The temple's damp, warm, putrid air lapped against the sweat on his skin like the tongue of an animal testing his flavor, and penetrated his nose like fangs in flesh. He hid his face beneath that of the lost Deku child, who could neither sweat nor smell, and followed the slick, crumbling pathways deeper inside.
The only light in this temple was what Tatl might have brought with her, and from the odd glow of the putrid water gathering in puddles and pools throughout the ruins. Empty braziers hid in the temple's dark corners like frightened children. He struck a piece of flint and lit them one by one, and Woodfall temple's broken body gradually revealed itself. During its long slumber, the serpentine roots of a great tree had penetrated the ceiling, dug through the floor, clung to the walls, and sewed the temple back together in a caricature of what it once was. Gaping holes riddled the passageways and dissolved the edges of the grand entry's sacrificial altars, and the remaining vestiges of the suspension bridges connecting the entrance to the central chamber trembled perilously in the flickering light. His lightweight body scaled the roots and columns of the crumbling room, and took great care not to disturb the spiders and shadows living just beneath his feet. The air grew cooler with each step he took, and soon, it was outright chilly.
Past the roots, under the moss, and beneath the dark mud, the temple's every surface was painted in reds and teals, and coated in gold. Amber and gemstone eyes in the temple's open-mouthed bas-reliefs slept through his visit under slimy, heavy, black-brown lids, never to open again. The poison pumping through the swamp's veins came from within these walls. Woodfall's heart had rotted away a long time ago, but it refused to stop beating. Deep in the temple, Odolwa marked its rhythm on drums and in chants like the great beast in the Hylian graveyard temple used to.
Odolwa, the warrior, the guardian, the last of the mortal giants of Old Ikana's dominion; taller than Keeta, older than Keeta, and unlike Keeta, without his mind. He called to his intruder with a challenge.
Odolwa guarded this ziggurat at Woodfall's summit in the Old Kingdom's stead. It stood for hundreds of years, and then some, and called across the four cardinal directions to Snowhead in the north, Great Bay in the west, and the Stone Tower to the east as a stronghold of prosperity and power; as a place by the Four Giants' ear, until Woodfall's swampy mire swallowed the temple whole, much like the open-mouthed reliefs in the walls threatened to swallow him whole if given the chance. Odolwa went with it.
Consumption: Majora's one true desire, and Ikana's one true legacy.
Carefully, he reached the back of the grand entryway and cracked open the door to the temple's central chamber. Dirt crumbled from the frame and fell on his hat and leafy hair as it slid open. Without his nose, he couldn't smell the poison on the other side, but the tender green leaves on the Deku child's body wilted beneath it.
The door opened to a platformed overlook, and water pooled in a glowing, poison lake beneath it. At its center, a painted, five-armed structure arranged like a flower of wood and metal protruded from the water, inert. Spined, blood-red flowers grew up from the water around it. Their yellow and black centers leered at him and his wooden body like the monstrous eyes of the temple itself. They were disappointed; wood was not good to eat, and it took so, so long for it to fall to the swamp's poison. The filthy taint of the purple water coursing through the veins of the Deku tribe discolored their leaves and clouded their minds with suspicious, baseless anger, but their bodies soldiered on through the madness. They would keep living until the water corroded all of their reason, all of their mercy, and sent them at one another armed with torches.
It was beginning. At the foot of Woodfall, the Deku king and his subjects were preparing to boil a monkey alive for a crime he never committed.
He counted to ten, held his breath, and removed the mask shielding him from the putrid water. His body stretched and grew to its normal proportions. He produced his bow and a red-tipped arrow, the latter of which he poised to strike the pile of suspiciously fresh kindling sitting on the five-armed device at the center of the room. As he notched it, the arrow's tip ignited, and soon a mane of white-hot light formed an unnatural corona around the entire head even in the damp air.
The machine's engine fed on fire. The Deku princess and her escort knew that, and had left it here before Odolwa had carried them off for fear that they might light it and bring the unthinkable into a place as dark as this.
He fired. His arrow struck the kindling, and set it ablaze.
