Chapter 20. Wow… just wow. That's, like… a fifth of a hundred!
DISCLAIMER: This fanfiction is not going to go to a hundred chapters.
Anyway, thank you guys so much for sticking with this fic. I really appreciate it!
RRRP:
ChangelingRin (FF): Yes, it IS a Star Wars reference. However, I dispute the fact that Anakin and TOM Link don't make a good comparison. Link takes a good eighteen chapters to get over his moping, while Anakin gets it done in about five- six, if you include Rogue One. And while Skywalker doesn't get to work through his grief in a natural and coherent way- or at all, for that matter- Link would be much the same way if not for Ivan, Malon, Zelda, and the Sages. Plus, Link got everyone ripped away from him at the end of vanilla OOT, whereas Anakin only lost Shmi and that one Rodian whose name is never mentioned, as far as I know.
Honestly, I'm surprised there was less stuff on Nierak, our Lord and Savior, than this.
OlafTheDestroyer (FF): First off, I love your name. Second off, yes, this story does progress very fast. Part of it is thematic; Link doesn't really pay attention to his surroundings because he's already done it before, and is trying to bring down Ganondorf as quickly as possible while avoiding being sucked into the past again. For that reason, he's brief and blunt, which does sometimes work against him (usually with Malon). The other reason is personal; I cannot embellish to save my life. This leads to a lot of the conversations and descriptions being quick and concise. It is also assumed that the reader, like Link, has played a good amount of vanilla OOT and knows what everything looks like already to fill in the gaps. Also, thank you, fellow Brandon Sanderson reader!
Anon (FF): Thanks!
Chapter XX: Temple of Sand, Mature Edition
The sands of the Gerudo desert were so much more bearable now that Link had more stuff on under his tunic. Not to say that he never wore anything under his green garb as a child; a pair of green shorts extending to about halfway down the thigh was common, as was a light brown undershirt. They just didn't make clothing tailored to desert life in the Kokiri Forest.
Link stepped into the Spirit Temple and was instantly faced with a conundrum. The path to his left that he was forced to take was blocked by a massive geyser of water. Worse, closer inspection revealed that there weren't any switches in Link's part of the room. The Iron Boots didn't help Link, as the force of the water spout was still enough to repel him.
The Hylian spent at least an hour trying to figure out how to get past the water spout. The Lens of Truth didn't reveal anything. None of the walls were bombable, which Link discovered after laboriously driving the Biggoron Sword into every nook and cranny of the chamber. He was stuck, and he hadn't even left the first room of the Temple!
"Is there any other way out of this room? One that doesn't require us to go through there?" Ivan asked logically.
"Well, there's the ele-" Link paused, staring at the ceiling towards the blocked-off hole in the roof where an elevator had stood in his previous exploration of the Temple. It was blocked by a boulder, and the Hero of Time suddenly understood why there was a number of Bombchus in that first chest. He planted a Bombchu on the floor before going for the chest, watching the little explosive mouse as it crawled along the walls and destroyed the blockade. Link waited expectantly for the elevator to descend, only for it to not come down. Confused, Link peered further up the hole, only to see a Hookshot panel at the very top.
His exploration of the passage was further blocked by one of those gargantuan stone cubes. Link glanced at his now-gauntleted hands, remembering how he had broken his promise to Nabooru for an instant before shoving the thoughts out of his brain. He threw his weight against the stone, only to realize that the weakness in his Stalfos Hand created a number of issues with moving heavy objects. As things stood, Link could barely move the block a minute amount at a time, even with the assistance of the Silver Gauntlets. Eventually, after a lot of time and even more sweat, Link finally managed to push all of the blocks into their respective holes. He took the opportunity to wipe the perspiration off his forehead before leaving the snakelike room, finding himself facing the smaller Sand Goddess statue that existed within the larger one.
His first action was to shoot all three of the pillars with Fire Arrows to light the torches that resided on top. This caused the door at the bottom of the adult side of the temple's staircase to open. Unfortunately, Link had no clue how to actually get up there, given how there wasn't a Hookshot panel like last time.
"Hmm… This would be a good place for a scarecrow to grow," Ivan mentioned.
Link gave him a look that screamed his confusion before suddenly understanding what the fairy was getting at. "Oh, right," Link said, withdrawing his Ocarina and playing his nine-note tune. Pierre the scarecrow appeared, allowing Link to Longshot on top of the staircase.
He went through the door and was greeted by three sun plaques on the opposite wall. There was supposed to be a mirror to reflect the light onto the suns, but there inexplicably wasn't present. Link checked the Lens of Truth just to make sure he wasn't going crazy, and he wasn't. He'd need the Mirror Shield to get back to the left-hand side of the first floor. He left just before the pair of Stalfos that had appeared landed their slashes in his face.
!0*0!
The last door was locked, necessitating a Small Key for Link to progress. But where could he get a small key? Would he need to go back in time?
"Try going to the other side," Ivan suggested. "There was that rusted switch that you couldn't press before."
"But what's that going to do? It's probably going to reveal this chest right here, but we can't get that because it's inside this central chamber through the tiny tunnel. I can't fit through that tunnel as an adult, and going back as a child would be pointless because I won't have been an adult to press the button in the first place, meaning that the chest wouldn't have appeared yet!" Link complained.
"Do you have a better idea?"
Link sighed, not even bothering to respond as he Longshotted across the gap and walked through the lower door. He then remembered the chest that had been out of reach as a child, and Hookshotted to it. It contained a Small Key. The Hero of Time had wanted to leave, but Ivan convinced him to go and press the rusted switch anyway. It did exactly what Link had predicted, and now he was mad. Time was something he didn't want to waste.
