Shades of Blue

Fragments

Said I would find you...

Promised...

Where did you go?

Why weren't you there?

Have to remember...what happened?

What happened to you? To...to me?

Remember—

Link shook his head, pulling himself from the daze as he came upon the ruins, the top of the shrine just visible over the wall, shining a brighter orange in the light of the setting sun. Taking the Sheikah Slate in his hand, he pulled closer in on the map, examining what he could of the path that lead to it. Unfortunately the slate was not as detailed when it came to ruins as it was for roadways and mountain ranges. It had been massively helpful in finding the first three shrines, but to be fair, one of them had been right in front of him the entire time.

He put the slate away with a sigh and looked to the ruins in front of him, settling to sort things out on his own. There didn't seem to be much here, besides crumbling walls and some oddly shaped, overgrown machinery. His newly acquired runes could do nothing here either—there was no metal in his path, and no sense in creating blocks of ice or freezing objects. It was just a small maze of dilapidated former buildings, with doorways leading every direction possible.

The shrine poked out from a section near the center, just visible over the top of the wall. It would be easiest to simply scale the wall and drop into that section, especially considering that many of the doorways seemed to be collapsed over with rock.

This was the last of the shrines on the plateau. After this, he could go, he could leave this place and set off for...wherever it was in the distance that he needed to be. The beasts had remained silent in the hours since their last call, but he could still see the first of them circling in the distance. He could still tell that they were trapped there. He couldn't afford to waste any more time than he already had.

The first shrine had been so simple, once he understood how to use the magnesis rune. It was only a matter of finding the metal that he could move and maneuvering it into the proper place to move on. He had even acquired a bow in a hidden chest, as well as some odd screws and cogs that had appeared after he flung a metal box at...something. It was gone before he could see it, but he had heard the explosion of it. He had shrugged off the strangeness of it all, scanning the little bits of machinery into the slate with the rest of the items he had found and moving on.

The second shrine had been slightly trickier. The stasis rune was simple, but it was strange to control, and needed a long period to recharge before he could use it again. He had a close scrape with a rolling boulder, but besides that had made it out of the shrine just fine. After finding a heavy sledgehammer and knocking the last boulder out of his way, the rest had been simple. And the rune itself had proven incredibly useful several times already, letting him blast rocks out of the way (or into swarms of bokoblins).

The cryonis shrine was the most difficult to reach. Mount Hylia was absolutely frigid, snow falling even as the rest of the plateau remained pleasantly warm. He had stumbled through snow for what felt like eons before rushing into the shrine, trying to warm his freezing hands. Thankfully, the shrine itself was not difficult, once he had a handle on the rune. The ice blocks were strange, completely unlike regular ice—they were easy to climb and hardly cold at all. But they made finding a path through the flooded areas of the plateau much easier, and he was glad for it.

As he stared at the top of the final shrine, Link found himself wondering what rune would wait inside for him. Each of them had caught him largely off guard in their usefulness, and in the odd way they functioned. He could only hope that whatever rune awaited him inside the shrine would be as helpful as the others had been.