Here's the next chapter!

Enjoy! ;)

Chapter 10: The Forest Temple

The Forest Temple looked like an abandoned mansion or a stronghold. The whole place, seemingly abandoned for years was old and falling apart, with only a few remains left, such as columns and walls, the latter now covered in vines stretching all the way to the roofless top. Vegetation took over the entire place and dead souls who possess odd magic are now roaming around the temple. In short, this place was very eerie.

The moment our heroes took their first step forward, they were instantly greeted by two Wolfos.

"Talk about a warm welcome…" Link sweatdropped as he fended off their attacks and defeated one of them. And just when the other Wolfos was about to attack Link from behind, Luigi shot a lightning bolt at it, which finished it off for good. "Oh… Nice use of that lightning." Link said, noticing what Luigi just did.

"Thanks." Luigi nodded.

"…Hey, where's Toad?" Peach asked, looking around.

"Up here!" Toad called out as everyone looked up to see him on a tree branch. "I noticed a treasure chest on top of this tree while you were battling the Wolfos so I made a mushroom trampoline to propel myself up here."

"And what was inside that chest?" Yoshi asked.

"…A key." Toad showed everyone the key.

"What." Yoshi deadpanned.

"Yep, Toad just jinxed it." Luigi thought, remembering what Toad said back at their very first dungeon.

"Seriously, let's just stop questioning anything that's nonsense to us…" Mario sweatdropped.

"I'm with Mario." Navi agreed.

"Yeah, let's just go." Link finished as Toad hopped off and everyone made their way inside.

At the interior hallway, they took out a Big Skulltula and reached the main room, where they saw four torches lit in different colored flames and there was an elevator in the middle.

Suddenly, the flames dissipated, each turning into four Poes of the respective flame color. These were the four Poe Sisters: Amy, the youngest, was green. Beth, the second youngest, was blue. Joelle, the second oldest, was orange. Meg, the eldest, was purple.

Of course, due to his fear of ghosts, Luigi paled up at the sight of the Poe Sisters. Everyone watched the flames reappear at the Poe Sisters' torches before they flew away in different directions, letting out sinister cackles in unison as the elevator in the middle sank into the floor.

"Oh thank god, they're gone." Luigi sighed in relief. "Golly, even the way they laughed at us sent a chill down my spine…"

"Okay, I will admit; those Poes did seem a bit creepy, so you're not alone, Luigi." Link admitted.

Mario then looked around the room. "I can see three available doors at the moment, so the best course is for us to split up."

"One of them is locked, though." Toad pointed out. "But at least we can unlock it with the key I just got." he unlocks the door with the key.

"And another one has a weird-looking block in the front." Yoshi added.

"A block?" Link walked over to it; it was a Time Block. "That symbol… I wonder…" he takes out his ocarina and plays the Song of Time, which caused the block to disappear, much to everyone's surprise. "Whoa…" Link awed.

"That was a Time Block." Navi informed. "Playing the Song of Time apparently removes it."

"All right… I'll go through the door in the middle."

"Mind if we go with you, Link?" Mario asked as he and Luigi came over.

"Sure."

"Then I, Yoshi and Toad will take the Time Block path." Peach offered. "We'll all meet back here."

"Right. And make sure you keep an eye for the Poes we just saw."

Everyone nodded and split up to their respective doors.

With Link, Mario and Luigi…

They first took care of a Blue Bubble, a flying skull monster surrounded by blue flames, and went into the next room, which was more of a dead end… until two Stalfos emerged out of the floor.

"Are those… living skeletons?!" Luigi flinched.

"Those are Stalfos!" Navi informed. "They used to be normal human adults, but after getting lost in the Lost Woods, they turned into this!"

"Yikes…" Mario grimaced, disturbed by this fact.

"Well, we have to take them out… considering we're locked in at the moment!" Link exclaimed, drawing his sword and shield to engage one of the Stalfos while the Mario Bros engaged the other.

Luigi shot a green fireball at the Stalfos, but it easily blocked it and slashed down at the brothers. They avoided the attack with Luigi jumping and Mario ducking, and while Luigi was in the air, he attempted to stomp its head, but it rose its shield above its head to avoid the stomping.

"Okay, this guy might be just reduced to bones, but he's really clever." Mario stated before ducking to avoid another slash from the Stalfos.

With Link, he blocked the other Stalfos's attack with his shield and countered before going all out on it, but it remained on guard. Link then did a low swing, cutting out the Stalfos's legs, making it angry and retaliated, but Link rolled out of the way and did one last swing to finally tear it apart.

Seeing what Link has done, Mario decided to go for the same strategy and did a low kick to knock away the Stalfos's legs, and when it began to retaliate, Mario brought out his hammer and swung it down at the Stalfos, crushing it into pieces.

