Well, room wasn't the right word for what Link walked into. Turns out the door she had gone through lead to some of the upper branches of the Tree. Wide-eyed, she looked around, and saw what appeared to be the Temple proper below her to the side. Birds flew past her, chirping happily in the spring air while Link's mind reeled from what she realized. "I did NOT climb this high inside, what the heck is going on?" She glanced behind her hoping, the hidden Don would explain.
"What? Surprised that the rules don't work how you think? This is a Magical place, a little trickery with space and time is normal. Especially when different magics mix. The Temple has Divine Magic working on it, the Great Faery and This Ancient Tree have Nature Magic, and Fangor's been using Dark Magic on this entire Forest, trying to take control of it. Shit gets weird every now and then, you'll have to get used to it."
"Weird, right." Link growled, annoyed. Her life had been non-stop weirdness for a couple days now. Shaking off her feelings of wrongness about everything, she looked ahead at the branches to see what she had to face. The branches were friggin huge, with no worries about them breaking as she walked. The leaves and branches snaking around made it hard to see too far, though it looked like there were a number of well worn pathways here and there, with some branches tied together with rope to connect them, or just a rope bridge here and there. Walking forward, she pushed some small low hanging branches out of her way, looking to find something interesting, which she eventually did.
Wedged precariously between two branches, and held there with rope, was another chest. Seeing a rope hanging nearby, Link figured she was supposed to throw one end over the branches and pull it down to a lower branch to access the chest. Before she could get started on that though, she heard a screech coming from above her. Diving backwards, and desperately trying to not roll off the branch, she sprung up and saw the oddest thing she'd seen all day.
A roughly humanoid blob thing hit the branch where Link had a moment ago stood. It went splat for a moment, turning into a smear before re-coalescing itself back into a standing shape. Link couldn't tell if the thing was furry, scaled, or if it had eyes, claws, fangs or anything, because it was constantly shifting its form. Whenever it did have eyes (up to a dozen at one point) they stared intensely at Link, when it had a mouth(s) they snarled, hissed, and growled at him. Just when it couldn't seem worse, more started appearing, swinging down from above, climbing up from below, and hopping over from all around. After a dozen had appeared, all around Link, they...just stood there for a moment. Link got the feeling they were confused by something.
"Um, Don?" Link whispered to the air around her. "What the hell are these things?"
For a fearful moment, Link thought that Don might have abandoned her, because no remark, funny or otherwise came for a long, tense moment.
"Uh..." Don's voice finally broke the silence, coming quietly from behind Link's ears. "I'm...I'm not entirely sure...I want to hazard a guess that these might be Boggarts."
"What the hell are Boggarts and why are they staring at me?!"
"Well, that's the thing. Boggarts are creatures of fear, and mildly psychic. They read the minds of their victims, and turn into creatures they fear. Fangor made them by taking blood samples of a hundred different creatures that people commonly fear, like snakes, spiders, and wolves, and infused his blood, then infused a person with the mixture. Because they're constantly turning into whatever will scare the people around them, no one's ever seen their real forms."
"Why do they look like...this?" Link whispered, as the Boggarts made odd chattering noises at each other.
"You're the only person they see, so they're locking onto you, if I wasn't invisible, they'd lock onto me instead and turn into my fears."
"You have fears?"
"Of course I do, all people do, except you, Miss Triforce of Courage."
"What?"
"For whatever reason, you don't have any specific fears for the Boggarts to latch onto, so they are currently are in their natural form. I think. So just, fight them I guess."
Link nodded at Don's advice, which seem to shock the Boggarts into action. All of a sudden, a dozen small, rapidly changing monstrosities leaped at the hero, sprouting and slashing with claws, snapping at her with fangs, or attacking with mandibles, pincers, stingers, tentacles, and more. Link frantically rolled back, slashing out with her sword and cleaving a Boggart in half, and she came up, she swiped out her buckler, smashing one and launching it over the edge to fall to the ground. A different Boggart attached itself to her buckler, scrabbling madly at her. Its surprisingly heavy weight pulled her arm down to the ground. In a swift motion, Link stabbed her sword into the branch, grabbed a Deku Nut, and tossed it at the next incoming Boggart, looking away while it flashed and stunned most of them. Ducking under the stunned Boggart who kept flying straight over the edge and to its death, Link turned her buckler down, and sat on her own arm briefly, crushing that Boggart under her shield. It screeched horribly before rupturing and dying messily.
