Revised as of 14/04/14
Chapter 28: Chill
Breathing underwater really screws with your mind. Your instinct tells you to hold your breath, but then... You can breathe.
'This is really weird.' I thought as Link and I swam deeper into the water, until we reached the bottom.
Since we only had one set of Iron Boots, I had to give Link my bomb-bag, while I just swam around, getting a feel for the armor. Working out the stiff-spots, finding out which ways I could move within my own abilities, and doing little somersaults and flips because, well...they were fun.
I stopped, though, when I felt the vibrations of the water, from the explosion that opened the way to the temple. I swam back to Link and he handed me the bomb-bag. I stuck it back in my pouch quickly, and we swam upwards towards the opening of the lakebed temple. I gestured for him to go first, and he did so. I followed closely behind him.
The world got considerably darker as we swam through the tunnels, but not to the point where I couldn't see. I suppressed a shiver as the temperature dropped, though I was expecting it. It wasn't like the water this deep down was gonna be a hot spring. I followed behind Link as we swam down through the tunnel, avoiding the sharp-looking...green and pink spike-things. We entered the larger part of the cavern, and I saw Link was already swimming downwards to take care of the giant man-eating oyster, or whatever it was. Shellblades, I think they were called.
Link waved me over when he took care of the second Shellblade, and we continued on through to the next part of the tunnel, that moved upwards. Of course, that was when the universe decided we'd had enough smooth-sailing since I'd recovered. One of the Bari that floated around in the tunnel had drifted a little too close to Link. I tried to yell out to warn him, but the sound barely travelled in the water. I watched with horror from below as the Bari activated it's electric charge just as it brushed by Link. He convulsed as the shock surged through him, while I was helpless to do anything but swim up as quickly as I could, to grab him as soon as the charge stopped.
I had to wait until the charge dissipated, but despite the angry feeling from having to wait I stayed quiet until the Bari drifted away. The moment it was safe I grabbed Link's forearm and began towing him upwards, being particularly careful around the second Bari. I got to the end of the tunnel, using one arm to climb out of the water while I kept a firm hold on Link's arm with the other.
"Are you okay?" I asked worriedly as I helped pull him out. He seemed to have recovered, even if only a bit. He only nodded his head at me. I sighed, but before either of us could say anymore there was a disgusting squelching noise from behind us. Chus. More Chus. "I'll take care of these." I told him.
They were easy to take care of, so long as I didn't let the individual pieces meld back into one. The things were like freaking worms. After taking care of the dull task, I set about examining the rest of the room, opening chests and gathering the contents and whatnot. Link caught up with me just as I got the last one. He was better, but still shaken.
"You're okay, then?" I asked, walking towards the door.
"Yeah, fine." he answered unconvincingly. I wondered if this was what he felt like when I did that, as we ascended the stairs.
"You both need to learn to be more careful." Midna grumbled from the shadows. I rolled my eyes, but I actually found myself agreeing with her. I looked to the handle hanging from the ceiling, before looking to Link.
"Is it just me, or is that lever thing just begging to be pulled?" I asked, smirking. He chuckled, and gestured for me to do so. I took a short running jump and my hands wrapped around the cold metal. My weight seemed to be enough to bring it down, and I heard the gate side open behind me. I dropped to the ground, grateful for the traction my Zora boots seemed to have on the slippery floor, before returning to join Link at the top of the stairs. From there we entered the next room, and I groaned when I remembered what certain enemies were in here.
My worst enemies, Helmasaurs and Tektites. Those things were annoying little buggers. My groan did not go unnoticed by Link, and he shot me a curious look.
"Those things," I gestured to the enemies below. "Are probably the most annoying enemies we'll ever encounter. Not more dangerous, just annoying." We moved forward to walk down the narrow stone path, but both stopped when a piece of a stalactite crumbled off, shaking the ground when it landed.
"Woah, that's treacherous..." Midna murmured, floating up from Link's shadow. I silently agreed.
"We should knock down those stalactites before we go any further." Link said. "I bet if we used bomb-arrows, they'd go down like nothing." I waited patiently while he prepared the arrows, simply taking out the Helmasaurs. It didn't take long before our path was clear, but I made sure to keep my balance; I really didn't feel like dealing with large numbers of Tektites -like the ones under our precarious bridge- quite yet.
Before I knew it, we were already at the next door. 'And here comes Link's first Lizalfos.' I thought as we lifted the door. He handled it better than i thought he would, using a Shield-Attack to daze the creature, before using a spin-attack to send it to the ground, where he ended it easily. I stared suspiciously to make sure it wasn't just playing possum. But judging by the black blood on Link's blade, identical to that pooling beneath the lizard, it was absolutely dead.
