A Ship and a High Place
"For those of you who feel sickly," Aveil addressed the captured trio as they sat down, "someone will help you lean over. We'll even release your manacles, but so we're perfectly clear: We aren't afraid to spill a little blood on this ship; on the other had, we'd rather you not reek when we deliver you to the witches, it's just unpleasant. You two, sit; Princess, right there with your exceptional bodyguards."
Zelda followed Aveil as the Gerudo ordered Ronran and Maple to sit against the wall of the deck, when it was her turn to be seated, she nearly let herself collapse on the deck. Her Heart had only been suppressed before Ganondorf crashed her into the wall, but it had reflexively risen to meet the stonework and then again to guard her against the stone floor. When Ganondorf kicked her, the princess's defensive aura was gone, as fortunate as it was that her Heart held until she hit the ground, the kicks to her face, side, stomach, and chest left her sore and tired.
As much as she wanted to fight against the black cloud that levitated her, Zelda needed Ganondorf to think she wasn't a threat, it was the only way she would've been able board the ships that docked in Castle Town, the only ships large enough to sail between Hyrule and Gerudo. She hoped the voyage would be worth the pain, though she was sure it wasn't as bad as what Impa was going through right now. She hoped that what she and the Sheikah would accomplish on the other side could help Linkle to save Impa, though unlikely, it was more realistic than hoping to personally save Impa.
Knowing that someone as kindhearted as Impa was suffering such immense agony, and for so long, made her sick. When she thought about it, she really did feel sick, she wasn't sure if it the overbearing darkness that surrounded her just before, the number of times Ganondorf's boot struck her stomach, the ship rocking on the water, or the culmination of the three.
"I think I'll take you up on your offer now." Zelda said as she glared at the Gerudo who had taken a seat on a bench under the ship's wheel. Zelda tried to stand on her own, but her bound arms made that difficult, and she only managed to get upright when Aveil pulled her up.
Aveil used the key that had been passed to her along with the responsibility for the prisoners, freed the princess's wrists from the steel they had been bound in, and kept her hair out of her face. Zelda's quiet had Aveil's suspicions raised, but neither Sheikah seemed ready to launch an offensive.
Even though the guests to her ship were quiet, she knew from past experiences not to underestimate the Sheikah; Ronran seemed especially fierce and the Seagull was still near enough for a small boat to swoop in and attempt a rescue. The princess—though silent—was by no means calm, every muscle in her face tensed, her frame trembled. Either she was fighting her nausea or was quite convincing, in any case, she had a feeling they'd be standing for quite a while.
"If you want one of my girls to help you, don't be afraid to ask." Aveil gave the pair of Sheikah a vicious sneer as they gazed curiously at her, "Be afraid of what happens should you paint the Seagull's deck."
"There's the Aveil we know and love." Said the Sheikah who didn't wear a traditional Sheikah uniform.
"You've got quite a mouth on you...just like Impa." Aveil added, with a small smirk that clearly enraged the green haired young woman.
"Master, just leave her alone." Replied the other—the Sheikah she had clashed with before.
"Funny, I know you, you fought with shadow, yet that girl," Aveil paused a moment, confused by the pair, "wasn't she the witch that crashed into Ganondorf?"
"The Sheikah Master must always be in disguise." The masked Sheikah replied, "I'm more than happy to mislead and confuse you—the witches and king you serve, too."
"A lot of good that's done you." Aveil shot back, returning her attention to the seasick princess.
"A lot of good it will do us." The young witch replied coolly.
"Say what you will, Sheikah, you're not the first of your kind I've met, the Great War was quite a meet and greet." Aveil retorted. A groan from the princess drew her attention to the princess's face, she noticed her sweating and growing pale. Her gaze trailed to find a white knuckle grip on the wall of the hull, she was sure it'd be hard to pry the princess away now—and then she witnessed a shift from blue to gold in the princess's irises, "What's going on with the princess? Is this her sacred blood at work or something else? The poison Ganondorf prepared for Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule the Second to administer to the princess; that's what's happening to her! It's not killing her, is it?"
"Princess," Aveil leaned on the short wall until she saw Zelda's eyes—slivers of blue barely peeking behind her eyelids—on her, "if you've got that out of you system for now, I'm taking you below deck."
"If you want to...risk that..." Zelda groaned, as she turned with Aveil, "but I make...no promises."
