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A pulse of dark magic.
Cirilla, caught in the crosshairs.
Lambert moves, before thought, faster than humanly possible.
Slower than a fly through amber.
He throws himself over the top of the girl, every instinct screaming to protect her, and...
Darkness.
Da-dump.
Consciousness seeps back slowly.
Da-dump.
Painfully.
A metallic ringing in his ears, not dissimilar to the after-effects of an explosion.
A soft, silvery whisper. "Open your eyes."
The light is suddenly bright, unbearable, and he flinches away.
"Open your eyes," Ciri's voice commands again.
"Cirilla? Where are we?"
"Wake up, Lambert."
Groaning, Lambert rolls onto his side, retching. Fucking portals.
He sits up slowly, trying to make sense of his environment. His possessions have been stripped - no swords, his armor is gone, most of his clothes - he's clad only in a pair of braies and his witcher medallion. Weaponless, bootless, mostly naked. Fucking fantastic.
He looks around - carefully. Every movement drives a hammer through the walls of his skull. His throat is dry, parched. Water. He sniffs at the air. Mouldy damp, not far away. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he turns. Behind him, a cavern. He makes his way cautiously inside, letting his eyes accustom to the darkness. A ledge drops down to an icy puddle of water. Stagnant, but witchers can't be choosers. He drinks his fill, and the pain in his head recedes to a dull throb.
The cavern's path ends at a wall made of large stone blocks, impassable. He turns back the way he came, and finds himself on a grassy outcrop near the edge of a cliff. A valley below, full of picture-perfect trees. In the distance, an active volcano.
The view is breathtaking, even more stunning than the view from the Circle of Elements at Kaer Morhen. The camera pans across a vast and beautiful view before zooming in to show--
Wait, what?
He shakes his head, the fog of sleep must still be clouding his thoughts. Camera? He mentally erases the last line and tries again.
Eyes. He looks out with his eyes over a vast and beautiful panorama. To his right, the crumbling ruins of an ancient temple. Closer, a campfire, burning merrily within a shelter of natural stone. A--man? turns and makes his way towards the fire the moment Lambert catches sight of him.
Lambert follows, an overgrown path making his journey easy. He picks up a tree branch on his way down. Not an ideal weapon, but better than nothing.
He passes a precariously-placed boulder that looks as if a soft breeze would send it tumbling down the path, and an apple tree, apparently, with exactly three apples. Next to the fire sits the old man wearing a heavy cloak. An apple is roasting next to the fire. Lambert picks it up.
"I BEG YOUR PARDON!" the old man says loudly, raising his head and staring at Lambert. He has a long, white, soft-looking beard with perfectly curling curls around the edge and his eyes are, would you believe twinkling. "I do believe that is my baked apple! You can't just go around taking whatever you please!"
Frowning, Lambert asks "Wh--" but the man keeps talking right over him.
"Oho ho! Forgive me--I could not resist pulling your leg. Please help yourself. An apple and an open flame make a succulent treat. It is a bit strange to see another soul in these parts."
Suspiciously jolly, Lambert decides.
"Who are you? Where am I?"
"Me? I'll spare you my life story. I'm just an old fool who has lived here, alone, for quite some time now. What brings a bright-eyed young man like you to a place like this?"
Bright-eyed? He supposes that's one way to describe his eyes, but young?
"Where am I?" Lambert repeats, louder this time.
"Answering a question with a question. That is fair enough."
"Oh gods, get to the fucking point, old man," Lambert growls.
As if he hadn't just been rudely interrupted, the old man continues. "As I cannot imagine our meeting to be a simple coincidence... I shall tell you."
"Not a coincidence?" Lambert sputters. "It's not a trick fucking question. Where are we?"
"This is the Great Plateau. According to the legend, this is the birthplace of the entire kingdom--"
"By Melitele, I don't--"
"--of Hyrule."
"Hyrule. Fantastic. Thank you so much," Lambert growls with as much biting sarcasm as he can muster.
It's quite a lot.
The old man doesn't even seem to hear, and he smiles benevolently. He points out towards the temple ruins.
"That temple there... Long ago, it was the site of many sacred ceremonies."
