When I woke up the next morning, I was sore all over, likely a result of lifting and pulling several tons worth of pure Goron muscle the day before. I tried to meditate, but Midna told me to not strain my body any more, it wouldn't be good for my magical energies to try and work it in my hurt state.
We stayed a couple of days in Kakariko resting up. We hadn't really had a chance to do so since the day before the children had gotten kidnapped, and we had been running around nonstop for almost a week. Taking a break allowed us to sooth our aches and pains away in the spring of Eldin, and after a few days of friendly interactions with the Gorons and assuring the children that we would find Ilia, we set off.
Before we left of course, we showed the kids how to shoot their own miniature forms of bows that they had made, and we went into Barnes' bomb shop and stocked up on some bombs. Barnes informed us that we could actually combine arrows and bombs to make bomb arrows, and he showed us how to do so.
I was content to allow Zach priority over the weapons and their usage, and he was more than happy to be blowing up monsters with our bombs. I just had to remind him not to waste them all.
We had left our horse back in Kakariko Village under Renaldo's care, with the reasoning that if we were entering the Twilight, we had no idea what kind of effect it would have on her, if she would go crazy or what, and we wanted to maintain her trust in us. So we spent a couple more days traveling across the fields of Hyrule than we might have otherwise.
Meanwhile, I continued to practice my magic with Midna every morning. On the dawn of the third day, I finally managed to find my magic while not in a meditative state. Inside my mind, I had pulled it out so much that it was more than halfway pulled through, the hole being little more than the size of my fist at this point. While not meditating, I suddenly came across my magic as if it were a beacon that I could suddenly see in the dark of night.
I pulled at it some more, and I felt it brush with my mind. "Alright Russell, You should stop there." Midna said. "Zach just woke up and you know we're getting close to the Twilight, we just have to cross the bridge." I reluctantly let go of my magic, feeling like I was just on the edge of something, but I let it go.
"Good morning." Zach greeted me as he pulled out some food from his backpack. "How has your magic training been going?" He asked. I had decided to tell him a couple of days ago that I was learning magic, and he had though that it was a good idea, but he decided that it would be a lot more work than he needed to put in, plus training would mean that he had to wake up early, which he wasn't about to do anytime soon.
"It's going well; I finally felt my magic this morning while not meditating." I told him, pulling out my own breakfast.
"That's good; soon you'll be slinging around spells left and right, taking down the monsters with magic while I kill them with all sorts of cool items!" He laughed. That was one of the things that I liked about Zach, even way before we came to Hyrule. He had always been different from me in most things. Sure we both liked to play video games, but what teenage boys didn't? Aside from that we didn't have a lot of similarities, but Zach never let that get in between us, and we had been friends for almost a decade.
After we ate, we made our way across the bridge and came to a giant rock that was wedged in between the mountain walls.
"Looks like it must have fallen down at one point. I don't think we're going to be able to get through here." I said, examining it, before I heard pray tell of a match being struck behind me.
"Hey Russell, get out of there!" Zach shouted, and I turned around, seeing him holding the match under the fuse to one of his bomb arrows, knocking the bow and aiming straight at the rock. I jumped away from the rock, and Zach let the arrow loose, blowing up the entire rock with one bomb.
He gave a wide grin, and said, "Now, what was that about not being able to pass this way?" I just stuck out my tongue at him before I saw a huge purple and black portal appear in the sky above the bridge, before it teleported the middle of the bridge away, leaving us stranded on this side. It dropped three of the large black monsters down on the bridge on our side, and they came charging at us.
This was new; we had only ever fought the black beasts in our animal forms. It was relatively easy for us to knock the monsters down, but we couldn't draw animal energy up in our human form to kill them all at once. The monsters fell probably seven times, their allies roaring to bring them back before Zach and I took down one target first and finally managed to kill the other two separately at the same time.
"That was quite the ordeal." Zach said, wiping his brow of sweat as the smoke rose and turned the purple and black portal into a teal and black portal. "It's a good thing that we have a portal here though, wouldn't you say? That way, when we find the bridge, we can teleport it back here."