"What are you doing with the princess?" The more obvious of the Sheikah demanded, "Why are-"
"I don't need to explain myself to you...but I'll tell you this, she's ill and I want to make sure she gets rest. Just see what a fragile thing she is...or are Sheikah less prone to nausea than most people? Now if you won't distract me further and promise not to cause problems while I'm under, I'm going to take care of your princess—don't go anywhere." Aveil sang her order playfully, as if the Sheikah could go anywhere; duty-bound to the princess, they didn't have many options. No, Aveil suspected they'd make trouble after they were on desert sand.
It was just as Rutilah had feared, first she pulled the lever on the outside of the gate that the first lever lowered, then stepped over the gate and yelled for Rutilah to pull her lever. The gate on the other side fell and Rutilah's voice told her to activate her strike switch. Linkle pulled the lever and the gate she just passed went back up.
She tentatively turned to the exit and quickly stepped over the exit, "Hey, Rutilah, are you out?" Linkle turned to the other side and found a wall between her exit and Rutilah's exit. She wondered if they'd have to pull more levers around here somewhere, but no sooner than she turned to where she should've seen the Zora, she heard Rutilah's voice above her, "It's some kinda disk...that pattern on the door's on this floor."
Linkle looked up and her eyes followed the raised platform built over the staircase, there was an outer set of stairs that went up—considerably shorter, "Whoever built this place must've loved stairs!"
"I don't know who, but...you should come up here." Rutilah urged. Linkle couldn't suppress her surprised gasp when she saw the reliefs depicting the Temple of Light—one without the big tree.
"Why's Hilda's vision here?" Linkle shook her head slowly and turned away, "This is crazy—oh, hey! Even crazier, look at this!" Linkle chuckled softly as she ran up to a lever on the wall, "Looks like we an make those gates stay up!"
"It is over the stairs..." Rutilah muttered dubiously, "at the same time, we're here and...a threat wouldn't have made it this far, right? Maybe this is how they let the others enter or this switch doesn't work unless you strike all the others? Unless this wasn't a prison, but a fortress."
"I get an odd feeling from this switch, so we'll get off this platform, I'll use this to extend my reach!" Linkle said as she pulled Drake's Bane out of her space pocket. She went down the short stairs with Rutilah, and held the grip just under the head of the hammer, and reached for the lever with the end of far end of the shaft.
After a few strikes, she knocked the lever down and struck the switch in the wall, the sound of metal spikes falling reached their ears. Though they looked for more—and harmful—results, nothing else appeared. Rutilah shrugged she turned to the long hall ahead, "Guess I was worried for nothing."
"At least there wasn't anything to worry about. Hopefully we're not wasting time here," Linkle sighed as she considered how Aryll was still dodging the Great Fairy, "at least we won't have to play the strike switch game again after this. I'm tempted to turn around, break through the skulltulas, and bring Aryll up here, then hit the switches for our own protection from the Great Fairy."
Rutilah knew the feeling, knew that Linkle also knew that they'd be stuck if the Great Fairy followed them and her fountain wasn't here, "We're not ready to help yet...are you?"
"Unfortunately...I want to go after her with everything I've got. Maybe we could trap the Great Fairy in the gates?" Linkle suggested, "Even if only for a few moments, it'd be easier to save her if she couldn't flee us or fight us." Linkle knew there was nothing she could've done for Kibo at the time, but she intended to save the Great Fairy now, if she could.
"I want to save her, too...hopefully a few minutes is all we need, hopefully the gates will hold—now that you mention it, that's a good way to trap her."
Linkle cast aside her doubts as she and Rutilah neared the end of the hallway. The wall that split the room into two hallways ended at a stone door. The duo turned around the corner, they saw it was identical to the one they had just passed through: Bare and gloomy. They turned back to the stone door and rolled it aside, dragged their palms along the surface until it revealed a second door.
Rutilah used ice spires to brace the door Linkle currently struggled to hold up and waited until the Hylian stepped over it and started rolling the next door aside before moving water into place to freeze and press the stone up the inclined path in the doorway.
"Ugh, another one?!" Linkle hissed as soon as the third door peeked out from behind the second.
Rutilah sighed and continued to focus her efforts on supporting Linkle with ice, "If you want me to-"
"Um, it might be a bad idea to try going back and forth over the ice. I'm just in a complaining mood, thanks for offering, though." Linkle glanced back and gave Rutilah a brief smile. She prayed it was the last door. Linkle struggled with the third for a few moments, as soon as it moved, she slipped her fingers over the rim of the door and pulled. Linkle wasn't sure if she should be surprised when she saw what lay behind the door, "And a fourth door! Because three just isn't enough!"
