#I rewatch the botw memories just to cry | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heartofhryule · 6 years

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Breath of the Wild: Captured Memories - Chapter 7

Preface and Disclaimer; First and foremost; SPOILER WARNINGS. If you have not played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or completed the Captured Memories Quest and want to stay unspoilered for it, DO NOT READ. Keep Reading link provided for that reason.

So I am writing these as I play through BotW for the first time - which means they probably won’t be ‘one-a-day’ consistent - I have finally gotten all of the memories, but not yet gone for the final fight at Hyrule Castle. #Soon. I will post them as I can though! Promise! I also plan to include links to the cutscene for you to watch at the bottom, if so desired - at least for the ones I can find. Any other warnings that become necessary, I will add for content as I go. For now, enjoy! [All Chapters here for your reading enjoyment.]

Y’all… Dammit Salty Bird. I got irritated all over again rewatching the scenes to get the dialog for Revali’s scenes. He’s SUCH a well written character... and I hate him. Well, hate is strong. But I really, really dislike him a lot. Even when he “gets better” he’s still a !@#%%^&^er. But, I like this chapter, and I hope you will too. Chapter 7 - Revali’s Flap

The Rito Village, and land surrounding, was genuinely breathtaking. The wood and canvas huts that served as both homes and shops were built around the landscape’s large peaks of sandstone. This design allowed wind to blow through the village unhindered without disrupting structural integrity. At this altitude and in the region, Link was chilled. Pretty much constantly. But, he’d bought some new armor from the nice Rito vendor in trade for some amber and a few sapphires he’d found. Now he was nice and toasty warm.

Sitting by the cooking pot inside a part of the village’s inn, Link stared into the fire as his dinner marinated. He’d been here before. He could feel it, and this was not a place soon forgotten. It might have been if it was the first place he’d come, but even then the striking beauty of the land, difference in architecture, and the colorful individuality of its inhabitants were like nothing else in all of Hyrule.

Maybe that was the opinion of an ignorant Hylian child that he had once been. He had grown up in and around the Zora Domain in the Lanayru Province. This knowledge was coming back to him slowly, and explained why he’d gone there first. It also meant the Zora had never seemed odd to him, though consequently neither had they seemed particularly awe inspiring in a long, long while. The Rito however, were a different story.

Ladelling out his dinner from the pot, simmered fruit for the moment as he was cold, tired and in need of foraging for some supplies, Link leaned back against the solid wood support beam of the hut. Simmered fruit made him think of his mother - now that he remembered her face. She made the best, and had taught him long ago. It always made him feel better.

He needed that right now. There was a long way to go for him to find all the locations in Zelda’s album, and take back control of two more Divine Beasts from Ganon. He was tired, and had only arrived less than an hour before, deciding that he was going to eat something before speaking with the Tribe Chief. In the sky overhead, Vah Medoh let out a shrill and bone chilling cry. The enormous ancient technology flew overhead in the shape of a bird, stone and metal kept aloft by gigantic propellers and magic. Glancing up, and giving a good, long look at the Calamitous energies pulsing through the construct, Link ate his simmered fruit quickly.

No rest for the weary, as it were.

After eating, he asked directions to speak with the Rito Chief and had the oddest interaction. It was as though the Chief could tell he was the fallen hero, but couldn’t accept it. Link had stopped bothering to try and explain it to people months ago at this point. He was told of Teba, and that perhaps the warrior could help him, if nothing else the Chief was worried.

But it was the following conversation with Teba’s wife that ignited something in Link. She showed him Revali’s Landing, a flight platform just outside her home named for the Champion of the Rito from a century ago. Looking at it, Link was taken by a memory.

***

Standing out on the center of the flight platform, Link craned his neck and shielded his eyes to look up at the impressive Vah Medoh high above him. It truly was an impressive piece of ancient technology, and he’d listened intently to Zelda lament at great length that she would never be able to set foot on such a marvel. The sky was the clearest blue surrounding the Divine Beast, and wind cool despite the sun’s warmth. But then, it was always cool in the Hebra region.

