IN MY HANDS
By the One and Only Phantwo J Fou
(what the J stands for is anyone's guess)
A/N: My sincerest apologies to Kota Magic, who is very female! No hard feelings perhaps, but I'm a slave to guilt. And schoolwork. At the time of this writing, finals are only one day away! All my hard ones are in a row. At least I get those over with! Anyway, I'm going to note now that I write this note before writing the chapter and I write the note at the end after I finish (typically), so at the end of this chapter, I might have already finished finals. Enjoy this chapter, in which there will be a little puzzle solving and more angst! More dark and scary Shadow Temple . . . um . . . freakiness! FUN! (Now that I'm done being zany, now I should get to being profooound... Heh.)
Chapter Four
Blind as a, um, Blind Person
According to my map, the boss of this domain was just beyond that locked door, in some chamber yonder. I could see the door that would be opened by the last little key in my possession; I could not see any way to get across the void ahead of me, however. The Lens of Truth revealed nothing, either. Curses. Wishing that tedious and hateful instrument some ill fate as soon as I no longer had need of it—which unfortunately I felt was not going to be any time soon—I stuffed it away into my quiver and wondered how I was going to get across.
Solving these tiresome puzzles time after time had begun to rattle my nerves a little. I had absolutely no desire to do any of this; the only desire I had was to heed the plea of my aching muscles and rest. If only I had the option, I'd have simply crawled under my Hylian shield and gone to sleep, like I'd done when I was still a child, when the shield was big enough—or I small enough—to cover me.
Dwelling on the past would get me nowhere. And yet it was so preferable to dealing with the present. . . .
Navi came to hover by my ear, completely silent save for the faint humming of her wings. Navi, my guardian fairy, assigned to me by the Deku Tree himself. For all of Nayru's divine love I missed him . . . oh, perhaps the Deku Sprout was now growing pleasantly in the forest, but it wasn't the same! Then again, since Ganondorf seized power, I had my doubts that anything would ever be the same. . . .
Navi, who had been given the fate of protecting me from myself, from my own stupidity. Who had been given the fate of encouraging me in these moments—although she had a rather bothersome way of 'encouraging' me—of weakness. Who had been given the fate of helping me through this quest.
Who I was now assigning the job of finding the way to that door.
After presenting this idea, the fairy launched into a stream of complaints, which probably would have never ceased if I had not swatted her. For all her assigned duties of encouraging me, she herself needed encouragement a lot more than I did! Even as I sent her on her way, she continued to mutter and grumble, her high-pitched voice filled to the brim with irritation.
"'You find the bridge, Navi! You find the switch!' Always me! Why doesn't Link try to find the bridge on his own sometime, that good-for-nothing little Hylian brat? Why do I even bother being his fairy? Why do I even bother?"
I seemed to recall that I had been the one to find the activation switch to the boat, but I decided not to say anything.
"Well, Link, I don't see anything," she snapped at me upon her return. "There's nothing but a few statues, a bomb flower, and a really, really big pillar."
She was right. Across the way there was a patch of bomb flowers to the far left, that really big pillar just behind them, and to the right a couple of statues. Nothing useful at all.
Except those bomb flowers. . . .
"And you find absolutely nothing peculiar about a patch of bomb flowers so conveniently located?" I asked Navi with a quizzical eyebrow raised. "Look. They're situated right in front of the pillar. And look up. It looks tall enough to reach over here, doesn't it? I think it does."
She scoffed. "And I suppose you're just going to say, 'Fall, pillar, fall!' and it'll fall down here and make you a little walkway! Link, have I ever mentioned to you how illogical you are? And how—"
"I don't suppose it'll fall on my command," I interrupted, "but if the foundation were to be destroyed. . . ." Before she could say anything more, I reached into my quiver, drew an arrow and hooked it to my Fairy Bow hastily. I took aim quickly and sent the arrow flying into the centre of the flowers.
