NAVI'S LIGHT leads me down the passage until we reach an immense chamber, reaching high into darkness. Navi gasps and brightens, flying up and dimming my surroundings. Where she hovers, she illuminates the walls, revealing their distress and gouges. "Has the Deku Tree always been hollow like this?"
"No. He has had hollow pockets on his body where he shelters us and the creatures that will come near him, but this." She flies slowly to the wall and presses against it, to touch and feel it like one would with their fingertips. "This is not right." There is noticeable sadness in her voice, a tender way in that she handles the words that relate to a subject beloved and now so steeped in pain. It is a heavy remorse that hurts to see and hear in the little creature.
"What could have done this?" I say, touching a wall myself. Its surface is ragged and violent, as if attacked with a malicious tool. "Insects maybe?" I say out loud, more to reflect then to inquire.
"I suspect that may be accurate, some of the wood has been devoured by mandibles in places. However, for insects to do all of this in such a short time would be unheard of. Most insects are entirely devoted to self-preservation and propagation; rarely do they ever act in excess. For insects to devour this much in so little time, I'd imagine they'd somehow have to be either purpose driven to do so, or incredibly massive." I twist the top of the black rod that is my little lamp and a bright yellow light snaps on. I lift it above my head and look upon a series of great incisions taller than myself in the tree wall. Navi turns to see these as I do. "Oh dear."
"Yeah. Incredibly massive." I begin to search around slowly, scanning the dark, setting the lamp into its holster and raising the rifle. It feels as if terror is a property of the air, poisoning it, causing my chest to tighten as I breathe it. "Stay calm, it is the middle of the day. Most burrowing insects are nocturnal in this forest, if they are anywhere then they would be in their burrow right now."
"Okay, so where would that be?"
"The root system I would suspect. Nutrients and sugars are most prolific there; it would be ideal to nurse juveniles there."
"So we go down then. They'll probably have tunnels around they use to get everyone straight to their work site." I pause in step and wish I could catch words in my hand before they reach the fairy, embarrassingly insensitive as they were toward the benevolent being that created and protects us both. "I'm sorry that was bad." But she is in a state now of deep, strange curiosity, alienating her from even her feelings in this moment. "No, it is an accurate description. This is a considerable endeavor, one that insects which have easily secured sustenance and shelter, would almost certainly not undertake. This chamber positively reeks with intention that should not exist."
"Intention for what?" I say, proceeding again, creeping onto my heels and gently rolling my weight to the flats of my boots.
"Malice." It is just then at the end of her single tensely pronounced answer that I hear something. It shuffles across the floor to my distant right in the shroud of darkness beyond our light. I stop dead for a second, angry and terrified. I should have stayed by the wall and now I could more than feasibly be surrounded. I say nothing to Navi who continues until she notices my halt. She turns to me, and in her pale light I see my sweat glisten. The only creatures in the whole of the forest that cannot see in the dark are the Kokiri and the fairies, so I assure myself that the entity beyond my sight can see us, while we are blind to it. "There's something in here with us"
"Where?" The fairy almost yelps but sounds as if attempting to stifle it, as I become increasingly aware that she is unable to adopt a dependable façade of any kind. "At my right in the dark. Don't move, it won't come near us yet."
"Our light?"
"Yeah." I decide it's time to turn to its position and in the dark I make out two dim eyes, deep ochre in colour. I bellow a command I barely think of to Navi to close her eyes before I even think if she has any, and from out of the dark flies a spinning shape like a slow bullet that I just manage to bat with the butt of the gun before I close my own eyes and turn away as the projectile explodes in a pure white chemical flash. I turn back around and run right at the eyes as they turn away to flee. I dive onto my knees and catch a wriggling body part halfway into the ground. Navi catches up to me and is frantic, her light shifting and casting erratic shadows over my arms and the wriggling legs in the hole. I lean back and heave until the creature gives and flies back with me onto the ground. "Captain what is that?" It wheels over onto its back and reveals its wide spout mouth and fixed pupil-less eyes set in wood-like skin and begins making a sucking noise before I plant my weight on one knee on its chest. It blows air out hard and I ram my hand into its mouth and clutch a set of wet strings inside. It writhes under me and gurgles around my arm. "It's a Deku scrub." Navi says over my shoulder.
"It sure is." I say, exerting to hold it down. "It's gone mad though, see its eyes?"
"Yes." She replies, affected. "What is it doing here?"
"Mad scrubs are mostly scavengers, it's looking for corpses or carrion." The words chill.
"Mad scrubs scavenging inside the Great Deku Tree. This is all so very awful. From where did you learn such things about the scrub people?"
"The people that get nominated for ranger duty have to learn everything there is about the dangers of the forest. They blind us with Deku nuts to prepare us, dab skulltula poison on our tongues, that sort of thing." I reach under its eye and pull its flesh down to observe its eyeball. Sickly purple veins snake almost all the way to the pale yellowing center. It looks all around and thrashes violently, trying to flex the muscle I hold in its mouth to regurgitate a nut into its mouth, secreting sour resin from its tear ducts. "Its been cannibalizing in here. There are probably dead scrubs in that tunnel it tried to run to."
