Sorry this chapter took so long, but it was harder to write than my usual chapters. Anyway, I think the beginning of this chapter may be same of my worst writing, but the rest is some of my best, so that's cool. Also, I do not own Poets of the Fall's Carnival of Rust, just my chapter shares the same name as it.
Chapter Eight
Carnival of Rust
Kaahshi dipped her quill into the inkwell on her desk, signing on more paper in a million. She looked out the window, and sighed. A loud banging came from behind the large door on the other side of the room from her desk.
"In the name of His Majesty, open this door or it will be broken to splinters!" The voice almost sounded like a hiss. Kaahshi, thinking it was the King's soldiers, called back. "It's open!"
The door was broken off its hinges and at least twenty Lizalfos, in chain mail and brandishing bladed staves, shuffled into the room. Kaahshi looked down the hall behind them. Every prisoner had been killed.
She stood up abruptly, keeping her knuckles pressed tightly against her desk. She spoke between her teeth. "What do you want with me?" One of the Lizalfos grinned, a black tongue flashing silently between his teeth. Kaahshi drew a scimitar from a drawer in her desk, and the Battle for Hyrule prison began.
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"Good morning, Hero." Link awoke to Zelda's soft voice. She sat at a desk, still reading her many scrolls and books, while Link was on the bed in the guest room. He propped himself up on his elbow, and for a second, his eyes met hers. He saw something in her eyes he had not seen before, but he put it aside.
Link sat up in his bed tiredly, and then jumped off his bed and into his heavy boots, which lay next to his bed. He walked to Zelda's desk and smiled at her as he opened a drawer and took Slahinyr from it. He preceded to strap it on his back. Zelda frowned.
"Will you stay no longer?"
Link, still somewhat tired, sat on the desk and sighed, again looking into Zelda's eyes. "Zelda… you must understand. If I do not leave, the world may fall apart over night. Gannondorf will not stop. He will kill and torture and conquer until the world has perished in water and fire.. I cannot let this happen. We cannot let this happen. He must be stopped."
Zelda sighed, and looked away. "You are right. To wait any longer would be to feed the reign of his evil. But… I wish I could help."
Link smiled. "Don't worry, Zelda. You will have a part to play…If you have not begun to play it already."
Link rode Epona to where the second Spirit gem was; it was not easy. His tunic was almost in tatters, held together only by straps of leather sewn hastily across burns. The skin under that was a nasty red-and black. Every bump and jostle seemed to tear his muscles apart.
He soon reached it, a bronze statue in Kakariko village of a knight on a rearing horse, its sword high in the air. Zelda would have found it familiar looking. Lines of blue-green rust poisoned the horse and rider from its hooves up, making it sinister and ominous.
Link had come across this kind of obstacle before, and knew what to do. He put his gloved hands of the plaque on the front, and pushed. It slipped, very slowly, backwards, and a bronze sheet, webbed with the same green rust, lay under it. When Link had pushed the statue far enough, he got to his knees and lifted off the cover. Under it was a square hole, barely large enough to fit through. Across the back of the cover he lifted off, words were written in blood, jagged and drip-dried.
Carnival of Rust
A chill snaked its way up Link's spine as he read it. An ominous feel came over him, and he began to reconsider, but dropped down the hole before giving this thought.
At first he fell fast, and then slowed down as darkness consumed his surroundings. Soon it was completely black, and he could see nothing. Then it began to brighten again, a slow and gold light from under him. His falling speed slowed to a crawl, and his feet lightly touched a dark orange bronze, riddled in rust, like green lightning striking from the walls to the center of the dimly-lit hallway. Its light, a strange gold, came from a tiny hole in the bronze ceiling. It shined around the hall, bouncing off every wall and floor, magnifying with each reflection.
Link began to walk forward slowly and carefully, and loosened Slahinyr in its sheath on his back. In front of him were bronze stairs, lined intricately with green rust, artistically giving signs of evil things ahead. Behind him was a huge talisman sticking an inch out of the wall, two feet long from one end to the other.
