If I had planned these updates at all, I would have first posted two weeks earlier- that way, this chapter would be uploaded on Halloween. But I didn't, so it wasn't.
In other news, I will assume FF dot net ate all of your reviews. It does that sometimes.
MQ Bottom of the Well challenged me more than I'm willing to admit. I scoured the dungeon so many times until I just blew up that one pile of ash and found a gold button. It was infuriating, but I love it. Mainly because you don't have to fight Dead Hand to finish it.
RRRP: No one.
Chapter XVI: Auspicious Abysmal Anterior Adventures
Link stepped off of the pedestal, the Master Sword gleaming in the light filtering through the massive window in the Temple of Time. It was much brighter than it was in the future, probably due to the violet haze surrounding Castle Town. He spent a few seconds getting his bearings; he wasn't used to being a child anymore. His Stalfos Hand was its pristine off-white again, but he still had the Interloper ring on his finger. Interestingly, he got his hat back. But to his major irritation, he still couldn't see anything out of his left eye.
"Ivan forgot just how different you look from an adult to a child," his partner suddenly said. "Ivan means, you're tiny, you don't have that white shirt and pants under the tunic, your hair is less greasy, you don't have earrings, and more importantly, you're a lot scarier."
Link blinked. "How do you mean?" He hated his voice. It wasn't fitting anymore. Maybe it never was.
"Leetle man's eyes don't match with the childish face," Ivan supplied. "They've seen too much. It's like someone with all their skin peeled off; it's unsettling."
Link stepped off of the Pedestal of Time, only to trip on something and fall gracelessly down the stone stairs. Genuinely angry, he turned to see what he had stumbled over, only to see a mass of bandages spanning from his foot to the dais. Gingerly, Link felt at his head, only to find that the bandages that had covered his blind eye were gone.
"Are you alright?" Ivan questioned, concern laced into his voice.
"I'm fine, Ivan," Link assured. "Just not used to being a little kid. That, and I had no idea I was going to shrink out of my bandages."
Ivan chortled. "Here. Let Ivan fix that for you."
They spent the next few minutes adjusting the bandages so that they covered Link's bad eye. Even with the powers he had gained from the future, Link still felt weak. He felt fatigue, pain, and depression worse than he'd ever felt it seven years from then. It was probably because he'd been battling those emotions more in this time than in the future. He took a few deep breaths, adjusted his belt, and left the Temple of Time.
It was midday. The little side street that connected the Temple to the main square was barren, as usual, but the rest of Castle Town appeared to be bustling. People still haggled over prices at the various stores, but there was a marked dampening of the atmosphere due to the death of the King at the hands of Ganondorf. At least the Gerudo man was stuck in the Sacred Realm for, what, a year?
"I heard a little boy tried to fight Ganondorf as he chased after the Princess, right in front of the castle gates," Link overheard someone say.
"Really?" someone else responded.
"Yup. Of course, Ganondorf hardly batted an eye. Rumor has it he plucked the kid up and ripped all of his limbs off before throwing him into the moat. Then he blew up Lon Lon Ranch just because he knew the kid was friends with the ranchers."
"No, that's not right," a third voice piped up. "I heard that the kid was working for Ganondorf the whole time, and spent that night nearly five months ago relaying his findings. Come on, what child would try to fight the King of the Gerudo?"
Link was visibly shaking, rage blotting out all coherent thoughts. He couldn't stand these people, who lacked knowledge on his situation at the time, belittling him and even going so far as to say he was aiding and abetting Ganondorf. They were repulsive gossips and nothing more.
"Leetle man, let's go," Ivan warned quietly. His partner didn't need to be told twice. Had he stayed any longer, he would have punched those voices in the face. Or worse.
!0*0!
Hyrule Field smelled of mid-autumn. The air was crisp and cool, a welcome change from the humidity of the summer. However, the army of mosquitos buzzing around Link's head evidently never got the memo. By the time Link had walked a third of the way to Kakariko, they must have drained half the blood in his body. He decided that he'd had enough. He stole away from the main trail, which was filled with a procession of people moving to Kakariko Village, and used Din's Fire from behind the cover of a small hill. The sudden blast of heat fried all of the parasitic insects, and a rain of corpses occurred for a short time afterwards.
