Chapter Twenty One – Removing the Zora's curse
Sheik finally left me an update today, and he got his next orders to help Link in Zora's Domain. The report Sheik left stated a man was found floating in the Hyrule River dead. Strange beans were found in his mouth, and Sheik had some of the beans examined to see what they were. It turns out these beans cause hallucinations in small doses, but in large amounts they are extremely dangerous. Once the beans got wet they began to release a harmful chemical into the water. After some investigations of our drinking water, it turns out all of Hyrule's water has been completely contaminated, and most of the people in Hyrule are going to die because of this.
Upon entering the cave the temperature dropped dramatically once again. His body was shaking from the cold, and his fingers were starting to go numb. As he made his way through the cavern he noticed there were many paths leading to other large caverns, and all over the place were lots of monsters roaming about.
Trying not to get the attention of anything that might try to eat him, he began moving through each of the large caverns as quietly as possible. Some of the caverns had unreachable ledges, but with some quick thinking he manages to build a path out of large pieces of ice and climbed up to reach the next area. With all the twists and turns he quickly became lost and didn't know which path to take. The walls of ice all looked the same, and the cold was becoming more and more intense the longer the stayed in there. He knew if he didn't hurry and get out of there he would freeze to death.
Just when he thought he wouldn't be able to handle the cold any longer he started to feel heat radiating from a tunnel that was on the far side of the room he was currently in. In the middle of the room was a giant piece of ice that formed two blades that covered the entire length of the room, and the giant blades spun around in a large circle very quickly. The blades were preventing him from being able to get through the room, but there appeared to be just enough room between the blades and the wall to slide past it. It wasn't much room to work with, and even a single misstep could cost him his life, but it seemed to be the only path around.
Trying his best to get to the room where he felt the heat coming from, he inched along the perimeter of the room while pressing himself as close to the wall as possible. The wind from the ice-blades almost made him fall forward with each pass they made, but he manage to maintain his balance and kept going. After what felt like hours of freezing as he moved along the wall he finally made it across the room and was able to see where the source of heat was coming from.
Upon entering the next room he noticed the heat was coming from a large blue flame that was emitting from a basin that was placed in the middle of the room on top of a pillar of ice. The heat in that room chased away all the cold air, but at the same time, none of the ice seemed to melt. The floor of the cavern he was in was made of ice, yet it also wasn't cold to the touch.
After being in the room for a while his clothes finally had a chance to unfreeze and dry out. The feeling in his hands was finally returning and his body was feeling warm once again. While he was in that room warming up he took some time to look around and noticed strange markings all over the room. It seemed to be some kind of ancient language, but he wasn't familiar with it, and wasn't able to read it. From what he could tell it appeared he was in some kind of shrine for the blue fire, but he wasn't sure what was so special about the flame. Moving over to it he placed the master sword into the flame, but when he removed it the sword wasn't even hot. With confusion about the flame he decided to test and see what the flame might burn up, so he pulled out an arrow and placed the tip of it into the flame, but when he pulled it back out there wasn't a flame on the arrow, and none of the wood had been burned.
Feeling a little more daring, he slowly placed his hand into the flame. He was instantly amazed to see the flame didn't burn him, and it seemed to stay at a mild heat that felt good to the touch. As he removed his hand from the flame he had the idea to see what else wouldn't burn in the fire, so he began going through his stuff and placing it into the fire to see if it would burn. After some time playing with the fire and finding nothing he owned would burn up in the flame, he took out his bottle and placed it into the flame, and to his surprise some of the flame entered into the bottle and remained there when he put the cork back on.
Feeling powerful now that he had fire inside a bottle he suddenly realized he had no idea what it was for. He opened the bottle and dumped the fire out and it enveloped the area he was standing in with blue flames for a moment before vanishing, but the flames still didn't hurt him. Thinking this was fun he began filling and dumping out the bottle over and over until he accidently dumped some on a red crystal that was in the room and it completely vanished.
Link took one final bottle of fire and decided it was time to head out and save the Zora's from their imprisonment. Leaving the room he remembered the ice-blade was still spinning in the next area and he needed to be careful. He slowly made his way along the wall and once again got past the blade without getting hurt.
Heading towards the exit to the cave he suddenly realized he forgot which path to take, and with monsters everywhere it made it very difficult to figure out which way to go. With each turn he took he felt like he was going deeper into the cave, and was becoming even more lost. Most of the monsters were easy to avoid, but as the cold started setting in again, he began moving through the cave at a faster pace than he knew he should, but he really needed to get out of there fast.
As he turned a tight corner a large white wolf spotted him and froze Link in place with fear. With amazing speed the wolf erupted into a run straight for him. Its jaws were dripping with drool as it drew closer. It took all his strength to finally force his legs to start moving, and before he realized what was happening he was running through different tunnels, with the wolf right behind him.
