Chapter 32: The Forest Crypt

…

Cale's hedging of his comment served to remind Link of how relative the term "light" was on the surface. After a few minutes of waiting for their headaches to subside, Luggard, Link, and Cale dressed and stepped out into the temple. A beam of smoky, grey light revealed an entrance of stone blocks of a slightly gold color. Luggard had to light another lantern so they could see where they had parked the Seventeen. This showed them a long room which had space enough for twelve trains the same length as the Seventeen, provided that there were two extra rows of tracks to accommodate them. The floor on either side of the single rail had been raised to provide a pair of suitable platforms; Link was glad that he had not fallen onto the tracks the previous night. The platforms spanned about half the length of the receiving bay and led to a short set of stairs at the head of the Seventeen's locomotive.

They stood at the base of these steps, Luggard's lantern showing them massive slabs of rubble blocking the floor above. "Well, no' goin' tha' way," Luggard commented with exhaustion in his voice.

"It may be foh the best," Cale said. "Some of these old temples ah packed with wild creatuahs and many sohts of monstehs."

"Where are we supposed to go then?" Irleen asked.

"The book I read said the crypt was found outside the temple," Link said. "We'll have to go outside."

Cale and Luggard exchanged concerned looks. "Uh… Link…" Cale said. "Wha-uh, what about the Skulltulas?"

Link turned and cast his eyes down the length of the entrance. His eyes then wandered to the deep black of the distant ceiling. "I don't think we have to worry. If there were any nearby, they might've attacked us by now."

"No' worried 'bou' them findin' us in 'ere," Luggard said. "It's ou' there tha' worries us."

"All four of us will be out there," Link said.

"Four?" Luggard pointed as he counted in his head. "Four?"

Puh!

"Ow," Luggard barely responded to Irleen dropping on top of his head. He looked up at the spot of green hovering above him. "Oh. Sorry, Irleen."

"I hope so."

Link shook his head. "Come on, guys," he said, waving one hand.

"I go' a question," Luggard said as he and Cale followed. "No one's crazy 'nough t' live in these woods. So who's cryp' is we lookin' for?"

"That's a good question, actually," Link answered over his shoulder. "The book I found didn't really say. I suppose Ryain never told anyone."

"Oh he didn't know," Cale added. "Hyrule hasn't been heah foh very long, maybe just the past few centuries. Who's to say what otheh races weah heah befoah us."

"I been all over the place," Luggard said. "Ya sayin' wha'ever buil' this cryp' thin' didn' wanna associate with us?"

"Ah-w-well… w-we neveh heahd of the Sorians befoah Link arrived. They'eh small, but new discoveries ah being made every day. In a month oh so, the existence of the Sorians will probably become common knowledge. Like the deseht dwellehs, the Gelto."

"Yeah, bu' they's common knowledge for other reasons."

Link jumped off the platform and leaned forward to look outside. The first apparent thing he could make out was the dried grass on the ground just outside, looking brown and even more dead than the growth beyond the woods. A pair of large, shaped blocks of stone sat on the edge of the mist on either side of the Spirit Tracks, their surfaces worn of any kind of point or edge. Above, the sky looked even greyer than the rest of the realm. Nothing moved, not even the air. Scrunching his face, Link stepped outside. One step… two steps… four… Link put a few paces between him and the temple entrance before turning. Other than the chipped, weathered, gold-colored wall before him, the rest of the temple extended maybe two stories before ending in a sharp edge. A large, black shadow loomed over the entrance somewhere behind the curtain of mist.

Irleen fluttered out of the temple to meet him. "Well?"

Link broke his concentrating stare for a blank look. "Seems all right. Nothing's come after me yet."

Luggard came out next, putting out the lantern. "It's quie'," he said, placing the lantern on a hook attached to the back of his belt. "No' sure if I like it or no'."

"I tend to see quiet as good," Cale said, stepping from behind Luggard. "It means nothing is looking foh us."

"Ain' tellin' 'ow long tha'll be lastin', so le's find this cryp' 'n ge' ou'a 'ere. Where is it?"

Cale's and Luggard's eyes fell on Link. Link opened his mouth for a moment, clapped it shut, and passed his eyes over everything visible to them. Nothing had changed, nor did it appear that anything would change for a while. "I-I don't know."