At least they were just mosquitoes, and not the aberrant forms that had taken up residence after Ganondorf's takeover.
He rejoined the caravan of refugees, careful to avoid any shocks of red hair that stood out from the crowd, as they made their way to the village nestled in the rocks. Some of them had horses or little carriages. Most didn't. The only thing they had in common was that they were all travelling east, away from Hyrule Castle Town. Evidently, the knights had galvanized the populus into getting to Kakariko for their own safety even before Ganondorf had returned.
By that evening, they had made it to the formerly Sheikah village. Link had forgotten just how small it was before it became a glorified refugee camp. It was cleaner and didn't reek of death now. The air was no longer filled with acrid haze, and Zora's River provided nourishment to the town.
Most of the travelers split off into the town, towards one of the various run-down looking hotel complexes that Link was pretty sure wasn't there before his sword-induced coma. He shook off the sudden feeling of nausea that consumed his being and stalked through the deteriorating town. Every step brought him closer to the well and the windmill. Every step brought him closer to the very place he didn't want to be. He swallowed his fear and fingered the Ocarina of Time.
"Okay, Ivan. Do you know why we went back in time?"
"Honestly? Ivan has no clue," Ivan responded.
"Basically, remember the guy you called Sheik who lives in that windmill?"
"Psikh, leetle man," Ivan corrected. "It means crazy."
"Oh… anyway, we're here to drive him insane by teaching him the song that he'll teach us in the future. Or taught? Don't think about it. The less you think about it, the better."
"But… we're going to teach him the song he taught us seven years from now… Doesn't that create a time paradox?" Ivan pondered. "Good grieving, this is giving Ivan a headache."
"Like I said, don't think about it," Link replied, stepping into the windmill. He wasted no time in walking up to the bearded man inside and playing the Song of Storms. It began to rain heavily, causing the windmill to go completely haywire. The mill spiraled out of control as lightning illuminated the landscape outside. Link felt sorry for the refugees outside for an instant before shoving that emotion down into the depths.
"Round… and round… and round… what? It's going too fast! You did this! You ruined my windmill!" the psychopath screamed, sounding absolutely murderous. It was then that Link noticed the steak knife hanging on the wall behind the windmill man and fully comprehended the demented glint in his eyes, not to mention realized that there was a tunnel straight to inside Dampe's grave connecting from the windmill for some twisted reason.
"We should go," Ivan suggested, his partner hastening to oblige.
!0*0!
The well was now devoid of its contents. Link mentally kicked himself for not putting some of the water in his canteen before he drained it. Then he reconsidered it; it probably wasn't very good water anyway.
"Ivan has a bad feeling about this," Ivan mumbled before Link backflipped down the well. "Hey! When are you going to stop doing that?"
"Never!" Link shot back playfully before venturing into the gaping hole at the bottom of the well.
As he descended further below Kakariko, what little light that was filtering through from the surface slowly faded away until it was almost dark enough for Link to not be able to see ten feet in front of him. The walls were dank and slick with green and red mosses- at least, Link hoped they were mosses. The air was stale and reeked of death and decay, eliciting a violent sneeze from the child Hero. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Link tiptoed forwards and into a small hole made of stone, his miniscule body allowing him to slip through the gap. As good as his adult body was, it wouldn't have been able to get through that hole.
"Okay, Ivan," Link started. "This place is filled with illusions. Like walls that aren't really there. Invisible enemies. Monsters that pop out of nowhere. And the…" he shuddered. "The Dead Hand."
By this time, he had finally extricated himself from the tiny tunnel, revealing a wider tunnel that had a sheer drop. Fortunately, the drop wasn't very high and had chains hanging off of it, allowing Link to safely rappel straight to the bottom if he so wished. More chains hung from the ceiling, dripping with what Link prayed to the Goddesses was just water. The small tunnel was filled with several piles of ash and grime and a skeleton chained to the wall, but the thing that caught Link's eye the most was the fact that, at the end of the hallway, the tunnel opened up to the central room. There was supposed to be an illusory wall there that supposedly blocked him from entering. Link wasn't complaining, though; the less illusions were scattered throughout this twisted labyrinth, the better.
