fleets: I started posting a few pictures related to this story on deviantart (I'm under 'fleetfleets') :)
Flufux also drew a comic featuring Fuu and my other Vaati-who-doesn't-realize-he's-Vaati character Gale from Avilux Ignis, as well as his own Vaati (he goes by Reptileman778 on deviantart if you want to check it out!)

Chapter 9: What Lies Beneath the Surface

Sheik and Shadow Link had disappeared, victims of the temple's traps. The only guess Fuu had about where they could have gone was 'down.' Other than that, he had no idea where to find them. This left him with little choice except to continue onwards, and try to find his way down to the lower levels as fast as possible. Fuu peered into the clear water that filled the grand chamber, and he could make out two stories of doors within the central structure that was submerged in the water. He recalled Shadow Link explaining how there was a switch on the far side of the room that could be used to drain the water out of the chamber.

He quickly made his way down the rest of the walkway to the central building, and then ran around it while being careful not to slip on the puddles. He half expected another trap to pull him down into the black abyss, too, but with every step forward he became more confident that the traps really didn't work for him. He had no idea why, but the dungeon didn't seem to want to stop his progress.

He couldn't say the same for Sheik, and he hoped that he was ok.

Once on the other side of the structure, Fuu came across what looked like a raised stone switch embedded in one of the white columns that rose from the pool. "That must be the switch Shadow was talking about," he thought, and he pressed it. There was a loud, lurching gurgle, and the entire chamber shuddered as the deep pool began to quickly drain. Thousands of gallons of water disappeared, swirling into a whirlpool until eventually all that was left were some shallow puddles on the lowest floor.

Fuu teleported down to the bottom of the chamber once all of the water from the pool had drained away. He grimaced a little when his bare feet stepped on a light film of slimy algae that had been growing on the stone tiles, and he wished that he still had his boots on his feet. Careful not to lose his balance on the slippery floor, Fuu began his search for a "door with an eye."

It didn't take him too long to find the door. Or rather, it would have been more accurate to say that he'd found a wall with a carving of a giant, ominous eye. He'd found it along the side of the central structure, and the carving was about five feet across in length. He took an additional lap around the cylindrical structure in the chamber to make sure he hadn't missed anything, but there was nothing else he could find that was remotely close to what Shadow Link had described. This had to be it, but then why wasn't it a door?

"How am I supposed to get past this?" Fuu wondered aloud. He ran his hand along the carving of the eye, trying to see if there were any secret mechanisms that would reveal some kind of entrance.

As soon as he'd done so, something flashed in the corner of his vision. It was much like how he could… see… spells, except the effect was much more powerful this time. When Fuu had relearned some of the spells he could cast now, the best way to describe it was that he could see them: it was kind of like how a skilled swordsman could instinctively read an opponent's moves or how a master painter would know just what colors to mix to create the perfect shade of hue. When he'd first woken up in the Gerudo camp, he'd realized that he could… see all of the illogically logical nuisances and subtleties of the air around him. Of wind magic. Back then, it had felt kind of like a tickle in his head, like a small spark of euphoria from an epiphany.

This time, however, the sensation hit him like the sudden nausea from drinking one too many blue potions.

His vision became strange, like he could see but not see anything at the same time. He could almost feel the cold stone of the carved eye with his vision, rather than touch, if that were even possible. And then he became confused as to whether he was still inside the temple or was somewhere else. He could see a hand reaching out to him, and then it turned ashen grey as it cracked into stone. His vision changed again, and this time he could see a faceless person, a young woman perhaps, though he couldn't be sure. They were spinning on the balls of the feet, dancing, and there was a slow, rhythmic heartbeat muffled in his ears. Another crack, and the woman stopped spinning and the heartbeat died. Her stone frame toppled and smashed into dozens of pieces on the floor.

A flash, a blink. Fuu's vision passed and he realized he'd collapsed onto his knees. He hadn't noticed until now that his pants had soaked up cold water from the puddles.

He touched his own face in alarm when he noticed that he'd been smiling gleefully. The vision had been disturbing, and yet he'd been smiling. "What… what was that?" he asked hoarsely to the carving of the eye.

He looked around, wondering if he'd imagined the disembodied hand and the woman who had turned into stone. Nothing remained changed in the chamber, and he seemed to be completely alone except for the company of the occasional gurgle of water from somewhere in the temple. Finally, he looked back towards the carving again, and he noticed something peculiar. Nothing about it had changed physically, but he had some new kind of understanding for it that he didn't have before.

He slowly pushed himself back up on his feet, and then he looked at his fingers, wiggling them a little. After a few seconds, he lifted one hand until he was calmly pointing at the carving of the eye.