Every one of them exploded upon my arrow's contact with the middle one. A loud blast resonated from the garden of explosives and momentarily all I could see over there was a haze of fire and debri. Then all fell silent. For another minute after detonation, there was no sound at all—nothing. Nothing to hear, nothing to see—the pillar had not changed at all.
After that minute of complete quiet had passed, I started to feel my face heating up. So it had happened again; I'd been wrong. That hadn't been the key to getting over after all, and Navi was right; I was illogical and stupid. Indeed, what a great fool I had been to accept this fate at all! And she'd remind me of that incessantly from this day forward. . . .
In fact, she was going to start now. "Well, Sir Hero! That was successful, wasn't it? Now you've lost an arrow and we're no clo—"
But a loud creaking cut her off, and both of us glanced back to the pillar anxiously. It wavered precariously for another ten seconds or so; then, with another groan, it began to fall towards us.
Neither of us said anything until the pillar finished its descent with a defeaning crash. I took an incredulous step forward. Navi remained where she was.
"Well, Link," she uttered sheepishly a moment later, "perhaps you aren't useless after all."
I grinned at her. "Hush, Navi! We haven't the time for pointless conversation! There are still monsters to fight!"
"Since when were you so enthusiastic about fighting monsters?" she remarked as I ran across the bridge I'd created. I merely shrugged and ran faster. The enthusiasm I was feeling right now made me feel like I could fight an entire army of Stalfos.
I knew I'd regret that thought if ever I should actually face that challenge, of course, but I probably wasn't going to, at least not immediately, so there seemed to be no harm in at least thinking it for a minute.
In a minute I was on the other side and very pleased with myself. Oh, I wasn't outrageously happy that I had discovered this—this wouldn't fill the holes in my heart, this wouldn't save Hyrule . . . but at least I triumphed over Navi. That was a good enough reason for me to be pleased.
Pulling my key from the quiver, I hurried over to the door with Navi trailing behind. Soon I had opened the lock and entered the room.
. . . and realised I still lacked the key I needed most!
Fool, Link! You're no hero . . . you're just a first-class, grade-A moron!
"You seem to be lacking something," Navi said blandly as we stared at the door yet ahead, padlocked with the gold lock that would only yield to the gaudy and overdecorated Boss Key . . . the gaudy and overdecorated boss key that I didn't have.
I nodded quietly and humbly. Then I reached for my map.
The chambers that I'd already been in had been marked off in blue ink; I took a moment to mark off the last two I'd entered before studying the map to find that key. Navi and I scanned the map hastily. Had I been in every chamber in this whole dungeon . . . and missed it? But how? How could I have been in every chamber and missed it? Was that even . . .
Oh.
It was in that section.
Naturally I hadn't even laid my eyes on that section of the map.
That section. The section I hadn't been in yet. Of course I'd overlooked it. It was in my idiotic nature to do such things. Perhaps Navi did have a basis for her claims about me after all.
"It seems to me that there's a door outside that we've not entered yet," I sighed, rolling the map back up. "I suppose we'll have to go there to find the key."
"You've very perceptive, aren't you, Link?" Navi replied sarcastically. Patiently I nodded, turning around to go back out.
Unlike my first trip over, I had very little spring in my step as we passed over the makeshift bridge. Why should I be excited? In the next room, there'd undoubtedly be more monsters and more puzzles (which translates to more pain). That was hardly something to feel enthusiastic about!
When I find Princess Zelda, I thought resentfully, I'm going to tell her how stupid she was to send me on this mission.
But she had sent me to do this, whether I liked it or not; therefore, it was my duty as a loyal citizen of Hyrule to carry out her orders. Yes, her instructions were aimed at the wrong person; yes, her instructions had sent me on a rat race in which I'd been lucky to survive thus far; yes, right now I wanted to tell her that she was foolish to send me on this foolhardy quest. . . . But she had sent me—me—and so I was going to follow through.
I call it honour. Navi calls it stupidity.