"Good thing they're made out of bones, otherwise this strategy wouldn't work." Mario remarked before putting his hammer away.

Then, a treasure chest appeared in the middle and the door was unlocked. Link opened the chest, and pulled out…

"Another key?" he had an eyebrow raised.

"How many keys this temple has?" Luigi questioned.

"Who knows?" Mario shrugged. "Let's just go back to the main room."

Once they went back to the main room, they immediately met up with Peach, Yoshi and Toad.

"Oh, you're back. So, how did it go for you?" Link asked.

"Nothing much." Toad replied. "We just went into a well and found another key in a chest."

"We also got the map of this place." Yoshi added, showing everyone the Dungeon Map.

"Unfortunately, we found no sight of any of those Poes." Peach said. "How about you, boys?"

"We just fought a pair of Stalfos and were rewarded with another key." Link replied. "I guess the Poes must be in the door Toad just unlocked." he pointed at the remaining door. "But since we have a lot of keys, this will make navigating around this dungeon much easier."

They then went into the door, defeating a Big Skulltula in the way and went into the door behind it, which took them to a maze with blocks to push to go forward. They ended up on the second floor of the dungeon and after defeating two Blue Bubbles, they unlocked the door with one of the keys, taking them to… a twisted corridor.

"Okay, this is disorienting." Navi said, feeling a bit dizzy as they were going through it until they reached another room, but the wall was now technically the ground.

Just then, a shadow appeared below them, revealing to be a Wallmaster that tried to grab Luigi, but Link quickly killed it before they unlocked another door with the last key they had.

On the next room, they just went down the stairs and entered another door, leading them to a circular room where they had to fight three Stalfos this time. Once they were defeated, a chest showed up in the middle and Link opened it, pulling out the Fairy Bow with some Arrows.

"Nice." he grinned and then everyone went all the way back to the room before the twisted corridor.

There, Link shot an arrow at the eye switch above the door, untwisting the corridor in the next room, allowing them to reach a treasure chest containing the Boss Key.

Now it was time to hunt for the Poe Sisters, but they first had to do some backtracking to get another Small Key by defeating a Floormaster. They first got Joelle and Beth by having Link just shoot their portraits with his bow and then defeating them once they were forced out of the portraits. The flames they carried were restored to the main room, but defeating Beth also caused a chest to appear, and this one held the Compass.

To reach the other sister, they had to go through a normal corridor and reach a room with four spinning platforms with a torch in the middle, and there was an eye switch encased in ice. But before Link could shoot an arrow at the torch, Mario just shot a fireball to melt the ice encasing the eye switch, making things easier for Link.

"If only I had those kind of powers like them…" Link thought before shooting an arrow at the eye switch.

When the arrow hit the eye switch, the normal corridor from the previous room became twisted, which allowed the heroes to drop down and reach a room… with a falling ceiling.

After braving through this dangerous room, they went into the next room where they found themselves doing a block puzzle, which had Amy's image on it. After they completed the puzzle, Amy revealed herself, only to get destroyed by them within a minute. After all, it was six against one.

When they went back to the main room, where three of the four torches were restored, they looked down to see the remaining sister, Meg, mourning the loss of her younger sisters. And when the heroes approached her, she got angry at them and split herself into four copies.

"Oh great, which one is the real one?!" Link wondered as the four Megs were circling around them.

The Megs cackled, making sure that they were terrifying Luigi, which was successful obviously, and tried to hit him, but Link did a spin attack that hit all of the Megs, causing all but one to disappear, thus revealing the real one.

"Somehow, having Luigi get scared really helped!" Link remarked before striking down the real Meg, immediately killing her.

"Way for you to throw ME into this…" Luigi rolled his eyes.

Anyway… With the last Poe Sister defeated and the last flame restored, the elevator in the middle rose back up. They made their way down the elevator, where a final puzzle awaited them. And what this puzzle was about? Moving a wall.

After finally uncovering the hallway leading to the Boss Room, they went in there, using the Boss Key to unlock the door. The room they ended up in was circular and filled with the exact same paintings on the wall.

"Nothing but a bunch of paintings." Toad said.

"Somehow, this reminds me of one of my oldest adventures…" Mario mused.

"Perhaps they function similarly?" Luigi guessed with a shrug.

All of a sudden, the only entrance they came from was blocked as the heroes turned around to look at it in surprise. Eventually, a horse neigh came in, so the heroes turned again, and much to their shock, they saw… Ganondorf and his horse.

Wait, what?! How did they get here so quietly?

"WHAT THE?! GANONDORF?!" Link yelled. "WHERE did you come from?!"