"Your poor back...why did they go to such lengths to keep people out?" Rutilah wondered, it was only a temple, supposedly, "Or were they trying to contain something?"
"What would they go to such lengths to seal when they could've stopped it without building...all this?" Linkle groaned as she slipped behind the door, one leg slowly, shakily over the ice spire Rutilah had in place, the last Rutilah would need to make. Suddenly it all became clear to Linkle, "Queen Hilda was here, right? She can see the future, she saw something dangerous would need to be contained, but after this place was done being built...I think this is the Great Fairy's trap. I think we'll find the Great Fairy's fountain just behind this door—ah, last door!"
"It's that or Queen Hilda wanted the Great Fairy out of this place, all the gates were up, the Great Fairy could've been corrupted outside her fountain." Rutilah couldn't imagine anything else behind all the stone doors, or anything that would need to be protected behind them.
"One thing's for sure, there's some powerful magic inside the stones, I can feel them pushing me away. You coming, Rutilah?" Linkle asked as she stepped over the last of the ice spires.
"I'll stay here and form a more permanent solution, I'll meet up with you in—oh!" Rutilah suddenly reached her hand out and wrestled with the fractures running up the ice, "Those doors are breaking the ice somehow!"
"I'll hurry!" Linkle wheeled around and ran into the room, the room was small, square, and dimly lit by the glowing plant life. Something snapped under Linkle's foot, she ignited a flame in her palm and saw part of a ladder that once stood here. She looked around the rest of the room for a way out, from up above she could feel something, before she was done searching the walls she painted amber with her fire spell. When Linkle looked up, she could see more plants growing alongside the shaft of the walls.
"Updraft!" The green cloaked adventurer shouted. Linkle glanced down at the floor and tried to cast the spell again. The air stirred, but something suppressed her magic—she could feel her Heart pushed down on by something. Linkle knew she was supposed to get up there somehow, or there wouldn't have been a way past the gates to begin with, she felt along the walls, but found no handholds.
Linkle even felt above the doorway, the wall was too smooth to be grabbed, "Apparently whatever was up there was meant to fall and die whenever it hit the ground...can monsters die from a fall?"
"I...don't know. I've never heard of monsters falling to their deaths...I guess it's not like anyone's had the chance to try to do that." If it came between safety and a quick when, Rutilah strongly preferred not trying to knock a monster off a precipice, "Is this a dead end?"
"No, I just...need a way up." Linkle turned her head to the ceiling and pulled on her clawshots, "Here's hoping a stray root's waiting for me."
Linkle fired one clawshot and waited, but the chain returned with not so much as a speck of dirt on the claws. She put her clawshots away again, she couldn't cast an area wide spell to elevate herself, and the clawshot chain was either too short or there was nothing for the claw to grasp above her, the walls were bare of any handholds, and she was either not supposed to go up or she was and just didn't know how yet.
She closed her eyes and focused on a smaller wind spell, just under her feet. Linkle raised herself up a few inches before the room's magic forced her back down. She glanced between the walls and found that they were spaced out pretty far apart, and yet...she had to try!
Linkle backed up to a wall, arms reflexively raised to brace the wall she neared, but she knew she had to hit the wall at full force, "I don't know if this will work or if any spirits are present to help me, but I will soar like a dragon if I have to!"
"Gale Rush!" Her spell sped up her sprint considerably, the prospect of crashing into the wall made her wince, but this was the only way to save the Great Fairy—and, by extension, Hyrule. She took a deep breath and reached out deep into her soul and focused on gathering wind around her feet. With a boost of air underfoot, Linkle sprang off the ground, threw herself towards the wall. She felt her breath catch in her throat as her foot connected with the wall, and blasted a gust of wind from her boot to propel herself up and away from the wall. With arms outstretched, Linkle somersaulted through the air, kicked off the wall she had started sprinting from, "Drake's Flight!"
Linkle forced her eyes to stay open as she threw herself from one wall to another, all too aware that a fall from this height would hurt, and from even higher might destroy enough of her Heart to render her useless to Aryll and Rutilah. Every time she kicked off a wall, she drew her knees in, and every time she neared a wall, she extended and cast a burst of air to launch her away again.
As Linkle neared the exit, she began kicking away at longer angles so as to turn and position herself to kick out of the shaft's exit, eventually passed the corners, reached the middle of the walls. All she had to do then was wait until she was out of the shaft and back on her feet.