Then he tripped.
With a shout of surprise, Link tumbled gracelessly onto the floor, entangling himself in several rusted chains, and then squealed in the most undignified manner possible as he felt something grab his leg. In his defense, the Redead was blending in perfectly with one of the heaps of ash and decaying material before Link quite literally stumbled across it. The zombie-like monstrosity quickly dragged itself up Link's childish body before driving its teeth into the back of the Hylian's cranium. He struggled violently in a vain attempt to get the Redead off of him. Unfortunately, he only managed to further ensnaring himself in the chains suspended from the ceiling.
Eventually, he succeeded in throwing the Redead off of him with a blast of fire magic. Then the Hero of Time drew his pathetically short Kokiri Sword and slashed wildly at the chains restraining him, finally succeeding in ripping off enough of them to give him freedom of movement. From there, he could finally ram his blade down the Redead's throat with the help of Ivan's Mind Hacking, ending its existence.
He took a moment to catch his breath, which Ivan used to idly chat with the souls of the damned dead haunting the Bottom of the Well.
"Ivan can hear the spirits whispering in this room… 'Find the eye of truth'... that's what they say."
"They're talking about the Lens of Truth," Link explained. "It's a magical artifact that allows people to see through illusions."
"Ah."
He walked into the central chamber, only to find that the path to the epicenter of the massive room was cordoned off by rusted old iron gates. There must be some way to remove those bars.
So he beelined for the back of the main room, ignoring everything else that he happened to see, including the small inlets etched into the sides of the room. He did note several brown boulders that looked fragile enough to break with bombs. On the other side of the central chamber was a hideous snakelike face spewing water from its mouth. Right in front of it was a Triforce plaque etched into the stone. Link withdrew his Ocarina of Time and played Zelda's Lullaby, hoping that it would drain the water so that he could fight the Dead Hand, get the Lens of Truth, and not have to spend another instant in this Goddesses-forsaken place.
However, the song didn't dispel the waters. Instead, Link heard the grating noise of rusted steel on rusted steel. He turned to see that the gates behind him had ascended, allowing him access to the center area of the room. He turned to explore it more before he heard something.
"Wait!" Ivan suddenly said. "Look here!"
Link followed Ivan as it flew over towards the stone face, illuminating its right hand. Link couldn't see it in the gloom before, but Ivan's light revealed a diamond switch in the statue's grasp. He withdrew his Slingshot, spending a good minute trying to operate it like a bow and arrow before realizing that it was not, in fact, the Fairy Bow, and hit the Switch. The Switch caused all the water to drain out of the room. Convenient.
Link took a shortcut through the now-opened central part of the room, in which there was a large chest. He opened it and discovered the Dungeon Map, although to his chagrin, he was so short that he had to physically jump in order to get at the contents of the chest. He suddenly wondered why he'd never considered it before.
To waste some time, Link took a left at the large wooden crossbuck right at the center of the room and shot the diamond switch embedded in the wall. He heard a torch behind him ignite and a door unseal, allowing Link to explore it.
The room was rather small and didn't have anything in it except three floating pots. But they weren't really floating pots; rather, the floor beneath the pots was invisible. So Link confidently stepped onto what appeared to be thin air, ignoring Ivan's chastising, and carefully walked around the room towards another section of visible floor. On the other section of floor was a Small Key. It wasn't even in a chest, funnily enough. Link picked it up and stored it, even though he knew he probably wouldn't use it.
!0*0!
"Okay. Time to end this," Link said, breaking into a jog as he returned to the beginning of the Well. He dropped down into a basin that had previously been filled with water, ignoring the nauseating squelch of his feet hitting the bottom. He gingerly made his way to the right side of the basin and pressed himself into the grime at the bottom, in order to squeeze into a small hole. He suppressed a wave of claustrophobia as he dragged himself through the tunnel, hideous echoes of moaning Redeads bouncing all throughout the place.
