Quickly raising his left arm before him, the swordsman heard metallic ring as the tip of the flaming arrowhead collided with the blue steel of the Hylian shield. Narrowing blue eyes at his assailant, the Ordonian thrust his shield out, knocking his green-skinned foe off balance and promptly seized upon the advantage; chorded muscles flexed as the silver blade of his sword cleaved a deep gash across the bulbin.

As the last foe collapsed before his feet and the earth was stained crimson, Link surveyed the battleground of the circular chamber he had dropped into, identical to the eight before it: a single lizalfos laid dead along with several other bulbin archers, their arrows spilt from the quivers on their back, as well as the split shafts of the arrows that had been let fly, tips aflame, only to ultimately come short of their intended target.

The attention of the green-clad swordsman was drawn away from the carnage that lay before him and to the stone door at the northern end of the chamber, as it raised itself upon the defeat of the last guardian placed in the chamber (though how it knew when all those who had originally been in the room were slain, Link had not quite figured out, despite several other similar occurrences of the phenomenon in his quest.) Reaching over his shoulder, Link returned the Blade of Evil's Bane to the scabbard hung upon his back and replaced his shield onto its harness.

Walking forth, he prepared himself for another battle in the vein of the nine he had already endured, only to stop upon reaching the edge of the cliff that dropped down into the next chamber.

Midna, too, gazed into the room, having manifested herself to the incorporeal shade form that she preferred when he was in his human form. "There's nothing waiting with intent to kill or otherwise maim you?" the imp questioned, tilting her head slightly as she surveyed the situation with her single visible eye.

Link blinked in bewilderment but nonetheless nodded his head. "Seems to be that way," he confirmed. "Honestly, I'm a little surprised, too; all there seems to be is a shallow pool of water," he observed, glancing to the side at his own shadow-turned-shade before shrugging his shoulders in dismissal and hopping off the cliff, landing in a crouch below.

Approaching cautiously, Midna hovering lazily over his shoulder, Link reached behind and wrapped his grip securely around the handle of the Master Sword—no matter how harmless it looked, he would not allow himself to be caught off guard in the case of an attack… only have his mouth drop open in shock.

Link had been prepared for any number of foes to leap from the seemingly shallow depths of the spring and assault him in a lust for his blood—the one thing that he had not expected to be confronted with, however, was a tall, slender, and half-naked individual of the female gender.

Staring, Link felt his jaw open in shock, and he quickly blinked his eyes repeatedly to no avail: the scantily clad woman was still standing before him. The hero, for the first time since he had first been taken by surprise and forced into his lupine state in the Twilight bastardization of Hyrule, was at a lost. He had been confronted with numerous and varied types of opposition in his quest: bulbins charging forth at him astride rampaging bulbos, magically animated statues wielding giant hammers, bandage-swathed ghouls dragging swords as large as his own body… but never had Link been confronted a green-haired woman—no, a fairy he realized upon seeing the gossamer wings fanning out from her back—clad in little more than her aforementioned hair and a loincloth (and truthfully, he sincerely and fervently hoped that this fairy wasn't hostile, for he wasn't quite sure how to go about handling this particular type of foe.)

Link was torn from his contemplations as he heard a snide voice hiss into his ear, "I do believe that her face is a little higher up, wolf-boy." His brow furrowing in confusion, Link turned to see Midna's silhouette floating eye level with him at his shoulder, her arms crossed, and that her single eye was slit into a crimson glare.

Opening his mouth to reply, the hero turned back to the fairy and noted that she seemed to have started speaking to him at some point, and stared at her, wondering what he could have done wrong to invoke the ire of his Twilight companion. Blue eyes than widened in realization as he became aware of the specific part of the fairy's anatomy his gaze had been directed to whilst he was lost in his contemplations of how to best fend off an assault by a partially-nude member of the opposite sex.

His face flushing slightly in embarrassment, he turned to his perpetual companion and opened his mouth to explain and defend his actions—only to find his jaw open but with no words coming forth. "M-Midna, wait!" he finally found his ability to speak, as stuttered out a response when her glare intensified upon him even more. "It's n-not what you think! I mean, I wasn't…" he trailed off as he saw her lips curl back in a snarl, and he found himself swallowing nervously as tried to remember whether he had still had that spare fairy he had trapped in a bottle or not: it seemed ever increasingly likely by the second that he would have dire need of it soon.

"Pig!" she snapped at him before promptly returning his shadow to its proper place as she went back into hiding.

