As a quick note, I usually don't mind spiders. They are helpful little bugs that eat other bugs for us and spin pretty webs. Though there are some circumstances where I prefer spiders weren't involved… such as them crawling across your face at night… Yeah. Not pleasant.
The Oracles
As usual, Shadow Link sat away from Medli. He ignored both her and the girl he had just rescued.
Medli wondered why Shadow Link had helped this girl at all. Could it be that he wasn't as bad as he was letting on? Then again, he may have just wanted to pick a fight with those armored creeps.
Medli waited for the girl to wake up. She started a fire and began to cook lunch. Tael buzzed around the flames, enjoying the warmth. Tatl and Tael handed ingredients to Medli as she prepared their meal.
The sunlight cast the dappled shadows through the leaves. As a breeze flew through the forest, the speckled shadows danced around. The wind touched the unconscious girl's face, and she finally stirred and sat up.
Medli jumped to her feet. "Oh! You're up!" she cried. "Are you OK?"
The girl looked rather surprised to see a half bird, half human, but she didn't say anything about it.
"Did you help me?" she asked.
"Oh, it wasn't me," Medli said, holding her hands up. "It was him, actually." She pointed to the dark shape sitting behind a tree.
The girl smiled. "Well, thank you. My name's Din."
"Din?" Medli exclaimed. "Like the goddess?"
"Well, I'm named after her, but I'm not a goddess." Din laughed. "Actually, I'm an oracle. The Oracle of Seasons."
Medli's eyes widened. "Really?"
Din nodded, then her expression became somber. "They actually caught the other two Oracles, Nayru and Farore. I'm not sure where they've been taken though…"
Medli nodded sadly. "Yeah. Ganon's been catching so many people…"
Din glanced up, startled. "Ganon? He's behind this? But he's dead!"
Medli sighed. "I thought so too. Hey, listen. We're actually here from another time. I'm from the future. A long time in the future."
Din nodded. "Since I'm good friends with the Oracle of Ages, that's not too difficult for me to believe. But I don't suppose she's the one who helped you travel through time?"
Medli shook her head. "No. We have an ocarina that brings up places. A magic ocarina."
"The ocarina of the royal family?" Din asked.
Medli nodded.
"What are you searching for that you need to travel through time?"
Medli hesitated. "I guess… to find the Master Sword, or rescue Link – at least one of the Links – and get rid of Ganon again. Uh, not necessarily in that order. But we should do at least one of those three. And since he," Medli gestured to Shadow Link, "is probably the last Link left, I guess we have to rely on him."
"Link?" Din repeated. "A Link from another time with black hair and dark clothes?"
"Well, actually, he's Shadow Link."
"Shadow Link," Din repeated. "Hmm." She sounded neither startled, frightened, nor confused. That was a first. Most people, when they heard that this was Shadow Link, responded in one of those three ways.
Medli offered Din some of their food. She gratefully accepted. Medli told her everything that had happened so far.
Volvagia had just returned from hunting. Shadow Link sat away from the flickering light of the fire. He didn't eat much.
"It's good," Tael said softly "that he sits quietly so much of the time. It means he's not being mean to us."
Tatl gave a soft ring of laughter.
"I wonder if we have to do anything else here," Medli murmured. "I thought maybe the ocarina was bring us places on purpose. Except nothing really happened the last place we went. We just arrived, and then had to leave really fast. Except Shadow Link got a sword, but he could get a sword anywhere. It's not even a special sword or anything."
Din shook her head. "You should always include the possibility that you didn't fulfill what you were supposed to. That you left before you should have."
Medli flinched. "I hope not. But if so, I wonder if we can go back."
"I don't know. Traveling through time… can be very tricky. And very dangerous. That's what Ganon has done, and it's destroyed the fabric of time itself. That's the only reason that those who are dead are alive once again. That's why Volvagia is here. Time is torn, and things are as they should not be. We have to be careful not to contribute further to these rips in the fabric of time." She sighed. "I wish Nayru were here. She could tell us more about it."
"I wonder if we could go back in time before Link was captured, and then stop it from happening in the first place," Navi piped up hopefully.
Din shook her head. "Only if you had very exact control over time. It seems like you can't control where the ocarina takes you."
"Maybe we shouldn't use the ocarina to escape sticky situations," Tatl suggested. "We should wait until we're sure we have what we need before we move on."
"A good idea," Din agreed, "though it will be hard to know if there's anything we've missed. We're talking about very large countries that Link may have taken weeks to explore."