"You brought us out to a spooky forest without knowing where an ancient crypt is?" Irleen asked.

"Ryain didn't share a whole lot, okay?" Link snapped at her.

Irleen shook from side to side. "No, I mean that just makes it interesting. It wouldn't be exciting if we knew right where it was."

"Wha' ya call 'excitin', t' me, is a brown pants momen'," Luggard said.

Cale cast his eyes around. "Soooo… Wh-wheah do we begin?"

Link sighed. "I… guess we should spread out. Look around for something unusual."

Luggard glanced from side to side. "We's in the Los' Woods. Wha's 'unusual' look like?"

Link put a hand over his face and groaned. Irleen said, "Luggard. You're not helping."

"Just… don't lose sight of each other," Link said. "We'll move along the Spirit Tracks; they might help keep us safe. If someone gets lost, just stay put and keep your ears open."

"No' a prob'em," Luggard replied, tugging on the point of his left ear. He started walking, stepping across the raised ground that bore the Spirit Tracks. Link and Cale exchanged a shrug, and Cale moved in the opposite direction towards one of the stone blocks. After a glance back at the temple, Link began walking in parallel to the tracks.

Link felt unusually calm. So far, the trip to the Lost Woods had presented him with a serious threat he was sure would be giving him nightmares for a while. And he could tell that Luggard's nerves were quickly fraying; he had seen enough airmen go through a similar phase before they decided to vent their frustrations on Link. The memory of almost being thrown into the Grand Sails' boiler after one airman expressed parenthetical dismay with being told to swab down the deck a second time by Link (punctuated with a salute that started life as a fist swinging only a hair's breadth from Link's nose) caused Link to audibly swallow. Unfortunately, Link had already sized up the door covering the firebox on the Seventeen. If Luggard lost whatever composure he had left, there was no Chief of the Engine Deck to stop Link from becoming train fuel. And although Cale did not seem to convey the same kind of blunt openness as Luggard, Link could tell that the scholar also had a problem with wandering about a cursed wood. Cale had a number of good points about the sanity (or rather, the lack thereof) regarding the exploration of the temple grounds, namely the shortage of knowledge which caused Link to simply give instructions off the top of his head. Irleen seemed to be the only one who enjoyed herself, although Link could not be sure if that was a good sign or not.

And then there was Link himself. He could feel his own semblance of sanity slipping. The nightmares he had had for the past two nights had compromised his sleep. And the constant bickering between Luggard and Irleen was taking a toll on the friendship they all had developed before leaving Library Town. Link guessed that the excursion to the Lost Woods was not quite the thing one wanted to ask new friends to help with, especially considering the danger that they had already heard of beforehand. He had come from a life where friends kept an eye on each other in very real, very inherently dangerous jobs. He had also come from a life where he had grown accustomed to giving people directions, although very rarely were they his own. In short, Link had concluded that his life as a captain's aide had turned him into a bit of a jerk. Without realizing it, Link started scratching the back of his head.

"Are you okay, Link?" Irleen asked.

Link felt his mind suddenly jarred out of his thoughts and stopped walking. "Wha-what do you mean?"

"You're scratching your hair. Scalp itch?"

Link shook his head. "No, just thinking."

"About what?"

He gave a sigh. "I don't know. I think tha—"

Shoofh! "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh…" Thup.

Link's head spun towards where he had last seen Cale. But the field was empty of movement. So he called out, "Cale? Cale!"

"Wha's goin' on, Link?" Luggard shouted from behind.

Link started moving towards the block near where Cale had been, his pace a steady jog. "Cale's gone!" he shouted back. "Cale!"

"He's wha'?"

"I'll look ahead," Irleen said, fluttering ahead of Link. "Cale?"

Link cupped his hands around his mouth. "Cale! Cale!" Link stopped in the middle of the field and used his eyes to look around again, trying to find anything moving. Nothing, and the lack of evidence caused Link's heart to speed up. "This isn't good."

"Link!" Luggard shouted. Link turned as Luggard slowed his run. "Wha' happened?"

Link shook his head. "I-I don't know; I wasn't watching him."

"Jus' take it easy," Luggard told him. "Where ya las' see him?"

Link pointed. "Just over there."

