Chapter 38: Skeleton
We went back to the main room without much trouble. I had told the other Links that I had an idea of what to do about the thing that was sticking its pincers out of the quicksand back there, so it only made sense. Frankly, I had figured that if it were to snatch something up, then we should give it something to snatch up… something explosive. Therefore, when we finally did make it back, all that I had to do was toss a bomb at it and everything simply clicked for the others. In an instant, we saw the whole creature: a human-sized… earwig? Either way, I was glad that a thing like that was dead!
Finally, we could move on because, for some weird reason, the quicksand turned into regular sand when the… thing died. Honestly, I wasn't even going to bother questioning it at this point because of the undeniable magic of this dimension, so we continued on. Down the corridor, we found a large room that likely contained the sort of monster that I had started calling the 'mini-boss' because that's what it would've been called in a video game and, yes, I had played quite a few of those before all of this. Although, there was nothing around except for the corpse of some ancient warrior.
It had obviously been there for a very long time because all that was left was the man's skeleton and armor. Knight Link began to approach it, but a thought then struck me that made me call out for him to stop: if the gerudo never allowed anyone even near this place, then what was the skeleton of a man doing there? This stumped all three of us. However, knight Link still approached it irregardless. Everything was quiet for a while, but he then suddenly jumped back and drew his sword!
I was about to ask him why he did that, but what I saw cut me off and left me gaping. The skeleton was standing up, completely on its own! When it was all of the way up, I finally saw that the skeleton had swords of its own in each of its hands. Slave Link looked grossed out by it, but knight Link halfway turned his head to both slave Link and me and told us that he knew what this thing was: a stalfos.
All of a sudden, the stalfos rushed for knight Link, but it looked like he was keeping a close eye on it because he easily dodged out of the way in time! Slave Link then came right out of nowhere and slashed at it with his sword (when did he draw it?). I looked at where he slashed at the bone (the spine) and I saw the indent. It was then that I figured that if we couldn't get the sword to cut directly through the bone, then we could at least weaken it so that it would collapse in on itself! However, the stalfos seemed to notice this too, so it began to protect that area a little bit more.
The other two Links seemed quite frustrated at the face that every attack to that area was being blocked, but then I started attacking different points in order to distract it from that area. Thankfully, it worked, even though the stalfos was mainly focusing on me after that because of the amount that I had hit it. To be honest, I was just barely dodging each blow in time. Heck, I even saw a little bit of hair fall because my movements were slowing down due to exhaustion!
Suddenly, I saw an arrow pierce its head straight from one temple to the other. If we wouldn't have been fighting for our lives, then I would've laughed at how similar to one of those fake-arrow-through-the-head things that it looked. Just as it turned its head to focus on knight Link and his bow, I came up again and slashed at one side of its spine. What made it awesome, though, was the fact that slave Link went ahead and slashed at the other side of its spine at the same time! After that, we could tell that it was a little bit stunned, but slave Link and I jumped away anyway to make room for a charging knight Link who finally hit the last bit left and made it collapse!
After collapsing, though, I saw that the head was still alive, so I tossed it a bomb and, with a loud boom, it was gone. Almost as if in response, a treasure chest appeared in the center of the room. Hopefully, it contained something good. After all, something really good and amazing always came after one of those kinds of battles, so it was to be expected. What we found when we opened the chest was…