WELL. That was a longer break than anticipated. Aside from tons of procrastination, there isn't much of an excuse. Hell, I wrote this in maybe four days after a month of shit all (shit all in terms of writing. I accomplished quite a lot in real life). From here though, I intend to get back on schedule!

Published June 2, 2012

Ghost Bashing

"This reminds me of a story I heard once," Diababa said, looking around the room.

"NO TIME TO TALK!" Link pushed against a part of the wall that wasn't covered in spikes, trying to force it to stop closing in on them. "HELP!"

"In that story, there was some kind of way to turn the trap off..."

"PHYSICAL FORCE! PUSH!"

"A mechanism of sorts..."

The walls creaked to a standstill, closing on both of Fyrus's shoulders. They were unable to move any closer together.

"We have to find the switch!" Diababa continued, starting to inspect a random location. "Search everyone, your lives depend on it!"

"Hate you," Link grumbled. "Hate you so much..."

The next room was the same sandy yellow colour as the last ones, but it was circular and had a large pillar sticking up through the middle of it. A handle stuck out of the column, looking like it was meant to be turned. Link sighed, reluctantly coming to terms with what he would have to do, and threw his body weight against the mechanism. This completely failed to have any effect. "Ugh, this is heavy..."

Phantom Ganon floated over to him, scratching his skull. "Why don't you have one of them do it?"

"Room... fall... all die," Link grunted, still finding himself unable to make progress on his own.

"I'll help..." Phantom grounded his feet and started to push as well. Together, after almost a full minute of back breaking effort, strenuously pushing their muscles to a level previously considered physically impossible, they changed nothing.

Link dropped flat on his face, panting. "I'm done. I think I'm going to lie here and become part of the tomb now. You guys can save the world without me."

Majora happily rattled in his pack. "I don't doubt that we can, but it's no fun without you to suffer. The only other ones I'd be able to bother this much are the imp who can just hide in a shadow and bonehead over there, but he won't be around much longer."

Bonehead's bony head jerked in his direction. "Wait what?"

As they discussed why Link's life may or may not have been worth living, Diababa nudged the handle and turned the whole room with it, the opening that had been set on their entryway circling around to reveal another passage. "Yay, I did it! Go Dia!"

Link climbed to his feet, sighing again. "I guess we'll keep going..." He entered the new passage and was immediately frozen when a ReDead howled into his ear, locking his muscles in place.

"Shit, one of those," Phantom said, holding up his arm to stop them from rushing it. "It going to jump on him in a moment, so we'll just get it when it does that so we won't be frozen too."

The decaying corpse hefted up a greatsword far larger than its own body, heaving it back as it came into view.

"MMMMMMMMMM!" was Link's terrified reaction as the monster swung at him.

-Shortly thereafter-

"This is why knowing CPR is handy," Diababa declared, leading them into another chamber. "It somehow revives people from being chopped in half, mhm!"

"Fyrus thought ReDead missed and Diababa jumped at puny green Nintendo man while Fyrus ate ReDead. ReDead was nicely aged, tasted fantastic." The giant licked his lips, not caring that his head was currently tearing through the roof of the hallway.

"Not to mention that was nothing close to CPR!" Link snapped, eyelid twitching. "I may have a minimal education but I know that much!" He shook his arm again, trying to clean off the sap that was covering his whole body.

"That is how plants do CPR, mhm."

"I'm not going to continue this conversation."

They turned, entering an ornate, circular room with plenty of torches held around the perimeter. One was not attached to the wall and floated just a few inches off, dangling back and forth. "I think one of these is the Poe," Morpheel growled as his eye darted from flame to flame. "They're the same colour as the other ones..."

"It's the floating one," Link said emotionlessly. He knew where this was going.

"Clearly there is a puzzle to finding this out," Diababa said. She narrowed her eye, spinning around the middle to observe them all. "There are ten. This is important."

"It's dangling in the lack of wind you vacant idiots."

"Fyrus saw ten pillars in the main room," the giant said, nodding enthusiastically. "Poes went between the third one on the right."

"It's this one." Link stiffly pointed toward the floating light, a headache forming in his skull. "This is it! THIS IS THE POE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR!"

"Fyrus, this is the goddesses again. Smack the third one with a bridge." Majora was clearly trying to resolve the situation with minimal collateral damage.

"FYRUS SMACK!" Fyrus drove his bridge into the torch in question, demolishing it and half of the wall. Rocks broke off from the ceiling, one reducing the real Poe to a stain of protoplasm in an instant. It had no time to react, only let out half a scream. The light floated away, likely back to the main chamber. "Fyrus do good!"