I didn't bother taking in the scenery in the corridor, the swirling water below us, the hanging vines clinging to the ceiling -which was actually the floor for the higher corridor- above us, or even the fact that there was a normal hinged door in front of us. Even in the other world, I'd despised this temple. It was so freaking confusing, and I wanted nothing more than to get it over with. Now we were in the circular hallway with the Harry-Potter stairs -I've always called them that, since they can change and rotate like the ones in Hogwarts- and despite my confession that I hated this place, I couldn't help but stop and stare.
It was amazing. Much more detailed than the game let on. The ornate and bright chandelier that hung over the stair was even more decorated than it had appeared in the game, the colourful vines strategically grown throughout the room an even larger medley of greens, reds, and purples than the animators had bothered with, and the stones that made up the walls seemed to have an unearthly aura around them.
"Wow..." I didn't realize that I was speaking aloud. Then I tapped into my memory, trying to figure where we were supposed to go first. Down. Clockwise. "This way." I took the lead as we went down the flight of stairs that would be much overused if I took us in the wrong direction.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Midna asked. I shrugged.
"I'm pretty sure." I answered, making a right turn. Of course right in our path there was a Tektite, hopping around. It's eye flicked our way, and I rolled my own. "Out of the way!" I yelled to it, using my shield to bash it's side the second it landed beside me, sending it over the edge and into the water. I ran past the first door, and I saw Link looking back at it.
"Why aren't we going in there?" he asked.
"Not yet. Now we pull this switch here. That door comes later." I said, walking past him again and jumping towards the metal handle. It felt weird being the one leading, but if I stopped I would forget pretty much everything helpful, so I'd just have to go with it. I was visibly shocked when the stairs rotated. I didn't care if I already said this; real life graphics so top videogame graphics. I let go of the handle when the stairs settled, beckoning for Link to follow me as I ran up the steps. I halted when I reached the top. Of course now my memory decided to fail me.
"Which way should we go?" I asked him, giving him an apologetic glance. He took the lead again, taking us to the left. That was when I noticed the tiny wiggling jar. Oocoo. I wondered how she got into this place alive, let alone Death Mountain, and the Forest Temple.
Oocoo yelped when Link broke the jar she was trapped in, letting out an 'oomph' as she landed on the stone floor. She took a second to recover herself before standing up and turning to us. Her expression became happily surprised.
"Oh, hello!" she greeted. "Gracious... You're that kind fellow who helped me before, and Rose is with you again! It's so good to see you both. Well, now that we've found each other again, let's stick together for a bit, hmm?" she suggested. I smiled and nodded my head, opening my pouch. She flapped her way up, and shrunk down again.
"Alright...what on Farore's green earth was that?" Link asked.
"Um... I think they're called Chu Worms. You alright?" I asked in reply, noticing his breath was a little heavy. I worried that the Bari from earlier might have stung him, and if it had that maybe it was venomous. But I disregarded the thought. 'I'd have noticed by now if he'd been stung.' I reassured myself. I then pulled out the key to the locked door in front of us and opened the lock. The room was set in a spiral-shape, meant to guide the water from the top of the room to the bottom. But... there was no water, and that left a very deep gap between the side the door was on and the side we wanted to go on.
"Yeah, I'm fine." he answered as I knelt down on my hands and knees.
"...I don't know about you, but I don't think jumping down there would be a pretty good idea. I vote we use Farore's Wind." I stated after gauging the distance from where we were to the lower floor. Then I stood up. In my peripheral, I saw Link nod his agreement. With that I wrapped my arms around him -I didn't want to risk any sort of injury if it went wrong, like if I'd just grabbed his hand and then he ended up falling because he was in the wrong spot- and felt the magic swirling around us. Then we were on the other side. Much better. I quickly let go of Link and we started making our way to the top of the spiral, taking out Tektites as we went.
When we reached the top, I gestured for Link to get the pulley-handle while I saved us some time and warped to the usually-unreachable ledge where the chest was sitting comfortably. It had two purple rupees inside. Surprise! That wasn't in the game!
I jumped through the shower of water -as Link had now pulled the lever- and rejoined him. We made to walk down the spiral, but the speed of the water swept us off our feet and sent us sliding down on our rear ends down to the bottom, and all but flinging us into the cold water that now filled the bottom of the chamber we'd previously warped over. I swam to the middle of the room and pulled the lever that would open the sluice gate, to bring the water to the main room. That had gone by rather quickly, thinking on it. We were already a third of the way through, I was pretty sure.
"Oooh, tunnels. Lovely." I sighed as we entered the previously-locked room. "Underwater tunnels with more Bari in them. Even better."