"Hey, boys!" Irleen called out. "Come take a look at this!" Luggard and Link located Irleen hovering near the stone block and hustled in her direction.

Then Luggard came to an abrupt halt, taking a fistful of Link's tunic from behind to stop him. Link turned his head to ask Luggard what was wrong, his leading foot held suspended in the air. Instead, Link caught the frown on Luggard's face and looked forward. His foot hovered over bare, cracked earth which circled the stone block at a radius comparable to the length of the Seventeen's locomotive. Irleen hovered over a large hole just a few steps away from the block.

"Thanks," Link said, a little shocked as he settled his foot back on the ground.

"Don' do much good if ya fall in with 'im," Luggard answered. "Thanks for the warnin', Irleen."

Irleen blew a raspberry at him. "I was about to warn you."

Link's eyes scanned ground. "What is this?"

"I don't know, but I think it's hollow underneath," Irleen answered, watching Luggard and Link round the patch.

"Do ya see Cale?"

"No, it's too dark."

When Link and Luggard reached the closest bit of grass to the hole, Link stretched one foot and tested the bare ground in front of him. Luggard said, "Yar made o' ligh'. Can' ya jus' fly down 'n find 'im?"

"You first."

Link took a step forward. "Seems safe enough," he told Luggard, stamping one boot in place. "We can probably make it to the hole if we take it slow. It's fairly solid."

"'Cep' where Cale stepped," Luggard groaned as he followed in Link's careful tracks.

Link reached the edge of the hole and craned his neck over to glance inside. "I think I see some light down there."

"Le' me see." Link took a large step to one side so Luggard had a better look inside.

Shoofh! "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—omph!"

"Link!"

Link's head spun from the impact with something hard, and his back felt as if he had fallen onto a hard floor. A number of his vertebrae popped as he sat up. He made to call out, but the fall had kicked up a large amount of dust, causing his voice to choke up in a fit of coughing.

"Link!" Luggard called from above him. "Ya 'live?"

Link gave a hard final cough before answering, "Yeah."

"Ya 'urt?"

"Kaħác! Līnca kowà ùtīn lìh! Lukàrda, ħònùlpa!"

"I don' much like ya, either! Stop screamin' a' me, ya flu'erin' li'l sno' bubble!"

"Tùħa kákilin ō! Pòka cùpat láki, kīt hì ħacìnu cápa!"

Link cupped his hands around his mouth and called up to the two spots of light above him, "I'm all right!"

"Cale with ya?"

Link glanced around the darkness, but his eyes still had not adjusted to the new surroundings. He blinked a moment, then gave his head a shake to clear it.

When he opened them, he beheld a network of green lines coursing throughout a large cavity surrounding him. Twisting and crisscrossing in a variety of directions with a soft pulse, Link found himself standing large in the sky again with the lights reminding him of watching the blue glow of a Sky Line against the speckled darkness of night. Thicker threads revealed most of the stranger bulges in an otherwise square-looking room. Most of the lines trailed across the walls; the floor only had a few webs along the corners where it met the walls while the ceiling had no sources of light other than the two holes he and Cale had made. Link mouthed his excitement, his voice taken away from the sight.

"Link?" Luggard called down.

Link jerked from his thoughts. "I-I don't see him anywhere. But you've got to see this!"

"I ain' fallin' down there."

Link looked up as a small spot of green entered from one of the holes above. "Link, are you okay?" Irleen asked.

"I'm fine." He held out a hand to show her the surroundings. "Look at this."

Irleen looked around in silence. "Whoa… what is all this?"

"I don't know," Link answered with a shake of his head. "I've never seen this kind of thing before." He stepped to the closest wall and touched his fingertips along a rough surface.

The pulsing in the lines quickened at his touch, and new lines of white, steady light shot from his fingers and across the cavity walls. The room illuminated in a soft flash, revealing walls and a floor composed of large slabs of green glass. Link saw that most of the green lines traveled just under the surface of this glass, guided by nothing immediately visible. That which was not glass sprawled from the center of the room, where a large spire of dark marble penetrated from the surface above into the floor. Roots grew shallow from the floor starting from this central spire. Link looked around to find that more roots penetrated the room from the corners, traveling along the edges of the ceiling and floor. In these roots, Link could see that the green lines followed the flow of cracks in its surface.