"But there's a lot of us," Navi suggested. "And we can fly too."
"Time travel is really confusing," Medli groaned, sinking her head into her arms.
There was a stirring from the bushes. They looked up in time to see Shadow Link getting to his feet. He turned his head this way and that, as though looking for something.
"What is it?" Din asked.
Shadow Link didn't respond, but his hand slowly slid to the hilt of his sword.
Everyone noticed this gesture and became very tense.
Volvagia gave a deep grumbling in his throat and his claws scraped grooves into the tree he was twined in.
Suddenly, something huge exploded through the bushes.
Shadow Link dove to the side and rolled to escape the huge thing.
It was a massive spider. Its pincers snapped, and its eight bristly legs waved menacingly.
Medli shrieked and she jumped behind a tree trunk. Din stood tensely.
Volvagia snarled and clamped jaws down on one of the spider's legs, twisting furiously. The spider gave a screeching sound and lashed out with another leg, catching Volvagia a massive blow on the head. Volvagia slipped out of the tree and flopped to the ground, getting tangled in a thick bush.
Shadow Link swept out his sword, cleaving through one of the legs.
The spider let out a hissing shriek and lashed out again, using a leg to pin Shadow Link to the trunk of a tree by his neck. The sword went flying from his hand and he reached up to try to pull the spider arm from him. He coughed, unable to draw a breath.
The spider's head drew closer to him, clacking its pincers. It was going to bite.
The spider suddenly let out a horrible shriek, rearing back and letting Shadow Link fall to the ground. Gasping, he scrambled around, searching for his sword. But it had gone.
He looked up at the spider to see why it had suddenly released him. Medli had taken his sword, and flown up behind the spider, driving the blade into the spider's abdomen. She pulled it free as the spider whirled around, shaking her off its back. She dropped the sword. Shadow Link grabbed his weapon again and dashed in beneath the spider's belly to strike.
Volvagia finally pulled himself free from the vines entangling him. He swooped over the spider, blasting flames down on it. With a two-front attack, the spider hissed and took several scuttling steps backwards.
Shadow Link wasn't about to let his quarry escape. He charged in again, raising his sword. With a shout, he launched himself forwards and the spider's head fell to the ground. The huge body collapsed with a loud crash.
Medli gave a horrified sound and covered her face. Din turned away. The fairies had already hidden in Medli's sash.
"Spiders are creepy," Medli whispered.
Shadow Link wiped his sword on a patch of grass as calmly as if he'd just swatted away a little garden spider. Volvagia gave a little puff of smoke at the lifeless spider body, as if to say, "so there."
Medli didn't expect a thank-you from Shadow Link, so she wasn't at all surprised that he said absolutely nothing. But Din put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Well done. Both of you."
"Didn't see you helping at all," Shadow Link muttered under his breath.
Din sighed.
Volvagia suddenly turned towards them and gave a rumbling sound. He gestured off into the forest. The others followed his gaze. To their horror, they saw a dark wave of spiders coming towards them. They weren't as big as this one, but the smallest was the size of a large dog. There were at least 100 of them.
"I think it's time to leave," said Shadow Link, sheathing his sword and reaching for the Ocarina of Time.
"Hang on!" Medli exclaimed. "We need to see if there's anything else we have to do here!"
"You'd better get over here if you want to come." He began to play.
Medli and Din hurried to his side as he began to play the Song of Time. Volvagia swooped down towards them.
But they'd misjudged the speed that the spiders were moving at. Link was only about half way through the song when the spiders were upon them.
Volvagia turned and spat fire at the scuttling attackers, but there were so many that it made no difference.
Medli screamed as a sticky thread fell over her, tangling her up.
One spider the size of a horse fell on Din. She had no weapons, but she moved with the ease of a dancer, slipping out from between the spider legs and kicking her attacker to knock it off balance.
The three fairies darted out of Medli's sash, flying at the eyes of the spiders to confuse them. One backed away from Medli as it swatted at Navi instead.
Despite their efforts to stay together, they were being pulled further apart.
Shadow Link continued to play the Ocarina, despite spider silk twining around his ankles. Just as he blew out the last note of the song, a spider jumped at him, knocking him over. He dropped the ocarina and it bounced away. He gave a shout and reached for it, but the spell was settling over them. The spiders and the forest faded away, leaving Shadow Link momentarily suspended in the void of time travel.
The spell faded, leaving Shadow Link standing on the side of a barren, rocky mountain.
The ocarina was gone, and Medli, Din, Volvagia and the fairies were nowhere in sight.