"Oh come on, it won't be that bad!" Midna encouraged from Link's shadow. I shrugged.
"If you say so." I said, diving into the water. I knew Link was following close behind. I had to be twice as careful in here. Hylia only knew that if those currents caught me, and I ran into a Bari because of it, it would hurt. Nayru's Love aside, I probably wouldn't even have enough time to make a proper barrier to begin with.
Thankfully, we both made it out of the underwater tunnel unscathed, but now we were in one of my three least favourite places in this dungeon; the Deku Toad's room. Yuck. I jumped when the opening in the floor slid closed behind us, but still looked to affirm what I already knew; we were stuck in here until we got the clawshot.
I heard twin splashes from behind me, and there were two Todos -those little tadpole things- that had seemingly fallen from nowhere. They swam towards us, quite obviously intending to attack, and we dispatched them quickly. I almost gagged at the smell that came up from the dead creatures. Another one fell from the ceiling, and I slowly looked up. I shuddered at what I saw; the Deku Toad. I already didn't like frogs, this fat freak just intensified that.
It looked down at us and made a...noise, before releasing itself from the stalactite and falling to the floor in front of us. It was big, messy, and looked downright slimy. And fat. Gross. It shook it's flabby back and sent a bunch of Todos flying off it, which quickly swam to us.
"Lovely." I said sarcastically as we began attacking the little buggers. It wasn't long before they were all gone, and we turned our attention back to the slimy toad. We weren't able to for long, as it decided it would be a good idea to jump into the air. We ran quickly to avoid it's shadow when it fell again, and the ground shook when it landed. We ran to it's front and began attacking its exposed tongue, which started oozing black blood -did all monsters in Hyrule just have black blood as a rule? Because I was pretty sure blood was supposed to be red- as it flailed wildly.
As it slowly recovered, I snatched a bomb-arrow I'd set up for myself earlier and sparked the fuse, nocking the arrow and preparing the fire. I let the arrow fly when the toad let out an angry bellow, and returned to slashing at it's tongue. It was gross, but it really, really had to be done. I had four of the five arrows I'd set apart from the rest, and I set up another one, while Link continued fighting off more of the Todos, which weren't supposed to be there. I shot the Deku toad a second time, and Link joined me in doing one final attack.
It was over, just like that. It hadn't taken all that long, for which I was grateful, but...EW. Just ew. It thrashed around and roared, before spitting out a gross green glob out of its mouth and finally just dying. Even more 'Ew'.
"Ugh, let's hurry up and get out of here! It smells!" Midna called from one of our shadows. I looked around the room, but I knew there was no way we were getting out of there without opening the chest. But it was slimy! With one hand over my nose, I reached towards the chest. I shuddered when my fingertips made contact with the slime, and flipped the lid open as quickly as I could. I shook my hand around in the water after doing so to get the slimy residue off my fingers. I heard Link chuckle at me as he reached into the chest, pulling out none other than...the clawshot. One clawshot.
"You're so stubborn, it's almost funny."
"Rose, I'm serious-"
"I can just warp, you don't need to-"
"But using Farore's wind uses up your energy, and you're not that heavy."
"So I use a little bit of my energy, I can get that back next time I sleep."
"I piggybacked you in the Goron Mines, walking upside-down and sideways."
"But that doesn't mean-"
"Will you two just shut up?" Midna snapped, flying up from Link's shadow to glare at us. "You're wasting time, here, time that could be used to get through this dumb place!"
Link and I had been sort-of-but-not-really arguing over using the clawshot to get out of there, and how we were both supposed to use it. I brought up Farore's wind, and Link suggested that I just hold onto him when he used it so that I wouldn't have to use up my own energy. And thus, our current situation.
"...I still don't feel like this is a good idea." I said, but that was the end of my protests. I wrapped my arms around Link tightly, while he pulled the trigger on the clawshot, aiming at the colourful metal thing on the ceiling. The sudden jerking motion almost made me lose my grip, but it only lasted a second before we were stationary. In the air. We suddenly jerked again, this time moving down, and the gate that barred our only exit slid away into the walls. I let go of Link, easily dropping to the floor several feet below.
"See, that wasn't so bad." Link said teasingly as he joined me, and we exited the smelly room. I gave him a light shove, trying not to smile.
"Maaaybe." I responded, with a little shrug. Things were bound to get easier, even if only a little bit, now. But then there was still the morpheel and the underwater maze. Joy.
A/N: It should be worth noting that this chapter hardly needed to be altered. If I missed something that you think I should fix -save for the Deku Toad battle- leave a review and let me know!