You know, sometimes I really hate being right.
It doesn't happen very often, but there have been certain times. Like when Sheik decided juggling knives would be a great way to test his juggling skills. When he was 10. Or when Shade decided to cook dinner for the first time. Just in case you couldn't guess, ash really does taste bad.
However, neither of those nor the other handful of occasions I could remember quite compared to slogging through what felt like a sewer infested with spiders. And of course, because normal spiders aren't nearly bad enough, the spiders ranged anywhere in size from a small dog to roughly the size of a fridge.
Thank the goddesses Zelda had thought for me to bring my sword, or else we would have been in a lot of trouble really quickly. Thanks to the sword, we were in slightly less trouble. Not much, but every little bit helps.
Zelda and I had descended the spiraling stairs to find a large circular room with three doors along the walls. There was another door on the landing of the stairs, probably leading further down, but this one was locked with a large, complex-looking contraption. And last but not least, all the spiders the size of dogs.
I pulled my sword from the oozing carcass of the fourth spider, breathing hard. "Thank the Goddesses for all that training," I wheezed out. Zelda came up behind me from where she had been standing by the stairs.
"Are you all right, Link?" I nodded briefly, steadily regaining my breath.
As I stood there, hands on my knees, Zelda started poking around the room, carefully avoiding the dead spiders. Of the three doors in the wall, one was covered in a thick bramble of vines and thorns. Zelda found a small area that was thorn free but couldn't budge the thick vines.
"Guess we're not going that way," she muttered. By now, I was fully recovered and joined her by the vines. I swung my sword at the same patch she had been pulling at, but my sword cut less than a quarter inch into the tendril before stopping. I had to pull hard at it to get it out.
"I guess we'll check out the other doors then," I said, seeing the branch I had cut was already knitting itself back together.
As we moved towards the one of the doors, I noticed Zelda very carefully kept her eyes away from the spider remains, which seemed to be decaying extremely quickly. "Not a fan of spiders, huh?" I said, causing her to start, before giving me a look that said I was an idiot.
"Have you ever met someone who was a fan on massive, monstrous spiders? Not to mention Skulltulas? Those things are everything horrible about spiders condensed and given a boost of evil. So, no, I do not like spiders. All those legs and hair and…." She trailed off with a shudder. I had meant it in jest, but now that she actually talked about it, I was quickly acquiring an aversion to the beasts as well. Not that I liked them in the first place.
To get through the door, I had to basically lift the door out of the way. Fortunately, the slab was clearly supposed to move, as it was actually quite light. For a stone slab at least. We certainly weren't going to be able to escape through one of them quickly if we were attacked again though.
Which is exactly what happened as soon as I let the door drop. Two more skulltulas dropped down from the ceiling. Unfortunately, I had largely dealt with the last ones by running around them and hacking at their legs. Now we were in a narrow tunnel facing the spiders with hardly any room to maneuver. Fortunately, the spiders were on the other side of a narrow channel filled with flowing water, giving us a moment before they sprang at us.
I managed to pull myself and Zelda down in time to let the first spider jump over our heads. As it soared through the air, I swung my blade over my head to slice through two of the monstrous spider's legs where they attached to the body.
"STAY DOWN!" I yelled to Zelda, launching myself from my crouching position towards the second spider. Through a combination of luck and skill, I managed to thrust my sword into the brain of the beast before it could pull its armored legs up to block. Twisting in the air served a double purpose to ensure the spider was dead and to reorient myself back towards the first spider, which was now scuttling towards a still crouching Zelda who had dropped into the water channel to get out of the way.
I snatched a broken piece of stone off the ground and quickly hurled it at the advancing spider, forcing it to stop to block the rubble and giving me enough time to jump over the channel, weave past the spider's legs, and jam my blade deep into its skull. The beast twitched twice and fell limp, already starting to decay.
I heard Zelda splash out of the shallow water behind me as a stinging pain hit my right arm. Hissing in pain, I dropped my sword to grasp the wound I didn't know I had gotten. Zelda rushed over, and I lifted my hand to see three barbs from the spider's leg embedded in my shirt, which was being stained with a small amount of blood.
"Link, are you all right?" Zelda asked, already rolling up my sleeve to see the wound. I grunted lightly as I felt the barbs pull free of my skin.
"I'll be fine," I said, silently enjoying Zelda's doting, even if I was in pain. "I didn't even notice it really." Now that I thought about it, I had felt a pull on my arm as I moved through the last spider's legs. I winced as Zelda used the edge of my sword to tear a bit of my undershirt off to make a rudimentary bandage.