After far too much time, Link made it to the other side and hurriedly threw himself onto the upper level. There was a steel door there, which Link slowly stepped through. It closed itself behind him, iron bars descending from above and locking it shut.
Several violet, bloody hands stretched from the brown ground, as if trying to claw their way to the surface. The limbs dangled there, swaying ever so slightly to give a feeling of surrealism to them. The Hylian took a step forward, only to hear a sickening crunch. He looked down and realized that he had stepped on and broken a human skull. On closer inspection, the entire room's walls were made out of compressed bone and Goddesses knew what else.
"What… in the Goddesses' green earth… are we looking at?" Ivan questioned.
"This is a Dead Hand," Link informed. "You're only seeing its infinite hands. There's a body that's even more grotesque hiding below us, ready to spring out as soon as those hands get ahold of us."
"Oh, those things," Ivan said, shuddering. "Ivan has heard of them, but never seen them. If Ivan's sources are right, you can prompt them to come out of hiding by detonating an explosive right on top of them."
Link thought for a moment. "That's better than intentionally getting grabbed by a hand. Thanks, Ivan."
He tucked himself in a corner of the room and pawed through his pouch, eventually finding his Bomb Bag. After stowing his pouch away again, though, the Hylian came across a problem.
"How do I know where to put my bombs?"
"Ivan doesn't know… Do you know?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you," Link grumbled before lobbing a bomb randomly into the center of the room. The ensuing explosion caused a depression in the bone floor, but otherwise did nothing.
He traveled further up the room, away from the door, lobbing bombs about in hopes of finding the Dead Hand. He failed, but the wanton explosions revealed a Small Key hidden in an ash pile in the upper-right corner of the room. Granted, it didn't help him kill the Dead Hand, but it was still nice.
Link remembered that there were several boulders scattered throughout the dungeon, and he was getting dangerously low on bombs. He had no choice but to swallow his fears and allow himself to be ensnared by the Dead Hand.
With lightning speed, the undead limb bent down and seized Link's head in an iron grip. On the other side of the room, the body of the Dead Hand erupted from the dark earth and started shuffling towards Link, agonizingly slowly, as the boy viciously thrashed in the hand's grip. Eventually, he was able to slip out of its grasp and, now unencumbered, drew the Kokiri Sword. He was reminded once again of just how tiny it was as it sat in his infantile hands. These hands shouldn't have to fight such an abomination. And yet, they had. Twice over.
Soon to be thrice over, now that he thought about it.
As soon as the Dead Hand lowered its sunken head, the Hero of Time drove the dagger as deep into its head as it would go. The abomination squealed, spewing crimson blood out of its face as it turned and dug back down into the earth, causing a tidal wave of bones and corpses to hit Link in the face.
"Oh, no you don't!" he roared, reaching into the bones and grabbing the first bit of pale flesh he saw. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of the Dead Hand's palms, and it seized Link's youthful body the first chance it got. The Dead Hand resurfaced, still oozing blood from the wound he had put in it, and waddled ominously towards Link. It managed to take a shallow bite out of his tanned flesh, exposing muscle but not tearing through it. Now veritably dripping blood from his body, the Hylian drew back the Kokiri Sword and viciously decapitated the Dead Hand. It collapsed to the floor, oozing blood and twitching violently before fading out.
Vaguely, Link heard the door unseal and a chest appear, but he was more focused on the gaping hole in his skin. He tore the bandages on his head off and almost used them to cover the wound, only to see that the cloth was incredibly dirty and unclean, and would probably cause infection.
"Ivan, could you go through my pouch and get me some more bandages?" Link asked.
"Ivan already did," the sprite replied morosely. "You're out. Would you like Ivan to get you a Red Potion?"
"That'd be great," Link croaked, propping himself up against the wall and covering his injury with his hands, struggling not to cry out when any bits of dirt and grime came off of his palms and landed on it. It was better than exposing it to the Bottom of the Well.
