"Ok, so let me get this straight..." Link said with a sigh, looking down at the penitent Aryll. "You wanted to help us, so you used the stealth skills that Don," At this Link glares at Don, who flinches, "taught you, and followed us through the Lost Woods, and you've been watching me from the shadows this whole time?"

"Yep!" Aryll tried to sound cheerful, as if she'd done nothing wrong, but she knew she had. "Part of the Hero stories is about all the loot and booty you're supposed to get! Sounds like a perfect time to be a pirate to me!"

"Oh my Goddesses..." Link palmed her face before turning to Don. "This is entirely your fault you know."

"What?! How is this my fault?"

"You mean aside from teaching her how to sneak around and being a bad influence on her, thief?"

Don recoiled from the harshness of Link's words before trying to muster up an indignant reply, "Hey, I never encouraged her to do anything dangerous! Pranks and harmless stuff, nothing more!"

"Mmhmm." Link rumbled as she turned back to Aryll, who now looked close to tears, clearly wishing she'd just stayed home. It hurt Link to see the distress she was causing the child, even if it was deserved.

I'm clearly not ready to be a parent...I'd probably fall for every single crocodile tear...

"Uuuuuugh..." Link let out a breath and then pointed at Don, "You're responsible for this, so you have to take care of her now. Keep her safe while I go deal with the Great Faery. And you, Aryll, are in trouble. I shudder to think what Anju's going to do when we get back."

Tears started to gush down Aryll's cheeks as she began to cry. "Pwease don't tattle on me to Anju~!"

"Hey, maybe that's a little harsh Link-"

"Harsh is what Anju will do to us if she thinks we brought her along with us!" Link snapped.

Don stepped back, grimacing but nodding. It was unfortunate, but they would have to throw Aryll under the carriage, so to speak, to save themselves from Anju. He didn't like being in charge of the child though, but understood he had to do it. From under his cloak he quickly pulled a rope and tied it around Aryll's waist, to the confusion of both girls.

"What are you doing Don?"

"Like you said, I've taught her some of my tricks, I need to make sure she doesn't sneak away."

Aryll huffed angrily, but made no effort to deny Don's statement. Link felt that something similar may have happened before. Don started to walk Aryll to the entrance to the temple while Link made her way to the dungeon entrance. As she stood at the top of the cobblestone stairway, she looked to the dungeon entrance to see Aryll and Don talking heatedly outside. She couldn't tell if they were arguing about who was to blame, or trying to sort out the story they would tell Anju. Taking a deep breath, Link would begin her descent.

As she went down the rounded staircase, she noticed how quickly it all became cold and damp. There were torches on the wall, but they were barely lit, sputtering occasionally as water dripped onto them. She also noticed how far down she was heading. She estimated that she went a couple hundred feet down before the staircase ended, opening up on the outer wall into a room. The room looked to be a quarter of a bigger circle that went around the staircase. There was only a door on the right wall, leading to the next quarter of the bigger circle. The entrance seemed to glow with shimmering light. Link started to approach it, and as she did, she started to feel a tingle in the back of her neck, which she was starting to associate with ambient magic. Carefully she reached a hand into it to touch it, and to Link's surprise, she felt information rushing into her mind, she could see the rules being imposed by the magic onto the world, the will being imposed on reality, and the immense feeling of the power behind the magic.

"Ah what the hell!" Link yelled and jumped away from the door, shaking her hand as if to get the magic off of her. I guess this is what they meant by me having talent. No way I could do that kind of magic, but I just...understand how it works? Weird. Link thought to herself, recalling when she was young and the Academy sorcerers had assessed her abilities. Because of her talent, they had been tempted to invite her to the Academy, but because of her complete lack of mana, they decided against it. They could have worked with her to develop her mana supply, but that would have been a long and hard process to invest in to grow her mana, so they decided against it. The only thing that annoyed her about it though, was that she would only be a normal knight of Hyrule rather than a Magic Knight, which would have been pretty cool. Oh well.

Link walked back to the door and peeked through the shimmering wall to see a couple skeletons standing there glaring at her (how do you glare with empty eye sockets?) and a couple boggarts. "How did they get in there? The barrier is...whatever." Link shrugged to herself, she'd probably figure out what was going on later. For now, she charged through the barrier and sprinted at the enemies. Keeping in mind that there might be more enemies to her side, she swung her sword to parry the attacking skeleton's sword while lashing out her shield to knock aside the boggart. She then swung out a side-kick, hitting the skeleton in its ribs and knocked it away, letting her quickly spin to assess that there were only the two skeletons and the two boggarts. Turning back to her enemies, she easily dodged the sword swings and and claw swipes, whipping out an upward slash to cleave one of the boggarts from its center up and out its neck. It fell to the ground, quickly dying. With a buckler-punch, she took the head off the skeleton, which somehow kept standing until she brought her sword down its middle, turning it into shattered pieces. The other skeleton and boggart were recovering now and getting up. Not giving them the chance, Link smoothly sheathed her sword and drew her bow, quickly firing off a shot to hit the boggart in what appeared to be its head, and the skeleton in its sternum. It fell to pieces too, apparently expiring. With that out of the way, Link quickly looked around. There was nothing else in the room, so she headed to the next room. There was another barrier covering this door, so there were multiple barriers? Okay then.

There didn't seem to be anything in this room either, until Link heard giggling coming from above. Slowly Link tilted her head up to see two glowing lights moving around up above. Faeries? Even if Link had known she was going to see the Great freaking Faery, it still surprised her to actually see real faeries. But then Link felt something off about the faeries, about how their giggling didn't sound so innocent.

"Oh look, another bad guy!"

"I think it's a girl!"