The machine groaned, and then extended its five arms like a lotus opening under the afternoon sun. With a series of slow, crescendoed thuds, the flower rose from the water and began to spin in a labored circle, and then faster. The vines cutting over and under the machine shredded and lifelessly fell to the water.
He put away his bow and watched as the machine swiftly made up for years of undone labor.
The ziggurat was, among whatever else it was to the old kingdom, a filtration system, as was the mechanical behemoth in the mouth of Great Bay. Old Ikana knew that the water was the lifeblood of Termina, and they sought to keep it pure, keep it flowing, make it last forever and ever, and position themselves as its chosen master.
Alas.
Once upon a time, Granny said, Woodfall was not a swamp at all, but a volcano wreathed in ash and fire. The relentless rain of time crashing down on it bored out its fiery center and filled it with life and a lake; perhaps, some said, because the water was originally the tears of a Giant mourning the endless suffering of the creatures in the fire. In sadness, the Giant curled up on the mountaintop, and their grief-stricken body suffocated the violent mountain until Woodfall breathed ash and flame no longer. Later, when the Giants left the people and entered their forever slumber, the one who went South returned to that same spot, returned to the Giant's Cradle, until they faded from the people's memories and disappeared for all of time.
Beneath the ledge, the water's tint was slowly changing from ethereal purple to clear, and the yolk-yellow eyes at the center of the red flowers shrivelled and warped from the whirlpool generating around them. He hopped down from the upper ledge into the steadily churning water, and let the current carry him to the edge of the stone walkway running along the perimeter of the room. His memory was a fresher and more reliable map than the crumbling paper one stashed away somewhere in these ruins: he didn't hesitate to pull himself onto it and uncover a vine-covered metal ladder hidden against the side of a pillar protruding from the wall, and he only stopped to protect his hands from the rust before climbing it. Another stone walkway waited above his head, and another door, and from there another pool of water and series of rooms spaced out along its edges. Very straightforward.
When they first got out of this place on a day much like this one, Tatl had asked him, "Hey, have you done this kind of thing before?" like a mild thought expressed in passing, but now she had the audacity to act betrayed that he might not be what he seemed when it wasn't convenient for her to go along with anymore.
He pulled himself from the top of the ladder and said, to nobody in particular, "Even if I hadn't been here already, it's not as if anyone else ever expected a fairy to stay and help me with this, anyway."
His life as he knew it started beneath the branches of an unfathomably old and unfathomably wise tree who granted his Kokiri children protection, companionship, nourishment, and love. The other children thought it peculiar and frightening that he could never quite fit in with the rest of them. They made fun of him to his face for a laugh, and then, when night fell and the creatures of the darkness reminded them that their worst fears did exist deep inside the Woods, they whispered about him- about how strange it was that he used to be so baby-small but now reached their height, about how he might one day grow even bigger, about how awful his world sounded when he talked about his nightmares, about how impossible it was that he had no guardian fairy. To them, he was frightening, and of them, he was frightened. His only friend was a girl more forest than human for all the years she'd been there, and more of the Woods than the Kokiri for all the time she spent beyond the borders of her father tree's haven. She taught him to question the world and play the ocarina; how to think, how to laugh, and how to love. The other Kokiri spoke of her with reverence and flabbergasted befuddlement, and sometimes blind admiration, but always with respect.
Her name was Saria, and if ever there was anyone in his life he loved beyond his means and beyond his understanding, it was her. But she didn't exist anymore, not really, and that loss was inexplicable to anyone but him. At the end of his story, the memory of her existence faded away as dust on the wind from all minds but his, and her name was forgotten under the stream of rewritten time by everyone but him. Her absence was a gaping wound in his chest that nobody else could see.
Navi had left him, too, but Saria had been the first to leave- and one of the few he could say with certainty had done so not because she wanted to, but because she had to. Tatl was another of the former, and that was the way of it.
He opened the door to the next room.
The water's smell was still awful, but the central turbine had already made a marked improvement in the water's color from what it would have been fifteen minutes ago. He yawned, rubbed at his eyes, and wondered very seriously if he should put the All Night Mask back on to keep him from falling asleep. Outside, it wasn't yet noon, but he hadn't slept since Tatl had left him in a screaming fit on the second day in the cycle prior to this one.