When my feet hit the ground on the other side of the bridge, I looked to my left. Yes . . . there it was—a door. I paused to wonder why I hadn't seen it before. It had been right there, after all, beckoning me, even begging me, to enter it, and I had ignored it. Not that I blamed myself for ignoring it. I hadn't remembered that I lacked that key, after all.
I strolled over to the door. Such an unspectacular door. . . . One would never guess that it stood for such tragedy if one only looked upon this door! The world was a strange place, trying to hide its sorrows with such a feeble cover. But then, before Ganondorf, perhaps even this unholy place could have been . . . peaceful. . . .
I shuddered at the thought.
With a sigh, I opened the door and cautiously took a step in. Before I took another, I reached out my left foot and pushed down on the ground a little . . . ah, yes, the ground was solid! My heart slowed down to a more tolerable rhythm and I took a look around to see what I had to do.
My findings made me catch my breath in my throat.
Before me were three—not one, not two, but three!—particularly ugly things that made me think of a dead and shriveled hand waiting for me. They were a hideous mahogany colour, with long, lanky fingers; to my knowledge they had no eyes. They stood about three feet off the floor; they were almost half my height! Killing these things would be a nightmare. . . .
I was about to utter something to Navi, but she beat me to it. Just as my lips opened, she whispered, "Floor masters!"
"Floor masters? Floor masters?" I glanced at her with scorn, then went on sarcastically, "That's a brilliant name, Navi! I couldn't have done better myself!"
"Well, Sir Hero, then I am hereby allowing you to call them what you like. And if you don't want me to tell you how to kill them, then I can shut up!"
The one time I didn't want her to shut up, she offered to shut up! Why wasn't she this obliging the rest of the time? "Navi, can I reserve that offer for later use?"
"No," she retorted. "Now, Link, once you strike these things with your sword, they'll break into miniature versions of themselves. If you don't kill them, they can restore themselves back to their original size . . . and if you don't do it fast, you could end up with more than you started with. And when they start to glow—they turn green like—like that! Link, watch out!"
I snapped to attention as she screamed, just in time to see the floor master—who had made that one up?—begin to glow an ugly shade of green, lift up off the ground, and come flying straight toward me. I raised my shield to repel it . . . and saw it smash helplessly into . . . into the air!
Navi didn't have an answer for that. Both of us stared at the disoriented monster in confusion as it stood and tried to get its bearings. Once it was reasonably steady, it stepped back and prepared to attack again.
Again, it released an unpleasant crash as it came to a smashing halt against . . . something. I looked at Navi inquisitively, but she didn't have anything to say—for once.
Then the answer hit me at least as hard as that pitiful floor master had hit whatever was blocking it. It was so obvious that I wondered why it had taken me this long. After all, I hadn't been able to view anything else in this temple without the Lens of Truth . . . so why should this room be any different?
Upon glancing through the magical lens, I saw a stone wall. Plenty of stone walls, in fact, all throughout the room. Navi and I both gasped in unison.
"Hardly what I expected to find here," she admitted. "Somehow I figured that the floor masters weren't such masters as their name implied."
"Hmm," I agreed, looking for an opening in the wall to head into one of the three doors around the room. There was a door in each corner—according to my map, at least—but I couldn't see any of them with this stone wall blocking my view. After a moment of scanning the walls, I found a break to the right, and I hurried over.
The floor master—I shall have to find some other name to refer to it!—noticed too, however, since it lacked the lens of truth and could see right through the walls. I raised my shield again as it started to glow, then readied myself for the impact. The giant hand proceeded to charge, just to bounce off my shield. Then I reached back for my sword and dove toward the monster, praying to the Three Goddesses I'd hit it and my first tribulation would be over. Navi assisted me in targeting.
Well, my sword hit home . . . but the rotten thing split into three tiny versions of itself!
"That's what I was talking about," Navi said lowly. "Quick, Link, kill them before they grow!"
By Farore's wind, they were fast! The miserable creatures scattered in every direction, leaving me wondering helplessly which way to go first. I chased after one of them for a minute before catching it and slicing it cleanly with the Master Sword. Then I turned to find the other two.