He returned to the top right door, unlocking it with his Small Key. He was greeted by another hallway engulfed in flames, and a wall of fire appeared as soon as Link reached the midway point. Not seeing any way he could walk around the fire, Link took a deep breath and sprinted through it, spending a bit of dark energy and health to teleport to the other side. He landed on his back, faceup, in a prime position to view the blatantly obvious Hookshot panel sitting on the ceiling. Mentally kicking himself, Link proceeded to go through the rest of the hallway and into the next room.
It featured several Beamos placed precariously on tiny stone platforms suspended over a dark abyss. There were also several Blocks of Time scattered about the room, but the Hylian was unsure of their exact significance. Killing the Beamos was easy enough; all it took was a few well-placed bombs to destroy them. Once they had all exploded, the door leading Link back to the main room opened and a small chest appeared, which only contained a large Bundle of Arrows.
Obviously, the rest of the room required extensive usage of the Song of Time. Link first played the song to teleport the Block of Time directly to his right, revealing a blue button beneath it. Stepping on that button caused the sealed door to his right to unseal, but stepping off of the switch nullified its effects. There had to be a box around here somewhere. The Hylian looked for a while, but saw nothing. He noticed that the Block of Time had moved to a spot directly underneath the other Block of Time. Unsure of what else to do, Link played the Song of Time again on the other side of the room, causing one of the blocks to teleport away, and the other block to move downwards slightly.
"That doesn't help me!" Link groaned, sinking to his knees in defeat and ignoring the soft thump of something falling somewhere.
"Ivan thinks it does," the fairy said, flying to a higher vantage point. "Look! There's a wooden box on top of this Block of Time!"
"How, though? The Block of Time was just touching the ceiling! There wouldn't be any space for the crate!" the Hero of Time argued. "This doesn't make any sense!"
Ivan gave his partner a droll look. "Leetle man, has anything made much sense this entire adventure? Think about it. Your first dungeon consisted of running around in the inside of the Great Deku Tree, lighting things on fire. Your third dungeon consisted of technically performing surgery on a fish god with living cows stuck in the walls. If that doesn't not make sense, Ivan would go back to the Water Temple just to eat the hat that you left there."
"You're right…" Link relented. "But how do I get on top of there? It's too high for me to jump."
"Play the Song of Time again. The crate will fall onto the box that gets teleported there," Ivan suggested. Following his instructions caused the Song of Time blocks to teleport around the room again, and allowed him to jump onto the newly spawned Block of Time and retrieve the box. Link then carefully maneuvered around the room, even donning the Hover Boots as an extra precaution, and set it down on the blue button. From there, Link could finally leave the puzzling chamber and continue forwards.
!0*0!
As soon as the door closed behind Link, a pair of the Lizalfos' more violent cousins, the Dinolfos, descended on the Hylian and attempted to drive their short swords into his flesh. They were more agile than their relatives, and therefore much more difficult to deal with. However, it still wasn't that big of a problem for Link to handle, as a well-timed Hero's Spin killed both of them instantly.
There was a small chest situated on a rug and a Block of Time situated on top of a spot of light. Link would need the Mirror Shield to properly deal with the Block of Time, and ignored it for now.
He turned to the small chest and was about to open it before hearing Ivan protest.
"Hang on! Ivan doesn't trust that chest! There's something… off about it."
"I'll be fine," Link assured, opening the container. He was promptly blasted with an arctic wind and frozen on the spot. Ivan just chortled as his partner desperately tried to break himself from the ice. Shivering madly, the swordsman kicked the chest halfway across the room in vengeance, but was shocked to see that it had caused the sealed door right next to him to open.
"Huh," Link commented intelligently, stepping through the door.
It lead to an empty hallway, with a sealed door at the end. Link smirked, peering through the Lens of Truth to reveal an invisible Floormaster protecting the door. It immediately turned green and flew towards Link, but because it was at the top of a staircase, it zipped straight over Link's head and landed by the other door. One swipe with the Biggoron Sword caused it to split into three smaller Floormasters, and they were all wiped out with a Spin Attack.
Link reorganized his inventory as the door unsealed. He then decided that the Biggoron Sword ought to have a name, as just calling it 'the Biggoron Sword' was honestly rather insulting given how much he had been using it over the course of his adventure. Something that reflected its new dark magic properties would be fitting, but he hadn't decided yet. He'd give it more thought after he finished up the Spirit Temple.
He walked through the door as it slammed shut behind him, revealing that he was in a nearly-identical room to the one that had once housed the Darknut a long time ago. He drew the Biggoron Sword in preparation to fight the Darknut that probably inhabited it, only to find that, like last time, the chamber was inhabited by an Iron Knuckle. Link slowly stalked over to the Iron Knuckle's throne and rammed the Biggoron Sword through its midsection, but he was shocked to see that the long blade pierced straight through its torso and stuck out the other side, caving through much of the armor there. Unfortunately, Link was unable to yank the blade out before the Iron Knuckle raised itself and bashed its axe straight into his torso, throwing the swordless Hylian away. Internally groaning, Link drew his Master Sword for the first time in a long time and picked himself up off the ground. The suit of armor was moving towards him as fast as it could, which wasn't all that speedy, considering how it had a magic-piercing longsword jutting out of its abdominal area. The remainder of the battle progressed in a simple fashion, which consisted of Link landing a quick blow before immediately backing up. Before too long, the Iron Knuckle collapsed and evaporated into blue mist, and the entryway behind its throne unsealed. Link re-equipped the Biggoron Sword and went through the door, finding himself on the Sand Goddess's right hand. There was a large chest precariously placed there, which contained the polished Mirror Shield.