Oddly, Link felt his eyes start to become heavy. He assumed it was just delirium and adrenaline, or lack thereof in the latter's case, making all of his fatigue catch up to him. The child couldn't keep himself awake and alert, and eventually succumbed to his tiredness.
He would have used a fairy, but he was fresh out of them.
!0*0!
A healed Link propped open the large chest that had appeared in the wake of the Dead Hand's death. A slight smile appeared on his lips. Now that he had the Lens of Truth, he could leave this damned place and never have to see things like this again.
Well, at least until the Shadow Temple.
He was so eager to get out of the Bottom of the Well that he didn't even check what he had grabbed from the chest until he had left the room. He had had it clenched so tightly in his fingers that it actually hurt a little. Gingerly, Link unfolded his hand so that he could see the fruit of his labor.
And stopped.
Because he was holding a Compass.
Link took a breath in, then took a breath out.
"Fuck!" he screamed to the moss-covered wall next to him. "Goddesses fucking damnit!"
Ivan stole thirty Rupees from his wallet.
"Fine," Link spat. "I'll spend some more time in this stupid fucking horror show. Because you know what a dead horse needs? More fucking bruises!"
"Leetle man," Ivan said. "Calm down. This 'Lens of Truth' has to be in here somewhere, da? So we can find it using the Compass and Dungeon Map. It's not the end of the world."
"I… I'm just tired, Ivan," Link confessed. "I'm tired of most everything, and I don't think it's the kind of tiredness that goes away with a good night's sleep. I just want to throw up my hands and call it a life, and eke out an existence in Kakariko. Maybe I'll join the Knights like some of them were suggesting and vent my frustrations on the monsters in Hyrule Field. I'm just tired… tired of being Link."
"Well, Ivan thinks that nobody would be a better Link than you," the fairy said. "Trust Ivan on this. Ivan knows you better than anyone."
The Hylian sighed. "You're right, as usual," he said resignedly. "Let's see. Where are there any chests in this dungeon?"
"There's one all the way down there, on the bottommost level," Ivan reported, pointing at one of the ends of the disturbingly hand-shaped room. "But how would we get down there?"
"We can use one of the holes on this level to fall all the way down," Link said. "There's a door, but it's locked from this side."
"Very well," Ivan relented. "Just… don't break your legs falling down, da?"
"Got it," the Hylian replied, trotting northwards and finding the hole on the leftmost side of the dungeon. It was situated right below a dementedly smiling picture of a ghoul or some other apparition.
Link swan-dived into the hole, straight into the deepest part of the dungeon, landing gracelessly on his face. He spat some dirt out of his mouth and stood up, only to nearly be crushed by a giant boulder that suddenly appeared. Link took a few moments to catch his breath before attempting to go again, only to be cut off by another rolling rock. The Hero of Time tailed the rock until it crashed into a wall, right next to a pool of acrid acid. He hung left, avoiding another rock, and traveled down the thumb of the hand, where the Compass said a chest could be found.
But there was no chest; rather, five Redeads sat hunched over in a cluster right next to where the chest should have been. Swallowing a lump in his throat, the Hylian grabbed his Ocarina and swiftly played the Sun's Song. This caused the Redeads to turn white and freeze up, allowing Link to slaughter them at his own pace.
He assumed and prayed that killing the Redeads would cause the chest to appear. But to his surprise and dismay, nothing happened when the last zombie fell. He hadn't seen any other monsters in the room, so unless they were invisible, he would have to do something else.
"Maybe we missed something in the big room above us? Leetle man does have two small keys that he hasn't used yet," the fairy suggested.
"Aw… but then I have to explore more of this hellhole…" Link whined, feeling himself get ten Rupees lighter. "Ugh, fine…"
He gingerly picked his way around the lake of acid and clambered up a ladder, reaching a sort of halfway point that had another ladder that finished the trek upwards.
"Look!" Ivan suddenly said, pointing back into the lowest room.
"What? What?"
"On that wooden platform!"
The sprite darted away, leaving Link stranded on the plateau.
"Ivan! I can't fly!" he scolded. "Don't leave me like that!"
"Spasiba. But there's a gold switch on this platform! It probably triggers the chest to appear!" Ivan yelled. "There's a hole that leads straight to that big "X" in the top room!"
