World Tree MUSH

  Back across the plain the royal caravan has gone, east toward the mountainous river headwaters of Zora's Domain. The area is still frozen solid, with thick deposits of ice and even some snow. It's definitely not natural, not with how the rest of Hyrule withers under severe drought and record-breaking heat.

  Zelda marches at the head of the caravan, heedless of the fast-dropping temperatures or the sight of her own breath. She's pulled on her mourning cloak, and huddled into the thick robe-like garment as she keeps pace with her horse and supply wagon. She's trading orders with different Goron work crew foremen rotating in and out at the head of the caravan.

  The hearty, enormously tall rock-men haul their own heavy equipment by way of enormously thick chains. Forges, smithing contraptions, and all manner of metallurgical equipment travel with them. To a close observer, it looks like Zelda is trying to dispatch the Goron crews in a way that covers and thaws the area as evenly as possible.

  Right now Zelda is consulting a hand-drawn map with the Gorons she's directing. The teams are moving out and unpacking their equipment, unperturbed by either the cold or the slick, icy footing. They're laughing and jovial as though eager to be working, equally unperturbed by the state of Zora's Domain. The fish-men will thaw, right...?

    Where she's able, Yumi Tachibana is putting her magical abilities to work. Never one to sit around while there's heavy lifting to be done, she's transformed and is putting her superhuman strength to the task of helping Gorons move this or that - and, where needed, her solar flames as well. Starting a fire where necessary is trivial in her transformed state, and if it saves the Gorons some supplies, she's more than happy to do so.

With her hand mostly regrown, fingers still a little shorter than on her right hand, Lucianne has been doing her part to help. She seems as unbothered by the cold as she was by the heat, still wearing that simple summer dress. While her strength isn't superhuman, and her fires not quite as easy, she's helped lift things and stuck sticks in her left eye to set them on fire. "Yumi, give me a hand?" She calls out, as she's struggling with a particularly heavy object.

    It's at times like these, when the temperatures drop, that Rydia is thankful for her wolfos-skin cloak. Hugging the white fur tightly about herself, the little Summoner lingers around Zelda, watching the Gorons work. She's not exactly a great help when it comes to heavy lifting so she mostly stays out of the way.
    And a little far from Yumi's flames.
    And she looked a bit queasy from the sight of Lucianne sticking things in her eye-fire.
    She's mostly just hovering, for now, like how the littlest bodyguard should.

    Lex is sitting by the caravan, bundled up in the cloak she got from Temulin, looking like she's gone from hot and miserable to cold and miserable. She's doing her best to distract herself by watching the Gorons and Yumi work, but she's still looking fairly tired; she also seems to be hugging it more tightly against her left side. Lightshard 18 is hovering next to her, and mostly seems to be watching Yumi; somehow.

    Lex glances over at Lucianne as she calls out. "I'd offer a hand," she calls over, "but I'm petty sure we have firmly established that I don't have any left."

    Lightshard 18 turns towards Lex. Despite being a sword with no real moving parts, she seems to be giving Lex a look. "Good grief," she says, her tone cool but with a hint of amusement, before looking back to see how Yumi will react.

  The rattling of chain and the sound of very large, very heavy equipment being dragged around is enough to ring the heights like a bell. Sound bounces off the ice, with not quite enough snow to muffle the sound; between that and the basso work songs of the Gorons, it's a little chaotic.

  Zelda gives her horse a pat as she folds her map, tucks it into a concealed pocket, and hitches the reins to a broken stone pillar. It's well-hewn, but frost has driven down through it like a splitting iron through firewood.

  No sooner has she finished tying her horse than she's off to direct another gaggle of Gorons, three of them straining under the weight of a broken-down furnace while a fourth tries to direct them. Swapping out with Zelda, the fourth goes to take the weight, and they manage to muscle it higher onto the ascent, cramming it into place by way of a stony alcove.

