Well! Certainly has been a while! Suffice to say, year two of college is far more busy than the last. When I wasn't working I was basically loafing about, trying to get some relaxation in, which is pretty much what held this up for so long. Heavy workload course. Oh, and I really wanted to make this one pun and got held up on that line for like a week before deciding it wasn't worth it...

AND Snowpeak was probably one of the less interesting dungeons in the game. I mean, it looks really pretty, but I don't remember being too thrilled navigating it. Still, I'm gonna work back into regular updates again, sorry about the delay!

As a final note, if I accidentally use present tense, well, I reread it like five times to make sure I didn't but it's because aside from this, for the last year or so I've written purely in present tense. This one keeps messing me up, so as usual tell me about any mistakes I may have missed!

Published January 20, 2013

Snowpeak Ruination

Link materialized in Zora's Domain, swimming out of the water and returning to human form. "At least the coat didn't get wet," he grumbled, pulling the fur tighter around his body.

"Ain't shapeshifting awesome?" The golden wolf trotted up to his side, tongue hanging out laxly. "It kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean, is that thing, like, a part of your body when you turn into a wolf? Will wearing armour and changing give you metal skin? If you have bacon in your mouth will you get baconsenses? These are the questions that keep me up at night... and being a spirit, don't have to sleep, heh... Hey, where are you going?"

"Away." Link began the extensive walk back to the mountain, trying to keep ahead of his new buddy.

After a long, daunting quest, the trials of the land throwing wind, snow and foes in his path to each be conquered in turn, the young hero arrived at the peak that was his destination. Looking his way, Stallord grinned. "Oh hey! Me and she here were just trying to encourage our flaming friend. You can do it buddy!"

Link scanned the area, frowning. Snow, rock, and clouds. No giant fire spewing behemoth with the grammar of an infant. "I don't see him..."

"He's down there!" Diababa piped in happily, pointing at a massive crevasse.

"FYRUS FELL DOWN," called up from the dark depths.

"There was a yeti up here and he told us to follow him down the mountain, but he botched the first jump."

Stallord nodded repeatedly. "So we're encouraging him to climb this fragile vertical cliff face on his own. C'mon bud, I believe you believe you can! Do you believe you can?"

"FYRUS DOES BELIEVE THAT!" A few seconds later, they felt the mountain rumble. "FYRUS FELL DOWN."

"Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna stand on this while he's ripping it apart below me, so... which way'd the yeti go? And where's Morpheel?"

-With Morpheel-

Forced to face backward from his projected course, Morpheel was unprepared to smash clean through a window. "OW." Bouncing off the back wall and floor, he eventually ceased to be dizzy and realized that his fortune had placed him inside of some kind of study. Soft chairs, a nice rug, a fireplace that he had contaminated with his entry, King Dodongo- wait... "What are you doing here, lizard?!"

Rather than answering immediately, King Dodongo simply sipped a cup of tea held extraordinarily carefully between two of his claws, the mug shattering once use was done. "Greetings, traveller. You have come a long way, and such persistence shall be rewarded. You may ask three questions, only three, and I shall answer."

"Why are you such a twat?"

"Because eat me. So what's your deal?"

"I am Morpheel, though you may have formerly known me as Morpha! My power is a trillion levels above the still massive strength you know me for. The years have been more than kind to the great Morpheel!" A rupee bounced off his pupil. "OW. THAT WAS THE POINT YOU ASS."

"Yeah, I'm getting good at that, aren't I?" He yanked the carpet to retrieve his precious rupee, sending Morpheel into a nearby table leg.

"OW. THAT WAS A PROTRUSION YOU ASS."

"Heh, that one wasn't even on purpose. I'm good."

-Snowpeak-

"THIS WAS A-" Hitting a snow bank, Link's ice-snowboard stopped in place and launched him a dozen feet onto his face. He lay in place for a few moments before placing his hands upon the surface and pushing himself upright. "Why... can't you just take me down there?"

The giant skull that was his ally caught up, circling the boy. "Because I believe in you! Seriously, after what this mountain has put you through I think you deserve victory, a chance to show it who's boss, you know what I'm saying?"

"I don't even know what I'm doing! This is an expert level course and I'm a beginner!"

"Practice makes perfect." He swerved to avoid a bomb arrow. "Save your energy, there's still another few kilometres to go."

Groaning, Link finally stood up and trudged back to grab the bane this mountain has forced upon him. He would just walk, but there were a few chasms he had to build up speed for. Don't want to die, after all.