With a quick glance back he saw how close the wolf was getting, but when he returned his gaze forward his feet hit a patch of ice on the ground and he fell to the ground and began sliding uncontrollably. The ground quickly sloped downward and he began to pick up more and more speed the further he slid. More wolves and monsters from other areas of the cave noticed the commotion and began chasing after as well. When the ground finally leveled back out Link was able to get back to his feet, but he didn't have time to relax as the monsters were still chasing after him. He turned to face the monsters and realized there were far too many for him to defeat on his own, but he was now stuck at the bottom of a very slippery slope with no way out other than climbing back up the way he came from, and that meant getting past all the monsters that were now waiting for him to come back up.
Looking around franticly for a way out he realized he was stuck there and would have to face all the monsters by himself. Pulling out the master sword Link tried to hold it tightly, but was shacking too bad from the cold and fear to steady it. He didn't know what he should do to get out of the situation other than fight, but his legs were too weak from fear to move. He felt the cold ice through the back of his shirt from the wall he was now pressing against. The howls and roars from the monsters grew more excited as some of them started to make their way down the slope.
Before any of the monsters reached the bottom, Link felt the cold ice on his back disappear and a hand appeared on his shoulder as he felt himself being pulling backwards and he fell to the ground just as a hidden door in the ice close and left all the monsters trapped on the other side unable to get to him. Quickly turning around to see who saved him he was surprised to see he was the only one in the room. Link got up to looked around and saw he was in a strange room with a large chest at the far end. No one else seemed to be in there with him, so he moved to the chest and upon opening it he found a pair of iron boots inside, but they were too heavy for him to lift out of the chest. While he was struggling to lift the boots out Sheik appeared behind him and once again placed a hand on his back, which made Link panic and fall to the ground as he franticly tried to pull the master sword free from its sheath, but his hands were still shaking so bad he couldn't get it free.
"We meet again, Link…" Sheik said as he walked over and helped Link back up, then started to thoroughly brush him off, which Link felt wasn't needed. "If you came here to meet the zora's, you wasted your time. The zora's are frozen in unbreakable ice that was created to by a monster named Morpha. You will find Morpha located at the water temple. If you do not destroy this monster, life in Zora's Domain will never return to normal. If you have enough courage to face this danger alone and save the zora's, I will teach you the melody for that temple."
Link had given up trying to obtain the boots within the chest and pulled out his ocarina in hopes maybe he could get one song right, but as they played it was just as bad as it always was. When Sheik stopped playing he walked over to Link and caressed his face with his hand as he said, "Time flows like a river, and people change, but your destiny will never be completed with you just standing there, so hurry up and save Hyrule."
With a flash of light Sheik vanished once again and Link was standing alone with another task of facing a monster he had no desire to get close to. He missed the quiet days when he lived in his treehouse, or the days he was placed in prison, and no one was asking him to risk his life for something he didn't understand, but he knew that's what was expected of a hero, and he was now expected to be a hero for all of Hyrule.
Looking around the room for a way out, Link found a hidden passage that lead out of the room he was in and back outside to the altar. He quickly made his way back into the zora's village and began freeing them from their frozen prison. It didn't take very much of the blue flame to thaw the red crystal, and once they were freed it appeared they had been sleeping. Link was glad they weren't suffering within the crystals; and even happier now that he was able to free them from the curse they had placed upon them. The final zora he freed was the king, and he had just enough of the flame left within his bottle to free everyone.
"What have you done?!" the zora king exclaimed when he was freed from the red crystal. "We were in hibernation due to the cold of winter. Our bodies can't handle the cold, and we have no way to reproduce our crystal state again before our entire race dies. You have destroyed our village! You might as well just take the tunic right off my back! This village is ruined."
The zora king then threw his blue tunic on the ground and Link picked it up thinking it was a gift for all his hard work, but he knew his work wasn't done yet. If Sheik was right he needed to destroy the monster Morpha within the lake temple in order to return things to normal so none of the zora died from this horrible cold. Link was just about to leave when he suddenly remembered the prescription he was given by the giant goron. He turned back to the king and handed him the paper.
"This is from the giant goron on Death Mountain." The king said with a weary look in his eyes. "Did that goron send you here to wake us up just so he could get this? I told him there wasn't enough time to complete the order he was requesting before we went into hibernation, and we wouldn't wake up until spring. We have the frogs used to obtain this– um… 'medicine', but they're still frozen, so we can't do business here. I'll give you the frozen frogs to take to a special doctor that lives at Lake Hylia. Once you have the rest of the order, I ask that you apologize to the big goron for us. Let him know we learned our lesson, and this won't happen again. He doesn't need to harm our village any further. The number of zora we will be losing from today will take years for our village to recover; if we'll ever fully recover from this.