When Linkle finally made it out she quickly grabbed her crossbows and glanced around for anything that might try to knock her down, but there was nothing, just a wide hall that ended in stairs. She followed them up quickly, and stepped into a large, circular room. There was a single bed, blankets askew and pillow torn apart. There was also a small table, a dresser, and a mat, the last item bore the same symbol as the stone doors that were all throughout this temple.
This room, she knew, was important; this was the room that drop, those doors, and all the gates were protecting—but who lived here? She approached the table, atop it were, a wooden cup, bowl, and assorted utensils, and a tablet. Linkle stared at the tablet and found the story of the last days written on the stone, not only that, but as she read it, images came to mind. It felt like a dream she suddenly remembered and grew more vivid by the minute.
"To whomever discovers this message..." Were the first words etched in stone, Linkle knew she was looking through the eyes of whoever wrote this message. She could hear the words that she read, carried by a woman's voice, echoed through her mind as the world changed around her—and yet, nothing changed! It was exactly the way she'd left it. She stood at the top of the stairs, her legs were sore from the tour of the temple she took.
Linkle distinctly remembered the Great Fairy, talking with her, laughing with her, all while dreading something far in the distance, yet great in her eyes. The future she saw...was awful, but she couldn't remember it, she only knew that something horrible gripped her heart with an icy hand, some unseen, unnamed, unknowable evil. As terrified as she was of the future, she knew that she didn't know, aware that those thoughts existed separately from her, like a dreamer aware of the nightmare.
She held to the vision, embraced it wholly, the fears, the hopes, all of it; Linkle knew that was the only way she'd get anywhere in this vision. She steadily walked towards the table, pulled the tablet from her pocket as she walked, "...it is with great regret that I transcribe the darkness from my mind to this tablet, I know you are brought to me by fate, I must pray that you are, put my faith in you. I saw you here last night, in this room. I didn't know where it was, but...the Great Progenitor showed it to me."
Linkle raised her hands above the tablet and closed her eyes. She saw a pair of wicked eyes, sclera yellow, bright like lanterns, veins like blue lightning traversed through the; green were the irises and the pupils were blood red. She didn't know who those eyes belonged to, why they scared her, she only knew—with a great and horrible degree of uncertainty—that they belonged to a great, unfathomable evil, one she had never beheld and should well pray never to.
"But if I don't stand before it, who will? That's my vision, isn't it? It'll kill people anyway, won't it? Then I should face it, where it lurks now or...when it arrives." Linkle took a deep breath and tried to bury herself back into that memory that wasn't her own, "I can only hope my friends won't be hurt...but I know that they will be, if this evil rises in our era. Does it matter? If not in our era, someone else will witness this terror, someone else will get hurt...I wouldn't want Malron or Aryll to live in a world with no Hero, but if there is one, what if...that thing appears?"
Linkle felt an odd dissonance between her presence and her mind's awareness; somehow she felt herself fall to her knees, tears trailed down her face, scrunched in frustration, inner conflict. Was that the real Linkle, or this woman's memory? And who was this woman? What was it that Linkle truly wanted? These questions made it impossible to hold onto the vision, the insight likely therein, that was granted to her by the visitor to the Forest Temple, now likely dead for hundreds of years.
"I guess the real question is...could I hurt so badly and keep going, after losing everyone I love? If it was up to me...no one would have to feel that pain, no one would see loved ones murdered by this monster! So, I hope that...if the evil she saw rises in this age...I pray that I can make the right choices and save the world...even if it kills me on the inside."
With newfound resolve, she pushed the memory further and the eyes she saw through opened again, light spilled from her palms, wove into the tablet, "You are the one, then. Young Hero, cursed by fate to dread the future, cursed by the gods to have so much you love, so much to lose, cursed to carry this burden on your shoulders, I pray that you will be equally blessed, in this life and the next. May your fears be unfounded. Yet, are we not blessed with the power to change the future? I must believe this is so, I must believe in you. To you, young Hero, I will leave a sacred gift, blessed by the Great Deku Tree, the Lord Jaburu, this era's oracle of the Goddess of Sand, and Hylia, through me. Their power runs deep in this object, it will surely aid you in your quest, though I know not what you must do."
The woman fell silent for a long stretch of time, she felt thoughts moving through the woman's mind, a prayer to Hylia, "Your Grace, my work here is done, I fear my time is nigh, let it be seen or not, quick or not, I only pray that this weapon aids her in saving the Great Fairy, who I have personally bound to darkness...my deepest regret was to leave her here, knowing what will be. I only ask to die saving Hyrule...I know my killer follows me here."