"Midna, please don't do this!" he pleaded to his feet, staring at his own shadow, but it was too no avail. Link let out a disgruntled sigh and hid his face in his hands, his cap coming forward to hang over his face.

Somehow, he doubted that the heroes of ages past had had to deal with this sort of situation. Lifting his face from its cradle, he noticed that the green-haired fairy, the source of his newfound strife, was and had been silently staring at him with a perplexed expression on her face. No doubt, she was wondering who this insane adventurer that had stumbled upon her spring was, and why exactly he was pleading with his feet. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Link looked towards the woman (being especially careful to not let his gaze slide anywhere below her face).

"I don't suppose that you could transport me out of her, could you?" he asked the fairy. "I don't quite think I'm prepared for the trials that lie ahead just yet."

The queen of fairies—though Link was unaware of this fact, having been lost in contemplation of strategies to defeat her should she attack he, while she had been introducing herself—tilted her head at the peculiar mortal before her. "If that is so your wish, brave adventurer," she said, raising a hand and promptly snapping her fingers, sending him to the threshold of the cave, above.

She continued to stare at the spot for a moment after his departure; what an odd little man, she thought.

Link appeared, in a flash of light, on the sandy crest of the mesa that he had previously been inside. Lifting his cap from his head, he scratched idly at his straw-colored hair as he surveyed the horizon, noting that the sun was currently setting, bathing the land in golden glow of twilight—the natural one, that is to say.

"Midna?" Link asked hopefully, not truly expecting his black and white companion to answer him, and was met only with silence from his shadow. Before our hero could ponder further on the issue of his companion's estrangement, his long ears twitched as he heard the sound of a rattle come from directly behind him. Closing his eyes in frustration, Link was fervently praying to all three goddesses that he was only hearing things as an effect from the heat of the dessert.

This hope, however, was viciously killed seconds later at the manic giggle that he knew well. "Why have you forsaken me, goddesses?" he asked to himself as he slowly turned and was met with the sight of a lantern bobbing about mere inches from his face.

Link stared at the floating light source for a second more, and then promptly summed and vocalized his thoughts on the situation: "aw crap." After uttering his two-word thought process, the lantern sharply lashed out and collided with the side of his ribs, knocking him from his feet. Lifting his head from the ground, sputtering sand, and glared at phantom foe that he knew to be carrying the lantern; he quickly, then, rolled to his side quickly and a cloud of sand was kicked up and a deep gash was drawn into the sand where his head had been not even seconds before.

"Listen, I know that you're not to happy with me right now, Midna," Link said, removing his shield from his back, but keeping the Master Sword securely housed in its scabbard, as, with even as holy a blade as it was, not even it could slay the poe before him, "but I really, really would appreciate it if you could transform me into my wolf form—" he rolled to the side and raised his shield to block the latern—"so that I could kill this thing…" he pleaded in a tense voice as his eyes tracked the swaying path of the ghost. Letting out a frustrated sigh upon receiving no response, Link scanned the area for the only option left open to him in the current situation: retreat; but upon finding no other way, he steeled his nerves, replaced his shield to its harness, and leapt from the top of the mesa, landing in a roll to absorb some of the impact of the fall.

He lay upon the now-cooling sand of the desert for a few seconds, waiting for the throb in his back to alleviate some before he climbed to his feet. Wincing slightly and placing a hand to his back—no doubt, it would be sore for some while unless he took a red potion or chu jelly—Link scanned around the desert, taking in the sight of the dessert horizon and dunes of sand that stretched for miles beyond.

In his mind, Link was currently cursing the three goddesses, and any other deities that he knew of, for the situation he was now in—and while he wasn't sure if Midna was privy to his thoughts when she was in his shadow, if she was, he had a feeling that she was currently laughing insanely at his mental tirade. As far as he was aware, there was no way back to the mainland—at least, none that he was aware of; he had always had Midna warp him to one of the Twilight portals that they had secured.

So, to put his current predicament into perspective, he was now stuck in a vast desert, with the night temperature dropping, with no food, water, or any clue on where he was or how to exit said desert. And as an added bonus to his plight, he was currently being denied the access of his beast form as well all his equipment, save for his shield and sword that he kept on him at all times as a human, because it was all stored in the Twilight pocket where Midna had put it all.

"Of all the areas on her body, I had to be facing her breasts when I got lost in thought, didn't I?" he asked himself in frustration. Then, with no other options open to him, Link turned and started towards the towering structure of the abandoned prison on the horizon. With any luck, the sages would be able to provide him with a means back to Hyrule proper, and if not, he would at least have shelter from the elements.