After a round of gentle slapping from the girls John was at last able to calm down and look at the artifact again. A simple piece of gold shaped like a broken triangle that didn't seem nearly as impressive now as it had the night before. Perhaps it was a bit sparklier than it should have been after however long it had spent in that dim, dank hold, and was maybe warmer to the touch than gold should be, though that might just have been John's own hands warming the thing up.
"Jaspers," he said, holding the thing up to the figurehead. "What is this?"
Jaspers turned around on his sinuous neck and examined it curiously, first with one amber colored eye and then the other, prodding it with his whisker-tendrils, giving it a little sniff. John was a little disconcerted seeing the boat's wooden body moving up close, mimicking flesh perfectly. "The Triforce of Courage," Jaspers said offhandedly after a brief lick with his splintery tongue.
Roxy gasped in awed surprise while John squinted and nodded as if he had understood. Jaspers laughed under his breath, though there was as always no malice in it. "When the Knight of time was called away on another adventure, he left Hyrule. He was separated from the Aspects that made him a hero, and his part of the Triforce split into eight pieces."
"And this is one of them?" Roxy asked excitedly, leaning over to look at it while Aradia patiently waited her turn. Jaspers nodded in the affirmative. Roxy let out a stream of excited expletives, wrestled it out of John's hand and started playing with it. She held it up to the light and set it on the back of her hand as if expecting it to do something.
Aradia cleared her throat loudly. "John's too insecure to ask what the Triforce is so I'm going to ask for him so he can save face!" She stepped forward, hands clasped smartly behind her back like a student about to recite. "What is the Triforce?"
"Oh!" Jaspers seemed surprised. "I forgot that everyone on the Great Sea had forgotten!" The boat tilted its cat-like head for a moment, eyes glazing over, deep in thought. "And untapped crucible of creative potential left over from the raising of this world from the primordial chaos!" He announced, and kicked his rudder into gear.
John sighed as he unfurled the sail. "Another damn thing Dave needs to collect, right?"
"Yup!" Jaspers shouted, enjoying the ocean spray. "He'll be so happy we got this one out of the way though."
Rats hissed and water dripped as Dave trudged through the ancient sewer. It was so old that it was clean; the eerie grey water splashing around his mid-calf was sea water. His cape trailed in the water behind like the mantle of a ray in flight.
The sewer complex was much, much larger than the old house needed; the little island he'd purchased (with rupees embezzled from the Windfall Stock Exchange) may well have once been a city. Up ahead, the cramped tunnel of Hylian whitestone opened up into a larger chamber made of plain granite with a square well-like structure in the center. The air was thick and pale in the light of his fire. Dave bit his lip; white fog, he'd learned, was a sign of haunting. He looked down the well and saw that the very bottom was bone-dry.
He hopped up onto the lip of the structure and drew his sword; it had an ugly scar in the center where he'd had it re-forged, though the edges gleamed red from an expert tempering by a Goron smithy as if slicing the light into its constituent parts like a prism. With one last look, he jumped right in. With a slight jerking sensation his descent slowed to survivable speeds as the Roc feathers he'd had sewn into the cape activated. The two huge quills, blue-tipped white, spread their pinions out from beneath the cape, granting him the illusion of wings. Shame he'd had to kill the poor animal; it had been beautiful.
About halfway down, the slippery-wet stone walls were replaced by mud-brick decorated with bits of shell, then rich black soil, reddish clay, and finally dank brown earth as he touched down. The room was square and slightly larger than his own room back on Outset, empty except for a few coffins lined up vertically against the walls and a clay pot filled with rupees in the center. He ignored the chum-change, being richer than a Chosenni merchant, in favor of a little tunnel in the wall right next to one of the coffins, just big enough for him to crawl through. Dave sighed. He had spent three days mapping this bastard maze and he swore it was going to turn him claustrophobic.
He approached cautiously, looking at the hole as if it would turn into a mouth and try to bite him. Fuck the Temple of Illusion, he thought. Biggest waste of his time ever invented, even compared to the Palace of Tumescent Puppets.
The lid of the nearest coffin fell open.