She stepped away from the tablet and approached the bed, pulled a cover back to reveal a pillow. She grabbed a knife sheathed under the left sleeve of her dress and tore the pillow, put her knife away again, and removed from her space pocket a weapon brimming with wild energy. A tangle of vines shaped like a hand with a large rose on the back of it.
The unseen speaker gazed upon it for sometime, contemplated using it on her assailant, but decided against it and finally slid the glove inside the pillow instead, "Hero, I pray you use Flowerbind well, it is yours to do with as you see fit."
The woman slid the glove into the pillow, took out a sewing kit, and sewed the tear carefully, "I feel as if I've known you for my whole life, you're strong, kind, brave...everything I'm not nor could ever be. I resent myself for sealing her here, knowing she'd become a monster, knowing you'd have to kill her because you have no Seeker. I've seen you hold her limp body in your arms, I saw you mourn her. Hate me, wish in your present for my death in the past to have been painful, tortuous. Let that wish be so, I don't care, only don't leave Flowerbind to spite me, to make all my efforts for nothing. I am only a messenger of the divine, a conduit for their will; they need you to have this, for your world's sake."
She cut the thread, flipped the pillow over, and covered the blanket neatly over the pillow, and went over to the table, where she sat and waited. She raised her compass and gazed down upon it, "Show me where Prince Rufert is, let the needle spin clockwise for distant rooms, counterclockwise for the floor level on which he stands."
A nervous laugh filled the room as the gold light of the Seeker pointed down at the stairs and spun counterclockwise once, "Well, he's taking his time. Mm-mm-mm, hm, mm-mm...there you are!" She sat stiffly in her chair, her soft, anxious hums concluded, and she watched anxiously as a broad shouldered, black bearded rose from the stairs.
"Did I leave you waiting very long?" He inquired politely as he neared her, "If so, I apologize."
"I forgive you...but not for what you may think. Years from now, you will come to regret your actions, but know that I have foreseen them for many an year now and forgive you all the same."
She didn't turn around as Rufert walked past her, tossed back the covers, and ripped open the pillow, she barely flinched as tendrils of vine wrapped around her neck, "Why did you hide it from me?"
"That's not for you, but another. She is watching us." The woman sighed, as she remembered she hadn't deactivated the spell she'd cast stood calmly and walked towards the stairs, eyed the pit she was to be cast down into.
"Again with the 'Hylia is watching you' speech! If she wanted to stop me, I wouldn't have been born."
"One of us has to live." She retorted, "Tell me, how did you know where I'd hide it?"
"That's where you've always hid things you wanted to deprive me of, pebbles, books, figurines...you haven't changed from the girl I was raised alongside by our nanny."
"Oooh, were that true! I fear that she died long ago, long before I saw my own death, for darkness and blood stain my hands, I've touched a hundred fates and it's likely that I've ruined so many more. I have died a thousand times before; this time I won't wake drenched in a cold sweat."
"Here's your fate, traitor." The man announced, showing the woman to the pit, "You have been found guilty of high treason in the eyes of His Majesty the King of Hyrule, thus, Princess Hilda Hyrule, I sentence you to hang until dead."
"I thought Father was too ill to pass judgment." Hilda said, though she knew Rufert killed her father.
"You know, Uncle actually passed. I was there to see him off, but—justly—his daughter wasn't, the girl I envied, hated. You're still the same child, frightened and delusional. Ironic that this forest is in eternal spring, it's even more ironic that you'll die in the Kokiri Forest, where death cannot be found."
Hilda turned to face her killer, unsheathed the knife under her right dress sleeve, and cast a blinding light at Rufert. "I hate myself with a passion hot enough to shame Death Mountain a thousandfold! I hate myself more than I could love my dearest friends! I hate every fiber in my being so infinitely more than you ever could...and thus, cousin, I deprive you of your desires for the last time!"
Linkle felt her consciousness thrown with the light, and turned in time to see a woman with dark, violet locks and crimson stained her chest. She stumbled backwards, held her hands and bloodstained knife in the air, fire built up in her arms, cast herself down the pit and burned the a ladder that Linkle knew had been there—through Hilda, she remembered. The vines around his hand frayed, snapped; the flower on it bloomed into flames, he cast it off with the torn vines and let it fall with his cousin.
Rufert's angered cries filled the room, he grabbed a blue cube that hang from his neck, and spoke to it, "Sheikah, the traitor is dead. I have the secrets of the strange switches we found, but the mystic object broke with me. Oh, that? She likely wanted me to be stranded here, my uncle knew better than to let his ill daughter know about the Sheikah's communication device."