"Ok good, great. Enjoy your... fire, and your history lesson, I'm going to find somebody who might actually be helpful," Lambert says, continuing along the path. The old man's voice follows him, seemingly unaware that Lambert is not following his script.
"Ever since the decline of the kingdom, 70 years ago, it has sat abandoned, in a state of decay. Yet another forgotten entity, a mere ghost of its former self..."
He steals a woodcutter's axe from a tree stump on his way.
On his way down the path, a strange little furry creature runs out at him from behind a tree, brandishing a small branch. He pulls his own branch out and waits to see what it will do - surely it won't attack, it barely reaches his hip in height.
It bares its fangs and attacks.
Lambert pushes it back with his foot; it grunts a very porcine grunt, and attacks again.
"Stop that, before you hurt yourself," he growls at it, whacking it a few times with his tree branch before that shatters into thousands of tiny splinters, setting the creature back a step, dropping its own branch. It looks at Lambert, and then at the branch. They both make a run for it, but Lambert is faster and gets there first. Striking it again, it flops to the ground and spins across the grass in lazy cartwheels. Lambert steps over to investigate more closely, and it vanishes in a puff of acrid purple magic, leaving behind only a piece of horn.
Very strange. Monster parts were rarely not useful, but usually, usually, they require harvesting in a way that is, by any measure, messy. Not that he's complaining, as such. It's just not what he's used to.
Lambert starts to suspect that he's landed in some sorceror's bizarre pocket dimension.
A blue blob of--water? but cohesive? And with eyes?--falls out of a tree, landing on the ground in front of him with a wet-sounding splat. Lambert takes a step back, wary. It follows, rolling towards him, and he kicks out at it. One wet explosion later, and a lump of eyeless blue jelly-like substance sits quivering on the ground in front of him. He keeps moving.
When he reaches the ruins at the base of the temple, he's attacked by another one of the furry red creatures. This time, after disappearing in a puff of purple, it leaves behind a fang. More of the creatures come for him; one gets in a solid strike to his leg with its club. It leaves him another piece of horn.
He stumbles upon a chest, and opens it to find a pair of trousers with sturdy boots. What sort of person leaves trousers lying around in chests lying around in ruined temples for fuck's sake? They're never going to fit, he doesn't even know why he's trying them on...
They fit perfectly.
He glances inside the temple. Through a tall arched entrance, sunlight filters through the decayed roof and lights the inside, long abandoned, now overgrown with grass and plants and vines. Stairs lead up to an elevated stone platform, where a serene statue stands. By the entrance, a large iron monster, its wicked-looking arms clawed at the tip, guards the entrance.
He moves on, soon stumbling upon a crevice in the rock. Carved - or half-buried? in rock across the divide, a structure; at the base of that, a pedestal. He climbs down to have a closer look, and the top of the pedestal lights up with glowing orange lines. The centre is empty, it looks like it needs a component of some sort to activate it. He looks around, knowing full well that nothing good of coming from experimenting with magic he doesn't understand. Curiosity killed the cat, after all.
Fuck it, I'm not a cat. Orange looks like Igni. Lambert casts a gentle stream of Igni at it.
The face of the pedestal spins a quarter-turn anticlockwise, and orange light streams upwards.
"Sheikah tower activated," a voice says. "Please watch for falling rocks."
The rock lights up with an arcane symbol that resembles an eye, the ground shakes, and rock explodes outwards. Lambert barely keeps his footing--another rumble, and he loses it, falling to the ground. The ground beneath him rises with a speed he cannot fathom, rock dust cascading down the sides as the remaining walls crumble away.
A cutscene plays. Lambert looks around as the tower rises, taller than any other structure on the plateau. Magical blue light puffs out from the tower as if to say 'that's it, I'm done.' Bet there's a good view from up here, he thinks. Maybe I can figure where to go, fuck I hope I can get down again...
A rock, pointing down at the pedestal, glows with blue symbols, light cascades downwards, distilling into a single, liquid drop that lands on the pedestal with a splash.
Weird.
"Remember," Ciri's voice echoes in his mind. "Try... Try to remember. We were separated in the time stream. The beast..."