"Good Fyrus!" Majora cooed in the same way one would talk to a dog who'd just fetched the newspaper without prompting.

Link sighed. "Please stop encouraging him..."

"Mm... No."

"...Why were you made to exist? Who thought you would be a good idea?"

"They knew what they were getting into when they made me. I'm a sentient piece of wood cut from the evilest, most twisted oak tree in the Forest of Chaos. They say the tools used to carve me were made from the bones of a murderer, and the paint from the blood of a warlord known to eat the eyes of those he felled in battle. These spikes are melted down teeth bought off a dentist, though they did drown a baby in the vat so I'd say that evens out the evility."

"...I did not ask to hear ANY of that! What part of what I said prompted it?"

He felt the mask shrug. "I felt that this was a suitable place for some babbling exposition. Every member of the party needs one of those at some point, right?"

"No! There are no suitable places for what you just said to me!"

"Fyrus want to give Fyrus back-story!" Fyrus shouted, yanking his bridge out of the wall.

"Can we not and say we did?" Link wearily asked. Being surrounded by these various beings was going to start taking a toll on his intelligence someday, perhaps dragging more sanity away with it. Wait, no, that was almost gone, scheduled for complete demolition on Monday... "I want to keep moving, it's so stuffy in here."

"Okay!" And the giant of fire's tales of epic proportion were never heard.

They left that room, moving to another generic stone hallway. Cave in was once again risked simply by having their presence, though this threat was mostly ignored. "If we die, I won't be nearly as devastated as I should be," Link expressed on the matter.

The hall opened into a chamber where the floor had fallen apart, most of it decayed into sand pits. Link walked forward, intent on crossing the sand to another stone platform, but four spikes shot up from the depths and blocked his path!

He walked around them, finding no other opposition. "That was easy."

The not-hero aimed for another stone stepping stone, taking a few steps into the deep sand, but another spike barrier immediately blocked his course!

It was circumvented in three seconds. "Is this the best trap they have? It's not even coming up under me, just in front..."

Upon leaving the sandy area of the room, their only path across a large chasm was a single, long bridge. Today's obstacle was an enormous chandelier sitting in the middle of the bridge, blocking it. "It's attached to the ceiling by those chains," Phantom analyzed. "And since there is a crank on our side... wait... Let's climb over it, it's only a few feet tall."

They did so, taking turns hopping on top of the ornate chandelier and crossing the gap.

"That was easy."

-Shortly thereafter-

Link pulled open a treasure chest, expecting a handy pair of keys like the rest gave him. What he did not anticipate was a shiny blue compass, not a speck of dust on it. He took it out, inspecting the device and confirming that it did still work. "Does anyone want a compass?"

"You're giving away a compass?" Morpheel screamed, pupil reducing to a pin sized dot as he shook in rage. "That is a tool of the gods themselves, and you're just giving it away?"

Link blinked, thinking he may have dropped the eye too hard before opening the container. "It's a compass. I already have one..."

"Your assembled piece of crap holds no water to this find! With this, you will be able to locate anything in the dungeon without effort."

"Oh for crying out loud, not this again..."

"By simply holding it level and triangulating the coordinates of that which you want to find, you will know its location."

"Stop... using... that... WORD. THAT IS NOT HOW THAT WORKS! I've herded goats my whole life and I know this!"

"Ignorant fool! The process works, you simply must stop questioning it."

Midna bopped them both over the head/eye. "Forget about it. Let's keep going."

-Twenty minutes later-

The hallway was like every other up to that point: made of yellow brick and lit only by the torches which somehow had not consumed all available oxygen despite being in an enclosed space and aflame for who knows how long. The main difference was the horde of knee high skeletons armed with halberds, jabbing away at everyone's exposed flesh.

"OW!" Link's sword ripped through four, breaking them to bits. His hatred increased when more rapidly filled their place. "Where are all these weird things coming from?"

"They're magic," Diababa said. She proceeded to smash another dozen, barely lowering their numbers.

"Well where's the magic come from?"

"Um... Bad people?"

"What bad people? WHO WOULD MAKE ALL THESE JUST TO PESTER TRAVELLERS?"

"Someone who knows how to do it," Majora piped. Link made sure his pack took a few extra hits.

As soon as the army of baby monsters was cleared, they walked into the path of a ReDead and were all frozen by its shriek.

"Fyrus, make it die!" Diababa hissed through a clenched mouth.

