"What happened to Scourge?" Tails asked, while Silver got himself a drink. It wasn't often he talked this much.
"I'm not entirely sure actually," he admitted. "Once he figured out he wasn't going to be much use in the Water Temple he stopped trying to follow me. I saw him a few times after then, usually so he could find out what I'd been up to, but the last time I saw him was just after I defeated Ganondorf, before I headed back in time. Just before I had to become your teacher, Tails. For all I know, he's still in Hyrule somewhere."
"I don't think so," Sonic disagreed. "They'd have talked about it, and I got the impression that we were the only ones like us they'd ever seen."
"You're forgetting something, Sonic," Silver sighed. "In the present, he still had the Hylian image – I'd only nulled it in the future."
"Surely that had to happen too though," Tails said.
"Of course it did, but I don't know what Scourge did. He might have decided to lay low somewhere. Certainly I never saw him in the two years after I finished off Ganondorf."
"When you went to Termina?"
"Right. Good thing I did too, otherwise it's probable the future wouldn't have happened anyway. I'll tell you about that in good time though, there's still plenty to go yet."
Inside Zora's Domain had frozen over completely. There were no Zoras, no rushing water providing the ever-present hiss that had been here before, not even the torches were lit. The waterfall looked like it had simply stopped in place, the ice around the base dipped around as if to show the impact on the water that had once lay beneath.
Frost lined the walls and stone paths making them slippery and treacherous. After I'd slipped once and Scourge, rather surprisingly, had quickly reached down and pulled me back up onto the path, I led the way more carefully than I had before.
The Zora shop was blocked off by a strangely warm kind of red ice that stubbornly refused to break even when hit with the Megaton hammer or melt no matter how strong a blast I threw at it from Din's Fire. Magic beyond what I knew was at work here.
The only other accessible place from here was the audience chamber where King Zora should be, and where the source of the winter wind was coming from. I'd felt a chill wind not long before I ventured into Jabu-Jabu's belly, and I suspected Ganondorf had enhanced that effect to cause this.
The audience chamber was similarly frozen over and devoid of life except for King Zora, who sat frozen in more red ice to one side of the frozen waterfall that led to Jabu-Jabu's lake.
"You know what Ganondorf has done, right?" I asked Scourge, sliding along the frozen water's surface down the cavern to the lake.
"What gave you that impression?" he chattered, handling the cold worse than I was.
"You knew what he was trying to do to the Gorons, didn't you?"
"I was in Goron City when Ganondorf attacked, that's all," he replied. "I was left out of it because I wasn't a Goron. Don't know anything about anywhere else though, except that he did something to some creature under the Kakariko well."
"I've met it," I said darkly, recalling the threat it had made. "So you actually have no idea what's going on then?"
"It's cold and this place is frozen over," he retorted. "What more do you want? I could lie if you want."
"I think I'll pass."
"Hey Silver," Navi called from up ahead. "You ought to see this."
We slid out of the cavern into the moonlit lake. It was only partly frozen over, a fair part of it still flowing freely within the confines of the deep lake, though snowfall had caused the level to rise slightly. It let us walk without slipping on the slushy snow on top of the ice to where the altar Jabu-Jabu had rested was.
Jabu-Jabu however, was gone. The lake somehow seemed at the same time larger, but also smaller without the Zora patron deity. I could only assume he'd gone somewhere safer before the trouble had gotten too serious – not that I could see a way he could have left.
A string of ice floes floated in the water, some larger than others, bobbing in the calm waters of the lake. They appeared to lead to the cavern I'd seen in one side – the one the icy wind had come from in the past. With the larger chunks closer to the cavern it was possible to reach it without needing to be me.
"I hate this," Scourge muttered. "You're going to go in there, aren't you?"
"Of course I am. It's the source of this ice, and it has to be cleared up. You don't have to come if you don't want to, but if you plan on keeping up with what I'm doing you'll have to bear it."
"How very considerate of you," he snapped, but followed all the same.
Out of at least some consideration for him, I chose not to fall back on simply flying up to the mouth of the cavern, taking the trip over the ice instead. Their slippy and sometimes uneven surface made it difficult especially on the smaller ones, and more than once one of us fell off. For me it was a simple matter to get on without getting dunked in the freezing waters; Scourge remained immune to me and so had to find alternatives. I used one of the two Deku Sticks I'd picked up way back to give him a hand back up, then used Din's Fire to help dry him out a bit. He backed away the first time I used it, but once he realised I was actually trying to help him he settled for warily watching it in case I pulled anything. He might not have been a friend, but he was travelling with me and that was reason enough for me to do such things.