And nearby, Link saw that what he had landed on might have been another root. He squat to get a closer look. The suspect root appeared to have fallen to decay, its probably once thick form reduced to a pile of black ash. When he touched a boot to it, he found it surprisingly squishy. Further along the root towards the middle of the room, he saw that a hole had opened. A hole that Cale might have fallen through.

Link stepped to it and looked inside. "Cale?" he called. "Cale!"

"Link?" came a soft cry from the hole.

"Where are you?"

"Uh… I-I fell in a hole."

Link and Irleen glanced at each other. "I don't think that's what you were asking," she said.

"He probably can't hear me," Link agreed with a nod. Then he enunciated his next words into the hole in as clear a voice as he could manage. "Cale. Don't move. I'll be right down."

Cale paused before replying, "Didn't you get that befoah we left the train?"

Link exchanged another look with Irleen, this time showing her a helpless frown. "He probably hit his head."

"Oh, Link, if you happen to see it, I've lost my right shoe!"

"Uh… okay, Cale." Link stood up straight and sighed. "This is going to be a long day."

"Find 'im?" Luggard called down.

Link's eyes found the holes above again. "Yeah, but he's further down underground. I'm going to see if I can find him."

"Tha's fine, bu' how's ya gonna ge' ou'?" Luggard asked as Link cast his eyes around the room.

Link spotted something on the far side of the room. "How well can you see me?" he called up. He held up a hand. "Can you see me pointing?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"It looks like there's a staircase in that direction. It looks like it might be a little buried, but it may be a way out."

Luggard paused as he disappeared from sight. When his head showed up again, he said, "I might 'ave a shovel or somethin' on the Seventeen. I'll try t' clear it b'fore ya ge' back."

"And if you fall in," Irleen called up, "try to bring the shovel with you!"

"Wha's tha'?"

Link gave Irleen a confused look. "What?" Irleen asked.

"We'll be right back," Link said.

"Go' it."

Link started towards the far side of the room, moving around the central spire and carefully stepping over the roots in the floor. "So, what's the plan?" Irleen asked him as she fluttered behind.

Link pointed a finger at the far wall, where a simple, rectangular doorway stood as the only obstruction to the green and white lights under the sheet of glass. "We might find another way down through there. It wouldn't do much good if I just dropped through the holes Cale made."

"It's dark, though."

Link reached the doorway. The same green lines traveling through the room behind him continued to flow through the cavity in front of him, showing that it was particularly shallow. With one arm stretched at full length, Link touched the wall just inside the doorway. A thick, white line arching over the doorway shifted down until it stretched into the small cavity, revealing stairs leading below.

With a slight grin on his face, Link turned his head to Irleen and gestured at the stairway. "I think whoever built this place has it covered."

"Yeah. I wonder what else that person had covered."

Irleen's voice came out sarcastic, and Link could imagine her folding her arms as she hovered next to his head. He shrugged and said, "It can't be too bad."

Then Link took the stairs down, following their twist with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. At the bottom, only a white shadow hinted at the interior of the next room. Clay tiles, a kind that Link had never seen before. Of course, tiles were not exactly prevalent in the sky kingdom; the islands only had so much landmass, and using some of that land to fire tiles was generally out of the question. Only the rich used them, and then those were usually taken from an uninhabited island. Link set foot on the tiles and touched the wall just next to the doorway.

The room that lit up with Link's touch spanned much further than the room above. The spire protruding from the upper floor continued its root motif across the ceiling, but the floor of this room was covered in tiles almost as large as Link. Each tile bore a three-loop knot at the center with a leaf at each corner. This knot on each tile, with the loops arranged in an arrow-like figure, all appeared to point to the far side of the room.

Irleen, dropping to the floor, commented, "Well, if that's not an invitation, I don't know what is."

"Yeah, it's really kind of friendly for an underground structure in the middle of a dangerous forest," Link said with a pleased grin on his face.

Irleen promptly froze in place as Link stepped around her. She quickly rose up and slid into the air near Link's right ear. "Link, do you think this might be the crypt we were looking for?"

Link wrinkled his face as he stepped over a large root blocking his path. "You know, this just might be.

"YAH!"

"Gyah!"