Link looked quietly at it for a moment, not moving, not even breathing. He couldn't drag his eyes away. The symbol seemed to engulf all his consciousness, consuming everything that stressed him, rushed him to finish his quest. He simply looked at it in silence. It seemed to make his heart split in half. One half hated the symbol, knew it must stand for something sinful and unnecessary. The other loved it, wishing Link would never look away.
Link felt his debating heart strongly and soon forced himself to turn around and walk towards the stairs. He took a step onto the first step, but the second he did the stairs began to spin, each step spinning individually. Under them were long, sharp spikes, rusted green and seemed to scowl up at Link as he began to grow dizzy. He jumped back off onto the ground, but the steps did not cease their spinning. The first clockwise, the second counter-clockwise, the third clockwise… there must have been thirty steps to the top.
Link stepped back onto the first step. He knew it wouldn't be easy. He began to spin, and the next step flashed across his view once… twice… thrice… eventually, in a fit of courage he jumped. After he did, his stomach hurt. He gagged, bending over a little, and put his hands on his aching middle. He was disoriented and sick, and then realized he was spinning in the other direction! After realizing this, his sickness faded. Then he jumped to the next step up, and crouched as he landed. He grabbed the edge of the revolving step, and then stood up cautiously. Slowly but surely, he climbed the stairs in this fashion. He reached the top soon to the sound of what should have been cheerful music, but instead it sounded eerie and ominous. It was played on what seemed to be a guitar or banjo, with the quiet sound of maracas behind it.
It was dark here. No light shot through the ceiling, no torches or lamps lit the room. He took a step forward, then another. One more step, and several colorful lights shot from the ground in front of him. On each one was a letter. R-O-Y-G-B-I-V. The beginning letter of each color. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These colors lit a pretty wooden door and a sign above it.
House of Memories
Link's stomach turned as he looked at the sign and door, seemingly plastered onto the rusty bronze wall. To his left was infinite darkness. The same covered his right. Behind him were eternally spinning steps. He opened the door and walked in.
Behind the door was a circular room. The floor looked like a tree trunk, covered in thousands upon thousands of rings. Link, feeling different, looked down at himself. His clothes were no longer ripped, his white pants had been replaced with green shorts, his white shirt under his tunic was gone, and he was two feet closer to the ground. "What the-" he shut his mouth abruptly. His voice was higher. He screamed, waking the plant to his left. From it sprouted a blue head, which licked yellow lips and lunged toward Link, who quickly drew the Kokiri Sword, much bigger than it had been. As the Deku Baba attacked Link, he held out the sword, and Link felt a particular strand of fear he hadn't felt since he was twelve.
The Deku Baba was moving too fast to avoid Links sword, held straight out towards the plant. Its mouth fell right on the blade, and a few drops of greenish water fell from its lips. It vanished it a white cloud, leaving only a twig, which Link picked up and shoved into his pouch.
He then focused his attention on the ladder that was behind the Deku Baba. It was made of a gray wood, and looked rickety. Link, feeling he had seen this place before, a long time ago, felt strongly that it would support his weight. So he put his foot on the first rung and his hand of the fourth, and climbed it slowly and cautiously.
Now came something he didn't feel he remembered. At the top of the ladder, instead of a higher balcony that followed the room across, was a hall of sandstone. He walked through this cautiously, his Kokiri Sword drawn. Presently he reached a large stone wall, full of cracks and holes, and two Bomb Plants, one on each end of the cracked wall. Link yanked one from the ground and threw it towards the cracked wall, while at the same time backpedaling hastily. The bomb exploded it a cloud of dust, and link covered his face with his forearm to keep it from his eyes. He uncovered him and the wall and dust were gone. Inside was a brown room, circular, with a hole in the middle going down twenty feet. At the bottom of this was lava. In the middle of this hole was a large, round pillar with a Beamos, a small obelisk with a rotating stone eye hovering an inch above it, in the center.