Link then rolled away and hopped back to her feet, lashing out with her fist(oops, left the sword in the ground from a moment ago) and shield to knock them aside till she stepped over and yanked her sword out of the ground. Link started yelling angrily as she fought, though it was only a short minute more of fighting before Link had finished killing or knocking aside each Boggart. Panting slightly, Link glared at Don when he appeared out of thin air, slowly clapping with a smirk on his face.
"Good job Link, Hero without Fear." Don joked, waving his hand and dispelling the filth from Link, cleaning her off quickly.
"Thanks, but please don't call me any kind of Hero title, I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this, because I do in fact feel fear." Link grumbled, annoyed at more Hero things popping up, even if it was something convenient.
"Hah, tell that to the Boggarts. What exactly does a brave, strong warrior like yourself have to fear, hm? You've got destiny itself on your side, don't you?"
Glaring at Don for a moment, Link looked down and she started listing off her worries.
"My Uncle Rusl is probably tearing his hair out about now, I'm his only family left and he swore to protect me, and he has no idea what happened to me. Malon, my best friend is likely going hysterical right now over me. Lance, my mentor...I know he's in love with me, even though I've brushed him off for so long. I don't know what he's going to do... And now I've just had the fate of all of Hyrule laid upon me for shit I don't really understand. Yes Don, I do actually feel a lot of fear right now. I'm just doing my best to not let it stop me."
Link looked up to glare at an uncomfortable looking Don, who sheepishly said, "Yeah...I guess that's why you're destined for the Triforce of Courage. I once heard that Courage wasn't a lack of fear, but being the only one who knows you're afraid. With how well you've taken to this Hero thing, I didn't realize you were feeling scared. Sorry."
Link nodded, accepting Don's apology before turning back to the chest above. Grabbing the rope, she tossed it over the above chest and carefully pulled it down, listening to the branch creak from the strain. Once she secured the rope to hold the chest at chest level, she popped the lock with her sword tip ("Cheater!" "Technique!"). Reaching in, all she found was another silver key. Meaning she had two at the moment.
"Two Silver Keys, and two Silver-locked doors in the last area, nice!" Don grinned, obviously trying to get past the previous moment as quickly as possible. As he hid himself again, he said, "Check around to see if you spot anything else, then had back and pick a door."
Link nodded, taking a brief, calming look around at the beautiful spring air around her. Now that things were calm again, bugs were buzzing, birds were chirping. It was nice.
As Link entered back into the main chamber of the tree area, Don appeared in front of her saying, "The Drider is gone."
Link nodded without saying anything, understanding what Don meant. The alert was out, it was Hunting season for the Driders, and Link was the prize.
She quickly made her way to her right, going counter-clockwise around to the next door. When she inserted one of her silver keys into the keyhole, she was shocked when the key itself disappeared, the lock fell off, and the chains pulled themselves into the wall, disappearing. It was kind of creepy. Opening the door, Link quickly spotted some enemies, who quickly spotted her. Three Wolf-Monsters were there, snarling and howling as they charged at Link. Link quickly got all the way into the room and dived to the side, avoiding the wolves who slammed into the wall, yipping before picking themselves up to charge again, while Link drew her sword and attacked in one motion, slashing across the face of one and knocking it aside. Two of them ran around to flank Link who quickly tossed a Deku Nut at each. While they howled in pain Link returned to the viciously angry first one, blocking it's swipe attack with her shield, swiping across it's front with her sword before doing a lunge slash along it's side. With a swift boot in it's new wound, and a slice at its neck, the wolf fell, headless. The other two were recovering and saw their pack leader, defeated. They hesitate before attacking together. With a fierce yell, Link shield-bashed one, smashing its skull in while she impaled the other through the front of its neck and out around its tail.
After recovering he sword from the corpse, and her breath from the quickly started and ended action, Link simply said, "Don?"
"Wolfos, Wolves that have had Fangor's blood put in them. With nothing special to enhance, they simply become bigger and more monstrous, like Goblins. Nice job by the way."