He took aim, and then whispered, "To Stone With You."

Energy zapped from his fingertips straight for the carving. As soon as it hit the wall, the entire chamber came to life with a bright red glow that spread along the walls. Hundreds of thousands of the eye carving glowed red along every inch of the chamber, lighting up the interior like the fires of Death Mountain. Fuu heard a low thrum as the stone carving disappeared into a hollow doorway, and just as soon as they had appeared, the red eyes vanished.

Fuu looked around cautiously for several seconds, wondering if he'd triggered any kind of trap. After all, those eyes had appeared rather creepy and sinister. However, nothing else happened, so he carefully made his way over to see what lay hidden past the doorway that had just appeared.

As he did so, he couldn't help but think about his connection with these dungeons, and with Vaati. Maybe it was a coincidence that he hadn't triggered any traps yet, but both Sheik and Shadow Link had told him on two separate occasions that he had a special ability to navigate dungeons without triggering their traps. What made him special? On top of that, it was almost as if the carving of the eye had been waiting for him, specifically, to show him the spell that could turn things into stone. And did he learn that spell just now, or had he always known it? Even more concerning was the fact that he shared the ability to go through dungeons unhindered with none other than Vaati himself. He couldn't help but wonder if Sheik had known about this and had decided not to tell him about it, but why in the world would he hide something like that?

The room past the doorway that was inside the central structure of the chamber wasn't very spacious, and only contained a single pedestal with a clouded yet brilliant shard. Fuu leaned close, observing the shard with his nose scrunched in suspicion, before he gingerly tapped it with a finger. Deeming it safe (though still suspicious), he picked it up and placed it on his hand.

No doubt this was one of the "Dusk Shards" that would supposedly help them defeat Dethl. It lay flat on his hand, and the oily blue yet metallic silver gleam reminded him of a mirror. He had expected an evil-warding object to be more… holy in appearance, as the shard had an almost foreboding and calamitous aura. He couldn't quite put a finger on why he sensed that it aligned itself towards Dark rather than Light magic, but that was the feeling he got. Maybe it was the way it felt heavier in his hand than it looked, as though it wanted to fatigue the one carrying it, or maybe it was the way it seemed to reflect light back into itself rather than reflect it out, so that staring at it made it seem like you were looking into perpetual, murky darkness.

Or maybe he was just tired and was imagining all of these things.

At any rate, they could find out more about the shard once they got back to the castle. Perhaps they could get Shadow Link to tell them a little more about it.

Fuu stopped in his tracks. Oh crud, he thought, I still don't know where Sheik and Shadow Link went.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"That's uh… that's a really big eel, fish… thing," Shadow Link nodded his head nervously towards the gigantic creature that had lit up the water with its electric blue light. Its bioluminescence pulsed along its sides, as it swam in a large circle beneath them.

From the length of the blue lights, Sheik guessed that it was thirty, no forty feet in length, roughly fifteen feet below them. He began to paddle backwards slowly, careful not to startle the monstrous eel. "You've never heard of Morpheel before?" Sheik asked, keeping one arm out in the direction that he was moving in. He was hoping to find the edge of the pool they were in. A wall would provide some kind of direction as well as a bit of mobility to push off of it if the monster decided to attack them.

"No. Vaati didn't tell me everything about what he put in his dungeons," Shadow replied. He, too, began to swim away from the eel still circling below, trying to find a wall that they could follow in the darkness.

"Can't you do anything about this?" Sheik asked, "Aren't dark places your comfort zone? It's plenty dark here."

"Well yeah, but swimming stinks. And bombs don't really work all that well underwater. If I could find a wall then I can phase into it as a shadow."

Suddenly, everything became dark again as the lights along Morpheel's sides dimmed. The blue lights had been a sign of the monster's agitation from having something foreign suddenly drop into its domain. The monster had apparently decided that whatever it was that had dropped into its lair wasn't anything to be afraid of, and now that it had calmed again, it disappeared back into the abyss. Sheik prayed that it hadn't decided that they were food.

"Yes! A wall!" From the darkness, Sheik heard Shadow Link's voice exclaim from somewhere to his right. Sure enough, Sheik's hand also touched the rough texture of water weathered stone. He heard shadow Link cackled gleefully. "See ya, sucker! I'm getting out of here." Then there was a soft 'pop,' which Sheik assumed was Shadow Link melding into the wall as a shadow, leaving him alone with the terrifying darkness and the leviathan lurking within it.

Once again, he was alone with nothing but the consuming darkness of the lair and the faint splashes of the water hitting against the walls. He was alone, with nothing but the chilling knowledge that a giant was out there in the darkness, circling the water.