"Oh no." She gasps loudly, stifling a small sob by speaking. "How terrible. Things should not be like this. For a Deku to turn to the consumption of meat is travesty in its own right, but for such a creature to end up like this." She shakes in the air like a bell dangled on a ribbon. "It is all so truly tragic."
"Yeah." I say as I pull the shortsword out of the scabbard strapped up on my right shoulder blade.
"I'm sorry." I say and stab the creature hard and fast. I pull my hand from its calm mouth slowly as I look into its eyes. I watch as the veins dissipate and the colour of its eyes fade, staring up into the dark at some subject unknowable, beyond even the physical world of this chamber in a realm far beyond yet close, in the mind, a realm where I imagine the creature is freer by the second from its sickness and pain but I shall never know the truth. I close its eyes and clean its face and Navi and I stay crouched by its side quietly. Navi sobs once, quietly. I stand up and whip the sword to strip any blood from it and then sheathe it. I walk over and pick up he rifle and then turn to Navi. "Let's put an end to this."
THE WEBBING burns up alarmingly so I refrain from doing it twice. Navi has been silent for a while and has simply followed me as I descend down the big hole burrowed into the floor of the tree's chamber we found near the scrub's tunnel. I put the lighter back into the pouch and proceed again down my rope, releasing the pressure in my fist and loosening the wrapped rope. There is no sound in the pit save the fairy's wings, noticeably more quiet than usual, and the friction noises of the rope as it runs through my glove. I reach a dirt bottom and ensure the footing is all right, then whip the rope enough times to push the hook up and off the wall. "Watch out, the hook is coming down." The hook falls right beside me in the dirt with a dull thud and I notice all of the cracked carapaces about on the ground. I pick it up and twist the hook hard one way holding it where it connects to the rope and the talons collapse into the metal base like cat claws. I wind the rope and fit it back into its round pouch and do likewise for the hook. I pull out a flare round from one of the loops in my belt, pull back the bolt and swap the rounds out in the rifle. We proceed down the wide tunnel and I crunch things underfoot all the way. At a point the tunnel opens up into a dark expanse and my boots splash halfway to my knee in water. All around in the dark there is constant dripping of water from on high. "They've destroyed his roots. Oh…oh this is so awful." I turn to the fairy and see it shaking in the air, its light flickering." I step closer, remembering myself to be this creature's partner no matter what I thought and endeavoring to be some kind of boon, but just then I hear a splash somewhere in the room. I turn to the dark and another splash like something falling from the roof occurs, and then another. Soon there are dozens of disturbances of the water in the dark, happening in a radius around me. There is bustling, too, all around. It was likely fact that there was nothing behind me so luckily I have at least some idea of my position in regards to my quarrels. I lift the gun to my hip arc it upward and fire. The round flies slower than a regular bullet but still climbs high into the air and screeches as it climbs, and then explodes into a small red sun slowly descending and belching sparks. In its red light countless two-legged insects flee the sound and glare. Across the room is another low tunnel mouth surrounded in insects. "Gohmas!" Navi shouts. "But this is impossible, their territory is nowhere near here! And those are massive drones, I've never even heard of them getting so big!" While she speaks I'm loading more flare rounds and lashing my lamp to the rifle barrel. I don't even bother with the spin-flute because these insects look absolutely berserk. "What is your plan to proceed, Captain?"
"Run through them."
"That is not wise or a plan." I begin running as the round begins to dissipate in the air. I hear her decry again the lack of my wisdom and planning. The fairy has no choice but to follow. She is clearly frantic and is yelling at me, or is just screaming. I see the drones turn at me quickly as they hear me slosh through the water and I smash my boot into one of their squishy eyes and step on another one's head, my heel collapsing its carapace and crushing its head. When the flare is almost dead and the shadows begin to run in, I point the rifle straight up and fire a screaming round high into the air. When it explodes I hear what sound like screams from the roof, and turn to see carcasses fall from the roof burning but the round begins to sputter out faster than normal embedded in the soft dirt of the ceiling. I run faster, doing all that I can to maintain footing and ignoring everything else. One of the drones lands on my back and immediately gashes me with its proboscis, tearing my tunic and skin in one swipe. I do a shoulder roll through the water and crush it, smearing it all over my upper body in the process. I hold the butt of the rifle up near my face for the final stretch and right after I do a drone comes down from the ceiling and I smash it right in the eye and send pieces of it flying. Another one springs from low in the water and I drive the stock right into the middle of its head. It flies back into the water then bounces out into another. I place both hands around the barrel and start swinging the backwards gun in front of me like a club. Full bodies, pairs, trios of drones are destroyed in front of me with every swing, chitinous chunks and shards flying everywhere, arthropod fluids splashing me almost to the point of soaking. I reach the tunnel as the flare round enters its final seconds of light and nearly run right into the horrific amount of web covering the mouth and running deep inside of it, likely filling it completely. I turn around and look to the numerous eyes advancing in the waning light. "What shall we do now Captain?" I pull the bolt of the rifle, expelling a flipping shell into the dark air, and then close it again to feed another fat round. I fire right into the thick web and the fairy jumps. The wall behind me violently erupts in flame, sending light far into the darkness and right into the advancing compound bug eyes. Navi yelps and I begin to back into the tunnel while the wall of flame devours the mass behind me, tunneling disastrously. "Come on, Navi." I hold the gun sights up to my left eye and level it at the screeching eyes, deeply alarmed. The fire crackles on the tunnel walls and roars behind me, its heat surrounds me and fills my lungs. "Captain this fire will not burn for very long. You know this."