The thing inside looked as if it had once been human but he couldn't be sure. The head was cylindrical and the ears horribly distended, though the surprisingly crisp white tattoos indicated a life of body modification. However, the entire thing was slate blue. Its chest and waist were emaciated, just leathery blue flesh over bone, but its thighs and calves had a fleshy plumpness; perhaps the fluids of its body had drained downwards as it mummified, ruining the proportions. Its hollow eye-sockets flickered red, like a just-struck match. It opened its lipless mouth and a hideous scream filled the air, augmented with dark magic to freeze its target in place with fear—
Dave threw his lantern at it, turning the dehydrated monster into a merry pyre. He'd fought similar creatures in the northern islands and knew what was what. Three other coffin lids thumped to the ground, each raising a little puff of eerie dust. Dave sighed, then sprang across the room with inhuman speed granted by his Pegasus Boots. John probably never had to deal with this, he thought as he slammed feet-first into the first monster's chest. As it toppled, he ran the ReDead through the mouth, prematurely ending its scream. John and Jade were probably back on Outset, worrying about him and shit. They'd be so surprised when he came back some day as a fully realized Hero. He twisted the blade and kicked off before the ReDead even hit the floor. His bro would never let him live it down.
With a two-handed swing he hacked through the spinal cord of the next monster. Its legs fell limp but the upper body shrieked in rage and leapt up to him, ready to grab with its spindly blue arms. Although the fear managed to paralyze his body, Dave still managed to hold his sword so that it impaled itself on the blade, and the ReDead's too-big teeth snapped at nothing until he regained control. He touched the medallion in his pocket. Magic did not come easy to him despite how often he'd practiced, and he needed little trinkets like this to make it easier. He gathered up power like drawing water from a well, and coldness seeped up into his body; little snowflakes glowing blue danced along the edge of his blade. He then executed a perfect spinning slash and the monster fell in three more, frost-coated pieces. He'd wanted to learn fire, but the Ether Medallion was the best he'd been able to come up with.
Thanks in large part to his Boots he was able to dodge the next blow as the third monster attacked. This one was different. It had a muscular build and no skin at all, but was covered in extra bones like a set of armor, with bony growths on its head in the vague shape of a helmet. A piece of metal had been riveted over its mouth, but in its clawed hands the monster held a huge sword, red with rust but more than heavy enough to split Dave in half if he let it.
He was not about to let it. With his Roc cape Dave leapt over the swordstroke and brought his blade down, drawing even more power from the medallion. His sword cut clear through, striking the ground under the creature, releasing a spray of chilled air that left frost on the floor. The strange undead thing fell to its knees and collapsed. Dave sheathed his sword and exhaled deeply. Behind him the first ReDead smoldered quietly. "I wasted my lantern," he thought.
Hours later, he crawled out of the mud underneath the little tropical cabana into a tropical rainfall. The warm shower put out the burning mummified limb he'd been using as a torch and he threw the wretched thing into the pool in disgust. The painting of a butler stared down at him disapprovingly from the door as he passed the house. Dave flipped it off. There was a little gravel path lined with lampposts that wound down to the beach. Dave cut straight down rather than admiring the big orange flowers planted at the bends.
Down at the shore (a beach of black volcanic sand), a pedal-powered boat and two trolls in codpieces waited for him. "Hey motherfucker," Gamzee drawled. "You find yourself that little fossilized piece of miracle you had your peepers on?"
Dave approached slowly, letting the torrential rain clean him off. "Nope," he said coolly, then taking a second to spit out the lukewarm water that had made its way into his mouth. It was really coming down. "All that and I just got a dusty little flute." The gaslamps flickered on by magic as the hour changed; the rainclouds were too dark to tell the hour by sunlight. Dave had yet to remove his sunglasses.
"Is today the day you stab me through the heart, pitch me overboard and take over the ship?" asked Rose as Vriska slunk into her cabin, cutlass in hand. She was applying her war-paint.
The troll grinned. "Nope. I was gonna do that last night but the crew was feeling especially loyal to you. Jack threatened to peel off my nails and eat them."
Rose arched an eyebrow. "Out of loyalty?" she asked with a deadpan expression. The black lipstick was rolled on with a practiced hand.
"Noooooooo," Vriska said with a roll of her eye. "That was just before I revealed my plan! Turns out, he wants to be captain too."
Rose groaned. "You should all just leave my employ and start your own crews."
Vriska smirked. "But there'll never be another ship like the Grimdark." She kissed the doorframe for emphasis. "Taking this ship would be worth half a reputation!"
