Chapter 23: The Forest Temple

A flood of childhood nightmares, coupled with the dizziness of a rough landing, slowed Link's defenses when the Skulltula attacked. From the corner of his eye, he could see its legs bustle as it slid down a thin strand of webbing and hung there in front of him. Farther yet, a pair of candles lit the narrow hall.

"Watch out, Link!"

He heard Navi squeak, but his legs refused to obey him. Fear and fatigue had paralyzed his arms. Even his mind barely had the strength to function.

But that was enough.

His eyes locked on the Master Sword, thrown out of his reach in the fall—behind the spider's body. Willing his limbs to move one painful inch at a time, he drew the Kokiri Sword and jammed it through the spider's eye. The spider bellowed and began to sway back and forth, then suddenly it tensed and threw its weight into Link, knocking him onto his back.

Link jumped to his feet while the spider was still swaying and dove past it with a twist of his shoulders before it could strike him again. Snatching up the Master Sword, he spun around to stab the spider through the belly and discovered that it had caught its web line on a candle in one of its last swings. When the flame burned through seconds later, the spider fell, impaling itself on the Master Sword with a gurgle of protest.

Link reached around the body for the hilt of the Kokiri Sword. Finding it, he wrenched both swords out at once, kicked the body away, and held the gut-splattered blades up to the light.

"Hungry?"

"Gross!" Navi pulled at his ear with a squeal of disgust.

Link shrugged and wiped the blades off on a patch of ivy growing from the cracks in the walls. Sheathing both weapons, he turned his attention to the door at the end of the hall.

"Let's see what we're in for, then."

From the ground up, the grand hall of the Forest Temple teemed with balconies, archways, and staircases. The architecture, though once beautiful, had been marred by centuries of cobwebs, rodent droppings, and thick dust that choked the lungs. A massive dome capped the chamber a hundred feet overhead, but a lack of windows forced anyone brave enough to venture there to provide most of their own light.

"Look," said Navi.

Link stared through the cloud of dust stirred up by his passing and found his gaze drawn to the center of the room. A primitive elevator booth, surrounded by four lit torches, provided an eerie relief to the shadows.

"Let's see what else is down there," Navi said too loudly, startling a family of mice from its home in a nearby urn. Afraid she might wake something worse than a mouse or spider, Link tried to shush her.

Something hissed in the darkness.

Link almost tore his tunic at the hip trying to snatch the Master Sword from its sheath. He scanned the chamber to his left, ready for almost anything except what he saw: Saria, alone and huddling in a corner of the room.

At first, she didn't appear to notice them, but he knew she would have heard the sharp echo of Navi's voice, if nothing else.

"Saria…" He approached at a gentle gait but kept his blade at the ready.

Saria stood and turned to face them. Sparing Link a single cryptic glance, she walked past him, moving towards the elevator. He trailed her at a distance, uneasy, his palms sweaty on the hilt of the Master Sword.

"Look!" said Navi.

Following her flight path, he glanced at the opposite corner of the room and felt a shudder wrack his body. Another Saria, heading straight for the elevator like the first, floated along the floor silently.

Navi screeched. "There's two of her!"

"Four." Link quickly checked the other corners of the room.

The four Sarias came to a stop simultaneously, each setting root by one of the torches.

"They're ghosts, aren't they?"

Link nodded. "Probably the same ones Sheik warned us about."

The four specters burst into flames, their laughter shrill as they took on new shapes. Saria's image vanished, leaving four half-human scarecrows in its place.

"They're different colors."

"I can see that," Link hissed.

Red, green, blue, and violet, the specters hovered for a moment longer before sweeping their arms through the torches, stealing the flames only to place them in new vessels. The next moment, the four scattered back to the corners they'd started from until they faded into the walls.

As if triggered by the sudden darkness, the elevator booth sank through the floor.

"Maybe they knew we were coming," Navi said.

Link frowned at the place where the elevator had disappeared. "Getting downstairs must be the key."

"Do you think we should follow them?"

He wiped his forehead of sweat, swallowing. "Do you think we have a choice?"

The frame of the oil painting overlooking the corridor had begun to rot a century ago. Moss riddled the wall around it, and the paint had faded until the original portrait was impossible to make out. But that didn't prevent it from being useful.