"Yeah I do."
"The drones will follow."
"They won't."
"How do you know this? There will be nothing fettering their advance when the fire extinguishes." I turn and look at the terrific licking wall of flame retreating in step with me. "The webs were here for a reason. Like a door with a lock, a big 'do not disturb'." The web opens to the fire into a great open space as black as pitch lit only by the dimming flames fluttering in a sucking wind. I turn my back to the tunnel mouth and look into the darkness. Navi remains staring behind me at the fiery trail into the past. "What is this room?" Navi turns around and stares as I do with eyes themselves unseeable. "I do not know. It appears to be completely empty."
"So it probably isn't." I take three steps, essentially to announce myself. My blood boils and my heart explodes, I feel able and willing to kill whatever rests in this room. I look up at where the ceiling would be and scan until I meet a single massive glowing eye floating in the dark. I level the gun at it and fire my final flare round. The red phosphorescent sun explodes and the eye closes, a whole massive form shifts behind and around it and lunges to the damp earth below it. The impact shakes the mud and the puddles, myself and darkened limp forms lying around the room. The eye opens once more and three pairs of crustacean claws lift into the air and level at me. Dripping mandibles pop in and out; a terrible mouth opens and shuts passage to an even greater terror deep in the dark within. "Oh." It rears in the air and plunges the claws into the earth all around me, a blind attempt to skewer me that it follows with a slash from a long raptorial foreleg it had kept folded under its thorax. It plants this too into the earth and drags it through the mud back to itself. It turns so fast it is like a wrist flicking, and the clumps from its foreleg coat the room and me as it leaps and scales the walls. I run and strip the mud from my face, small bones poking at cheeks as I frantically slap them off. I can hear it root around on the ceiling, clicking loudly and shuffling. There are then more splashes to the ground softer than before. I turn back to the flare and see soft-shelled larvae bounding across the mud at me. A blow from my boot kills one easily when they are close enough and does not faze the others for even a second. "These are larvae!" Navi yells to me from two meters up in the air. I draw the sword and cleave a larva in one motion. "I know." I say through my teeth cutting another almost in half and rolling away.
"This must be the colony's queen. By the goddesses, it is quite large." She says catching up to me as I run across the room and eye the ceiling. From the tatters on the shoulder of my tunic I tear a long bloodied green strip of cloth, clutching both ends in my fist. I hear more shuffling as I continue running and stop just short of where the disgusting green-red shell lunges into the mud. I tuck and roll backwards and the mud almost cements my back to the ground, giving way with a beleaguered vacuum suck. The great eye turns and her claws and forelegs slash hellishly into the air and earth. I take up a stone in my makeshift sling and pin one of the ends under my forefinger as I back up. I begin swinging the sling furiously and the forces of it begin shifting my arm along with the spin. The queen lunges and rears high at me and I loose the big rock right into the middle of her eye with enough force to dent it before piercing. In the pause that the blow makes I step forward and slice her eye open in several places and then she begins scrambling frantically for the wall. I cling to a segment of her thorax as she slams into the wall. I clutch the slung rifle in the crook of my elbow and load a final thick hollow point round into it and as she climbs furiously, the mud gives and she slides backwards for a second and I climb up right to her brutalized eye. It rotates right to me and glares with inhuman focus. I stand balancing and there is a noticeable stop in everything the second before I jam the barrel right into my incisions and fire. The bullet splits and spreads open inside the eye and ploughs through the massive terror's insides until it blows a hole the size of my head through the other side of its carapace. A second after I shoot it, the queen bug falls from the wall and into the pile that it ejected from its exit wound. I fall off the carcass when it lands and lay on my back exhausted. "Captain that was utterly phenomenal. I am truly taken aback. You have saved the Great Deku Tree, and the whole of the forest!"
"You talk a lot." I say with me eyes closed, suddenly very aware of my deep harsh breathing and the loud pain of my shoulder. The fairy stings my forehead and I swipe sluggishly. "I say exactly as many things as I mean to, though do not fear, I think I've spoken exactly as many nice words about you as I possibly could as of now." She flies up into the dark and sounds a harrumph that echoes throughout. "Hey wait, come back." I whisper as a great root reaches down for me from the dark. "I don't mean to be a bad friend." I say, muffled as the Great Deku's root envelopes me and begins to lift me back to the surface.