Just as Link had the thought he should probably go find the Rito Champion, as that was whom he had climbed the peaks to see on behalf of Zelda, the wind picked up. At first it was small, but it rapidly build to a steady cyclonic breeze that seemed to come from beneath the platform.

In the blink of an eye and the flash of dark grey feathers, the Rito Champion appeared from below. Shooting up into the air high above, Revali spread his charcoal and white feathered wings, gliding down to a light and graceful landing before Link.

“Impressive, I know,” the Rito archer said in his normal, smug tenor. “Very few can achieve mastery of the sky. Yet I have made an art of creating an updraft that allows me to soar. It’s considered to be quite the masterpiece of aerial techniques, even among the Rito.” Revali turned to pose dramatically, one wing lifted where he was backlit by the sun in the beautiful day.

Link managed to not roll his eyes at Revali’s grandiloquence, giving him a tight-lipped smile. Revali didn’t like him - Link knew this. The Rito felt within his superior self image that he should have been the Princess’s appointed knight as he was clearly the most capable and worthy of the Champions. Clearly.

Though the Rito had never said those words exactly, it was the undertone of every word, sneer, snort and action the Champion took while in Link’s presence to date. Somehow the Hylian knight had a feeling this interaction would be no different.

Link found Revali cutting him a sharp look, speaking again before the knight could give a syllable of proper greeting. “With the proper utilization of my superior skills, I see no reason why we couldn’t easily dispense with Ganon,” be boasted with a bow. Hopping down from the railing on which he’d perched, Revali tucked his wings behind his back as if about to give a dissertation (which Link had no doubt he was going to do just that). Strolling forward, Revali’s expression was one of barely contained detestation. “Now then, my ability to explored the firmament is certainly of note… But let’s not- and pardon me for being so blunt-” he said as his tone changed from fairly condescending to outright patronizing, “Let’s not forget the fact that I am the most skilled archer of all the Rito.”

“Oh here we go,” Link muttered to himself into the wind.

“Yet despite these truths, it seems I have been tapped to merely assist you. All because you happen to have that little darkness sealing sword on your back. I mean, it’s just… asinine.” The only thing that prevented Link from drawing his sword then and there and teaching this megalomaniac of a Rito a lesson, was self control. As Revali’s red-feather rimmed, green eyes cut snidely to him, Link crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. The absurdity of this entire monologue was as laughable as it was insulting. Clearly, Revali liked hear the sound of his own voice.

“Unless,” the Rito Champion added after a moment, “You think you can prove me wrong?” He took one large step closer to Link. The bird man who was a good head taller than the Hylian leaned in, beak to nose and invading Link’s personal space aggressively. “Maybe, we should just settle this one on one.”

Link opened his mouth to say that he had no problem with Revali… not until this conversation at least, but the archer turned away and continued his drama. “But where?” he asked the wind, one wing crossed his chest as the other pretended to stroke his beak in thought. “Oh, I know! How’bout up there?!”

With a grand sweep of one wing, Revali motioned to the sky, where Vah Medoh was soaring past, making its rounds. “Oh! You must pardon me,” Revali chuckled, his tone even more supercilious than before, “I forgot you have no way of making it up to that Divine Beast on your own.” The last words were spoken with actual open aggression as the Champion spread his wings sharply, and took to the skies, leaving Link behind on the platform.

As Revali grew smaller towards Vah Medoh, and the vision began to fade, the Rito’s parting jab echoed the skies. “Good luck sealing the Darkness!”

***

As he came back to himself, Link was being stared at oddly by Teba’s concerned wife. Apparently she’d asked if he was alright, while he’d been lost to the past. “Oh, I’m sorry, yes - thank you ma’am.”

Giving him an uncertain look, she touched a delicate wing to her beak. “If you’re sure… you seemed… angry? Irritated at least. Are you well?”

Cracking his neck at the legitimate frustration Revali’s personality had left him with, he nodded. “It was… just not a pleasant memory, ma’am. Sorry to space out like that- but I promise, I will find your husband, and bring him back alive.