"Really?" Link said. "Let's go!"
!0*0!
It turned out that the hole was sealed with iron bars that Link couldn't penetrate.
"Lovely," he drawled. "More time I have to spend in this place."
"Don't think about it like that," Ivan said comfortingly.
"You're right. Everything is just fine," Link snorted, sarcasm dripping off of his voice.
Ivan rolled his eyes, but said nothing.
He glanced to his right, where behind a rather rusted set of iron bars, there was a locked door. Link prematurely brandished a Small Key walked in that direction, going underneath the iron bars and appearing on the other side.
"Hey, Ivan? What's the difference between a Redead and a Gibdo?" Link asked, absentmindedly jamming the key into the lock. "They always act the same."
"Redeads and Gibdos are functionally identical," Ivan informed. "It is merely that Gibdos are more commonly found in dry environments, whereas Redeads are more commonly found in moist environments."
"Uh huh," Link commented intelligently, stepping through the now unlocked door, facing backwards so that he could face Ivan.
Then he backed into a Redead.
He had thought he had collided with a wall or something until he felt a pair of clothed arms tightly wrap itself around his head. A sharp pain soon followed at the nape of his neck, making the youth cry out in agony. In a bout of strength foreign to his childish form, the Hylian grabbed whatever was biting him and threw it over his head. It collided with the wall with a sickening sound, and Link realized that it was a Gibdo and not a Redead. He then drew a Deku Stick and smashed it into the mummy's face, denting it and ending the Gibdo's existence.
The room was filled with six coffins and a few odd statues, with a Golden Skulltula hiding beneath one of them. The Compass wasn't registering anything, so there couldn't have been anything hiding in the coffins.
"Well, this was worthless," Link grumbled. "Just like this child body. I feel so… vulnerable. I much prefer my adult form."
Ivan didn't comment.
"Where haven't we explored?"
"We haven't been up at the top of this place," Ivan informed, indicating the northeast section of the map.
"But you can see that it leads to this little alcove," Link pointed out, tapping the aforementioned section. "We can see that there's nothing in there from here save two Skullwalltulas."
"Do it for Ivan?" Ivan pleaded.
"Fine," Link groaned, turning around and leaving the room.
He moved up the Temple and took a left, eventually ending up at a miniscule tunnel. Pressing himself into the stone floor allowed the small Hero to crawl inside and drag himself to the other side. There was a locked door and one of those grinning faces there.
"Shoot the face, right?" Link said, already readying his Slingshot.
"Ivan isn't sure… Ivan isn't getting that itch in the back of the brain…"
But Link had already shot the nose of the demented smile. A loud chiming noise followed, and the sealed door became unlocked.
"Ivan stands corrected."
On the other side of the door was a Floormaster. There were also several holes in the floor blocked off with iron bars, for which Link was- for once- grateful.
"Watch for the shadows of Wallmasters. There's at least one in this room," Ivan said.
"I'm not worried," Link replied, running blindly past the Floormaster in the center of the room and unlocking the other door with his last Small Key. This door led him to back into the main room, on the other side of a large set of immovable iron bars.
"I told you there wasn't anything in here. Just two Skullwalltulas," Link complained. "I wasted all of my Small Keys on this."
Ivan said nothing, contemplative. "There's got to be something somewhere in here…" Maybe there's something under one of those piles of compressed ash?"
"Worth a shot," his partner grumbled, procuring his last Bomb and lobbing it at the Skullwalltulas. The ensuing blast not only killed the spiders, but decimated the grime pile, revealing an oddly pristine golden button.
Sighing a breath of relief, Link slammed the golden button down and heard the rusty squeal of iron on iron. The iron bars under the crossbuck must have retracted. Hoping beyond hope that this hypothesis was correct, Link veritably sprinted back to that area and grinned giddily when he realized that he was right.
His stomach chose that moment to make itself known, grumbling angrily at its lack of sustenance. Link paused and pawed through his pouch in an effort to find food, but was legitimately surprised to come up empty-handed. He punched his stomach in a last-ditch effort to shut his gut up, which thankfully wasn't as fruitless as his pack.