Sheik needed light. He could potentially use the spell for the Holy Arrow, but that would greatly risk giving away his identity as Princess Zelda in front of Shadow Link. He ran through a list of all the different spells he knew how to cast which would help him with vision. He decided to go with the spell of Divine Shield, as it could be cast underwater and it would leave him with a glowing blue shield that would last at least five seconds so that he could see his surroundings.

Sheik, still keeping one hand along the wall behind him, brought up his free hand and forward. "Nayru's love," he murmured.

SLAM!

"Ah!" Sheik exclaimed in surprise as something rammed him against the wall no sooner had he cast the spell. He forced himself to remain conscious; losing consciousness in water would lead to drowning. As he tried to figure out what had happened, Sheik caught a glimpse of rows upon rows of huge teeth, half the length of his body, which were pushed up against the magical shield he had summoned. He could see every detail of the ridged scales of the creature as it thrashed against the shield that it had crashed into. Sheik paled as he watched Morpheel wiggle back angrily after being thwarted from eating his prey. That had been extremely, uncomfortably close, from being impaled between the monster's teeth.

Sheik wasted no time pushing himself sideways from the wall to swim quickly away from Morpheel. The lair lit up in the same electric blue again as the monster became angered. "I guess that's one way to summon light," Sheik gulped.

He needed to find a way out of here, and fast. He was no match against a monster of this size underwater. While Sheik was a talented fighter on land, the water was Morpheel's domain; there was no way he could stand a chance against it. Worse still, he could feel himself getting fatigued from paddling in the water: if Morpheel didn't kill him, then he would surely drown to death. He scrambled to find a way out of what seemed to be a large, dome-shaped cave filled with water. It was fairly deep, as the lights from the mega eel barely lit the sand at the very bottom of the pool.

The light around him dimmed again as Morpheel swam away, only to circle back with increasing speed. Sheik clutched the wall behind him tightly with both hands, getting ready to leap to either side as Morpheel closed in on him. Just before the eel consumed him with its enormous jaws of double-lined teeth, and just before Sheik could jump out of the way, a tremendous force pushed him under water without warning.

Gallons of water had suddenly come pouring into the chamber from above, raining down on them heavily with an explosive roar. Sheik briefly saw the eel writhing against the sudden current, twisting as it fought for control, before he lost his own sense of direction from being tumbled further and further downwards into the pool. He clawed for air, and his ears throbbed in pain from the sudden change in pressure, but it was no use: the surge of water was too powerful to fight against. He tumbled downwards until he hit the sand at the bottom of the pool, with little chance to return to the surface until the influx of water was stopped.

Sheik almost resigned himself to his fate to drown in Morpheel's lair when it occurred to him that the surge of water must have some place to go, or it will overflow the lair: there was a chance that there was a way out of the lair other than the hole they'd dropped down from above. He looked around wildly, ignoring the pain in his ears, for some sign of a vent or tunnel that led out.

There. He saw it, about ten feet away against the wall at the bottom of the pool was a steel grate that blocked the way through a tunnel. His only chance to make it out of this alive was to get through the grate and through the tunnel to wherever in Subrosia it led to. Sheik crawled along the bottom of the pool, pushing himself forward as fast as he could against the current. As he closed in upon his exit, however, Morpheel came around one last time, knocking Sheik away as it thrashed about in a frenzied rage.

No… Sheik reached out for his last chance of escape. His vision was blurring, and his chest was beginning to burn as his lungs screamed for air.

As he lost consciousness, the last thing he remembered was a firm grip around his numbing hands. It reminded him of a secret handshake. Like the one with Link. The one with Fuu. I wonder if he's worried about me… he thought, as darkness overcame him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Surrender, Princess."

The voice was cold and ruthless. She'd heard it before, and it filled her with fear to hear it again.

"Hyrule belongs to me now."

It was the final battle. The fire and smoke from the burning plains stung her eyes, and it burned the sorcerer's menacing red eyes a much more terrifying red. She could see him sneer as the ashes rose around him into a black storm. The legions of monsters that rallied behind Vaati was truly overwhelming, their numbers turning the field into a cover like pitch.

The soldiers behind her were not enough. They had not expected such numbers, but they still had to try. This was perhaps their last chance to have the Hylians, Gorons, and Gerudos fighting together. There were no second chances. Their only hope today was to defeat Vaati, and the battle would be over.

She knew what was going to happen next as she replayed the events of the final battle. She pulled back the string of her bow, charging the Holy Arrow that would pierce through the darkness and reveal a path of light. As she did so, Vaati would transform from the pale skinned youth into a monstrous black eye with pupils burning in hatred and rage. He would end the lives of hundreds behind her with a single sweep of his claws.