I nodded, and we made our way to the portal, where Midna pulled us through. We once more turned into our animal forms, me a Snow Leopard, and Zach a Wolf. "Alright!" Midna said, jumping on top of my back. "This is the last stretch of twilight, only one more Fused Shadow to go! Now that we're back in the twilight, I can help you again! But what a shame that this is indeed the last of the twilight… I had become so fond of seeing it covering this world. Or, is it really the last you two will see of it? Eee hee! Let's get going!"
My eyes narrowed as I began walking. What had Midna meant when she said that? She had just blatantly implied that when we restored this next area that it wouldn't be the last twilight area that we would see? What was going to happen?
We made our way forward, ignoring the couple of bats that flew through the air. Eventually, we came across a broken bag on the mountain path, and Zach's ears perked up.
"I can smell this too for it's scent. I can track this." He told us, and went and took a deep whiff of the stuff.
"Nice…" I said with a cat smirk. "Trying to get a teenagers scent in your nose, what would your mom think if she heard?"
He swiped at me with his front paw. "You know what I'm doing Russell, now let's go, the scent leads this way." He took off at a run, and I followed behind him. We darted through the mountain pass before finally coming across a great field, a castle in the distance.
"Hey, haven't we all seen this castle before? Eee hee hee!" Midna said, laughing a little bit. "So, we've finally made it back here! Well, only a little farther, so hang in there! Or so I'd like to say, but it's only going to get a lot harder from here on out. Eee hee! Alright, let's get started."
We made our way across the field, feeling now fatigue as our animal forms seemed to have a lot more speed and stamina than our human bodies. We followed the road all the way to Castle Town's West entrance, where Zach kept following the scent into the town. I saw a bunch of spirits and decided that I would hone my beast's senses, and overheard a couple of people talking. Someone was talking about a Zora child who had collapsed but was currently being taken care up by a woman named Telma at her bar. And the other people said a few other things like how there was a water outage, random snippets here and there.
I followed Zach through the streets, knowing that the spirits could not see me in my beast state. We walked all over town, the scent seemed to have stopped at a medical clinic at the East side of town, before heading into the southern part of the city. Finally we followed the scent all the way to, surprise surprise, Telma's bar!
The sign outside said that it was open, and the door was ajar, so we let ourselves in. We found a bunch of Hylian knights surrounding a map, as well as a fairly well-endowed woman standing near Ilia and the Zora boy that we had heard about.
Ilia was watching the boy and asked the woman. "This boy, can you save him?"
The woman said, "All right, little lady, try to settle down, ok? I just now sent for the Doctor! But this is indeed strange, a child of the Zoras. I wonder if this is at all related to the incident the soldiers were talking about in the back…" They remained silent after that, so we wandered to where the soldiers were talking about. They mentioned that the citizens were upset that they couldn't pray to the spring spirit, and marked the map with the location. Midna took out our own map and made a mark on it where we could find the spirit, and we took off.
We left the town, making our way across the western fields and heading towards where we had seen a map marked on the soldier's map. As we crossed the bridge, Midna stopped us short suddenly.
"Hey, do you smell anything funny?" She said, a look of concern on her face as she furrowed her brows. I smelt the ground, and realized that it was slick with lantern oil. A monster came out from the shadows at the end of the bridge, pulling out a bow with fire arrows. A look of horror crossed our faces as it shot an arrow, it soaring high above us, lighting the oil from the end of the bridge that we had come from. It knocked another arrow, and before we knew it, the other side of the bridge also had fire coming, we were stuck between two walls of fire!
"Hey, we're in a bind now, find us a way out!" Midna shouted in a frenzied state, clearly worried that she would be burned alive. Zach and I looked around, and all we saw where a few wooden crates left strewn about, and the edge of the bridges around us.
"Hey Russell?" Zach asked me. "Didn't the maps the soldiers had show that there was a lake underneath the bridge?"
My eyes widened. "Well, yes, but the fall alone would be enough to kill us, we're talking about a few hundred yard drop!" He smirked.
"Well, let's hope that Midna can use some hocus pocus magic power to slow our fall, or we're not getting out of this alive!" And so he jumped on the ledge, and I followed suit.
"What!" Midna screamed in my ears. "You have got to be kidding me! There is no way that we're going to survive the drop!"
Zach jumped, and so did I.