Link stowed away his Hylian Shield before slinging the Mirror Shield onto his back. Experimentally, he tried equipping it, only to find to his dismay that even with the power of the Silver Gauntlets flowing through his greaves, his Stalfos Hand simply didn't have the raw strength to lift the Mirror Shield on its own. He would have to wait until he got the Golden Gauntlets from Ganondorf's Tower until he could fight the way he used to. Then again, in all that time, Link had grown used to fighting with only the Biggoron Sword and the Stalfos Shield, and honestly, that was going to be the way he kept fighting. The Mirror Shield was far too heavy for him to use effectively while wielding his strongest weapon, and while the Hylian Shield was comparatively much lighter, Link could only use it to its maximum potential while using it in conjunction with the Master Sword, which limited the Hylian's reach and power. He'd take the Stalfos Shield any day due to its versatility caused by its weightlessness, despite being limited by his dark magic. For that reason, Link had taken to preserving one of his bottles for a Green Potion to refill on mana if he ever needed it. It just worked.
He kept the Mirror Shield on his back, because he'd need to reflect sunlight a good deal for the rest of the Spirit Temple.
!0*0!
Link noted that he could instantly slay Gibdos with his enchanted Biggoron Sword.
The mummy in question had been guarding the Boss Key, which was hidden behind a locked door that Link had managed to unseal. The trick was to reflect the sunlight underneath that Block of Time in the chest switch room into a sun face. Seizing the Boss Key, Link returned to the large room with the miniature Sand Goddess seated within it, disregarding all the foes that blocked his path.
Now that he had the Mirror Shield, Link could finally conquer the left hand side of the first floor. He darted down the left staircase, ignoring the Floormaster that had taken residence there, and stepped through the lower door.
Two Stalfos jumped out of the floor and tried to kill him as soon as the Hylian entered. Worse, a Wallmaster was hovering over Link, waiting to strike. The Hero let himself be hit by one of the Stalfos and then Backapparated off of it, using his own life energy to extend his teleportation. He timed it so that the Wallmaster had descended right when Link teleported away. While Ivan distracted one of the Stalfos by flying around in its face, the Hero of Time was able to destroy the Wallmaster and pin the other skeletal warrior by its hands. The second Stalfos eventually got bored of Ivan and focused its attention on the seemingly-occupied Link, taking the opportunity to launch itself into a jumping slash. At the last instant, Link threw himself away from the attack, and the Stalfos found its blade embedded in the other Stalfos' ribcage. It then disassembled, signifying its end. While the remaining Stalfos' attention was otherwise consumed, Link crept up behind it and clamped his hands on the skeleton's skull before twisting it viciously, actually ripping the head straight off of its shoulders. It then fell apart, dissolving into green flames. The swordsman then turned his attention to the three sun faces situated underneath a small crack in the wall that allowed sunlight to filter in. The air wasn't as stale here, which the Hylian really appreciated.
He laboriously pointed the Mirror Shield at the leftmost one, only for it to burn up, situating that it was the incorrect choice. Instead, it summoned another Wallmaster, which Link defeated easily. The Rupees it spewed out filled his wallet. The central sun was also the wrong choice, and it spawned yet another Wallmaster. Deducing that the third must be the correct choice, Link shifted the Mirror Shield towards it, only for the sun to… also burn away. The Wallmaster that it summoned swiftly met its end, and only then did the iron bars covering the path forwards come away. Instead of climbing down the hole like a sane person would do, Link opted to simply throw himself down it, somehow landing safely at the bottom. From there, he blindly sprinted past the few Spikes patrolling the hallway and went through the door, ending up on the other side of the waterspout from the very first room. The Hylian first turned his attention towards the out-of-place boulder smack-dab in the center of the room. It soon fell to pieces thanks to the Megaton Hammer, revealing a rusted switch. Slamming the switch with the Hammer caused the geyser to finally disperse for all of ten seconds before it started up again. Link decided that he'd ignore it for now, instead opting to walk through a door to the right of the way back up. The other one was locked and needed a Small Key to unseal.
It was empty save a Gold Skulltula on the ceiling and a small Triforce engraving on the floor. Playing Zelda's Lullaby caused the iron bars lining the door to disperse. But there was still a collectible in the room that Link couldn't see, even with the assistance of the Lens of Truth. He hopped down into the sands below the Triforce engraving, only to be assaulted by several purple tumors that rose out of the scalding sand and threw themselves at the Hylian. He slaughtered all of them as a chest appeared on a small pillar amidst the dunes. It only contained Rupees, which Link didn't need, considering the fact that his wallet was stuffed full.
He returned to the central room and smashed the rusted switch again, running over the rushing waters and collecting the other two Silver Rupees hiding in the room. This caused a third chest to appear, which contained a Small Key.
!0*0!
The Hylian was unsure why he had let Ivan convince him to use the Small Key on the last door of the first floor, but it had somehow happened.
The room contained two boulders rhythmically rolling perpendicular to the tracks that they were supposed to be on. There was also an inexplicable Moblin Boss casually sitting in front of the other door.
"You know what? I want to try using one of the Void Arrows," Link decided. "How many of those do I have again?"
"Four," Ivan supplied.
"Yeah, I'm going to shoot the Moblin Boss with one of them," he declared, pawing through his bag to find the requisite enchanted arrow. He loaded one into his bow, noting the awesome-looking dark energy that pulsed out of the tip, and fired it, nailing the pig right between the eyes.
The Moblin's back arched as it brayed in agony, skin charring and atrophying as the Void Arrow did its work. Soon, it was dead, leaving nothing but a decaying husk in its wake.
Link stared at the remains, shocked and awed by the Void Arrows' power. Shaking himself from his gawking, he hit the rusted switch next to him, which caused some iron gates blocking a little divot in the wall. There wasn't anything in the inlet, but it was adorned by a little Block of Time on top of it.
"Look at all of these rooms…" Ivan breathed. "That one has a sun on top of it. That one has… is that a crate from Old Lon Ranch?"
"Hang on, what?!" Link exclaimed, focusing on the aforementioned crate. Indeed, there was a Lon Lon Ranch crate casually placed on top of one of the sides.