"Thanks." Link said offhandedly, looking around the room and seeing no loot. There were windows though, so she walked over to look through them. She was apparently in a kind of hallway that overlooked the main chamber of the Temple they wanted to get into. From her vantage she could see a large, ancient room with many murals and faded images on the walls, as well as a large door at the far end. And in the middle of the room sat that Kokiri from before. He didn't seem so monstrous or scary at this moment, as he sat on the ground, looking at his dead fairy in his hands. It seemed mournful as it poked the fairy, trying to get it to do something. Link suddenly felt herself get yanked back by Don. "Wha-?"
"Don't do that." Don warned, looking serious. "Don't try to empathize with them. They've been corrupted and broken. Don't think about trying to save Fangor's victims. While there's hope for the Great Fairy because she's not lost yet, but for any that are completely corrupted, like him, the only thing you can give them is a peaceful death."
Link nodded, rather than get into another moral debate. Don knew more about the Monsters than she did. He had been fighting against Fangor for longer than her. She decided to just accept his words, and focus on the mission.
Taking a brief look around for anything of importance, Link spotted and grabbed a handful of arrows before she left the room, hopped across a couple platforms, killed some Deku Baba to replenish her Nuts. She then used her last key on the door and went through. She spotted more wolves, guarding a chest, at the same time they noticed her. She quickly grabbed and tossed a small handful of Deku Nuts at them, stopping them from charging as they were blinded. Before she would charge them though, she had a thought about her new weapon, and decided to try it out. Drawing her bow, she notched and fired three arrows in swift succession, hitting each wolf in either its head or chest.
Link lowered her bow, but realized that the one shot in the chest wasn't dead, it was down, but it was growling weakly at her. Again not wanting to kill a downed enemy, Link walked over and did a pommel-strike to its head, knocking it out. She then went over to the chest as Don showed himself, shaking his head angrily. He didn't say anything though, as Link pulled out an odd looking device. Her first thought was that it was similar to a flintlock pistol. It had a handle and a trigger, but it had a sort of needle at the end, and an odd apparatus instead of a barrel and stock. On the side was a sort of small container.
"Is this the thing?" Link asked, turning the thing over to look at it. "The Purifier?"
Looking up from the Wolfos, Don smiled as he said, "Yeah, that's it. Why don't you try using it on this pup, since you still think you can get away with not killing monsters."
Scowling, Link came over and did just that, inserting the short needle into the Wolfos' side and pulling to trigger. The device made some odd noises for a bit, as the Wolfos changed slowly back into a normal wolf. Don himself looked surprised for a moment before he checked the wolf's pulse. "Ah, the drain killed it. The only reason it was still alive was the 'Power' in the Fangor essence."
Link herself was about to say something when the container part popped open, and a black crystal thing fell out. Don quickly caught it looking the crystal over.
"Oh that's how it works." Don said, seeming pleased. "The Purifier removes the dark essences and condenses it into a crystal. This way it doesn't have to deal with a filter that needs constant replacing, like that prototype I saw."
Link just watched and listened. From what she understood, yes, the purifier removed Fangor's corruption. The victim wouldn't have much chance of surviving the cleansing though because Fangor's blood is what sustained them. "So we can go see the Great Fairy now, right?" Link asked, grabbing and slipping the black crystal into her purse for now. It might have a use later.
"Ah, yes, we can go to her now. But, I think I should mention something."
"What?"
"Someone's been following us since we entered the temple at least. They've just been watching, but I don't think we should let them watch anymore, when you leave the door, try to keep your eyes open, if you spot them, pull your bow and shoot them."
Link nodded, not terribly surprised that they were being followed. Don disappeared as Link got ready to leave the room and find her stalker. As she opened the door though, she found the short sized person wearing a dark, hooded cloak, standing just a little ways away from the door. It jumped back a little, seemingly surprised at being caught.
"Well, that was easy." Link muttered, reaching for her sword instead of her bow since the person was so close when they suddenly yelled and through their hood back.
"Wait, it's me!" A cute, panicking little girl said, nearly clubbing herself in the head with her telescope as she pulled her hood back. She seemed both excited and scared as Link and a suddenly appearing Don both screeched in their own panic.
"Aryll! What are you doing here?!" Don and Link both yelled. While the girl sheepishly grinned.