Inside even just the mouth of the cavern and its initial tunnel there were deep snowdrifts, interspersed throughout with icy stalagmites jutting up, and fragile stalactites hanging down. Made it a practise to knock those down before I even got near them.
I kept Din's Fire in one hand, giving me an odd warmth there while I was chilled everywhere else. I wasn't going to just use it carelessly though, the red ice was resistant to it and in any case snow and ice was probably going to be easier to work with than more freezing waters.
Eventually the winding hallway opened into a frozen-floored cavern with frosted metal bars blocking the only exit on the other side. Four translucent statues of ice drifted around, apparently harmless at first until they all oriented on me and breathed out clouds of cold air toward me. They lacked range to reach me from the ice, and lacked life to breath once I'd sent a flame into each of them, causing the bars to lift.
We passed through another hallway into a second cavern, this one larger but with a great chunk of ice that was definitely not naturally formed, a cone in the center that rotated with two giant blades of ice on either side.
In here there were five silver rupees, not used as currency but as a kind of magic that marked progress. Navi explained them to us, then pointed out another line of bars up on a ledge that blocked our progress, suggesting that if we collected the five rupees it'd unlock – if we managed to avoid getting chopped up by the blades of ice. There were also two caverns hidden behind some red ice, but since we had no way of dealing with that I barely noticed them.
I did try melting the ice blades, but while they were not red ice, they too stubbornly refused to melt.
"Got an idea," Scourge said, trying to mask the effect of the cold. "I can run faster than that thing can move. If you break the stalagmites over by that one," he gestured to one almost hidden in them. "I'll collect it and the four around the blade. You get that one up there on your way up to the ledge, and if it doesn't open I'll turn over my four to you."
"You're helping me? I thought-"
"It's cold and I don't want to be here, so just do it Silver," he said plaintively. "The sooner we get out of here the better."
I shattered the stalagmites on my way up, simply floating as the silver rupee was hanging in mid-air away from the ledge anyway, then waited. Scourge kept his word, becoming a blue exactly as Sonic would have – though in green, of course – to collect the other four, easily evading the blades. He needn't have worried about giving them to me as once all four were collected they flashed, disappeared and caused the bars to retract to let us progress.
That led us down another hallway, past more stalagmites and stalactites to yet another cavern. The main part of this cavern was on raised rock pillars, some connected by more stone, others only had jutting crags with more stone on the ice underneath that had collapsed.
"Ice Keese," I muttered, reaching for my bow. "As if Fire Keese weren't bad enough."
"Let me," Scourge said, roughly pushing me aside. He pointed at the nearest one and said, "Drop dead, by order of the King."
And it did.
"When did you learn that?" Navi asked.
"When I made my deal with Ganondorf, of course. He arranged it so I wouldn't have to worry about the various monsters while I tried to keep track of you. Won't work on you or on a Hylian or Gerudo though, so its use is limited."
"Useful here though," I noted. "Looks like we'll have to climb up this ledge here."
"In full view of more of those things? I think not," Scourge told me firmly. He slid around on the ice, repeating his actions for each of the Ice Keese he spotted and even some more ice statutes, or Freezards as Navi called them. She helped him find the ones that kept evading him once he explained he had to have line of sight or it wouldn't work, then when he was satisfied we finally climbed up.
Over on one of the more distant platforms was a large chest encased in red ice, but what caught our attention more was a large blue pot that had a similarly icy blue flame shooting out of it. It was easy to reach it atop these platforms as they were covered in snow and not ice.
When we reached it Scourge held out his hands to it to warm them, only to draw them back sharply with a startled oath. When I repeated I found out why, this fire didn't radiate heat, it gave out cold.
"I get it now. The red ice is warm, so it won't get melted by heat, only a cold fire – this. That's what it's here for."
"I'm so happy for you," Scourge said. "So we can defrost that chest and the fat Zora, what good does that do you?"
"There's another route we can take that needs this to defrost it... if I can figure out how to carry it."
"Catch it in a bottle?" Navi suggested. "I don't think you're meant to move this pot around, and you can't touch it yourself, so it seems to be the only way."
"Right," I agreed, then glanced over at Scourge having an idea. I took out one bottle and with Din's Fire created a normal flame in there, then corked the bottle and handed it to him. "I want it back when we leave, mind," I warned him, then used my other two bottles to capture some of the blue fire.
Scourge took the first bottle off me gratefully, keeping it close to him to ward off the chill while I defrosted the red ice around the chest, which contained a map of the cavern. It didn't look like it was a large place and there was no skull marking, so it seemed unlikely this was the place the next sage would awaken. If I'd known where the Water Temple was before, I could have simply ignored this place and gone directly there – unless this was necessary. Coincidences in Hyrule rarely are.
