"T-40, small dip in power, takes 10 days to even out, ending up around 8% lower than before."

"T-20, another dip, 5 days to equilibriate, 15% loss."

"And now, what must be only hours before Vah Medoh takes off: plummets right to zero."

"Now, we know that the Divine Beasts launched in the order of Vah Ruta, Vah Rudania—may he rest in peace—Vah Medoh, and Vah Naboris. We know that close proximity to a Divine Beast snuffs out the output of an ancient furnace because of competing draw of ambient planar energies. I know you know where I'm going with this, but let's get all the pieces in place first!

"Cam, can you make us the readout roll from the same tower two months before and two months after? And the same three for a tower from each of the other Divine Beasts, matched in objective time, not relative time to their launches."

"Uh, sure -" Paper.

In a minute, with some folding out long lengths of time where nothing of interest happens, the reels are laid out and aligned.

"Clear as day! Whenever a Divine Beast comes online, towers in the immediate local area lose all power. As expected! However, AFTER the Divine Beast leaves the launch site, the towers of that geographical region CONTINUE TO OPERATE AT REDUCED CAPACITY, first bouncing back to 60% power after launch, but then declining to 5% the original output over the next weeks!

"This means that diffusional effects play a much stronger part than we believed! Not only does a Divine Beast totally exhaust paraplanar energies in the immediate vicinity, it also over time drains most of the power in a much larger region for miles and miles and miles, with long-range effects seen all across Hyrule! We only never noticed because the combined shadow of the four Divine Beasts covers all of Hyrule, and we've never had access to ancient technology while not under their effect!

"To confirm this, I checked on the ancient furnace in Akkala while Cam was away, and indeed, it's now burning brighter and hotter than I could have ever imagined, and getting brighter and hotter with every second! I was able to stoke a truly tremendous draw from it to recharge the ultracapacitors in the lab in only a few minutes!"

"So: if we put up a new Divine Beast in the north east, it'll take years to get to full charge. But now we know that energy generation is sharply diffusion-limited, and Hyrule herself is exhausted, there's a simple solution!  Send the Divine Beast on a trip across the western mountains, or into Gerudo Desert, or out across the sea, and it'll eat up all the energy it needs before it comes back."

Purah is poring over the graphs.

"There have to be additional effects at play," she mutters. "We'd have noticed before. The ancient energy condensation mechanism must be a long-range field, not a point sink; that's the only thing that makes sense. Or maybe it's both. Let me... hm. Cam, can you check which tower survived the longest and get us the rolls for that one until its destruction, same two-month intervals?"

By littering the floor with models, sure. "Here."

It's a whole pile? Purah drags over another table to sort through and splay out the new rolls.

"...Look," she tells Robbie during a pause.

He squints.

"Hrm. What year is this? Two four eight... year thirty. Where's sixty, do we have sixty?"

Purah turns to Cam. "Give us an hour to sort through this. Have you found Link yet?"

"Drone took cover from the storm. I should check if he's even still there." Is he?

He's now farther out into the desert proper, trekking through some stone ruins in the sands. But he's not teleported somewhere across Hyrule, no.

When the drone is safe to come out it does so and tracks him down.

There's still some sand blowing to the north, but there's a clear path from where the drone is nestled to Link's current location. It'll see some large biped lizards on the way, camping in the dunes, seemingly sapient by their tool use and even ramshackle armor, but they don't give the drone any trouble.

Link notices the drone long before it's in speaking distance.

He raises his shield and moves a hand for his bow, ready to draw at a second's notice, but he doesn't attack first. He repositions to better footing as it approaches, keeping his eyes on the drone and his shield between them.

"I come in peace!" says the drone.

He twitches at the voice coming from the machine, but relaxes a little. He doesn't lower his shield.

"What do you want?" he calls.

"I've got a letter for you!" It approaches and pops the compartment when it's landed.

Link approaches slowly, silent. When he's a few meters away, he takes out his Sheikah Slate, holds it up at the drone, and spends a few seconds tapping around on it.

Then the feed cuts out.

"Huh, I think he wrecked the drone. I hope the letter's intact."

Purah looks up from their work. "He what? Hmm."

Oh, hey, the feed is back! Downtime, what downtime?

Link is inspecting the note. His expression is unreadable. "How time-sensitive?" he asks, looking back up.

"- oh, he stasised it. Purah, what would you say about how time-sensitive this is?"

"It's not time-sensitive, but whatever he's doing now instead is probably totally obviated by your existence."

The drone transmits this.