"That other one has the Triforce on it, and that other one is blank," Ivan noted. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know… but when there's a Block of Time, you play the Song of Time. When there's a Triforce, you play Zelda's Lullaby. Maybe we have to play songs?"
"Good idea!" Ivan said as Link entered the little inlet and played the Song of Time. That caused the Lon Lon door to open up. Playing Epona's Song in there caused the Sun door to open, in which playing the Sun's Song caused the Triforce door to open. Lastly, by process of elimination, that meant that the unmarked inlet required the Song of Storms, or perhaps Saria's Song. The Song of Storms turned out to be correct, and the locked door that the Moblin Boss was once protecting opened once more.
As soon as he entered the now-unblocked room, a whole infestation of Giant Skulltulas descended from the ceiling, startling Link. Instead of laboriously slaying each Skulltula individually, the swordsman merely opted to cast Din's Fire and killed them all in an instant, including the Golden Skulltula hidden on the wall.
The room contained a chest on a small dais, adorned with a carpet. Link wondered what was inside of it. It was a large chest, but he had already acquired the Compass, Dungeon Map, Silver Gauntlets, and Mirror Shield. Gently, Link leveraged the chest open and found that it contained a purple book. It was thick, and adorned with three silver circles, two of which had tiny openings within them. Link's Stalfos Hand seemed to react to it, almost yearning to open the tome and reveal its contents. For that reason alone, the Hylian was plenty wary of it.
"Ivan, can you tell me what this book is?" Link asked.
"That… hm… Ivan thinks it's some sort of dark magic tome of Gerudo design, but… Ivan isn't sure. Open it, but don't say anything. You might unwittingly cast a spell."
With his partner's advice in mind, Link cracked open the book and reviewed its contents, but was dumbfounded with what he saw. The words kept on shifting and changing, and it was in some archaic language the swordsman didn't recognize. Also, they seemed to be flowing into his Stalfos Hand. This revelation was accompanied by a surge of acute agony, not unlike the pain that occured when Link dispelled his Shield after not using it. However, this torment was much more drawn-out, which made it feel even worse. Link gritted his teeth as the energy from the book finally stopped flowing into his corrupted left hand.
The tome only contained a single spell, named Utarefson. If Link's understanding was correct, the spell drained life energy from other living beings and used it to infuse the caster's own vitality. However, it was by far the most taxing spell in Link's arsenal, easily consuming a third of his dark magical reserves, even with the Interloper Ring he had found in the Fire Temple. Regardless, it appeared to be an excellent way to save his own skin in a pinch if he was out of Healing Fairies or something.
"So? What's the verdict?" Ivan asked.
"It's a spell called Utarefson," Link revealed. "It drains life energy out of enemies and then allows me to heal myself with that energy. It's really taxing on my magic, though."
Ivan appeared to cringe for an instant, but Link was half convinced his mind was playing tricks on him. "Nosferatu spelled backwards? Interesting…"
"What's a Nosferatu?" Link asked.
"An old legend spoke of a creature by that very name, who struck a deal with Demise for unlimited power. Nosferatu became extremely powerful, yes, but there was a cost; his life became dependent on the blood of his victims, and it eventually took to sneaking up to children and biting them, drinking the blood from their veins until it was all drained away."
"Uh… that's not comforting…" Link gulped. "Warn me if I start lusting for blood, okay?"
"Ivan was already going to," Ivan laughed.
"Anyway… this was cool and all, but it doesn't help me finish this Temple… have any ideas where we can find another Small Key?"
"Well, there's that one chest…"
"Ivan, we went over this. The laws of time dictate that we can't get that chest, because when we go back in time to get the chest, I won't have pressed the button yet and the chest won't have appeared. There might as well not be a chest there at all."
!0*0!
"Ivan misses your hat," Ivan mused.
"Why?" Link blurted, stepping away from the Master Sword that was now embedded in its pedestal.
"Because Ivan doesn't feel right just sitting on your head, and your hat was the perfect roof in case it started to rain," Ivan explained as the child and fairy began their trek to the Spirit Temple, footsteps echoing through the Temple of Time. "Plus, it is very comfy."
"Well, too bad. I'm not going to get another cap in the future, so live it up while I'm wearing this one," the youth spat, pointing violently at the green hat now affixed to his head.
The fairy wasted no time in slipping below the Kokiri garb, and soon he was snoring away under his hat.
Link re-entered the Spirit Temple and immediately noted that a third chest had somehow appeared and was open, something he had done in the future. Similarly, the boulder blocking the path upwards that Link had destroyed as an adult was gone.
"Ivan, I swear to the Goddesses, if you're right…" Link grumbled, getting on all fours and shimmying through the cramped tunnel on the right side.
Ivan was right. There was a chest smack-dab in the middle of the room, which contained a Small Key.
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Link complained. "I haven't been an adult to hit the button yet! Hell, I can't even lift the Megaton Hammer right now, much less swing it around! Come on, that's bullshit!"
"Time is weird," Ivan mumbled from underneath Link's hat. "And why are you complaining? You got a Small Key out of it."
"But… but… it's just… ugh," Link lamented. "This is giving me a headache."
"In the words of a time-travelling youth, 'the less you think about it, the better'," Ivan reminded.
There was silence for a few seconds, or at least as much silence as there could have been over the roaring of the flames that wreathed the room.
"Shut up, Ivan."
!0*0!
A physically older Link leapt across the abyss in the Beamos room and approached the last locked door. He opened it with his paradoxical Small Key and stepped through it into the next room.
He was still mad about that.
This next room featured several Fire Keese noisily flapping about as sections of the wall slid along, sections of which were climbable. The wall was adorned with Silver Rupees which Link would presumably have to collect, which would be infuriating if he discounted the fact that he could Longshot onto the climbable portions of the wall and then fall back to the floor, collecting the Rupees as he plummeted.