Link sheathed his sword and put his shield on his back, then walked towards the pit with the pillar in it and looked down into the lava. Its light seemed to make his face glow red, and he felt heat radiating onto his face from the liquid. As he looked down, a stepping stone that was more like a rod shot up from the lava. He jumped on it and onto the pillar in the center. The Beamos rotated slowly until it looked to where Link was, and a blue beam shot from its pupil. Link barely ducked fast enough to keep it from shooting between his eyes. He ran towards it screaming, Kokiri sword thrust out to his left, and swiped it right under the big eye, between it and the obelisk over which it hovered. It made a little squeak, but no damage appeared to have been done. It still slowly rotated until it looked at Link again, but he ducked before it had even shot. It caught a tiny glimpse of his hat, waving like a kite, just a second behind his ducking head. It shot a blue laser as smoke seeped lazily from its pupil, and stared in that direction for a moment, then kept rotating its slow pace.
Link, still crouched, looked left, then right. On both "corners" of the little platform were Bomb Flowers. Link rolled sideways in a semicircle towards one. His heart skipped a beat as the Beamos stopped its rotating and looked in Link's general direction, then kept spinning slowly. Link, with a little effort, pulled the Bomb Flower's big, blue seed from its leaves. He put too much force into pulling, and temporarily lost his balance. His hands, carrying the Bomb Flower, Shot up above his head. The Beamos caught a glimpse of this and shot another blue laser in its direction, barely catching the top of the Bomb Flower seed. It smoked and sparked, and link gasped and threw it at the Beamos. Its top hissed for a moment. A single lazy strand of smoke oozed from the top of the plant, lingered for a moment, then vanished as the seed exploded with a thundering crash! Smoke filled up the little platform. Out of the smoke jumped the little stone eye that had spun atop the Beamos' lower structure. It touched the ground, bounced once, then rolled off the platform. It exploded just before it was consumed in lava. As the smoke cleared, Link coughed quietly and saw that all that was left of the Beamos was the shattered base of the Obelisk.
Link looked back at the Bomb Flower from which he pulled the seed, and another one grew almost instantly, with a strange whump. Then he looked back across the hole in which the platform lay, in the opposite direction from the one he came. There was nothing but a brown stone wall, one section of it cracked and dilapidated. Link picked up the Bomb Flower seed that had just regrown (watching another one grow instantaneously with the same strange noise. He got down on his stomach and lowered it as far as he could off the edge, towards the lava.
His hands felt like they were on fire. Every second that passed they grew more uncomfortable, like all the skin had melted of and all that was left was dry, cracked bone. Then a wisp of smoke came up towards links face from the Bomb Flower seed he held, then more. He began to see sparks drop into the lava and sizzle. He quickly jumped up and threw the seed (which had become as hot as red coal) as hard as he could at the wall and wrapped his black-streaked hands in the bottom of his tunic, moaning through his clenched teeth and shifting his weight from one foot to another rapidly.
The Bomb Seed exploded and revealed a long, dark passage. Link jumped onto another platform that jumped up from the lava below and walked slowly into it. Soon it got too dark to see, and he put his arms out in front of him. He walked slowly with his arms thrust in front of him, and his steps soon began to sink into the floor. Link's first thoughts were that he was stepping through mud or quicksand, but his feet came out too easily for that. Then he though it must be water, but there was no splashing when he stepped, and he didn't feel the resistance water creates against his legs as he walked. Soon it began to brighten again, and he saw that he was stepping into soft flesh. Ugh! He thought disgustedly and jumped back, realizing that he had been walking in it for several yards He took steps slowly and cautiously with a grimace on his face.
The end of the dark passage came quickly. It ended in a ledge above a circular room that followed the wall across the left side. There were several harmless-looking bubbles floating randomly in the room and some jellyfish. Nothing deadly. Or so he thought, before he reached one finger out and touched a bubble. It seemed to push his body back and he was flat on his back before he realized the bubbles were dangerous. He, while still on his back, stabbed up at a jellyfish indifferently. The two halves floated slowly down, like two halves of a piece of paper on either of Link's sides.