"Whatever, she must be here to hurt the Great Faery."

"Yeah, we gotta stop her."

"Let's show her the 'ol Razl Dazl!"

"Yes, the Dazl Razl!"

"I'm going to go ahead and assume your names are Razl and Dazl and ask you to calm your shiny wings for a second. I can go through the barriers so I'm not one of the bad guys."

"Liar! LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR!"

The faeries swiftly flew down and started circling Link, zapping her with little magical electric shocks and they kept screaming that she was a liar. Link had to resist the urge to swing her sword at them. They were obviously corrupted by Fangor's blood somehow, though not to the degree that they're mindless monsters. Their thought processes are just warped, causing them to not listen to reason. Or maybe faeries are just crazy, what do I know?

Link quickly sprinted off to the side as she sheathed her sword and pulled out the purifier. Glancing over her shoulder she saw the faeries pursuing her. Before she got too far or got too much speed though, she skidded to a halt and swiped out a hand, grabbing the hot pink faeries as it failed to stop or swerve out of the way. Being careful not to crush it, she quickly pinched its wings to hold it still as she poked the purifier needle into its chest (Wow, up close I can see their body shapes, so cute!) She pulled the trigger and the device quickly suctioned the corruption out of the faery, spitting out a darkened crystal like before. The faery either died or went unconscious, Link couldn't tell, but it drove the other faery mad.

"YOU KILLED RAZL!" The bright blue faery charged angrily at Link, glowing even brighter. Link could feel the ambient magic getting thicker, and quickly decided to stop the blue faery by jumping forward and putting her buckler in its path. With a ringing sound, it collided with the shield and then fluttered to the ground, now also unconscious. Deciding not to use the purifier on it just yet, instead Link checked on the first faery, "Razl". Carefully she picked up the faery and looked closely at it. It was hard to stare closely at something that was glowing but Link did, and after a moment could tell that the faery's tiny chest was rising and falling in tiny breaths.

"Whew, it survived. Guess faeries are tougher than wolves, heh." She went back to the second faery, "Dazl" and set Razl next to it. Carefully she used the purifier on it and removed the darkness from it too. Link pocketed the two crystals and then waited for the faeries to wake up, looking them over. After a while Link realized that the pink one, Razl, was a boy, he had no breasts, while the blue one, Dazl, did. She couldn't tell if they had anything between their legs though, she couldn't see any details and didn't want to touch them there to find out, felt kind of rude.

Eventually, they both started groaning and sat up, grabbing their heads.

"Oh my gee-eff, my head hurts like I drank a whole three drops of honey, geez..."

"Not so loud sis! My head hurts too...ow...oh...oh...hello...there...human..."

Link kneeled calmly on the ground and waved at the faeries. "Hello! Razl and Dazl right? Sorry I had to be rough with you too, but you were kind of...insane with evil corruption inside you. I used this to fix you two." Link showed them the purifier.

"Insane?"

"Evil?"

"OH!"

"THAT!"

"Oh my goodness I remember now!"

"That Deku Baba!"

The faeries looked at each other and then at Link. Slowly they started fluttering their wings and took flight. They floated up and around Link in circles, which started to make her dizzy.

"Razl! Do you see what I see?"

"Yeah Dazl, she looks just like the mural!"

"Didn't the big gee-eff say that the Hero was a man though?"

"Maybe she was wrong? I think it's cool that she's a girl!"

Link stopped trying to follow them and instead looked towards the next door. "Gee-eff? Do you mean the Great Faery?"

The two faeries stopped in front of her and nodded their little heads. "Yeah yeah! Hey, if you fixed us, do you think you could fix her too?! She got cursed ages ago and she's been fighting the evil for so long, but she's not gonna last much longer!"

"That's why I came here actually. I'm supposed to save the Great Faery and heal her, and then maybe get her help in dealing with the Kokiri guy upstairs."

At the mention of the Kokiri, the two faeries looked sad.

"Oh, I'm sorry, were you friends with him?"

"Kind of..."

"We're twins, and his faery, Lumie, was our little brother."

"When Mido was first infected by that black blood stuff, Lumie refused to leave his side."

"He tried so hard, used all of his magic to try and save him."

"But Lumie couldn't do it."

"The Great Deku Tree couldn't either."

"Not even the Great Faery could. When she tried she was hit with the curse that started to corrupt her too."

"Even when the corruption fully took poor Mido, Lumie wouldn't leave him."

"He died trying to save his Kokiri."

The two faeries were sitting on the ground now, holding each other as they cried over their brother. They were too lost in their grief to continue, so Link let them be. She stood up and started walking to the next door. She had to save the Great Faery.

She passed through another barrier and entered the antechamber leading into a bigger room. Though, once Link entered, she realized that "big" didn't quite cover it. The room was enormous! The curved walls met up at the top of the ceiling some three or four hundred feet up. There were arcing columns of blueish grey that met in the middle of the dome, with the walls between being a dark blackish blue with twinkling crystals like stars in them. Some thirty feet in front of her was was appeared to be a small clear blue pond with some stepping stones leading to a larger stone platform. Beyond the pond was a sight that made Link's jaw drop. A huge raised cylinder with glowing water overflowing out of it, like a giant tub, with an equally giant woman leaning over the edge. The Massive Great Faery slowly opened her eyes to glare at Link, who gulped as she felt massive amounts of magic wash over her, probing her.

"You..." The Great Faery's oddly lilting voice resonated through the room. "You can't be...the...Hero?"

With Agonizing slowness, she pulled an arm out of the waters of the giant pool she was in and reached for Link before collapsing, her giant arm crashing onto the ground as she slumped into unconsciousness.

Link stood there for a minute in stunned silence.

"...Giant...woman..."