He made sure to kill the bats first, though, because he despised Fire Keese with a burning passion. He then enacted his plan, which somehow succeeded, causing the exit on the fourth floor to unseal.
The next little passageway had a locked door with a Triforce engraving on the floor in front of it. Chuckling to himself at the apparent ease of this puzzle, Link stepped onto the Triforce and played Zelda's Lullaby. He didn't get a Small Key, but instead, a different door at the other end of the hallway opened. Odd. Whatever, he wasn't complaining.
The other two doors in the following chamber were sealed. Granted, one of them wasn't actually a door, but it was covered with iron bars that Link couldn't pass through. The Hylian opted to jump down into a small pit that he would be revisiting later, rolling into the crates all over the room to break them. One of them hid a rusty switch, which when triggered with the Megaton Hammer, unsealed the door.
The adjoining cubicle featured a Torch Slug and a Green Bubble that dwarfed any other Bubble Link had ever seen. Seriously, it was almost as large as the Green Bubbles that used to be in the Bottom of the Well had appeared, and that was when Link was a child.
They were easy enough to defeat, but Link was legitimately caught off-guard by the Lizalfos that charged out of the adjacent room with its sword raised. While it startled the Hylian, it wasn't able to land so much as a scratch on him, and died rather easily.
Before Link did anything else, he explored the strangely-shaped room. There was a basilisk statue with a mirror in it in the second little area that reflected light from a hole in the ceiling, and there was another one in the third area wreathed in flames. Link couldn't reach it without lighting his hands on fire, and he wasn't particularly keen on doing that. He noticed that the Compass was registering something in the room, and the Lens of Truth revealed that there was a hidden small chest in there that contained a Small Key.
He ran back across the Temple and found the last locked door, walking through it even though it contained nothing that the Compass could pick up. It contained an Iron Knuckle and several stacks of stone thrones, each of which hid a Skullwalltula behind it. Link didn't feel like fighting another Iron Knuckle, and instead backpedaled out of the room and back in the curved room.
It was only then that Link noticed the sun hiding on top of the archway that connected the first cell to the second. Shining the light on it did… apparently nothing, but closer inspection revealed that the fire surrounding the second basilisk mirror had faded away.
The Hero turned the first basilisk statue to face the second, but when he looked up, the fire had engulfed it again. Obviously, the sun switch was on a timer of some sort, just to irk him. Link undid his progress, activated the sun again, then sprinted to the other side of the chamber and rotating the second basilisk mirror so that it faced through the bars into the adjacent room. From there, he could laboriously point the first snake statue at it so that the light reflected off of both of them.
He returned to the mirror room and directed the light at another sun switch with his Mirror Shield. This caused the entire platform to start descending until it was level with the face of the smaller Sand Goddess. If Link hadn't done it already, he would have been confused, but he laboriously propped the Mirror Shield so that it reflected the light onto the Goddess's fragile face. The light was so forceful that the stone fell away, revealing the Boss Door, or something like that. Link wasn't sure, but he wasn't complaining, either.
He Longshotted off of the hanging platform and into the Sand Goddess, opening the door and readying himself for battle.
!0*0!
Kotake and Koume had their backs to him as Link entered the final stretch, facing an Iron Knuckle in decorative red. Link knew from experience that Nabooru was stuck inside, brainwashed by the witches into doing Ganondorf's dark deeds.
"Ho ho ho… looks like the kid is here, Kotake," Koume mentioned, swiveling her head to look at the Hero of Time.
"Indeed he is, Koume," Kotake agreed, following suit.
"What an outrageous little boy he is to intrude so boldly into our temple, don't you think?" Koume said.
"We should teach this ridiculous fellow a lesson! Hee hee hee!" Kotake decided.
They parted to reveal the Iron Knuckle in more detail, making Link privy to every little detail the suit of armor had to offer. "Oh, loyal minion… Destroy this intruder on our behalf!"
Then the witches disappeared, as the Iron Knuckle lifted itself from its throne and glanced at its hands in confusion for a while, evidently bamboozled by the lack of gargantuan axe at its disposal. It snapped its fingers and a massive halberd appeared out of thin air and into its awaiting grasp. Axe now in hand, the Iron Knuckle slowly stepped forwards, sending seismic shockwaves with each footfall it took. Link tightened his grip on the Biggoron Sword as he stood his ground, baiting the brainwashed Gerudo into taking a swing.
But the instant he had gotten within range, the Iron Knuckle froze in place, ax raised above its head in the process of swinging down. Link was confounded, bewildered, because this had never happened before. Nabooru then dropped her axe, letting it disappear into a cloud of mist, and clutched at her head with her gauntlets before throwing her helmet off of her face.
"Goddess, I'll never get used to that… Where the hell am I now?" Nabooru mumbled.
"You're in the Spirit Temple, Nabooru. Almost at the-"
The witches teleported back into the room, looks of anger etched into their wizened features.
"Well, that was boring, Koume."
"Yes, quite! We should have made that brainwashing spell a little stronger, shouldn't we have…"
"We want to use the girl, not kill her, Koume…" Kotake chastised. "You old bat…"
"What did you say to me? If I'm an old bat, you're an old bat! We're twins!"
"Whatever," Kotake spat. "What do we do now?"
"Brainwash her again?" Koume suggested.
"Now, has that worked very much over the last few weeks?"
"Well… no… sister, that wasn't a very good idea after all, was it?"
"Indeed it was not," Kotake agreed. "Perhaps we should teleport her into the Haunted Wastes and watch her shrivel like a prune!"
"But she commands a lot of respect among the other Gerudo, young though she may be," Koume argued.
"Ooh ooh! We could make her watch as we tear her little lover apart!"