"Ganondorf? Oh, you are sorely mistaken…" Ganondorf(?) chuckled evilly before a skull mask appeared on his face. "I am Phantom Ganon, the Evil Spirit from Beyond! And you shall be destroyed!" he declared as his horse suddenly began to float into the air before he commanded it to gallop into one of the paintings.

And by saying into the painting, I actually mean in a literal way.

"Did he just go into the painting?!" Link asked.

"I knew something was up with those paintings…" Mario muttered.

"Uh, guys? He's coming to us from that one!" Luigi pointed at the painting from the opposite end, seeing Phantom Ganon coming before leaping out of the painting with the use of dark magic and was about to fire lightning bolts at the heroes with his staff.

"Link! Shoot him with an arrow!" Navi instructed.

Acting quickly and listening to his fairy companion, Link fired an arrow at Phantom Ganon before he had the chance to attack them, and then he retreated into another painting.

Everyone kept an eye on each painting, waiting for Phantom Ganon to appear. Luigi once again saw Phantom Ganon coming from the painting he was looking.

"Over there!" he called out.

"No, wait! He's over here!" Yoshi also called out, seeing Phantom Ganon in the painting he was keeping an eye on. Wait… there are two Phantom Ganons?

"Oh, dang… One of them is the real one!" Mario exclaimed. "Keep watching him, you two!"

Luigi and Yoshi nodded and kept looking at their respective paintings, until the Phantom Ganon in Yoshi's painting suddenly turned around while the one in Luigi's painting began to come out.

"Hey! The one I'm watching just turned around!" Yoshi exclaimed.

"WOAH! Then mine is the real one!" Luigi flinched as he avoided a lightning bolt attack from the real Phantom Ganon as he emerged out of the painting.

"Hold still!" Link exclaimed and fired another arrow at Phantom Ganon.

"Argh! Little pests!" Phantom Ganon growled. "You are very troublesome… I shall deal with you by myself!" he gets off his horse, letting it ride away into the painting, before hovering in the air by himself, staff in hand.

Phantom Ganon's staff pulsated with energy and launched an energy ball at them, forcing them to dodge as Link fired an arrow at him, but it went through him and he rammed his staff at Link, knocking him down. He quickly recovered just in time to block Phantom Ganon when he tried to ram into him, sending him back a little bit.

Peach then fired a beam of light at Phantom Ganon, but he blocked it with his staff. He then flew down to attack her, only for Toad to come to her and counter Phantom Ganon's attack by releasing mushroom spores at him (the same thing he does during Peach's new Neutral Special Move animation from Smash Bros Ultimate), damaging him a little.

"Grr! Begone!" Phantom Ganon yelled and fired another energy ball at Peach and Toad. On instinct, Mario rushed to the pair and ended up kicking the energy ball back at Phantom Ganon, and because he didn't see that coming, he was hit by it and was stunned. "Aaargh!"

"Huh?" Mario thought, processing what just happened. "The energy balls he creates… can be deflected back? In that case…" he looked back at the rest, who were just knocked to the ground by Phantom Ganon punching the ground to create a shockwave.

"Guys!" Navi cried out.

"Hey, Navi!" Mario called out. "Tell them to reflect the energy ball back at him!"

"Right!" Navi then told the rest of the heroes just that, and when Phantom Ganon sent out another energy ball, Link swung his sword at it to reflect it back, but was surprised to see that Phantom Ganon actually reflected it back at him.

"GAH!" Link didn't react in time and was hit by the energy ball. Phantom Ganon chuckled darkly by his success.

"Oh, so it's like tennis, huh?" Peach thought with a smirk on her face. "I knew winning the 1-Up Mushroom Cup was worth it!" she takes out her Tennis Racket. "Let me handle this one!"

"Nngh… Okay…" Link groaned.

Phantom Ganon conjured another energy ball and shot it at Peach, but she swung her tennis racket to send it back, only for him to knock it back at her and so on. The volley continued for a few seconds until the energy ball finally hits Phantom Ganon as he screamed in agony before dissolving into blue flames in midair.

"Looks like I have better tennis skills than him!" Peach teased before putting her tennis racket away.

"Nice one, Peach!" Mario praised.

Peach thanked him back before heading over to Link and healing him. Then, shortly after Link was fully healed, they suddenly heard Ganondorf's voice echoing around the room:

"Hey, you all did quite well… It looks like you may be gaining some slight skill… But you have defeated only my phantom… When you fight the real me, it won't be so easy! What a worthless creation that ghost was! I will banish it to the gap between dimensions!"

"Ganondorf…" Link muttered. "We have to be strong enough in order to defeat him…"

"That must be why we must awake the Sages. They should be able to grant us immense power." Mario said.

A blue light appeared in the middle and they all went into it, transporting them to the Chamber of the Sages. The green platform emitted a blue light, possibly revealing the Sage of Forest, and it turned out to be none other than Saria!

