapnel. Idiot might destroy itself at that rate!
When she stood up again, the Talus was trembling, shaking…
"One more," she hissed, hoping she was right.
She didn't see the larger fist coming in from the other side.
But it didn't matter. The fist had raised high, and her Boko Bat had come down before it could swing, shattering the core into thirty or more chunks.
Beneath her, the Talus crumbled, all at once, and almost as fast as the core had broken apart beneath the hammer-blows of what might she could muster. She tumbled through the air, landing on the same bruised knee from before and her free hand, but mostly upright. "Hah… hah… I… I did it. I killed a Talus. A slayer, a killer… it takes whole platoons. I did it… hah…" Then, as she pulled herself to her feet she crowed, as loudly as she could into the deafening rain, "I fucking did it!"
Her Dragonbone Boko Bat was shredded, all but one of the spines had broken off in the impact and the largest, end-cap spinal piece was broken in half, hanging in place only by virtue of the shoddy, or well-worn, aged ropes that held the thing together in the first place. It might be good for one or two more swings, so Zelda shrunk it back down as she tied it to the weapons strap on her satchel once more.
Then she set about gathering the multitude of gems that had been left behind, and not a small one.
Pebblits, what she and Celessa thought were essentially Talus young, would sometimes leave Amber or even rarely other gems as they died. A full-grown Talus, it seemed, was not only many, many times larger, but with a much more rich core.
Three chunks of amber, four of opal, five rubies, including the hand-sized one her arm had been wrapped around at one point, and a few smaller pieces of regular flint added a huge sum of wealth to her satchel, which helped Zelda understand why some people would try and hunt the colossal elemental creatures for more than just the safety of their homes.
She couldn't be sure, of course, as she was still new to the greater economy of Hyrule's remnants, but Zelda was reasonably sure that, in a frantic minute or two, at most, she alone had just earned upwards of a thousand Rupees, maybe even two.
Yes, it would have flattened her if she had been hit, but by coming up with it, staying quiet, it hadn't even known she was there, until it was too late. I can totally do that again. At least, with cover of rain. Whatever senses they have, I'm sure the pounding of rain masks any sound or vibration-sensing organs they have. It must've been terribly confused.
The rain finally let up as Zelda and Nightmare, who came back on the first whistle once things had quieted down thankfully, made it to the bluff.
A bluff where she found a very round hole in the ground, signifying another Korok, she was sure, and on the other side, barely hidden by the rise, a rock-fall and a buried arm, skeletal, sticking from beneath it.
Two bombs cleared the mess, which Zelda wouldn't have bothered with had they not been in an overhang. When the twin explosions cleared the pile of rubble fairly effectively, but did not cause more rocks to fall, Zelda headed into the little overhang, and urged her again-nervous horse in to join her. "Come on, boy, it's safe enough I think."
It was, at least, mostly dry.
A quick check of the body revealed that it had been a woman, or at least had worn a simple shift dress, but the only thing of value she carried was a plain steel necklace on which was set a small amethyst. No, that's cut- that's a Rupee! A purple Rupee!
Zelda pried it out quickly, with a whispered apology to the long-dead woman, before she decided to try and risk a fire. It would be highly visible, at least for a distance, in the dark night… but she desperately wanted to be warm.
She didn't remember falling asleep as the rain slowly gave way to the soft crackle of flame.
Even if her body ached with the uncomfortable night, the injuries from fighting the Talus, and the cold, Zelda still forced herself to climb the rise again as the sun began to break over the Zora's Domain's many high mountains. The air was brisk and clear, cleaner even than normal, with a scent of faint petrichor wafting in from the north, where distant clouds still covered the lofty, snowy mountains and the great forest in dark clouds and mist.
Here, though, the day was stunning already, as golden light moved visibly in a line from the west toward the base of the mountain and ridge behind her. The Squabble River was two miles to the south, and the great Hylia River two or three to the west, while the large forest she'd seen on the map around Rabia filled most of Zelda's vision to the north in a twisting line.
And a boulder, high at the top of the butte, with a little channel running down the slope to the west.
Zelda sighed, and gave the thing a powerful shove. Just one, thankfully, for the boulder was carefully set to follow the path down. A few minutes later, she heard a quiet thud in the distance, and a nearly-invisible sparkle of green before a Korok started flying toward her on a whirling leaf.
It took longer for the Forest Spirit to reach her than the boulder had to roll down, but Zelda still took her stinking seed with good grace, before gliding back down to the shelter she had found late the previous night, and moving on.
Another archery pinwheel filled her gaze an hour later, the aim of this one two acorns that floated high over the nearby forest edge.
A trio of Chu, slaughtered with a single bomb.
A Forest Octorok, that Zelda sheepishly took the green, wriggling tendril from, trying not to think about how she might use it to enjoy herself that night, and hoping no one had seen her eyes light up.
Ironshrooms, by the dozen. The forest, it seemed, was quite lush indeed.
To the west, Zelda spotted the ruined Guardian and the small outpost on the gravely beach where the Squabble and Hylia ran together just north of Proxim Bridge, though she was still east of the long structure herself. But she thought she'd already found the single treasure that remained after a hundred years of scavengers, so rather than take the easy route along the beach, or crossing the river without her horse to walk north after the bridge-crossing, she turned that way immediately, using the fiery, distant mountain-crown as a guide through the trees that suddenly seemed to envelope her like a cool blanket, shading the crisp morning air and sun alike.
The first green Octorok should've warned her.
Zelda was barely a hundred feet into the trees when she suddenly found herself beset. Stones came flying at her from all sides, including behind, in quick succession. She threw herself from Nightmare's back as the horse bolted again, this time back the way they came after rearing up and being struck in the chest after the first stone had narrowly missed the both of them.