"Fyrus wants to move, but Fyrus can't!" was the barely audible response. The ReDead stepped closer, its giant sword leaving a gouge in the stone floor behind it.

Link's eyes darted between them, sweat dripping down his body for a large combination of reasons. "Come on, someone's gotta break out of it! Midna?"

"I'm in a shadow, I'm not immune to status ailments..."

"...Majora?"

"Can't move either way~"

"Ghost-man?"

"I... think I'm getting some feeling back in my hands..." Phantom Ganon's fingers began to twitch, eventually curling shut. "Right, I-"

The ReDead screeched again.

"Aw hell... Nope."

Link sighed as best he could. "We need to hope it decides to hit someone who can take it, meaning not me."

The ReDead's head turned, looking over its many choices before pausing on Link... "No no no no..." ...and drifting down to Morpheel.

"You want a piece of the mighty Leviathan? Bring it! Even without moving, I'm still powerful enough to kick your sandy ass up and down the Nile twice with one hit! I am Morpheel, the unstoppable force that killed everything he saw for over a hundred years!"

"How many schools of fish was that anyway?" Majora asked.

"Shut up! You have no comprehension of the force that you are messing wiAHH!"

The ReDead's cleaver hit him on target, but luckily the eye was durable enough to be sent flying instead of the fatal alternative. He bounced off the far wall, hit the roof, was deflected by a torch, and flew back into the jewel on Fyrus's forehead. The giant's whole body toppled over and splattered their enemy quite easily.

"...Fyrus made it die."

-Poe numero tres-

The second last target was hidden behind a sliding wall, discovered only when Fyrus tripped and swung his bridge as he fell, smashing Phantom through it. The undead apparition groaned, slowly opening his eyes. A lantern was then bashed over his head.

"AGH!" He rolled over, grabbing his aching skull. "What the hell?" The invisible Poe hit him again, cackling.

Phantom batted it away with his sceptre, floating to his feet. He blindly swung, likely missing as all the ghost did was laugh at him, lantern jingling in the air.

Getting an idea, he scooped a bunch of sand up from the floor and threw it all over the ghost, finally getting enough of an outline to beat it upside the head with his metal stick. He did this until it was down for the count.

-A few chambers later-

"WHY WON'T IT STAY DEAD?" Link shrieked, running back as the animated skeleton reformed after being defeated and came at him again, axe and shield held high. He dodged, running around the edges of the room with the Stalfos hot on his heels.

"It's already dead, Linny," Diababa said, eye-smiling as she smashed it to bits again. The monster reformed.

"DON'T CARE, WANT IT GONE!" He blocked its overhead swing, retaliating by swiftly cleaving an arm off. Link watched, horrified as the arm floated into the air and popped back in its socket, completely undeterred. "WHY? HOW? WHY?"

"Diababa, wrap it up in some vines and pin the thing," Phantom ordered. She did as told, letting loose a few vines to tightly coil its bones together. All that stuck out of the bunch was the head, jerking back and forth in surprise.

Link sighed, shoulders slumping as he wiped sweat from his brow. "Okay, it's handled," he said, trying to assure himself more than anyone else. "It's done. She's grabbed it, Fyrus can eat it, then I'll never have to..."

The Stalfos broke itself apart, the bones flowing out between her tendrils and reforming. It immediately sprinted at Link.

"OH COME ON!"

"HEY! PUT ME DOWN YOU WRETCH!" Morpheel came flying out of nowhere, knocking its head clean off on impact. "I'm not a baseball, I am-"

"More like a softball," Phantom commented, wiping some of the ocular fluids off his staff.

Fyrus scooped up the Stalfos and ate it in one mouthful, not chewing for even a second. "Fyrus lunch!"

"That's... not a verb," Link muttered, though he had almost completely given up on teaching the behemoth by then.

"Fyrus want noun to function as action, so noun will function as action because Fyrus wants it to." He had a big grin on his face, thinking he said something profound. Link started walking toward the next door, praying that some greater being would take mercy and allow him to escape.

-The final Poe-

The moment they entered another circular room with lanterns hanging on the walls, one sticking out and swaying, Link had Midna turn him into his wolf form. "You guys argue about which one it is. I'll kill it."

"Because your imbecilic methods didn't work on the last one, I will locate this Poe," Morpheel declared. Meanwhile, the Poe floated toward Link, lantern swinging.

"It wasn't imbecilic, I just overcomplicated the math," Diababa argued.

"The problem was that you just made up numbers and methods of combining them!"

The Poe split itself into four identical versions, circling around Link.