Another quake of the ground, and sinister, swirling red and black ribbons of--something--swirl malevolently around the most ridiculous-looking, child's-drawing-of, many-turretted fairytale castle in the distance.
"When the beast regains its true power, this world will face its end--Bugger. Wait, hang on, that wasn't me. I don't know where I am--I need you to find me, there is someone here with me, but our thoughts are... all twisted together, I can't tell where hers end and mine begin. Now then... You must hurry, Lambert. Before it's too late..."
"Too late for what?" Lambert asks.
"Oh, and watch your stamina bar." Ciri's voice fades away.
What the fuck is a stamina bar?
He spends a few minutes looking out from the top of the tower, learning the layout of the land. Presumably, he needs to get to that castle, it must be where Ciri is being held; the lands that lead to the castle are far below the plateu, and he cannot see any easy way down from here. Surely that old man doesn't live up here by himself. He'll need to take a closer look.
A neatly-shaped hole near the edge of the platform leads down to a small balcony, a lattice-like formation providing a convenient ladder. After the first balcony, the second is near enough that he can make the distance with a jump, and he makes his way back to solid ground surprisingly quickly.
"Hoo!" sounds from above, and Lambert looks up to se the old man flying in on some kind of a kite. He lands with a soft thwump, just in front of Lambert.
"My, my... it would seem we have quite the enigma here."
"Nope, I was just leaving, bye," Lambert says.
"This tower and others just like it have erupted across the land, one after another."
"This is called a not my problem," Lambert says.
"It's almost as though... a long-dormant power has awoken quite suddenly."
"Really? Please tell me more, this is not at all fascinating but I'm sure you're going to anyway."
"If you do not mind me asking... Did anything... odd occur while you were atop that tower?"
"Nope."
"Well, now! A voice, you say? And did you happen to recognise this mysterious voice?"
"Right then, this conversation is terribly one-sided, time to fuck off," Lambert says, turning his back on the man. The edge of the plateau isn't far, perhaps he can find a way down.
"I see. Well, that is unfortunate," the old man's oblivious voice follows him again. "I assume you caught sight of that monstrosity enshrouding the castle?"
Lambert stops walking and turns back. "What do you know about that?"
"That... is Calamity Ganon. 70 years ago, that vile entity brought the kingdom of Hyrule to ruin."
"Don't care about your kingdom. Need to get to my niece."
"It appeared suddenly and destroyed everything in its path. So many innocent lives were lost in its wake. For seven decades, the very symbol of our kingdom, Hyrule castle, has managed to contain that evil. But just barely. There it festers, building its strength for the moment it will unleash its blight upon the land once again. It would appear that moment is fast approaching..."
"Are you going to tell me anything useful?" Lambert demands.
"I must ask, courageous one, do you intend to make your way to the castle?" the old man continues, his tone conversational.
Lambert glares at him, and the man laughs.
"Oho. I had a feeling you would say that. Here, on this isolated plateau, we are surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs, with no way down. If you were to try to jump off, well... no death would be more certain. Or more foolish."
"Fine. How do I get down then?" Lambert demands.
"Of course, if you had a paraglider like mine, that would be quite another story."
"Maybe," Lambert said, pressing his fingertips to his forehead in exasperation, "you could have led with that?"
"Oho. Piqued your interest, have I? Yes, I didn't come soaring down here on my own feather wings, you know!"
Lambert sighs heavily. Clearly, nothing he says or does is going to deter the man, or hurry him along. "You don't say."
He waits while the old man rambles on. Insists on showing him a structure in the distance, a mound of stone glowing with the same orange light as the stond pedestal. Trade the paraglider for treasure from inside the stone mound.
When the old man's words finally dry up, Lambert heads for the edge of the plateau. It's not that he doesn't trust the strange old man, he just really doesn't trust the strange old man.
He looks out over the edge. The fall is, indeed, too far for even a witcher to survive; the cliff itself decorated with arched stones-- was it man-made?--was potentially scaleable, with the right equipment. Equipment Lambert doesn't have.
He looks across the distance to the castle, and the sinister swirling mass around it, and sighs. First things first. The treasure in the creepy stone structure. Then, the paraglider. Then Ciri.