“Oh thank you!” she said sincerely. “Please… be safe.”

---

The knight held his shoulder and looked around the topside of Vah Medoh. The Windblight Ganon creature that had held control of Vah Medoh for so long was gone, fallen to the Master Sword. Well the Master Sword, and a not insignificant amount of bomb arrows.

Staring at the Main Control panel ten yards from where he stood, injured and exhausted, Link smirked to himself. He should just sit down, right here, and bake some apples to eat so he could regain a bit of his strength. It had been a hard fight! It had taken a lot out of him! And Revali could sit around and complain all he wanted, since there wasn’t anything the spirit of the Rito Champion could do about it.

He deserved as much for the prickly and haughty manner in which he’d been speaking while Link tried to subvert Ganon’s corruption. Though the change in tone as the hylian’s repeated successes went on had not gone unnoticed by the knight.

No, No Link wouldn’t keep him waiting… that would have been cruel. With a sigh, Link closed the distance between himself and the Main Controls, setting the Shiekah slate on the tablet as he had so many times elsewhere. The bulb, large as a room and intricate with ancient energy, changed from orange to blue, and pulsed once… twice… three times as Vah Medoh was not returned to control of the Champions.

“Well I’ll be plucked,” Revali’s echoic, ethereal voice said from behind him, “You defeated him, eh?” Link cut his eyes over his shoulder and turned around, braced for a potentially long and self absorbed speech. There Revali stood, incorporeal as both Daruk and Mipha had been, green spirit fire dancing around him where he had just landed. Spreading his wings wide, Revali seemed reserved… for Revali. “Who would have thought?”

Looking at each other a long moment, Link felt… differently than he had before. Mipha and Daruk had been his friends, people he cared a great deal for. Revali and he had not been friend, and even actively disliked one another a century ago. And yet, there was still a sadness in Link’s heart, seeing the Rito Champion’s spirit.

Noting that the archer dropped his gaze and looked away before he spoke, the Rito’s next words were surprising to the hylian. “Well done.”

But Revali continued, and the moment was over. “I suppose I should thank you now that my spirit is free. This returns Medoh to its rightful owner.” With a grand gesture to the sky of one wing, Revali straightened, clearly meaning himself. “Hmph,” he added with a callous expression. “Don’t preen yourself just for doing our job.”

Link pressed his lips together and raised one eyebrow. “Oh yes. We could never have that from any Champion,” he mumbled sardonically. If Revali heard, he didn’t show it.

“I do suppose you’ve proven your value as a warrior. A warrior worthy of my unique ability. The sacred skill that I have dubbed Revali’s Gale!” Despite the posing and flapping of wings, Link forgave the Champion’s drama in the face of the nicest thing Revali had ever said about or to him.

With yet another set of dramatic movements, Revali’s spirit summoned and sent an orb of green spirit energy hurtling at Link, and as it entered him body, a familiar, strong whirlwind kicked up, lifting Link from his feet and tossing him into the air quite unexpectedly. With a flip and twist, Link landed without injury on one knee, and looked back up to the Rito… in gratitude.

“It’s now time to move on and start making preparations for Medoh’s strike on Ganon. But,” Rivalli gave a small smirk, “Only if you think you’ll still need my help while fighting inside Hyrule Castle.” It wasn’t an apology, but even a small admission that he’d been wrong so long ago was enough to inspire forgiveness entirely in Link’s heart. Revali quickly ruined the moment again by added, “Feel free to thank me now.”

Rolling his eyes, Link noticed the now familiar gold light that meant his time on the Divine Beast was over, and was shocked to hear Revali say, “Or.. .nevermind. Just go. Your job is far from finished you know.” The Rito Champion was glancing at him sidelong. Finally turning away and lifting his beak to the sun, Link was fading away already when he heard the final words of his old self appointed rival.

“The Princess has been waiting an awful long time.” Revali’s Flap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doMVZikgnNE Freeing Vah Medoh - https://youtu.be/uxP8BqemAvc?t=1413

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