"I've never seen that before," Phantom muttered dryly.

Fortunately, the Poe had no self preservation instincts and made sure to both attack very slowly and make sure they knew which one was attacking. Link easily dealt with it, finishing the creature just as the other group decided it was actually Morpheel that was the last Poe.

"I'm not a ghost, I'm an eye! Even I know this is stupid!"

"We're supposed to put a stake through his heart, right?" Diababa held up a wooden stake, squinting as she took aim.

"Fyrus think we're supposed to melt him with salt!" The giant started sprinkling salt onto the eyeball.

"AHhHHhhHHhhHH! WHYYYYYYYYY?"

With the Poe taken care of, the four torches were lit. This obviously caused the door in the main hallway slide back into the roof, letting them pass. "This is taking much longer than usual," Midna said, sitting on Link's head and absent-mindedly picking her nails. "Too many people are starting to slow us down. I'd suggest abandoning most of you if not for the fact that you can break everything that's in the way."

"Fyrus break good!"

"Yes, just like how you broke that door."

"Fyrus broke every other door in the temple to make up for that..."

"And how many cave ins did that cause?"

"Seven!"

"Mhm. Let's go, Link."

-Forty-one seconds later-

Link screamed like a little girl. "AHHHHHHHH!" Like that, yes.

The giant, floating sword slashed its way through the air, putting new markings on the floor and walls in its pursuit of Link. "WHY DID I TRY TO TOUCH IT? THAT WAS A HORRIBLE IDEA!"

Midna tapped her chin, pondering his query. "It's almost like you don't learn..."

"HELP!"

"Oh, right. Anyone want to help him out?"

"Fyrus sit this fight out." The behemoth took a seat on the sidelines. "Fyrus feet hurt."

"YOU USELESS PIECE-" His words turned into an unintelligible scream when the blade put a slice in his tunic less than an inch away from killing him.

Diababa and Phantom Ganon leapt into action, attacking the floating sword with all their might. Phantom threw magic balls at it, each hit popping on the metal to no avail. Diababa tried to coil her vines around it, but being a giant sword it easily bisected them.

"Hey guys," Midna called, cupping her mouth. "Maybe it's a ghost holding it like every other major enemy we've seen here!" She pulled out the dark crystal and hurled it at Link, pegging him in the neck and turning the kid back into a wolf.

Link shook his head, reorienting himself before looking back at the foe. As it turned out, an enormous, cloaked ghost with a ram's skull for a head was one-handing the sword with ease, and it was staring at him with those empty, soulless eye sockets. "AHHHHHHH! AWFUL, AWFUL IDEA! I'M GONE!" He ran away, scratching at the door. "WHY DOESN'T IT OPEN?"

"We're in a fight, it needs to stay locked for safety purposes," Diababa proclaimed, sounding very happy despite the way Death Sword was cutting through her.

"That's stupid! Fyrus, get me out of here!"

"Fyrus feet hurt."

"You don't even need to move, just smash that bridge through the door and we'll be done!"

"Fyrus go to sleep now."

"Crap."

Back in the fight, Death Sword took a ball of lightning to the face and de-cloaked, screeching as it returned to the land of the visible. It brought up its blade with speed one wielding a device that large should not be able to possess and cut Phantom clean in half, bones flying everywhere.

"Ow..."

Link returned to human form, hesitantly moving to back-up Diababa. "I, er, I've got your back," he squeaked.

To his horror, the giant plant turned around to face him and left her back completely exposed. "Yay! But I think we need a plan. How about you-"

"TURN AROUND!"

She whirled around, using both arms to smash Death Sword halfway across the room. With this done, Diababa returned her focus to Link. "How about you shoot it in the head with an arrow, and while it's stunned I pummel him into the ground! Sound good?"

He stared at the dent their ghostly enemy's impact left in the wall. "Yes."

"Great! It's just you and me, Linny, saving the world!"

"I am still here, whelps!" Morpheel shouted, being ignored as he rolled around Link's feet.

"I gave you your nickname because it's less of a mouthful and I don't mess it up when I bite my tongue, but my nickname is BEHIND YOU AGAIN!"

Diababa once again smashed Death Sword into the wall. "Anyway, continue."

"Don't ignore a god, jackasses!"

"I don't even care anymore, let's just kill it again."

Upon facing Death Sword, they quickly learned that Diababa's last hit had put the beast's own sword right through its torso, pinning it fatally. With one last croak, it crumbled into dust.

"Linny, you're such a valuable member of this team," Majora said with a cackle.

"Shut up."

"No."