But… that was not at all what happened this time. As she aimed her arrow at Vaati's heart, he continued to stand there without transforming into that hideous demon. His sneer vanished, only to be replaced with a concerned frown. "Sheik? Did I do something wrong?"

Her fingers trembled against the string of her bow. No, no this wasn't what happened.

"I trust you, Sheik. Because you trust me, too."

"Fuu." Her voice was hoarse and broken. The legion of thousands that Vaati had commanded all turned their hungry eyes on him, and they were released from his hold. She watched helplessly as the black storm fell over the sorcerer, devouring him.

"…betray… you…"

Her fingers slipped. The arrow flew straight into the center of the darkness, carving a path of light through it. The storm parted, revealing the wind mage still standing in the center. He fell as the arrow pierced his heart.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sheik gasped, jolting awake. He fell into a fit of coughing, and his throat burned, screaming for air. A hand roughly slapped his back to help him cough up the rest of the water that was in his throat. Once he recovered from his coughing fit, Sheik took a few minutes curled up on his knees, trying to process what had just happened. He'd been dreaming something horrible, and before that he remembered drowning…

He stared at the tufts of grass between his palms. He slowly raised his head to see that he was in the shade of a tree, in fact the very one on the islet where he and Fuu had tied their raft to. When he looked up further he saw the blue skies of Hyrule above him. A familiar face interrupted his view.

"Hiya," Shadow Link waved.

Sheik sat up, surprised by the identity of his rescuer. "I thought you'd left," he said quietly.

Shadow huffed, and waved him away. "Look, let's not make this more awkward than it already is. Yes I saved you. You're welcome," he squeezed some water out of his black cap, and then pinched its ends a little so that it curled the way he liked it. "And now you're probably going to ask me, 'But why, Shadow? Why did you save me? Are you actually a Hero?' My answer to that is, I wanted to even the score," he crinkled his nose irritably, "Now I don't owe you anything, got it?"

The corners of Sheik's eyes softened, and he turned away from the shadow to take a look at his own damage. His back was still sore from being slammed this way and that by the Morpheel, and his hearing was a little muffled from water in his left ear. Nothing seemed to be broken, and all in all he'd come out of the ordeal alive with just a few bruises and several sore limbs. He smiled to himself. "Thank you."

Shadow Link bit his lip, flustered by the genuine gratitude. He threw up his hands in frustration, "Ugh, don't thank me. I only did it because you saved my ass first, and I hate owing favors," he grumbled. "I don't even get why you saved me in the first place. Weren't you trying to kill me earlier?"

Sheik flopped back onto the grass, breathing deeply. He closed his eyes to rest. "Yes," he replied simply. "You are dangerous."

"Then why?"

Sheik opened his eyes again. He watched the clouds passing by. He was relieved to see that they were white, unlike the ones in his dream. "I…" he started, and then hesitated. He didn't really have a good answer to that. He hadn't really been thinking in the limited time he'd had to make the decision to save Shadow. "I should have let you drown. You are a former ally to Vaati, and perhaps a current ally to Dethl. You know our secret of what we did to Vaati. I should have let you die," Sheik trailed off, "and yet I didn't. I do not know why."

Shadow Link burst out laughing. "Hahaha! Well I'm glad it wasn't for some dumb reason like 'I saw the light in your heart,' or something stupid."

At this, Sheik chuckled and they both fell into a thoughtful silence again. It didn't last long, however, because Sheik remembered something incredibly important. "Oh Din," he sat up again, "We completely forgot about Fuu."

"I didn't," Shadow grinned, "I'm sure he's doing fine."

"I have to let him know that I'm all right," Sheik stood up to leave.

At this, Shadow Link cocked his head with a curious glimmer in his eye. He jumped up onto his feet and stretched, still with that lopsided grin of his. "Hey, so I gotta ask," he started, causing Sheik to turn towards him questioningly, "What will you do if 'Fuu' ever finds out what you did to him?" His grin widened, "He'll probably kill you."

Sheik's expression tensed, and his eyes narrowed behind the cloth over his face. "It won't come to that," he said sternly.

Shadow Link, however, wasn't dissuaded. "But what if it does?" he pressed, hovering playfully in the air, "What if he finds out that you took away everything he ever had and gave him a lie?"

Sheik sighed, and began walking towards the water that lapped against the grass. "What do you care, Shadow?" he asked. Then he asked the question that had been nagging him since he first found out that Shadow was supposedly helping them. "And what are you hoping to accomplish by helping us, as you claim you are doing?"