Two blood-red eyes blinked in the dark. The specter's thoughts glided from one matter to the next, but they always returned to this: however long she had to wait, it didn't matter. The intruder would find this place eventually.

Across the hall, the canvas of a second oil painting shifted, forming the image of one of her sisters.

He comes.

Link explored the temple for three hours, rifling through coins, jewels, and broken pottery. At another time, the adventure would have thrilled him, but his enthusiasm remained in check while the ghosts remained in hiding.

"Hey, come look at this."

He groaned. "I think I've seen enough junk for one day, Navi."

"No, really. Look!"

Link sighed. The room looked just like ten others they had seen in the last half-hour. "We're wasting time."

"Fine, then. If you don't want a Fairy Bow, just say so."

"A…Fairy Bow?" He followed her to the edge of the room and watched her disappear through the keyhole of an oak chest bedecked with dust, its iron hinges rusty with the passage of time.

"In here." Her voice came from the chest, muffled. "You'll have to break it open."

Link knelt, brushing cobwebs from the chest as he ran his hand along the lid. Just in case, he reached for the latch.

Thump. A substantial weight hit the floor somewhere behind them, scaring up dust. He paused. No ghost could have made that noise.

"Was that you, Link?"

Link slowly turned his gaze in the direction of the sound. If only it had been.

An undead skeleton glared back at him, its eye sockets burning with a subtle red flame. As if its bones alone weren't hard enough to crack his skull open, the skeleton carried a curved sword and a round shield larger than his own.

"Just cut the hinges with your sword!" Navi chirped.

Link stepped aside as the skeleton made a clumsy lunge, its sword piercing the oak chest instead of his heart.

"I think you almost got it," said Navi. "Try again!"

Link sucked in a breath and rolled between the skeleton's legs, severing the pelvis with a clean sweep of the Master Sword. The top half of the skeleton tumbled onto the floor, its sword arm breaking off at the shoulder but still clinging to the blade. Kicking the legs away, he pulled the skeleton's sword from the chest and jerked the lid free.

"What took so long?" Navi escaped in a blur of wings. "You sure made enough noise!"

Ignoring her, Link knelt, staring into the chest at a bow and a full quiver of arrows.

Perfect.

The bow fit comfortably over his right shoulder. Strapping the quiver alongside it, he strode through a doorway into a narrow corridor, batting aside a curtain of cobwebs. Ahead, he glimpsed a moss-covered staircase, but the low ceiling prevented him from seeing beyond the first few steps.

"Seems warmer in here." He took it slowly in the dim light, keeping a hand on the wall for balance. Twice, the bow scraped the wall, startling them both.

He stopped when they came to the stairs. The ceiling rose parallel with the stairway, directing his gaze to a painting that hung on the wall at the top of the stairs. What the…

Navi shrieked. "Look out!"

Link fumbled for his bow as the painting erupted in flames and the blue ghost flew at him like debris flung from an explosion. His practice with slingshots and smaller bows in the forest took over as he fixed an arrow to the string and pulled it back, grunting at the powerful strain on his arms.

Why are you here?

The sudden whisper in his head threw off his aim, and the arrow spun into the wall. Navi got between him and the ghost, but the ghost crashed through both of them, blasting them back down the hallway.

Link groaned and rolled to the side, his eyelids fluttering. He had landed on his shield, nearly breaking his back. He groped for the bow but couldn't find it. The ghost hovered over him, dangling the torch just above his face.

We were friends once. The scarecrow shape disappeared, leaving Saria's image in its place again. Have you forgotten me?

His hand fell on the trigger of Sheik's strange weapon, the Hookshot. Grabbing it up, he fired. The steel spike tore through the ghost's right arm, spilling blue flames on the floor and on Link's clothing.

Curse you…

He rolled over as the ghost swung the torch at his body, hitting his shield and spilling more flames over the moss that carpeted the stairway. The light glimmered on his bow; he tried to dive for it, but the ghost knocked it away, and in the process he dropped the Hookshot, too.

He had maybe a second before the ghost turned on him and swung the torch at his head. In that time, he managed to roll over again, slide the Master Sword from its sheath, and point it at the ghost's face—the face of Saria.