  It's definitely a forge or furnace. Unfortunately, this is going to involve some fire, if only because there's a whole lot of ice to melt. But, as the foreman strikes flint and tinder inside, and the others lump in what looks like coal or some kind of fuel processed down into chip form, it's a nice tame little fire, and it lights up the metal station. Zelda is quick to fetch a torch from one of them.

  "Gorons of Death Mountain!" The torch is waved to get their attention, and soon dozens of somewhat beady pairs of eyes are looking up to where Zelda's climbed atop a boulder. "Today, you have the gratitude of Hyrule's royal family and its allies! Begin your work, and know that you honour the goddesses with your selflessness this day!"

  Lights wink on from below all the way up the ascent, with two furnaces up at the very top, where the frozen basin is; those two are placed well away from where the waterline is supposed to be, where they will, hopefully, land on stone and not sink to the bottom of the pool.

  It's not really fire that they're using to melt, though. Two crews of burly Gorons are carrying armloads of what look like metal staves, crude but stout, singing their gravelly work songs as they go. The staves are distributed to any Goron who isn't tied up with something else, and they each take places at the forges, shoving the far end of the pokers into the fire until they're red-hot, some of them almost white-hot.

  And, filing out around the mountain, spreading up and down the slope, and positioning themselves around the basin -- they wait, as though for some kind of signal.

  Zelda slashes downward with her torch.

  Goron workmen and foremen turn and thrust their red-hot staves into the ice -- and observant eyes would notice that they're all strategically placed.

  The sound of ice cracking and shattering is, for a few seconds, almost deafening.

    "Huh? Oh, sure! Be right over!" Yumi finishes what she's working on, then jogs over to help Lucianne with the heavy lifting. "Alright, where we gonna put it?" She does notice Lightshard 18's observation, but responds only with a cheery grin. After that, though, she moves to quickly get out of the way; because it looks like the Gorons are just about ready to get the big show started. Good time to be over on the side of the lake - so, of course, she heads that way quickly.

"Last time I lent you a hand you didn't give it back." Lucianne counters Lex with a smile on her face, clearly teasing. With Yumi's help, the object is swiftly moved and she also backs off to watch the show from safe ground, eyepatch back on she approaches Rydia and Zelda. "Don't recall ever seeing anything like this." She comments, "Rather impressive."

    It sure is a sight. All the Gorons and their forges, working in tandem, singing their songs, preparing to thaw the frozen waters. Rydia keeps her distance from all of it, though.
    "It's something, alright." The green-haired girl replies to Lucianne, tugging her cloak around herself all the more tightly to ward off the cold. 
    A pause. "I'm not casting fire magic again, though." She asides. The Gorons have this.

    Lex chortles at Lucianne's comment, then jumps slightly at the noise. "Whoa!" She shifts the cloak around herself and pads over to Rydia, Zelda, and Lucianne with Lightshard 18 in tow. "I mean, me neither," she comments, rubbing her left shoulder for a moment. "It is all kinds of impressive, and all that."

    She regards the Gorons for another moment. "I mean, regardless, it's good to see our efforts getting into place, and stuff," she adds. "Good to see something go off without a hitch and without a fight for a change."

    "Yes, indeed," says Lightshard 18.

  The roar of ice shattering overwhelms any other sound for several long minutes. It drowns all hope of conversation as soon as the staves are driven into the ice.

  Even Zelda can't help but cringe, clapping gloved hands over pointed ears. She looks up even as she does, watching the way steam billows upward to the frozen heights.

  Icicles drip as they're warmed, and soon enough there are chunks of ice tumbling from above. Some of them bounce off Goron workmen below, but they must really be made of rock. It doesn't seem to affect them too much, aside from them to swat the offending cold and wet out of the way.

  "Thank the Gorons," Zelda calls over the dull roar. "This is all on their shoulders. They are Hyrule's master metalworkers, and now you see why!" She points, indicating the ice slowly softening on the heights; the cliffs ringing the uppermost basin and audience hall. "As long as those don't come down all at once, this should go smoothly!"