Picking up velocity for the next airborne advent, he was able to avoid the tall lump of snow and clear it with ease.

Oh, you want to know about the landing, don't you?

Face first.

Hating this mountain more with every inch he went up or down it, Link fought on. His battle was valiant and frigid, constant wind battering him at this immense altitude and the momentum threatening to solidify is very flesh... or at least it would be if not for the ultimate form of subzero protection so graciously leant to him.

Well over an hour later, Link, Stallord and somehow Diababa found themselves outside a dreary mansion. Long icicles hung almost to the ground, several windows were shattered so long ago that the edges of the glass have been dulled by the elements (aside from one, round hole with a flickering of fire within), and many walls crumbled to rocky rubble with the harsh passage of time. Whoever built this place had either abandoned it long ago or long since given up on ground keeping. "This place could use some ferns to lighten the mood," Diababa stated, clicking her... tongue? Lips? Eye stalk?

Another frigid wind hit the group. Link sighed. "I... think those would kinda die really quickly."

"Nonsense! All you need is to show them love and they will live forever and ever! The warmth of your heart will protect it from this deathly chill."

Opening wide, Stallord shuddered and horked up a still beating heart on the snow between them. "Think that one will work?"

"WHERE DID THAT COME FROM YOU HAVE NO THROAT?!"

"You think too much. So, plant lady, how about it?"

"WHY IS IT STILL BEATING?!"

Leaning down, Diababa extended her eye down to the organ and inspected it thoroughly, scanning every inch. "Maybe, maybe... Where did it come from?"

Stallord shifted to the side to shrug in the best way that a floating dragon skull was capable of moving.

At this point, Midna emerged from Link's shadow, sighing. "Can we get inside already? Mirror of Twilight, evil guy, you know the deal by now." She proceeded to push Link, easily moving the feebly resisting boy.

-Snowpeak Ruins-

The dark, icy foyer was of the same quality as the manor's exterior. A part of the roof had collapsed long ago, rubble worn and snow covered, doing nothing to protect them from the gales that no one minded. Passing uneventfully through this room, Link spotted a firm, wooden door with the light of a fire crackling underneath it. Looking back at his assortment of allies, Link didn't have to think about his next call. "Okay, you guys stay here. I don't want to freak out anyone."

"The yeti accepted us quite well, once we assured him we were not going to kill him. I may have lied a bit to get things moving." Stallord did his shrug.

"That's nice. Stay here." Opening the door, he carefully slipped inside. "OH SWEET MERCIFUL NAYRU I DON'T WANT TO DIE HELP! HEEELP! FUCKING GET ME OUT OF HEEEERE!" A gargantuan crash resounded into the lobby, a mighty roar, and the brief sound of fingers clawing at the door before being dragged across a rug.

"I'm on my way!"

Stallord quickly floated into Diababa's charge, halting it abruptly. "Wait! What if it's just saying hi? This could be its way of bonding! Running in there has the potential to ruin everything you know."

"I DON'T WANNA DIE YOU FUCK GET IN HERE PLEASE!"

"That sounds bad though!"

"It's a lot worse when you can't see it. Have you heard any blood fall?"

"Uh, I can't really hear that sound effect specifically..."

"Clearly you have not encountered such as often as I have. Look, I haven't heard a single laceration, it is fine in there, girl. You trust me, right?" The skull locked his teeth in a savage grin.

Diababa took a moment to think through the next screech of agony and thunderous collision. "Oh! That makes perfect sense. Hear that Linny? I'm only not helping you because this is for your own good. You need to expand your circle of friends after all!"

"NO YOU IDIOT!"

The skull chuckled again. "All will be well. I'd pat you on the shoulder now, but I have no hands and your arms kinda bulge out of your midsection, so, we both lack the proper anatomy."

"Headbutt of compatriotism?"

"...Su-"

The door swung open. From the lit interior staggered Link, unstained sword held loosely in one hand, clothing disarrayed, and a thousand yard stare just gazing out in their general direction. "Our host would like to see us," he choked before tipping over like a plank of wood.

"See? He's fine, just a bit stunned."

Once Diababa administered CPR to the semiconscious Hylian, the current trio squeezed into the far warmer chamber. Clearly more fit for living than the entryway, the room had lavish wallpaper, several comfortable pieces of furniture all pointed to the crackling fireplace, and a squishy carpet feeling nice on the toes/base. In one of those seats was a woman, a sort of female yeti perhaps. No arms were visible, it almost looked as though she were wearing poorly planned fur bodysuit rather than anything else. She turned her squished face toward the group, prompting a powerful flinch from Link.