Zelda cursed, dodged, weaved, and over the next several minutes, dispatched no fewer than six more tentacled, stone-spitting monstrosities.
Thankfully, that seemed to have been at least most of them in the southern reaches of the forest, for Zelda, panting and gasping for several minutes after the harried fight, was able to add a few rare Octorok Eyeballs and another half-dozen tentacles and possibly-edible fish to her collections without being further harassed.
Along with, of course, more acorns and a wide variety of mushrooms.
And beauty.
A gorgeous view, as the sun began to sink once more to her left, as Zelda beheld Batrea Lake.
It wasn't particularly large, perhaps two miles long north-south, and a mile and a quarter east-west, in a reverse-L shape, though quite rounded. Shallow from summer, too, she could see deer wading through near the center of the pool, up to just their bellies, though Zelda could quite easily see water-lines in the reeds and rocks several feet higher. Floods during the rainy season? Or when the snow-melt happens in spring? With the Hylia to the west, and Nabi Lake to the east, the water table must be quite high.
She couldn't see any spring or river inlets or egress, and there was barely any flow she could detect from where she crouched on a stone overlooking the slope down into the lake's southern side.
It was a position she had taken carefully for her admiration of the land's beauty, because she was not alone.
Not just Octoroks, though Zelda was sure now there were at least a few more on the far side of the lake, as one had stuck itself from the ground and looked around a bit, a distant greenish sphere, before it had vanished.
Bokoblins.
Lots of them.
Near the center of the lake's bend, a massive trunk, hollowed out by the passage of years, held something metallic she could just make out in the shadows of the afternoon sun. To the left of that, just north of Zelda by a few hundred feet, a Rito Watchtower climbed high into the sky, well over her head even on the hilltop rocks.
The tower rose from the eastern edge of a small islet on the west half of the lake, though calling it even that was being generous, as most of the reeds and grasses were submerged still. All except the base of the tall tower, and a very large tree.
A tree which carried in its strong branches two platforms full of Bokoblins. A blue, three- no, three blue, and five red ones. Armed with bows, explosive arrows, and just a few close-in weapons… and even with the Scope, Zelda couldn't find an easy way up. The Bokoblins had affixed a rope ladder, but pulled it up behind them.
No way up except the tower. I could maybe use Cryonis, but that would leave me very exposed, If I wait for night, and come in from the far side, they shouldn't see me. Then I'll have the height, and some cover with that overhang, and of course there might be one of the Rito's supply chests. It's a plan, at least.
So she slipped back into the trees once more, careful to stay out of sight of the watchful Bokoblins, and vanished into their shadows herself.
Another Octorok died on her slow, methodical way to the northeast, but as the sun set, Zelda's tabi-clad feet stepped into the water, and she took care to keep the tower's stone pillar, thin as it was, between her and the Bokoblin's camp.
Closer, closer, quietly now…
And up.
Slowly, gently, testing each hand- and foot-hold carefully, unwilling to use the climbing gear because of the noise it would generate this close to the camp, she climbed. Slid onto the top-most part exhausted, with aching hands and feet, but still healthy.
Somehow, she'd killed both the Talus and Octorok swarm without significant injury, though she had taken care to wrap her bloody knee that morning.
It was hard to judge heights without a reference, but after she had traded another dozen apples and a two dozen well-made arrows for the five bomb arrows she found in the chest at the pillar's peak, Zelda estimated she was as much as three times, though probably closer to two, higher than the rocks she had first seen the camp from.
Not to mention closer.
With the higher vantage, as well, Zelda could see the horse-shaped top of the stable that was her next destination, and the glow of a nearby Shrine beyond the trees, though it was across the mighty flow of the Hylia as well.
Again, she could just see the two bridges, one closer to Floret Sandbar in the north, and the one further south, now much nearer to her position, and just make out a few gaps that indicated the road split between the northern bridge and the Eagus she'd already crossed now a couple of days previous, the other road winding through the forest to the nearer bridge on the west.
Before she dealt with either route, though, Zelda thought it would probably be a good idea to remove the threat of a well-armed, well-defended camp.
Even if it was just temporary, they were far too close to the road for her comfort.
She loosed one of the newly-obtained Bomb Arrows at the head of the nearest sleeping blue Bokoblin from almost directly overhead.
With an ear-shattering boom, the silence of the night broke apart in flames and death, as half of a red Bokoblin, the lower, spiraled off into the shallow lake. The Bokoblin somehow survived the initial blast, though she was only forced to watch the ruined, blackened and bleeding face howl for a few seconds before it succumbed to the flames, accompanied by the shrieks of three other burning beasts.
Another Fire Arrow followed, this time aimed at their collection of explosives. Zelda was already annoyed that, somehow, the first shot hadn't ignited a single one.
The second did the trick, however, and a half-dozen more Bokoblins died in burning agony.
After that, it was a simple matter to hurl a pair of bombs, one left and one right of the long-dead tree that held the camp's structure up, and the remaining Bokoblins vanished in blasts of blue that left no trace she could see, and the camp was empty.
Threat neutralized, for now, she thought to herself grimly, before throwing the still-strung Phrenic Bow over her shoulder and unfurling her glider. "Now to finish the job for sure."
There was nothing left but ash, and a few measly weapons, the best of which was a simple traveler's bow.
After adding that to her again-full collection of archery equipment, Zelda had nothing left to do but pick up the few pieces of Bokoblin that had not burned away, and turn her feet toward the bridge, whistling once more for Nightmare to follow across the Owlin Bridge, crossing the Hylia at last.