  ...What's that rumbling, anyway?

  Zelda's eyes snap up to the heights. At the northern point of the ring, a large chunk of ice has slagged off from the rest, tumbling over the edge in an avalanche of jagged, dense ice. It makes a spectacularl crash when it reaches the basin, and Gorons dive out of the way as it starts making its way downstream. It takes out several stone pillars as it lumbers ponderously through water that's only half-frozen now.

  ...That also means Zelda's scrambling up to a higher boulder, carrying her torch with her. "I was hoping that wouldn't happen, but I think they've a handle on it. Up, friends! We should be safe, but mind the ice. It's all going to come down."

    The deafening sound of ice cracking ramps up to a point where conversation is impossible, so for a while, Yumi falls silent, and simply covers her ears. When it subsides enough to hear others again, she lowers her hands - but that big chunk tumbling down is cause for no small amount of concern. The magical girl takes a hop or two up to a higher vantage point but keeps a careful eye out for Rydia, Lex and Lucianne. Just in case, she sweeps her hand through the air, summoning a series of glowing runes that quickly shape Prominence between them. She'd rather have the runeblade handy in case any pieces of ice become genuinely dangerous.

The deafening sounds eventually result in Lucianne covering her ears to try to dampen them some. The big chunk startles her, however, and she rapidly begins backing off to ensure she stays well outside of nay potential trouble. "I can see why they make such great smiths, yeah." She answers Zelda.

    Lex's eyes go wide at the sight of the impending collapse. "Whuh-oh!" She starts scrambling after Yumi and Zelda onto another nearby boulder; she stumbles once, but Lightshard 18 quickly floats over to help her steady herself, and she sits down heavily on the boulder, watching the show. "Jeez ... And this is an entirely different kind of impressive!"

    "From this particular vantage point, yes," Lightshard 18 calls out dryly, settling onto Lex's back; it sounds more like she increased her volume than a natural shout.

  Zelda has no particularly useful talents that involve stopping a massive glacier the size of a massive building from crushing her like a bug, so she does the wise thing and climbs up to higher ground.

  She does wave her torch, signalling to the Gorons that hey, they might want to ease up melting that stuff up there until the smaller pieces have had a chance to trickle down. It's pretty easy for them. They just curl up and roll wherever they need to go. It doesn't even look like there's any casualties, although there may be a close call or two.

  As ice gives way to slush, slush gives way to water, and water thunders down the ascent. There is a river bed, and the running water is quick to smash the ice out of the way, forcing floes downstream until they reach a point where they begin melting. Even the preternatural cold seems to be fading, until the humidity feels kind of uncomfortable under winter layers.

  Zelda shrugs out of her robe, but she doesn't give up her perch on high ground. Even with the larger chunks of ice out of the way, there's still a tremendous amount of water coming down the mountainside: These are the headwaters of Hyrule's entire river network, and as the plains attest, there has been a staggering amount of water locked up in the ice. Maybe some of this might lend relief to the parched grasslands below.

  "Oooh." Zelda winces as the giant ice floe bounces against another column, snapping it like a toothpick. There goes generations of stonemasonry. "Gently, Gorons; gently..." There's no hope of them hearing her, though, so she sighs and shakes her head. "Well, there's little more to do here until this finishes melting... the Gorons are all set to help with rescuing those Zora who can't get out of the water." Something she won't be doing, because she is not a fish, and has no care to be swept away downriver and crushed to death, no thank you.

  Settling cross-legged on top of the flat boulder, Zelda rummages into the pocket of her robe, producing a spyglass and training it on the heights. The Gorons seem to be doing things much more smoothly now, shearing smaller pieces of ice and using forge-heated staves and hammers to break up the less cooperative pieces.

  It looks like it's going to be wet here for a while. "We should be able to climb down in a little while," Zelda calls, to her allies. "But not for a while. Zora's Domain will be safe when it has drained, and there will be places we might rest."

  For now, though, there's not much to do but wait for the deluge to end.