He saw things.

He felt things.

Unable to forget.

Coughing twice, she said, "Sorry, I have sickness, uh. Husband told me cute little human would come. You want to look at mirror, uh? Where you go?"

Link was fully hidden behind Diababa, holding up one of her leaves as extra security.

Stallord snickered at this. "He's indisposed. I can be your new contact, however. Please tell us or I will be forced to eviscerate you with my tongue."

"You don't have a tongue," Midna sighed. "And of course, you wanted that for lead in to..."

"Nope!"

"Was expecting more."

"I am a betrayer of expectations~"

Shaking her head at his idiocy, Midna floated closer to Yeta. "So, mirror?"

"Uh, yes. My husband found it. But since I get mirror, I get sick, and then bad monsters appear. So many bad things happen since mirror..."

"That's because you looked in it and it broke! Ha!" Stallord grinned. "I apologize ma'am, you're quite... fluffy on the eyes."

The resident Twili emerged from the darkness, intent on getting this talk done. "Where did you leave the mirror? We can get rid of it for you."

Yeta the yeti blinked, thinking. "Uh, we locked it in third floor bedroom, uh. I show you location." Shifting position, a map was somehow placed upon the coffee table. "Key is here. Would you bring it to me?"

"In the back."

She nodded.

"Why did you... Whatever, not gonna gain anything but a headache by asking. We're done here, let's grab it." The shadow dweller dropped back into Link's shadow.

Link sighed softly, nudging Diababa to move closer to the door out of the room. She did as signalled, allowing him to stay out of Yeta's view until he could throw it open and dive through the wooden frame, skidding across the stone floor of this strangely large kitchen. The others squeezed through behind him without much difficulty.

"Hello again visitors! Including new one, uh! One is gone, but one who want to kill Yeto still here, uh. I wish other one was here instead." Stirring his cauldron in the middle of the chamber, Yeto quickly sampled it. "Needs more ingredients, uh!"

"Don't worry. We won't see each other many more times." Stallord locked his teeth in a grin.

"Yeto worried."

"Good."

Link just kept on walking. Keep on going, do not look back. The only way home and past the madness is forward.

Sadly, only madness awaited the not-hero. Yeto and Yeta apparently developed a habit over the years of arranging complicated steel blocks fifty times the boy's weight across icy arenas, forcing him to almost throw out his screaming back while trying to move them around. Only switches would unlock the barred doors, and these blocks were arranged to be pushed onto the switches with some thought.

"This is really silly, isn't it?" Stallord laughed, watching Link's boots dig into the stone as they tried to push the heavy metal over ice. "I mean, just because it's on ice doesn't mean you don't have to apply ridiculous amounts of weight to do this, right?"

Link harshly inhaled, slumping against his newest foe. "Can you... do it... for me?" he panted, lungs heaving. "You're... big... and heavy..."

"Better idea! Funner idea! I shall break the doors!" Whirling around, Stallord rammed his skull into the steel barred door that looked about as thick as his teeth. With a crack, he bounced off and dropped to the ground, eyes rolling and jaw twitching sporadically.

"Welcome to the group." Link gestured for DIababa to push the block. Once in place, the bars slid up from over the door.

"Hrrrrg..."

Slowly pushing the wood open, sword already jabbed through, Link crept into the next well lit study.

"Ah, Link and servants, Kingy and I were just finishing up." Morpheel nodded his eye toward them.

Diababa nudged Link's back as she slipped in. "Hear that? You're not a servant! Unlike me..." Her leaves drooped.

Rolling his eyes, Link sheathed the blade. "No one's his servant. Is this where you ended up... some time a while ago... how long have we been at this place for?"

"Too long," Stallord groaned, blinking rapidly. "The cold's not... good for my blood."

Ignoring that, Link stepped closer to the fire, and as such ended up right next to the giant greedy lizard. "Hi again.. Kingy?"

The business baron's eyelid twitched. "DON'T CALL ME KINGY."

Even in the heat, Link paled. He just nodded.