Link jumped up quickly and instead of touching a bubble, swung his sword at it. A part of it folded over the edge of the blade for a moment, then bounced off. Then a jellyfish floated into his back, and he fell forward, then got back up and cut it in half. There were still three of those, and four bubbles. Link looked around the ledge, and saw two little wooden crates on the opposite side from him. He ran towards them, swinging his head left as a bubble floated by, then making a little hop to the right when two jellyfish got in his path. He reached the little boxes and threw one at a bubble. At first it had no effect on it, but it got crushed between the box and the squishy ground. Link saw clear liquid splatter from underneath the box, and smiled. He cut another jellyfish in half, then slapped a bubble to the ground with his sword, splattering it. The end of his sword barely poked into the ledge, and the entire room shook as Link heard a moaning noise.
This startled Link for a moment, giving a bubble time to brush up against his right shin. His entire right leg fell out from under him and he fell flat on his face while the bubble floated (smugly, Link thought) past his nose. Link presently swatted it into the ground with his sword, then got up and stabbed a jellyfish. Now there was only one bubble left, and Link tossed the box at it. It splattered the same way the first did.
Link now looked for an escape from this room, besides the passage from which he came. He looked off the ledge, and there was a little floating platform coming slowly up. When it reached the ledge Link was at, he was it was made of the same squishy substance as the walls and floor, but it had several nasty purple thorns coming out of the bottom. He jumped onto it, being careful not to touch the thorns on the other side. It dropped slowly to the water under them, and Link jumped off and into the water before it had reached the end of its line.
His first thought as he jumped into the water was that it was unusually warm. His second thought was to watch out for that rock the Octorok in the underwater tunnel between him and wherever he was going, and he did so immediately. When it shot the next one, he swung his sword at the rock, and it bounced back at him. Link supposed that, since this sword was not as sharp as Slahinyr, it wouldn't cut the Octorok's boulders in half so easily. The boulder struck the Octorok between the eyes. It floated slowly into an upside-down position, and then vanished in black smoke. Link swam on through the tunnel it protected.
He swam up until he reached the surface of the water, then walked onto land, soaking wet, without looking up. When he did, he saw something he knew, and knew quite well.
Almost the entire room was dark. The only noise Link heard was the voice of monks, singing solemnly the tune of the Song of Time. A single spotlight of daylight came from the ceiling, and onto a little platform, with the Sages' Seals around the edge and two steps going up to it in Link's direction. In the middle was a little stone block, with a black triforce in the center. The Pedestal of Time. Stuck into it was the Master Sword.
This is what I've been looking for all along! Link thought joyously. It was so easy! But, why did this place bring me to the Temple of Time? As Link thought this, he realized he was already walking up the two steps to the Master Sword. He put both hands firmly on its hilt, sat for a moment with his eyes closed, then pulled it. He, and the Master Sword, immediately vanished.
When he reappeared, he did not have the Master Sword, just Slahinyr was strapped to his back. He was in a room made of bronze, webbed in green rust. In front of him were huge double-doors with a little sign that said "exit" across the front above it. With a little effort, he pushed them wide open and walked out, then heard them close shut with a huge clang! He knew they would not open again. Ahead of him was a little bedside-table kind of platform, made of stone, as was the rest of the room. On it was a hand mirror that he almost recognized, but couldn't quite place it. It was a black metal, with rose designs along the handle and around the glass. It was beautiful and lightly sprinkled in dust. Link had a strange tingle in his stomach that seemed to tell him, "No! Don't touch it! Don't!" He walked slowly towards it and picked it up, feeling afraid to look at his own reflection. He closed his eyes and held it up to his face, then shot his eyelids open.
He reflection he saw was not his own.
Instead of his face he was that of the Fierce Deity, smirking at him, telling Link a thousand things he didn't want to hear without even opening his mouth. Then the reflection faded away, but Link's face did not appear. Link dropped the mirror on the ground and it shattered, but he took no notice. He didn't even feel that he had control over his own body. His feet lifted off the ground, and he felt another spirit invade his body, occupying Link next to his own soul. It almost seemed to devour his own soul, taking up all the power it had ever held. Link wanted to scream, but couldn't. Again the feet that had lifted up only a moment ago touched the ground, but the body was not Link's
It was the Fierce Diety's.
P.S. I'm still having trouble with pictures, which are rather important. You'll still get it, but not with as much fun. Whatever. If you know the answer, then when/if you review, put it in there. But, even if you don't, maybe review anyway?