"Well, be careful. Not all of us are naturally amazing with a sword. I don't even know how you pulled off that flip. I would have lost my grip and been eaten." Zelda went from worried to quiet and subdued as her mind caught up with what her mouth was saying. "I wouldn't have gotten through the first room. Farore, I wouldn't have gotten past the barrier. Not much of a goddess if I can't even get past a little barrier by myself." Zelda tied off her improvised bandage with a firm yank. I resisted the urge to wince. "I'm useless."
"No, you're not." Zelda started at the venom in my voice. "You didn't hesitate to jump headfirst into what looks like an underground, spider-infested maze. You could have easily just let me go in myself. But instead, here you are, giving me the one thing I need most." Zelda looked up at me, hope in her eyes.
"What?"
"A friend." I could practically see relief flood into her eyes, and a gentle smile lifted her mouth up. "Also," I said after the moment had passed, "you make a great piece of bait." Zelda didn't hesitate to punch me in the ribs, which I deserved, but I could also see she was still smiling. We pulled ourselves to our feet and moved into the next room.
This room had a short hallway spilling out into a small square area before going down another small hallway. I could see something at the end sitting on the floor, about the size of a boulder. But before I could get a good look in the half-gloom that pervaded this place, two squishing blobs dropped from the ceiling. I held my still-drawn sword at the ready.
At first, the blobs didn't do anything. However, by chance or by design, the two blobs made contact and quickly merged into a single, double-sized blob. It didn't do anything until Zelda and I moved towards it, at which point it jiggled ominously (doesn't really make sense, but its true), and jumped towards us. Fortunately, it was pretty slow and predictable, so we were easily able to dodge it. Once it landed, I slashed through it cutting it back into two smaller pieces. Unfortunately, the two blobs didn't seem phased, both jumping at us.
We dodged around the blobs and moved towards the hallway across the room. Luckily, the blobs moved at a snail's pace and seemed to prioritize merging back together giving us time to get away from them.
Down the hallway, I could see that the something on the floor was actually a chest. An honest-to-goddesses treasure chest. My fingers twitching with the desire to open it, but since I was the one with the sword, I let Zelda pry it open. Fortunately, it wasn't locked.
"Link, there's only an old key in here." Since the slimes were moving slowly, I glanced back to where Zelda was kneeling in front of the chest. Sure enough, the only thing in the chest was an old key. The sparse light glinted off the dull metal.
"Well, grab it and let's go. I want to get away from these slimes before they try to eat us or something. We'll figure out what it's for later." We hurried down the hallway back the way we came, only to find more of the small room taken up by the slime, which seemed to have grown in size. I quickly hacked at it in hopes to make it smaller. Which worked, but also doubled the number of slimes we had to dodge as we booked it back down the first hallway and out the door.
"Probably absorbs moisture to grow bigger," Zelda said as we strolled back to the main room. "It seemed to be more unstable though. You cut through it more easily when it was larger. Didn't seem like there was a way to kill it though."
"I guess we'd better just hope we don't run into any more of them in cramped rooms." We made it back to the first, large room, at which point we decided to go through the second unlocked door.
Once through the door, the hallway immediately took a sharp right and had another channel of water flowing down the center. We walked down the hall and made it though the door at the end without being attacked.
The room we ended up in had another chest against one wall and a large grate in the floor, into which three streams of water flowed. We cautiously approached the chest. I was extremely wary of the apparent lack of enemies. I had played enough games to know what a trap looked like. I motioned to Zelda to stay low and keep quiet, not wanting to unwittingly trigger whatever was waiting for us. I kicked the chest, senses on high alert. When that didn't do anything, I shoved the lid of the chest up with my boot.
Unfortunately, I was once again right. The chest made a horrible, earsplitting creaking noise as it opened, and spiders poured out of some holes in the ceiling I hadn't noticed. Most of them were rather small, but there were about four that were the larger variety I had cut through earlier. I had dealt with two of them when I heard Zelda scream, felt the ground shake, and heard a massive thump from behind me. I whirled around and was confronted with a skulltula three times as large as the other ones. Basically, a horse with twice as many legs.