Link blushed slightly, but the witches were too busy squabbling amongst themselves to notice.
"Oh, that's evil! I love it, Kotake!" the fire witch squealed, readying a magical spell in unison with her sister. Nabooru turned to escape, but her efforts were fruitless; she was spirited off to another place in an instant, in ashes of red and blue. "Then we can brainwash her again! Now, what do we do about her little boyfriend?"
"Well, clearly he's offered himself as an oblation to the great Ganondorf, so shouldn't we let him finish the job?" Kotake suggested.
"But sister! He's enacting his birthright, we can't teleport him here!"
"Who said we were bringing that Ganondorf?" Kotake asked wickedly, fingers oozing dark energy as a hole in the fabric of reality began to coalesce on the floor. Koume soon joined suit, although the expression on her face clearly indicated that she had no idea what was going on.
A gauntleted right hand leapt out of the vortex before latching onto solid ground, dragging the rest of its body out. Link watched in abject horror as a masked face emerged from the void, complete with two massive white horns. Phantom Ganon, with a staff and everything.
It was just one of those days, wasn't it?
Link quickly nocked an arrow in his bow and attempted to shoot a Fire Arrow at Kotake, in an effort to stop the ritual before the evil spirit could fully free itself. Unfortunately, the arrow was blocked by the end of Koume's broomstick, which she had moved to intercept the attack. Phantom Ganon had fully extricated itself from the gap between dimensions by this point, and the portal was beginning to close before… it stopped, staying in an open state as Kotake and Koume watched with confused interest.
A gauntleted left hand leapt out of the vortex before latching onto solid ground, slowly dragging the rest of its body out of the portal. It was another Phantom Ganon; to be specific, the one Link had bested the first time he had gone through the Forest Temple before he had been sent back by the first Zelda. This theory was strengthened by the fact that it was more deteriorated than the other Phantom Ganon, and more of its body was see-through and ethereal. Somehow, it had survived the timeskip by being stranded in the gap between dimensions.
"Impossible," Link whispered, tightening his grip on the hilt of his blade.
"Oh ho! The great Ganondorf never mentioned having two copies!" Koume proclaimed. "The more, the better, don't you agree?"
"Indeed, sister," Kotake agreed. "Now, let's prepare the next spell, shall we?"
The two witch sisters apparated out of the room, leaving Link with two particularly irate Phantom Ganons. He steeled his grip on the Biggoron Sword, knowing that it wouldn't take much time to destroy either Ganon given their current partially-evaporated state.
New Phantom Ganon summoned an energy ball and flung it at Link with the end of its staff, only for the Hylian to slap it back with his own blade. This went on for some time, long enough for Link to notice the Old Phantom Ganon also readying an electric attack. The next few minutes consisted of frenzied multitasking as the Hylian sought to deflect the electric balls from both Ganons. Eventually, Old Phantom Ganon missed the electric ball and was hit by it, although it probably had more to do with the fact that it had deteriorated so much that its arms had completely evaporated. New Phantom Ganon wasted no time in literally consuming the energy of the other Phantom Ganon, forming an unholy union of two Phantom Ganons with double everything- two pairs of legs, two heads, and two sets of arms, each sprouting from the shoulders and dual-wielding both tridents. Link steeled himself and fired an arrow at the midsection of the Dual Ganon, but it flew straight through the apparition and hit the wall on the other side of the room. Dual Ganon merely laughed a throaty cackle as Link's world suddenly slowed down a good deal. By extension, this also made Dual Ganon much faster, and now the Hylian could barely keep up with the phantom's flurry of blows. Eventually, Link managed to shove the apparition off of him before cleanly chopping one of its heads off with the Biggoron Sword. Somehow, it seemed hardly fazed, and continued to fight Link as his time slowed down even more. A trident plummeted towards his torso, and the comparatively lethargic Link only barely managed to parry with his own weapon. The second trident then caught the blade and, between the two tridents holding his sword in place, wrenched it out of his grasp. Cursing his weakness despite the augmented strength of the Silver Gauntlets, the Hylian scrambled away from the apparition in a desperate bid to buy time, rummaging through his pack for the thing he needed so desperately.
The symbiotic Ganons slowly stalked towards the prone Hero, raising the Tridents above its neck in a final coup de grace. Dimly, Link could hear Ivan holler something along the lines of "No!" from somewhere out of reach; the sprite must have been affected by the time dilation as well. The pair of pronged spears began their final descent towards Link's chest, as the phantom cackled in its warped, off-kilter voice.
Then Link drew the Master Sword from within his pouch and slashed at the exposed chest of the demon.
It seized up, the anti-evil enchantments on the sacred blade doing quite a number on its already atrophying state. In a moment fueled by adrenaline, Link hauled himself off of the ground and threw himself at the beast, hands latching onto Dual Ganon's remaining head before cleanly snapping its ghost neck. The abomination suddenly started spewing acrid blue fire from both of its necks as it deflated in the center of the room, finally fizzling out of existence..
Breathing deeply, Link realized that the door was unsealed. He stalked through it, keen on ending Twinrova in much the same way.
!0*0!
"Look at that stupid kid! He came on his own to offer himself as a sacrifice to the great Ganondorf!" the witches' voices emanated through the empty room, mocking Link as he stood on their demented dais. The walls began to pulse with magical power; he would later learn that these were wards that prevented magical from working properly outside of the chamber.
Link laughed out loud.
Sigils began to form on two of the smaller platforms surrounding the larger raised area, one red and one blue.
"With my flame, I will burn him to the bone!" Koume roared, flying into the air as her hair lit on fire.
"With my frost, I will freeze him to his soul!" Kotake screeched, hair suddenly transmuting into a shock of ice.