With that distraction out of the way, he leapt down the hole, doing a flip in mid-air just because he could. He landed squarely on his feet and instantly compressed the gold button that was also on the wooden structure. He became concerned when nothing seemed to happen. At Ivan's behest, he ran back into the thumb of the room. He joyously found that a large chest had appeared there, and angrily found that the five Redeads had appeared again.
After an encore of the Sun's Song, the Redeads were pacified. This time, instead of slaughtering them, the Hylian opted to ignore all of them and beelined for the chest, throwing it open and revealing the Lens of Truth.
It was purple, and shaped like the Sheikah symbol that she had seen on Zelda's disguise's shirt. That is, it looked like a single crying eye with three separate triangles on top. Through it, Link's sight could pierce all illusions at the cost of magic power.
"Hmm… what could this be? It looks like some sort of lens… Is this the Lens of Truth you mentioned?" Ivan theorized.
"It is indeed," Link confirmed. "It lets you see through illusions. Here, give it a try."
He handed the lens to his fairy companion, but not before he climbed back up to the main floor. The fay could barely lift the comparatively giant lens to his face, but he managed it somehow.
The sprite immediately started dimming in a way Link had never seen before. He immediately dropped the Lens of Truth, nearly breaking it on the cold stone floor. Fortunately, the ground was coated in slick mosses that acted as cushioning.
"Why didn't you tell Ivan the Lens drained magical energy?!" Ivan interrogated. "Don't you know that fairies are made of magical energy? You nearly killed Ivan!"
"In my defense, Navi never had that problem," Link argued. "Or at least, she never mentioned it. Will you be okay?"
"Do fish moo?" the sprite said coldly. "It makes Ivan very, very tired. Ivan will find a place to rest and sleep for a while. Maybe, seven years or so? Anyway, this place is dank and creepy… Let's… get out… of here…"
Ivan fell asleep, perched on Link's shoulder. Link left him there, playing the Nocturne of Shadow on his Ocarina. He could check out a motel room in Kakariko proper for the night and give both himself and Ivan a well-deserved rest. Goddesses knew they deserved it after getting through the Bottom of the Well.
!0*0!
All the hotels were stuffed to bursting.
It was a fatal miscalculation on Link's part. He should have known there wouldn't be any room in any of the inns, due to the massive influx of people from Castletown. Well, he could always rely on the little patch of ground under the tree in the front of the village.
Even this spot was taken, though; some old man had set up shop right there, and wasn't keen on sharing. He was running some sort of game with three cups and a pea. Judging by the expressions on the people who played the game, none of them won.
Link sighed before leaving the village and departed into Hyrule Field, which was filled with an oddly high number of monsters, despite being the middle of the day. It wasn't as hot as it had been when Link had last been in this time period, which made sense. It was mid-autumn, after all. It would be winter rather soon.
A few hours of near-aimless wandering later, Link found himself in one of the destroyed villages from before he had first drawn the Master Sword. The corpses that had once been strewn about were gone now, probably devoured by scavengers. The whole place reeked of rot and decay, nauseating Link somewhat. He tore open the first door he found and poked around, too delirious from fatigue to think properly. If Ivan was lucid, he'd probably be scolding the Hylian for breaking and entering, but the fairy was not, in fact, awake. An irrational fragment of Link's shattered mind feared that he was dead. But the fairy was still glowing, albeit rather dimly, so he couldn't be deceased.
Right?
Link searched the house, only to find that the bedroom wasn't completely destroyed. Experimentally, he felt the bed to test its softness, and to his surprise and delight, it was about as hard as the walls of Castletown.
He laid Ivan down on one side of the bed and threw himself on the other side, not even bothering to get under the moth-eaten covers.
For once, sleep came easily to him.
Don't worry, Ivan didn't just die. I promise.
Anyway, that was chapter 15. Fifteen! Perhaps more shocking is that it's currently May 14th and I have an AP test tomorrow that I should probably be studying for right now!
Why do I do this…
Anyway, review please!