I refilled the bottle on the way back, keeping two full with the blue fire as we headed back to the room with the spinning ice blades to open the next route, first taking the eastern hallway.
Here there were more stalagmites on their own with normal Keese hidden behind them. This time rather than let Scourge handle them I experimented with the phantom sword ability the Great Fairy had given me, shooting them down with that instead, smashing some of the stalagmites in the process.
Behind some of them was another pot of blue fire, and nearby another chest encased in red ice that contained a strange, almost transparent blue stone.
"That's magic in crystal form," Navi identified it. "I could be wrong – I don't know much about magic, after all – but I think that's for your arrows."
"Ice Arrows?" I remarked. "I can't see a use for them, but maybe they'll be useful somewhere."
Once again I refilled the empty bottle from the blue flame and went back to the spinning blades room to open the other passage, as this one had been a dead end.
This one led us to a more artificial seeming cavern, a large square room with a floor made completely of ice carved into neat squares. A large cube of ice was on the same level as us, while the floor itself was lower down. On the opposite wall was another blue flame, while above were more Ice Keese – until Scourge told them to drop dead as well.
The giant ice cube moved easily at my mental touch, but didn't stop so readily, colliding with one of the many stubby pillars of ice dotted about the room. After I'd moved it once, several pieces of the floor dropped away to reveal a black pit beneath.
It was clear I had to move this block of ice into a position I could use it to reach the southern exit, or at least so Scourge could. Each time I moved it around more of the floor fell away to make things more complicated, until I made a mistake and it dropped down the gap.
"Oh, nice going," Scourge said sarcastically. "Now what?"
As if to answer that, the floor rose back up again, the ice cube flowing up out of it exactly where it had started from.
"That help?" I replied. "It looks like every move drops a part of the floor away, and there's only so many moves before there's no other choice but to reset it like this."
"So plan ahead," Navi said. "Work backward from where you need it to be until you figure it out."
That was simpler than trying to work forward through it. Once I figured out the right directions I discovered something else – only wrong moves caused the floor to drop away. It took me only five moves to put it in place without a single piece of floor dropped, allowing us to slide over the ice to reach it and the door beyond.
The room on the other side was very different to anywhere else. The walls were black, but glittered with uncountable pinpricks of blue light, almost like stars, making their own games of shapes and patterns. Ice grew out of the snowy floor, not as stalagmites but as crystalline shards.
"Something's here," Navi warned, which kind of spoiled the effect the room was having.
Scourge hung back by the door, leaving it to me while I drew out the Master Sword and shook my shield down into place, warily heading through the room. Close to the middle with an echoing howl a white Wolfos leapt out from behind one of the ice crystals, claws swinging wildly for me. I managed to evade the blow, then on an impulse without thinking why I jumped up, pushing magic out into the blade. The blade struck not the Wolfos but the ground before me, the impact enhanced by the magic to fling the Wolfos into the same crystals it had leapt out of, the sharp points defeating it instantly. This was another skill I later taught Tails – the Jump Strike.
With its fall a large chest appeared, containing a pair of boots similar to my own but with heavy metal attachments on the bottom that made it a struggle just to lift them. Like other things, once put in that ever useful pouch, the weight was gone.
"Silver," Scourge called. "Who's that?"
"Nice to see you again Sheik," I said, having sensed her presence. "I was wondering when I'd next see you."
"Did you meet the other Hero?" she asked simply.
"Of course. We talked a little, but he didn't recognise me. Did you reach what you were looking for?"
"Naturally. In the desert at world's end. Exactly where it was said to be. But you need not concern yourself with that yet. I have another warp song for you that will take you to Lake Hylia, and the Water Temple beneath – which is why you needed those boots. You cannot simply swim down there."
"Even with them I can't, Sheik. I can't hold my breath that long."
"Speak with the King of the Zoras before you go to Lake Hylia then. He will surely help you."
She took out her harp from whatever concealment hid it from view, playing the song that I then mimicked on my Ocarina to ensure I'd learned it right, the Serenade of Water, then she left me with one last warning.
"In the Water Temple beware of he who is not who he seems to be. To defeat him, you must first conquer yourself."
Then she vanished into another Deku Nut flash.
"That confirms it," I said. "That was all we needed to be here for. Come here Scourge and I'll warp us back outside, then we'll defrost King Zora and see what Sheik thinks he can do for us."
"Or for you, at least," he said sourly, reluctantly handing back the bottle with the still burning red flame inside that had warmed him.