They then proceeded to fly around the room in a swirling fashion, both ending just above Link and flitting around in circles before separating and readying their own magical attacks. This was bad, because Link would need to reflect their sister's energy back at them to deal effective damage. He'd done this with the Mirror Shield in the past, but back then he'd had the strength of a normal human hand to lift the heavy shield around, something he didn't have the luxury of now.
He told Ivan to keep an eye on Koume and warn him if she cast her spell. Meanwhile, he would observe Kotake and had preemptively positioned the Mirror Shield on the ground, at an angle to that her ice attack would reflect back at her.
"Link, look out!" Ivan roared. Keeping the shield standing, Link darted around it and rotated it so that its polished face was pointing towards Koume. It caught the beam of fire and bounced it right back. From there, it was a simple matter of tilting the shield face so that the attack hit Kotake instead. The ice mage squealed as the fire made contact with her frigid skin. Excellent.
Now he just had to do it about ten more times.
If the battle went the same way as it had last time, Link had about five seconds before Kotake blasted him with a barrage of ice that would freeze him on the spot. An errant glance over his shoulder confirmed this. The time traveller wasted no time in twisting his shield around and repeating the process of deflecting the bolt and then tilting it in such a way that it hit the other sister.
This went on for some time. He must have hit them at least seven times each before anything changed. And even then, it wasn't a metamorphosis into their fused form, Twinrova. Instead, the elemental witches merely took to firing their magical attacks in unison, preventing Link from exploiting their main weakness without being punished by the other. He had no choice but to dash out of the way when this happened, the two magic beams colliding with each other and cancelling out into a large puddle of lukewarm water.
"Ivan! Can you Mind Hack one of them?" the Hero begged as he threw himself off of the platform in an effort to dodge the ensuing attacks.
"Ivan can try, but it won't be very long-lasting!" Ivan replied. "They'll probably just create mental wards to counteract Ivan!"
"Do it anyway! Right before they blast their magic!" Link ordered, Longshotting back on top of the dais and moving towards one of the separate pillars nearby.
The witches readied their spells, but right as they released it, his guardian fairy collided with Kotake's cranium. Nearly instantly, he was jettisoned from the fire witch's head as she reasserted control over her mental faculties, but it was just long enough for Koume's fire to connect with her.
"Okay, this isn't working!" Kotake sputtered.
"How about we get serious, then!" Koume replied.
"Oh, OK Koume."
They glided to the center of the room and spiraled ever closer, although they began to assimilate into each other at contact. They were swiftly consumed by an ocean of red and white flames as they fused with each other.
"Kotake and Koume's Double Dynamite Attack!" they hollered in unison, slightly out of sync, as the flames suddenly burst off of Twinrova's fused body. Whereas Kotake and Koume had both been old crones with broomsticks, Twinrova herself appeared young and powerful, wielding those broomsticks as twin wands along with a disturbingly seductive smile. Link's jaw dropped on instinct upon being greeted with the sight of the Gerudo witch staring down her nose at him, taking a step back to put a little more distance between them. Twinrova herself only replied with a suggestive wink before suddenly disappearing from Link's view. Whirling around and tightening his grip on the Biggoron Sword, Link expected Twinrova to be preparing a spell to blast him with. Instead, he only saw her standing on the pillar directly behind him, almost sizing him up.
"You know, it's almost too bad we have to kill you…" she remarked, slowly sauntering towards Link. "You would have been a fun plaything to break."
"Leetle man?" Ivan said, almost a whisper. "Kill her."
"Then again, given your hero complex, there wouldn't be much to have fun with… Such a shame."
The verbal jab flew straight over Link's head. "Excuse me?"
Ivan merely looked at Link, clearly mortified at the witch's words. "Don't worry about it."
"Yes, don't worry about it, indeed," Twinrova's dual voice emanated. "All you need to do is surrender yourself, and we'll make sure your last moments are as pl-"
Before Ganondorf's surrogate mother could finish her statement, Ivan clamped his ethereal hands over her mouth. This prompted a rather negative response, as she proceeded to backhand slap the fairy all the way across the vast chamber. Then she readied a spell.
Link sprinted across the dais, only barely managing to intercept the attack with his Mirror Shield. Rather than reflect the magic bolt as it once had, the Shield actually absorbed it, flashing white to signify the ice attack that it had stored.
"Come now," Twinrova mused sultrily. "We could give you the time of your life if you just let us kill him!"
"If it means losing Ivan, I'm not going to do… whatever it is you want to do," Link declared. "It'd probably be more pain than anything else, anyway."
"Insolence," the fused being muttered angrily, flying away to another pillar and casting a fire spell. The Hero of Time, knowing that his currently stored ice spell would be nullified if he absorbed the flames, opted to scoop up Ivan in his grasp and sprint away from the area.
"Ivan, are you alright?"
"Ivan's dealt with worse," the sprite assured. "Focus on those witches!"
"It's just one witch now," Link commented as he absorbed another ice beam. "Two witches fused into one, yes, but there's only one thing to keep track of. Feel free to take a nap in my pouch or something."
"I… Tempting, but Ivan is fine."
Finally, Link had stored up three ice attacks within the Mirror Shield. This caused the shield to overload and spewed all of its pent-up magic in a solid white beam. The Hylian angled the beam towards Twinrova's body, catching the witch with her own magic. She made an odd-sounding wail as she collapsed on the dais, vulnerable to attack. Link was about to jump over to the smaller platform and hit her with the Biggoron Sword before he thought of something.
The part of Twinrova that was vulnerable to fire was still there. Couldn't he shoot a Fire Arrow and effectively nullify half of Twinrova's power? It seemed like a good idea at the time, so Link asked Ivan to give him his Bow from his pouch. He quickly drew an arrow and loosed it, only to realize too late that it was not, in fact, a Fire Arrow.
It was a Void Arrow. At least he didn't miss.