One of them was right there in front of me, lying in wait for me to turn around so it could attack. . . .
. . . and attack it did.
The tiny thing leaped up and grabbed at my throat. At first, it was merely a nuisance. I reached up to punch it off . . . and then I was aware of pain.
Pain!
I could not breathe; I couldn't even open my eyes. Oh, but the pain was nothing—not compared to the frustration! The pain held me in place while this accursed mini-hand choked the life out of me, and I was so weakened I couldn't rip it off. . . .
Just when I felt like oblivion would reign over me, though, it released me. In surprise I opened my eyes.
And there was Navi, shouting at it, "And don't you dare touch him again, you big, uh, big meanie!"
I couldn't help but chuckle a little at that as I slashed at the creature that had almost managed to steal my senses. This time, it fell down and didn't get up again. Now there was one more to kill. This one, I swore, would not get the better of me. . . .
Navi's tiny gasp alerted me, however, and I whirled to face what she had seen.
One more to kill—one more, who had mysteriously become larger since last I saw it!
"It just expanded, Link! I was about to throw this rock at it, but then it . . . it just grew! And now, it's—"
"Shut up, Navi!" I shouted. I wasn't in the mood to hear about how what had been small and seemingly harmless had suddenly turned into such a repulsive and imposing menace. "When I get it, throw that rock anyway, all right?"
She gave me a fairy nod, which was my signal to lunge at it desperately. Steel met skin; the floor master let out a sickening squeal, then split into smaller pieces. But this time I was ready for them. With Navi's help, we targeted the three of them and I sliced them, one by one, until they all lay motionless on the ground. At last! I had finally, at long last, killed the wretched beast!
Then I reached up to my still-tender neck to massage it a little, hoping to ease the pain that still assaulted me. But my hands met something sticky and wet and I drew them away quickly in disgust. I thought nothing of it until it struck me—what would be on my neck that was . . .
Suddenly I looked down at my hands . . . and saw blood.
Those accursed floor masters had made me bleed!
Then I rebuked myself. If I had said that aloud, I could just imagine Navi telling me, Very perceptive, Link. . . .
"Link, your—your neck's . . ." Navi started, but she trailed off at my look of ice.
"Yes, I know," I muttered. "By the goddesses. . . ."
Slowly I turned and looked through the Lens again to find the walls. The closest door was to my right, and I started running for the door. There was another floor master behind me, preparing to attack, but if I could reach the door first, then it wouldn't matter if it lived . . . would it?
"Link, behind you!" Navi cried. I could hear it as it prepared to attack . . . but the door was only a few short feet away. . . . "Link, you idiot, turn around! Link—!"
I opened the door and ran through, just in time to hear it smash into the door behind me.
One tribulation narrowly avoided!
But an earsplitting creak made me look around . . . and what I saw made my blood run cold.
The walls on each side of me were closing in—and the walls were covered in spikes. There was no way out except to go back through the door, and then I'd have to face that floor master. Either way, I was trapped.
"I think we made a mistake in coming here," I said to Navi.
In a panic-ridden voice dripping with sarcasm, she retorted, "Oh, you think?"
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Well! As I suspected, by the time I finished this chapter (which was about twice as long as the previous chapters, if you hadn't noticed!) I was done with finals! I did very well on most of them . . . I know I got a perfect score on at least one! That made me happy!
I actually started playing Ocarina of Time again so I could write the Shadow Temple with as much accuracy as possible. . . . Not that I really mind, since I love that game so much. This time around, I did my two least favourite temples in a row, the Fire Temple and the Shadow Temple. Hope my efforts have paid off. Now REVIEW! Bless your souls! Compliments, comments, criticism and flames are welcome! Anything is welcome, so long as it is THERE! Heheh. So review! (Yes, I'm begging!)
Oh yes . . . for all the ladies out there, I realised this week that the initials of Link's title Hero of Time spell HOT. Coincidence? I think not!