Midna emerged from Link's shadow near Morpheel, opening her mouth. "His ex called him that," the eye said immediately. "He was real sore about it, then they got back together again a year or two back. Then they broke up again. There were a lot of soap opera details, screaming, attempted murder, someone said 'who's the real mother', but don't ask him about any of this shit. I was in Lakebed Temple, figuring out what my godly title would be for like fifty years, he just unloaded all that info dump the second I asked how he was. Yeesh, you'd think I asked his life story or something! I'm the mighty Leviathan, I don't give a rat's ass! Ever since I was cursed by the gods to be this mighty beast, far stronger than my previous, water manipulating form, I-"

Midna placed a hand on his pupil. "All right that's enough of that. Did you see anything helpful to us on the way in?"

"OW FUCK DON'T PRESS MY LENS THAT CRAP'S SENSITIVE!"

She pulled it back. "Sorry, I thought you were, er, more resistant. Being a hopping eye."

"Hell no, it hurts to be sometimes, I can just muscle through it unless some bitch is putting her claws through sensitive materials!"

"I said sorry, shut up about it already."

Diababa's eye stalk dropped between them. "Hi. Question! How can you muscle through something if you don't have any muscles?"

"...LINK. Let us move. This scenery bores me... LINK."

Stallord's face joined the fray. "Dude left while you were going on about your favourite soap opera or something, I wasn't listening."

In this brief moment of silence, King Dodongo loudly cleared his throat. "And now that you people have shut up for a few seconds, wow you can go on about nothing, Morpha has told me-"

"MORPHEEL, the Almighty Leviathan!"

King Dodongo scoffed. "Yeah whatever Morpheeeel told me you were trying to find some extradimensional portal."

He received a rapid nod from Ms Nature. "The extradimensionalist! Part of it's here, then part somewhere else, then part in the sky. Then we go to the extradimension!"

"You had me at 'tourist attraction'. I'm coming." Lurching out of his seating, King Dodongo started walking toward the door hanging open.

"I never-"

"You didn't need to say it to say it, you know what I mean?"

"...Sure!"

"Shouldn't have asked."

In the back, Midna sighed as she slipped into Stallord's shadow with no intent on letting King Dodongo profit off of her dying race in any form. "Where do these people come from?"

-Later-

"HERE." The doors were thrown open, ripping off their hinges and crashing into the ceiling from the weight of King Dodongo's tackle. "And THAT is why you don't need a key."

Link waited for the doors to fall back down before proceeding. "It wasn't locked you know."

"Not every lock is a chained padlock you know."

"I haven't seen otherwise yet." Turning a corner, Link stopped, staring at the contraption before him. And what is that?"

"Ah, my specialty!" Stepping over him, King Dodongo placed a claw firmly upon the top of the device. "This, kiddo, is a cannon! Utilizing explosions and very heavy objects, we can send these balls hurtling forward at speeds at which they can smash clean through a wall or break every bone in your lanky little body with one shot. Want a demonstration?"

"...Not really."

"Too bad!" Shoving a cannonball into the barrel, King Dodongo puffed out a tiny flame to light the fuse. "Here we g-" His last word was drowned out by the cannon firing, not due to loudness, but because it was not properly secured and the recoil sent it hurtling back into his mouth and down the dragon's throat. Gagging, he fell to the ground and clutched at the afflicted region.

The cannonball, meanwhile, smashed clean through a random wall. The resulting structural instability brought down that half of the room and all chambers connecting to it.

"OhNayruIdon'twanttodie... The hell is that?" Link asked loudly, ears throbbing.

Through the rubble, the group could see a hulking figure. Decked out in plate armour and with a chain in hand, a gigantic ball attached to the end, he was easily the size of Stallord's skull... or at least would be, if the giant Triforce statue had not fallen from the collapse and run a corner through his torso, leaving him bloody and inert in the brick.

Diababa tugged at the choking dinosaur's flailing tail. "Ooo, Kingy! Is that worth one million rupees?"

With one last heave the cannon was ejected from his system, flying off to do more property damage. He breathed heavy, red-faced. "Eh? Eh... Huh. It looks like it's marble... not worth nearly one million, but something of that size is... still rather..." Then he passed out.

"Noooo! Link! Give him CPR."

Still recovering from the deafening explosion a few metres from his poor ears, Link glared at the plant monster while wondering how much less it would suck being in the majority here without ears. "I don't know how, you do it."

"I taught you earlier! This is your test."

"Taught me? Pretty sure CPR doesn't involve... The hell went into my mouth?!"

"That was my stalk~"

"...Why did I ask, why did I ask?"