He pulled it on, just in case, and readied his bow with another magical arrow as he stalked down the walkway to the old doorway at the end. The damp air by the arrowhead hardened and crystalized into ice at its touch. He winced as its frigid bite threatened to take the feeling from his fingers before he so much as loosed it.
In a place as wet and cool as this, the ice arrows might as well be the incoming moon for all the destruction they could cause.
On the other side of the door was the Gekko, a grotesque, monstrous frog swollen with the temple's poison. It liked to lure its prey into its abode and feed them alive to its servant creatures. Its addled mind took great pleasure in causing terror, and without that to entertain itself, it either soaked in one of the deep puddles of water scattered in the room or hung itself from the ceiling to lap up any new droplets soaking through.
He squared up to the door and kicked it with his boot. It slid open, and a dozen glowing eyes turned towards him, befuddled.
He shot a single icy arrow into the room before any of the creatures- the yellow-eyed tortoises, the fire-breathing lizards, the man-eating spiders, the grotesquely sizes dragonflies- could think to stop it. The arrow's frigid magic infected the saturated air, and by the time its trajectory brought it to the center of the Gekko's favorite puddle, half the room and the creatures in it became ice sculptures of themselves. He reloaded and fired another arrow, and another, until the entire chamber was a uniform mass of ice.
Then, he pulled a series of gunpowder sacks from his bag, lit them, and tossed them inside before closing the door.
Just to be safe, he counted five minutes after the explosion sounded before opening the door and venturing in.
The chamber was barely recognizable. Where patches of ice abruptly ended, black-ash holes marred the stone floor. Icy monster limbs- a head here, a leg here, what must be a shattered shell- littered the edges of the room, where they had fled the destructive light of the blasts that took the rest of their bodies.
He caught sight of his masked reflection in a prism of half-frozen water clinging to the wall. Once, he was afraid to so much as trap a squirrel or clean a fish when he was hungry and cold. Now, the All Night Mask made him into a red-eyed, unblinking, smiling monster standing among the carnage. He didn't recognize himself.
It occurred to him that Tatl's curiosity about his competence at this sort of thing wasn't because he was adaptable and competent- it was because he was downright merciless.
He reached to take off the mask, but a cold, slimy weight fell on his shoulders and peeled it off for him before clawing at his eyes.
He screamed and threw his hands to the top of his head in an attempt to push the creature off of him, but the Gekko dug the spiny claws on the edges of its webbed feet deeper and deeper into his face, and, with a strangled cry, bit down on his arms and hands with its sharp teeth.
They struggled, and soon the Gekko pressed its forelegs against his windpipe and squeezed. He tore at its hold with one hand, and with the other, pulled out an arrow and jammed its point blindly behind his head until the he felt something give. The Gekko screamed and fell to the frozen ground.
He turned around and drew his sword, but there was no need for it. The arrow jutted diagonally through the Gekko's head, and even though its body still wriggled and screamed on the ground, it wasn't long for this world.
He braced the creature with his foot and pulled the arrow from its head. Its eyes clouded over, and then, it stopped moving.
He took a second to breathe, and then peered up at the ceiling for signs of any more stragglers. He found none- only a perfectly circular patch of unfrozen stone large enough to encircle exactly one Gekko.
Of course.
He looked back to the dead monster. Its white, needle-like teeth fell from its black lips, and the sickly orange color of its skin bled from its pores and onto the icy puddle like ink.
In the span of time it took for him to blink twice, the creature on the ground was no longer a grotesque monster, but an innocent, spotted frog. It sat up, suddenly unharmed, and then watched its former adversary with bulging bug eyes and bulging vocal sack.
"Ribbit," it said, and traced him over with glassy eyes.
He looked around the room- at the frog, at the dead monsters, and again at the frog- and cleared his throat. "I've come to, ah," he felt outrageously out of place, "I've come to tell you that spring will be coming to the mountains very soon."