"Thank you… Because of you, I could awaken as a Sage…" Saria said. "I am Saria. The Sage of the Forest Temple…"

"You…? The Sage of Forest?" Link breathed.

"I always believed that you would come. Because I know you…" Saria looked at Link.

"Really? You already know that I'm-…"

"No… You don't have to explain it to me… Because it is destiny that you and I can't live in the same world."

"Saria…"

"Link. I will stay here as the Forest Sage and help you… Now, please take these…"

Saria then rose her hands to the air as a green Medallion and a green Grand Star rained down towards the heroes as Link took the former while the Mario cast took the latter.

"I shall grant my powers of the forest into these… The Forest Medallion and the Grand Star of Forest!" Saria declared.

Everything went white for our heroes as they heard Saria's final words:

"I will always be…your friend…"

The heroes soon were taken to the Great Deku Tree, but there was something dug into the ground in front of it as they curiously looked down at it… when it suddenly emerged out of the ground by itself, catching the heroes by such surprise that they were flown backwards while screaming.

"Hi there! I'm the Deku Tree sprout!" it spoke. "Because you and Saria broke the curse on the Forest Temple, I can grow and flourish! Thanks a lot!"

"Excuse us?" Link raised an eyebrow as he and the others walked towards the Deku Tree sprout.

"Hey, have you seen your old friends? None of them recognized you with your grown-up body, did they?" the Deku Tree sprout asked Link.

"No, they didn't." Link shook his head. "But I'm still wondering how come I've aged and they haven't."

"That's because the Kokiri never grow up! Even after seven years, they're still kids!"

"What?!"

"Well, as you might have already guessed, you are not a Kokiri! You are actually a Hylian!"

"I'm a… Hylian all along?"

"Yep, just like Princess Zelda! I am happy to finally reveal this secret to you!"

"Dear Hylia… But, how did I end up in this forest in the first place?"

"Allow me to tell you what happened…"

"So, technically he's still the Great Deku Tree?" Link thought as he and his friends listened to the Deku Tree sprout's story:

"Some time ago, before the king of Hyrule unified this country, there was a fierce war in our world. One day, amid the fires of war… You were born to the house of a knight in service to the king. However, your father died in battle. Although she was mortally wounded, your mother took you… and desperately fled the burning palace… into this forbidden forest. During her last breaths, she entrusted you to the Deku Tree, the guardian spirit of the forest. The Deku Tree could sense that you were a child of destiny whose fate would affect the entire world, so he took him into the forest. After your mother passed away, you were raised as a Kokiri. And now, finally, the day of destiny has come!"

Link just stood there in silence, shock filled his face. He grew up always believing he was a Kokiri and not remembering anything about his past. Everything was now making sense to him; that's the reason why a fairy partner would never come to him since he was not really a Kokiri. What's worse is that he never actually got to see his father, since he was in the middle of war, and while he did see his mother, he couldn't remember her face since he was still a baby. But one thing still didn't make sense to him: why is he the one chosen for this task? More specifically, why HIM, out of all people?

"You are a Hylian and were always bound to leave this forest." the Deku Tree sprout said, snapping Link out of his thoughts. "And now…you have learned your own destiny… So you know what you must do… You must save the land of Hyrule! Now, break the curses on all of the temples, and return peace to Hyrule!"

"I'll do it. Along with my friends." Link replied. "But… I'm wondering, why me out of all people must do this task?"

"Hmm… That I actually don't know. But you have no choice but to accept your fate. Now go and save the land of Hyrule from the King of Darkness, Hero of Time. Oh, and you too, Heroes from Another World! Save this world from your worst arch-nemesis, known to us as the Tyrant King!"

"Tyrant… King? Our worst arch-nemesis?" the Mario cast thought. "Could that be…?"

"It was a surprise to learn that Saria is one of the Sages, wasn't it, guys?" Navi spoke up, changing the subject entirely. "I wonder how Sheik knew?"

"Beats us." Luigi shrugged.

"Anyway, off to Hyrule Field!"

Everyone nodded as they took off and Link, Yoshi and Toad mounted on Epona while Peach, Mario and Luigi mounted on Pearl and both galloped to Hyrule Field, leaving Kokiri Forest behind.

"Someday, I'll know why I was chosen to be a hero…" Link thought.

To be continued…

I always liked the Forest Temple's music. It's so mysterious and eerie, but it doesn't help the fact that this temple can be quite confusing to navigate...

Poor Luigi having to suffer more ghost shenanigans, but at least they're for comical moments.

Finally, what better opportunity for Phantom Ganon's second phase of his battle to have a little game of tennis between him and Peach with her tennis racket? ;D

Next up, the Fire Temple at Death Mountain! See you next time! Please review!