Promptly, shadow swirled on the floor beneath him and he whisked him away. Linkle was stunned by what she just witnessed, she couldn't blame Hilda for locking the Great Fairy away; she knew that Hilda had told the Great Fairy what would happen. Linkle had been inside Hilda's head, she couldn't claim to know what Hilda was going through, but all the same, she felt as if she saw more clearly than the princess ever did.
She saw that the Great Fairy accepted her fate, knew that if it wasn't she who would suffer, it would be another—in her own words, one of her sisters, she'd rather bear that burden. She was also glad that Hilda had commissioned the place to be constructed so that the Great Fairy would be trapped, unable to hurt Hyrule or her sisters, or the Kokiri living so nearby.
She knew, also, that the Great Fairy would only be corrupted a few hundred years after the Kokiri left their home; still Hilda tormented herself, hated herself for letting the Great Fairy of Courage dread her fate for those hundred years, that—in the end—her joy would amount to nothing for the suffering she'd go through, all for it to end by Linkle's hand.
"Zelda said she saw me die in the corrupted Dark World, yet I live; surely you were mistaken, Princess Hilda...I just pray you knew that, before the end." Linkle took a deep breath, realized her hands were still on the tablet, though her knees were on the floor.
She rose and read the tablet in full, surprisingly, the entire vision was written on the stone, it ended with these words: "To the one my dear friend Princess Hilda addressed, I am the Guardian of the Forest, and bade you to break this tablet, wherein lies the gift of the gods Princess Hilda referred to, for the glove was a trick, and the true gift is a spell—one that the Great Deku Tree, Lord Jaburu, Goddess of Sands, and Lady Hylia cast for her to place where only you would find it.
"Let Princess Hilda's memory be honored, by you and the descendants of her citizens. Save my future successor—you will know her by her blade, a gift from Princess Hilda—save my people of your era, and save the Great Fairy of Courage! Please, I know it's a lot, but I'm begging you to do your best; I have no doubt in my mind that you can do anything, Hero of the Kokiri!"
"I will save them all, I will speak of what your friend accomplished for all of us, and expose her cousin for the traitor he is." The green cloaked adventurer vowed as she grasped the tablet, raised and swung the tablet down on the edge of the table.
A bright light poured out of the tablet and wrapped around her hands as she put the cracked tablet in her space pocket, and suddenly, Linkle understood Flowerbind in its entirety. It was crafted by the two foremost guardian spirits under the instruction of two goddesses who added their power to the spell.
Linkle also understood with great clarity that it could be enchanted onto something to preserve its energy. She reached into her space pocket, slipped her fingers into the clawshots, and pulled the two tools out. Linkle wove her own Heart energy through it, to further preserve energy, "Thank you, Your Majesty...I will use this well. I hope that you saw me here; you have nothing to fear or worry about."
She gazed up at the ceiling and had the oddest feeling that powerful magic was spilling out above her, she seemed to recall that Hilda knew the Great Fairy lived up there, but there was something the magic was falling through. It brought her back to the time she was in the corrupted Sacred Realm, the feeling of every time a Sheikah was near her, the way the wall that was not there felt as she followed Princess Zelda through it, and just now, in that memory, the feeling as Rufert entered and exited the room, "He didn't take the ladder up here, a Sheikah used shadow magic! And if I felt the same thing all those times, then this is one of those secret passages, just like the one Zelda showed me at the castle!"
Linkle fired her clawshots at the ceiling, green and blue magic intertwined and struck stone, she didn't want to go up here, so used her crossbows instead. Linkle fired until one of her bolts passed through the illusory stone, then used her clawshots and began her ascent into the Great Fairy's Fountain.
Author's Notes: I think Flowerbind is helpful enough to be this temple's item, and I'm apparently following the trend set in the Water Temple, where non-weapon items or magic spells are the "item", such as the Zora's Scale Laced Cloak and the Seeker spell: Eclipse, it's good help either way.
The way Linkle obtained Flowerbind might be similar to how spell books in this universe work, but they might be rechargeable. The books should wear out with repeated uses and recharges because they're still just books and also have a limited number of uses gained for a spell when it's absorbed and a deterioration rate for spells stored in the pocket space. Those factors and impact when a spell's used are based on the book caster's ability and the spell writer's power limit/limiters. I'm glad I haven't already settled on this topic yet, there are so many ways this can go!