"Ribbit," said the frog.
"You should make your way there," he continued.
"Ribbit," said the frog.
"Do, do you understand me?"
The frog blinked at him, once, and then tilted its head in consideration.
"Ribbit," it decided.
He felt his face heat up in embarrassment. Frogs could talk if they were old enough- everything could talk if it was old enough- and he hated when people and creatures condescended to him when he very clearly was not acting the part of a clueless, dull, unaware Hylian child.
He pulled out Don Gero's mask and shoved it over his face. Putting a frog on his head after so soon removing one from the same spot struck him as some sort of involved cosmic joke.
The frog croaked, again, and for a minute he thought he might punt it across the room, but then its croak lengthened and formed into words.
"Ah, Don Gero. Has spring finally come to the mountains like that strange child was saying to me?"
He reached out his hands to grab the frog by the throat and return the favor of what it had done to him not a moment ago, but stopped himself.
"Yes," he said, through gritted teeth.
"I understand," said the frog. "I shall return to the mountains as soon as I can." It blinked. "It will be so nice to see the others again."
"Yes," he said, "I'm off to summon them, as well."
"It's such a shame," continued the frog. "Woodfall is no longer as clear and beautiful as it once was. Even I was powerless to resist the evil once Odolwa turned."
"I can't say I know why you think you might be above that."
The frog laughed- a noise like air wheezing out of a balloon at high speeds.
"Oh, Don Gero, always a jokester. It's nice to know you haven't changed all these years." The frog sighed. "I swam down to the temple to see what could be causing such a malady as this, but the curse pulsing from this place ensnared me, too. I can only hope the guardian of the swamp below wasn't ensnared like I was." Its round eyes blinked at him, just barely out of sync with one another. "You'll have to thank that strange child for me. His approach could use some fine-tuning, but he was very effective."
Don Gero's golden, popped-out eyes didn't portray any emotion, but beneath them, his wearer's narrowed.
"...I'll be sure to tell him," he said.
"If he's feeling more clever, he might be able to free Odolwa of his mask," said the frog. "The Royal Family. They should have destroyed all of the relics associated with that old god, not given them to their generals. If only Odolwa could have abandoned that old mask before it was too late…"
Tomorrow afternoon, In the deepest chamber of the Woodfall ziggurat, he had decapitated Odolwa by the light of the flames the giant warrior set to frighten his opponents. However, the giant was long dead before the blade ever touched his neck. His blood had congealed in his veins, and instead the poison of the swamp coursed through him and animated his wrath. His skin greyed beneath his warrior's paint of bright red and deep blue, and the rancid smell of his rotting flesh brought forth droves of insects great and small. They followed him in a cloud, eager to feed on any creature unfortunate enough to cross his path.
When he fell, his insects fed on him instead.
The frog croaked, again. "You have to be careful in choosing who you surround yourself with," it said. "Betrayal leaves the kind of grief that will infect you from the inside out, if you aren't careful."
"Yes," he said, thinking of Navi, and of Tatl, and Cremia, and all the people who made decisions for him without asking him what he might want. "Yes."
He looked down at the patches of ice thawing at his feet. Don Gero's big eyes and green skin stared back at him without an opinion. Odolwa had been slowly eaten alive from the inside thanks to a curse he was powerless to stop, much like Jabu-Jabu, like Death Mountain, like his father, the Great Deku Tree.
Like he felt was happening, now and for almost as long as he could remember. Odolwa's crudely painted wooden mask stared out at the world with a fearsome visage, but when he had taken his sword and peeled the mask away from Odolwa's head, the face underneath was gone. He had been whittled down until nothing remained but the facade.
The frog hopped away, towards the door on the far side of the room. "There's no point in lamenting it now," he said. "Odolwa himself has long passed. All that's left in his place is a large shell, and an even larger problem someone needs to solve."
About halfway to the door, the frog paused. "Oh! And if you see that strange child again, tell him to get an antidote for when I attacked him while I was out of my right mind."
He looked up from his reflection in the ice. "Huh?"
The frog jumped up and down. "I am poisonous, you know!"