Irleen turned to find Link leaning on the central spire, giving her a goofy grin. "Sorry. Tripped."

"Don't do that!" she shouted, almost bumping his nose when she jumped closer to his face. Link chuckled at her.

But she backed away from him, her light paling. "Link. Look."

Link could not tell which direction she was looking in, so he had to pass his gaze around the room for a moment. The other side of the room looked to be about twice as long as the room above, the floor covered in rubble and missing a small number of its tiles. The lights traversing the room continued in its flowing, uninterrupted pattern to another doorway on the far side. Then his eyes fell on the spire he leaned against. Now that he stood closer, he could see that the spire looked more like wood grain than marble. The hand he used to brace himself slid along the surface, looking for the slightest flaw.

That was when he spotted it. A skeleton sat at the base of the spire, a dented breastplate bearing the Crest of Hyrule on top of a humanoid form of faded red. Link stepped closer so he could feel the surface of the armor.

"It looks like a Royal Knight," Link told her. He checked around the ground. "Huh. He isn't armed. I wonder what he's doing here."

"Wait," Irleen said. "This is a Hylian?"

"Probably one of the knights of the Royal Family," Link said with a nod. "I'm guessing that he's been down here for a long time. He might've come with Ryain."

"Link. If this is a Hylian…

"Where's his head?"

Link was not blind to the fact that the knight had been beheaded. It was so glaringly obvious that Link had not really expected the question to come up. Surely decapitation had been what had killed the knight. But now that the question was foremost on Link's mind, he was curious as to what took the knight's head. Link again glanced around the floor where the knight had been permanently seated, but all he could find were fragments of tile littering the ground. Looking at the spire behind the body, Link saw a single notch in its otherwise smooth surface. He stood and examined the body and the height of the score. It appeared to him that the notch would meet with the end of the corpse's neck. His eyes wandered about the spire's roots until he saw something settled against one of the roots a couple arm lengths away from him.

Link pointed and said, "There it is."

"Aaaaaand… it doesn't bother you that his head is over there?"

Link examined the notch, using his hand to compare its level with his height. "I think I'll be all right. If there's a trap nearby, I have about half a head's clearance."

Irleen turned to look out at the rest of the room. "But there's nothing else here. It's all just… glass and tiles."

Link shrugged at her. "It wouldn't be much of a trap if it was visible." He turned and started across the room again.

Then the room changed. Link froze in place when the green lines of light quickly faded to purple, darkening the room a bit. And whereas the pulses in the green lines had been traveling towards the other side of the room, the now-purple lines flowed in the opposite direction.

"Uhhh… something… bad just happened… didn't it," Irleen said.

"I, uh… I don't know." Link looked around, seeing if he had touched a trigger somewhere. And he saw that he had stepped on a tile pointing towards the entrance of the room, one of a few on the floor before him. "I don't think I like the way this tile's pointing."

Irleen dropped closer to the floor to look. "O-okay… maybe… you can just take your foot off?"

Link took a step back, ensuring that he did not step on another backwards tile. However, the room remained the same. "Uh… n-now what?"

Irleen rose to Link's head level again. "Uhhh… try to… not lose your head?"

Link turned his head to respond to Irleen's comment when he caught movement in the corner of his eye. His head whipped back just in time to catch a tile move. It was spinning like a top, wobbling with the movement like it was off-balance. It rose just about level with Link's chest and hovered, giving off a light swishing sound with each turn. Link could see that this tile was actually a little narrower than he had expected.

About as narrow as the notch in the spire behind him.

Link's face paled at the realization, and his heart started pounding frantically at the inside of his chest like a sailor trying to abandon a sinking ship. His stomach churned. Worst of all, his mind blanked. For a few moments, Link stared at the deathtrap with nothing on his mind except an image of his body with one corner of that tile impaling him through the chest.

"Watch out!" Irleen's cry snapped Link out of his thoughts.

Just in time for him to realize that the tile was hurling straight at him! Link released a wild cry and dove to the floor to his right. The tile sailed past him, its wake flinging Irleen to one side, and hit one of the roots on the floor with a ceramic crash.

Sooshsooshsooshsoosh… Link's head spun from the fragments of the first tile to see three more rising from the floor. He shoved himself to his feet and dashed across the room as another tile shot at him. This tile attempted to arc back towards him and smashed against the glass wall behind him.