The ghost paused, the arm with the torch upraised. You would kill a friend?

Link held the blade steady. "You expect me to confuse an image with the reality?"

In us, you see reality. In us, you see the objects that torment your own thoughts.

"There's no need for me to fight you. I know Ganondorf cursed you and your sisters, but you can free yourselves by working against him. Let me help you."

We are bound to our task.

Link's face tightened. "As am I."

They lunged forward in tandem, the image and the reality, each striking the other but only one surviving the exchange. Link dropped to the floor, his clothes aflame yet again, while the ghost flailed about in pain, impaled by the Master Sword.

"I'm sorry," he said, partly to the image of Saria and partly to the ghost itself.

With one final shriek, the ghost, along with the torch and all the flames that had been eating at the growth in the hallway, vanished.

"Are you okay?" Navi appeared at his left shoulder. "Were you talking to the ghost?"

He frowned. "Didn't you see her?"

"Saria?"

He nodded. "I could hear her—it—talking to me. It said in them we see things that torment our own thoughts."

"I did see her a little, at first, but then it changed to you."

He smiled slightly. "Do I mean that much to you?"

"Don't get a big head over it, Mr. 'Hero of Time.'"

His grin widened as he turned to retrieve his scattered weapons, but a distant shout brought his attention to the door leading back to the room they'd come from. "What was that?"

They listened as the sounds grew fainter, then louder, as if someone was stumbling through the temple, not caring whether they made their presence known to every living creature.

"Listen," said Navi. "Doesn't it sound like Mido?"

Link shrugged. "It would be like him. A ghost wouldn't be making that much noise."

A crash echoed from the next room. The sound of fire crackling reached them, and a glimmer of red light played at the end of the corridor. A second later, they saw not one, but two Midos come dashing towards them.

"Get him away from me."

"Shut up. This thing's been chasing me ever since I got here!"

"Kill him. He's the fake!"

"Fake, nothing. Hey, Link. Remember that time I stuck a pine needle up your nose?"

"Yeah? What about our last birthday party? Remember I ate half the Skulltula pie Saria made us?"

Link's head spun. Both were speaking aloud, and both knew details about his history with Mido. Was either image real?

"Both sound like Mido," Navi whispered, "but one of them keeps changing shapes."

Link bit his lip. "To me, they both look like Mido. Which one is it?"

She told him. "Be careful."

Link approached the pair as they vied for his attention. "I believe you," he said.

Both Midos paused, each staring at the other. "You do? Which one?"

Link stopped in front of the Mido on his right and knelt to eye level. "Your sister already tried confusing me. It didn't work."

The other Mido sighed. "That was close. I thought you were going to believe him."

Link swung the Master Sword at the left Mido, cutting off the expression of relief in a burst of red flame. The scarecrow form reappeared, flailing its torch at Mido and Link, but sight and sound of the ghost soon evaporated, leaving the corridor empty.

"I recognized your breath," Link said, drawing a snort from Mido.

Navi zipped between them. "How did you find us?"

"Some of us still know how to climb trees with our bare hands." Mido smirked.

Link raised an eyebrow. "You could have come with us to start."

"I'm no coward. I told you Saria wanted me to wait for her."

"Obviously, you decided to help us find her."

"Obviously."

Link handed Mido the Kokiri Sword as he picked his other weapons off the floor. "You might need this."

Mido tried to cover the glow on his face with a scowl. "Thanks, Octorok Lips."

"You're welcome…Skulltula Brains."

Well, here we are, deep into our first dungeon with Link as an adult. As with the "Inside the Great Deku Tree" section, the Forest Temple went through several revisions until I was reasonably satisfied with the outcome. When you think about the way this temple is set up in the game, with Link chasing four ghosts one-by-one around a musty stone labyrinth, this could have gotten REALLY repetitive. Obviously, I didn't want that, and I don't think you would, either. Spicing it up plot and character wise with the visions of Saria and the presence of Mido, hopefully, goes a long way to relieve that sense of repetition.

I can't wait for you to read the boss fight and Link's encounter with the Sage of Forest in Chapters 24 and 25. Thanks for sticking with me, folks. Your support means a lot, and every review I get is like finding an orange rupee. Only better \(^v^)/. どうもありがとうございました. Until next time!