"To be clear, I'm not helping you," Shadow Link clarified with a snort. "I'm using him to get something I can't without his help, which is exactly what you're doing. Unlike you, however, I'm also looking out for Master Vaati."

"And yet you don't want him to remember who he was?"

At this, Shadow Link's expression became blank, as though he had to think about the question a little. After a while, he shrugged dismissively. "You wouldn't understand. You were never a servant. You can hate someone, and yet still feel compelled to look out for them," he said, though avoiding Sheik's gaze. "I don't want him to remember because I like him better this way." When he noticed Sheik looking at him in a way that suggested that he didn't believe Shadow was telling the whole truth, the doppelganger crossed his arms angrily and changed the subject. "Y'all are so dead when Master Vaati finds out what you did to him."

Sheik watched Shadow Link who had his arms crossed over his chest irritably. "You may not want him to come back, but you are still upset about what we did to your master," Sheik observed quietly, seeing a bit of clarity of Shadow Link's motivations. He wondered briefly about the complicated relationship between Shadow Link and his former master. Perhaps he despised him yet respected him, wanted to escape him yet help him against the ones who had wronged him. Sheik had been right all along: Shadow Link had never intended to help them at all. If they weren't careful, Shadow Link might eventually use Fuu against them. "If Fuu ever finds out what we had done," Sheik said carefully, "then I hope he remembers me as a friend."

"And that's what I hate about you people," Shadow Link spat, his false cheerful demeanor completely gone now. The façade had been a mask to hide all of the anger and bitterness towards Hyrule, and this was perhaps the first time that Sheik had seen Shadow Link. The real Shadow Link. It was the one who couldn't bear the suggestion of lifting a single finger to help Hyrule. Shadow Link was definitely not trying to help them, and Sheik had been extremely lucky that Shadow hadn't wanted to owe him for saving his life earlier. Shadow hadn't saved him out of the kindness of his heart. "You pretend that you harbor friendship and kindness towards everyone. Even when you don't," he glowered, "Friends don't lie the way you do."

"What do you know of friendships?" Sheik asked, genuinely curious about the answer.

At this, Shadow Link smiled bitterly. He almost sounded lonely when he replied resolutely, "I don't believe in friendships."

fleets: Shadow Link in this story is probably the most complicated character I've ever had to write. How he acts on the surface doesn't fit with what he really feels, and he has at least 3 different motivations that I have to keep in mind as the story continues onward. I don't know if this was actually good story planning.

I tried being clever with the title but probably failed miserably hahaha ('Lies' beneath the surface, because we have several liars in the story/chapter, and also there's a giant fish monster swimming below the water's surface, and then vaati magic beneath surfaces... yeah i'm so witty and clever hahahaha *shot*)

The pacing is actually quite difficult for me, so I can only hope that it's o.k. so far. I'm not really sure what it is about this story in particular that I'm finding trickier than my other ones. Maybe it's because I haven't really written a story yet with a fairly equal distribution of attention to three characters (like yeah, I guess Rend kind of had three and OA had several, but in all of those stories Vaati still overshadowed the others). And I haven't even introduced Dethl properly yet... I'm having fun with the learning process involved in writing this though :)

Morpheel is one of the underwater bosses from Twilight Princess, and one of my favorite battles! He got a little makeover with bioluminescent sparkles in this chapter. I'm really fond of fights with giant water leviathans :D

Thank you again for giving this story a chance! :)

Serpent Tailed Angel: Hahaha yeah it is! Now that you mention it, I think I could have played that up a bit more (about how Shadow was being obnoxious) XD Shadow Link's motivations are... messy. I hope I can reel it out appropriately (not too rushed, but not too vague) because he's probably one of the more interesting characters in my lineup this time.

SubZeroChimera: I know right! He's infinite! In this case it was a good thing Sheik saved him or this story will have to continue with one less character. And yeahhh the updating was a little crazy. I skipped a few days between the last one and this one so it's a little less crazy but... still pretty crazy for me?

AquilaMage: Or a mix of both, with helping and abandoning at the same time XD
Fuu's getting more and more confused, yeah. Even more so now with the temple jogging his brain with one of his trademark spells. I like to think of this entire situation like a game of Jenga - eventually it's going to come crashing down spectacularly.

Cattycheeno: The witches did a really good job at erasing his past, which is part of why it's so horrible. I've actually never played OoT so I still haven't fought against Dark Link who I've heard so much about!

Flufux: Wildcard: that's a perfect word to describe him :) Haha that's awesome! I can't really imagine what a mix of Scottish and Spanish sounds like, but that sounds wild. And yes! I saw it! :D Thank you for letting me know I loved the cameos! I posted a memo at the top to let other people know as well :)