His foot hit something on the floor, something loose. He looked down, then looked up again as another tile hurtled toward him. With only a breath's length to think, Link picked up the loose item with both hands and held it up to protect him. The tile met a wooden surface and skipped to Link's right, breaking against the floor. The object Link had lifted slipped from his right hand, leaving its edge to scrape his palm and the inside of his arm. To Link's fortune, his undersuit protected his arm, and he brought the object up again to block another tile. This time, however, Link felt the full impact of the tile and was thrown backwards by almost unwavering force. He landed on his back against the tiled floor, wincing at the pain for only a moment.

Sooshsooshsooshsooshsoosh… More tiles. Link scrambled back to his feet to find five more hovering between him and the exit.

"Link! Over here!" Link's eyes searched for Irleen's light. He saw her at the far corner of the room from him, fluttering above what at first looked like another tile. But with Irleen giving off her own light as she drew his attention to it, he saw that part of its surface was raised.

He was out of time to think. All he wanted to do was make it to that tile and hope Irleen had found a way to disable these flying ones before he joined the knight behind him. The problem was that those tiles stood between him and her, and he would have to make his way past them.

So Link picked up the wooden disk again and held it parallel to the ground. Within a second, he threw it into the tiles and dashed back across the width of the room. The next tile to move collided with the disk, sending both in wild directions. Link's hand tagged the opposite wall, and then he made a beeline straight for Irleen.

He would never make it, though. He was running past the tiles, and the next one was sure to hit him the moment it even felt like attacking. Link also had to bound over the roots protruding from the wall, and there were far too many in his path.

So many that he tripped about halfway to his destination. The trip seemed to save him, though, as the next tile to strike had chosen the moment before to make its move. Link dove into the ground and scraped his chin against the floor just as the tile closed distance with him. It could not follow him through the fall and, instead, shattered against the glass wall above him. Link had to cover his head from the falling chunks of tile, instead taking most of their impacts with his back. They felt heavy, solidifying Link's desire to not be hit by one. Fortunately, he could shrug off being pelted with pieces and scrambled back to his feet.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Link's battlecry heralded another spectacular fall as he dove for Irleen, arms outstretched. Again, he hit the floor hard, and his hands pressed down into the surface of the raised tile to help stop him from bashing his head.

Sooshsooshsooshsoosh… soosh… soosh… soosh… klay! Klay klay! Klay! Link dared a glance up. The flying tiles had collapsed back to the floor, their askew angles from the surrounding tiles the only clue as to where they were only moments before. The purple lines in the room switched back to green, continuing on as if nothing had happened. Link gave a sigh of relief and let his head rest against his arms.

"Nice work, Link!" Irleen said as she descended to eye level with him.

"Thanks to you," Link replied, raising his head again. "If you hadn't found this switch, I might've gotten killed."

Irleen's small body whipped around for a moment. "Uh… aaaactually, I hadn't noticed the switch until you pushed it," she confessed with a tinge of embarrassment in her voice. "I just thought you might be able to huddle into this corner and smack them away with your sword."

Link frowned at her. "That… probably wouldn't have lasted for very long."

Irleen huffed at him. "Well, it was a strategy, at least. What was that thing you threw? I barely got a look at it."

"I don't know," Link said as he pulled himself to his feet. "I'm just glad it was around." He glanced back at the room and located the object he threw against the wall across the room. He jogged to the other wall and picked it up. He found that it was a circular shield composed of wood boards held together with a metal band on the circumference. When he turned it over, he found three straps riveted through what looked to him to be a separate panel of wood from the front. Two straps, one shorter than the other, were riveted parallel to each other. The third strap, the longest, was riveted at diagonal points on either side of the other straps. After examining a little more, Link decided to fit his right forearm through the larger of the parallel straps and fit his hand into the smaller enough for him to grip it. Then he drew his sword and struck a pose with the shield held in front. "What do you think?"

"I think Cale might be in more trouble than he realizes," Irleen said, coming close to his face as if to look him in the eye.

Link opened his mouth, closed it in embarrassment, and sheathed his sword again. After a quick look at the shield, he pulled his arm out of it and used the large strap to sling it over his back. "Right. Let's go."