After a short adjustment period that almost ended up with me being eaten, I focused almost entirely on the large spider, only keeping enough track of the other ones to dodge their attacks. I even managed to manipulate the massive creature to kill one of its fellows when I dodged. It took a minute or two to find the monster's carapace didn't extend to the swollen underbelly of its abdomen, leaving it free to be sliced away at. As fast as the beast was, it couldn't turn fast enough to keep my steel from sinking my steel deep into its flesh, eventually causing the beast to shudder and collapse, impaling the last (relatively) small spider on one of its flailing legs. I collapsed on the floor as the hideous abominations disintegrated.
All at once, I became aware of what felt like a hundred cries of pain from my various body parts. My shoulders ached from swinging my sword, I had nicks on my legs and arms, one of the small skulltulas had gotten their fangs in my leg (I hope that's not poisoned), I had more barbs in my arm, and my head was spinning very slightly from a knock I had taken to it. It was totally worth it though, because Zelda wasn't hurt.
"…ink. Link! Eyes up here, are you okay?" She was crouched next to me looking worriedly into my eyes. 'Pretty romantic,' a part of me said. The rest of me was too busy whimpering in pain to answer. Reluctantly, I pushed myself off the ground. Who knew stone could be so comfortable.
"I'm all right, Zelda," I muttered as I pushed away from the ground. I felt like I was standing on a wall for a second before everything stopped spinning. "Just needed a minute." I put on an air of being alright. Which of course only lasted until I tried to take a step towards the still open chest. My foot didn't really do what I wanted, and I went stumbling against the large box.
"Goddesses, Link, slow down. You just fought off five monstrous spiders singlehandedly and probably have a concussion. You need to rest for a second." Zelda sounded exasperated, a feeling I could relate to since my legs wouldn't function properly.
"Okay, maybe you're right, slow is good." I rested my back against the wooden chest, silently relieved to have a break. Out of curiosity, I reached back and pulled out whatever was still in the chest.
This time, it was actual treasure. I pulled out a heart-shaped crystal thing, which seemed to have a pulsing core, like a heartbeat. "What is that?" Zelda asked. I shrugged and dropped it into my lap. It must have been pretty fragile though, because as soon as it hit one of the buckles on my belt, it cracked and shattered. I was stunned and surprised to see the shards float in the air for a moment before flying into my chest. At the same time, all my wounds started healing, and by the time the pieces had finished flying into me, I felt like I hadn't been injured in the first place.
"Well," I said slowly rising to my feet in case all the pain came back. "That was unexpectedly helpful." Zelda was once again stunned. For supposedly being a goddess, she sure got surprised a lot. I grabbed her hand and hauled her upward. "On the upside, I'm not on the verge of passing out anymore. Let's just keep going and figure this all out later." Zelda could only sigh reluctantly.
"Alright, fine. Let's go."
Ladies and gentlemen, it's dungeon time! At long last, something actually happens! No more sitting around talking and expositing! No more relationship drama! Huzzah, the storm clouds of boredom fade away and give rise to the light of action! I have no clue what I'm saying anymore! EXCITEMENT!
Now, I hear you asking, "What about all the Zelink?" No really, Nightwing literally asked. I have good news (just in case you missed it in this chapter). Not only will Zelda and Link's relationship develop outside of the dungeons, but inside the dungeons as well. Nothing cements a relationship like killing shit and almost dying! At least, that's what I've heard. Only had one girlfriend and she was not the dungeon-crawling type. But anyway!
Onward to the reviews! Confused Man, yes, please do review. Sorry to confuse you. Unless that's just a perpetual state of being for you. In that case, there's not much I can do. Nightwing, thank you very much. Plenty of relationshiping and dungeoning at the same time, so don't worry there. I'm glad you agree with my assessment of men; anything else is just denial. Ultimate, good catch. There is indeed new things, along with new stuff, and even new **REDACTED**. It's gonna be good. And yes, the actual relationship we want. Maya, it seems I am victorious again. To be fair, I literally had a 50% chance of being right. Lucky for you, you don't have to wait long. As in, not at all!
Alrighty then, just so you guys know, this chapter was a little light on dungeony aspects, mostly just setting up for next chapter. But next chapter, ho boy. Puzzles, fights, drama, dungeon stuff. Good times. A quick note here as well: I drew out the structure of the dungeon so I could plan it out and I am more than willing to put said drawings out for you to see. Just let me know and I can get that set up. Also going to have weapon/tool/ item designs and boss sketches, so let me know if you want to see those.
Last thing, don't forget to review! Positive praise is the best motivator. Give the story a follow and favorite to stay up to date on all the latest excitement. Cheers all!
-Aro