Twinrova screamed as the dark arrow impacted on her skin, lifting into the air a bit while slumping over as dark magical corruption leached her very life force. The witch then started spinning around rapidly before dissipating into a single white flame and a single red flame, which spiraled down in front of Link before transmuting into Koume and Kotake.
"Shoot! What a fresh kid! This time, we'll get really serious, right Kotake?" Koume said as both sisters turned a translucent blue as holy-looking rings appeared over their heads.
"Huh? Sister, what's that over your head?" Koume asked.
"I don't know, but you have one too, Koume!"
They both looked away, looked up, then looked back down. It suddenly clicked what was happening.
"But I'm only four hundred years old!" Koume wailed.
Link started chuckling.
"And I'm only three hundred and eighty years old!"
"We're twins! Don't try to lie about your age!"
Meanwhile the Hylian and his fairy were laughing so hard that tears were coming out of their eyes.
"You must have gone senile!" Kotake roared, ignoring the guffawing duo that had defeated both of them.
"Who are you calling senile! Is that a good way to treat your older sister?!" Koume demanded.
"We're twins! How on Demise's dark earth could you be older?!"
"Keeeeyaaaah! How heartless you are!"
"How can you possibly be this ungrateful!"
"You're heartless!"
"You ungrateful…"
Their end-of-life crisis was interrupted as both witches rose up and out of the Temple.
"We'll come back to haunt you!" they wailed in unison as they finally departed.
Link and Ivan, who had since recovered from their laughing fit, took a moment to drink in their success. They'd cleansed all the Temples and awoken all the Sages. All that was left was to face Ganondorf himself.
"Hang on…" Ivan suddenly questioned. "When they… How did… Do you even know what you're saying?"
"Huh?" Link asked intelligently.
"When you say… uh, that."
"What? The word 'huh'?"
"No! The one Ivan tells you specifically not to use."
"Oh, fuck?" Link said. "... You better not charge me for that. You asked me to say it."
"Da, that one. Do you have any idea what that means?"
"Honestly, I just heard it used in the context of adding emphasis to things, mostly from Ingo last timeline, and pieced together meaning from that. I think it's just a word accentuator that for some reason had negative connotations. Why do you ask?"
"D- don't worry about it," the fairy decided.
!0*0!
"Kid… let me thank you. Heheheh… look what the little kid has become in the last seven years- a competent swordsman!"
"Uh… thanks?" Link replied, rubbing the back of his neck with his Stalfos hand. "Does that mean you can stop calling me kid now?"
"Never!" Nabooru laughed.
Link wilted.
"By the way…" the Sage of Spirit continued. "I really messed up… I got brainwashed by those old hags and used by Ganondorf to carry out his evil whims… But I'm a bit confused… why didn't you show up at the Training Grounds? Did you somehow know that the witches were going to brainwash everyone?"
"Well, yes," Ivan said. "The first time we met you was the second time you met us, and you told us that we didn't appear at the Gerudo Training Grounds. Therefore, we had to make that promise and then break it to prevent a time paradox. Because if we had returned to the Gerudo Fortress and given you the Iron Gauntlets, then you wouldn't have been able to tell us that we didn't appear. We had to break our promise in order to make the future happen the way it did… does… is?"
"It's confusing," Link summarized. "The less you think about it, the better."
"I suppose that makes sense… You know, it's kind of funny, isn't it? That a person like me could turn out to be the Sage of Spirit? And now I'm going to fight as one of them? Heh… I'm going to make them pay for what they did to me!"
"That's the spirit," Ivan commented.
"Kid… alright, fine, Link, the Hero of Time… instead of keeping that promise I made all that time ago, I give you this Medallion! Take it!"
Link received the Spirit Medallion. Normally, he would have been whisked out of the Sacred Realm at this point, but he would have to deal with a short speech from the rotund Sage of Light before that happened, due to the fact that all of the Sages had been reawakened.
"If only I knew you'd turn out to be such a handsome man… I should have kept that promise I made all that time ago…"
The Gerudo descended into her pedestal in a similar fashion to how she had appeared, as Rauru emerged from the Light pedestal to address Link himself.
"Link, the hero!" Rauru boomed, preventing the swordsman from getting a word in edgewise. "Finally, all of us, the six Sages, have been awakened! The time for the final showdown with the King of Darkness has come! Before that, though, you ought to meet with the one who has been waiting for you… at the Temple of Time…"
Rauru then faded from his sight as the Hero of Time was returned to the mortal plane.
He touched down on the pedestal right by the Desert Colossus. It sank in that there was only one last push to go through. Ganon's Tower. Then he was done with all of this hero business. He could settle down somewhere, although that somehow didn't appeal to him. He would think that he would relish normalcy, but upon introspection he decided that it just didn't fit. Maybe he could rebuild the Hyrulean Knights after Zelda was reinstated, or something like that. It didn't matter now. All that Link cared about was that the choice was his own, and that alone was paradise.
Okay, so I was contemplating doing MQ Gerudo Training Grounds, but I've decided that it wouldn't work. First off, it's completely optional in the context of the game. Second off, I feel like in the context of the story, it serves only as filler and really doesn't need to be included to weave a polished story.
NOOTTD:
Utarefson is Nosferatu spelled backwards. The spell Utarefson is basically the Nosferatu spell from the Fire Emblem series, and Nosferatu is a rather famous vampire. I figured I would work him into Hylian history somehow, and I did.
All that Twinrova dialogue in the boss fight extended from that one wink. Basically, I think she views Link like a piece of meat specially prepared for her to dine on. It's sultry enough to be disturbing ingame, but I feel like it wasn't dialed up to its fullest extent. That's where the speech came from.
Review Please! And if you can come up with a good name for the Biggoron Sword that's better than my current idea, you can suggest it and I'll maybe implement it!