"What is it you want?" Rose said, short of patience.
"Did you ever hear anything about the island boy?" she asked innocently. "I liked him. I was gonna ask him to join the crew if he came back alive."
Rose tapped her chin. She had tried to contact him with her orb all that night, but it appeared to have been damaged. All she could pick up were small hints of things over the next few weeks, an explosion of activity in the past few days. There had been a confrontation with the lord of the fortress, open water for longer than he should have been able to survive, then fire and monsters. A god of the old world, vanquished.
And girls. Two or three very pretty girls their age getting fairly touchy feely, and John may or may not have had a post-victory snog with a ram-horned troll. Rose did not like her; it shows poor breeding and desperation to kiss a boy on a battlefield, and right after slaying the monster too. He deserved better.
Regardless, it had been enough to justify a letter informing dear old Nana that her grandchild was still alive, though the mission had been a failure. "He's still alive," said Rose. "He appears to be collecting treasure himself as part of some sort of test. There are very dark things going on, First Mate. The world might be in peril."
Vriska affected apathy. "Do we really care about the world?"
"It is where I keep my things," Rose responded.
Vriska nodded and turned to take her leave, but stopped herself. "Oh, there is one more thing Captain!"
Rose frowned. This was probably not good. Then there was a loud *bang!* and the ship rocked almost all the way onto its side. "We're being attacked by a Sosarian destroyer," Vriska added. "The crew will be informed that you were too busy talking about boys to bother with this assault."
Rose aimed a needlewand at the troll girl and fired off a blast of purple-black energy, but she was already gone and working on her current nefarious scheme.
The Grimdark shook again, groaning under the latest blown. Rose clenched her teeth and made her dignified way up the stairs to the immanent battle, ignoring the smoldering black smudge on the wall, curled and twisted like a horrorterror.
The islands of the Forest Haven materialized out of the morning mists like ambushing phantoms. At least, John thought they were islands. As they approached, the truth became clear. The Forest Haven was in fact a forest.
Or at least it used to be. A half dozen or so tree trunks the size of islands rose from the sea like somber giants. Most were of a silvery pale wood mottled dark green, a kind that John had seen for sale at Windfall for an extravagant price. To the left, one massive trunk had been riddled with walkways and openings, and carapacians could be seen bustling about near the upper branches. The branches however, were short and cracked, and any sort of greenery was from smaller plants that grew from clefts in the bark.
To the right, it was a different story. The next largest island, almost equal in size, was a dark brown, almost black, and was being overgrown by huge choking vines, as green as the ocean depths with thorns bigger than a man, and they seemed to be moving, very, very slowly, but moving even still. There was only one opening John could see, a tiny chink way high up, farther than any could climb. Strange animals flew near the upper reaches; they seemed to hover in place and move by spinning and spiraling. The two wooden giants seemed to glare at each other over the mile-long stretch of ocean between them, the smaller tree-islands looking up like frightened children watching their parents argue. "That's the Forbidden Woods," Jaspers said cheerfully.
"Obviously," John muttered.
Within the hour, they had Jaspers moored to the island's sole mailbox and set foot on land. There was a series of shallow terraces thick with moss and some scraggly grass, the lowest of which was only a few inches about sea level. The topmost one turned into a path that lazily zigzagged up the trunk to an opening like an arched doorway. Unlike a doorway, a little stream of pure crystalline water trickled from the opening, turning into a picturesque waterfall that cascaded to the right of the winding path. Forest Haven was not a bustling port on the magnitude of Windfall, with only a few small, clinker-built boats lashed together from strips of pale bark moored at one island or another. The exception was one slightly smaller boat that made John's eyes widen on seeing it. "Beedle!" He called out.
The hull of the barge was painted a cheerful teal, with white enamel fittings decorated in teal patterns. The sole cabin was painted with a huge advertisement that declared in bright red characters the massive amount of money saving that would go on inside this ship, should you choose to enter. It also depicted a dusky, round faced man with a long, red nose and tiny black eyes, whose brown hair had been shorn into shape resembling a helmet, or a coconut. Brass speaking tubes protruded from the top, pointing in all four directions and playing exciting music. "What are you doing here Beedle?" John shouted, trying to wave the merchant down.
Aradia joined in. "Yay, Beedle!" she declared. "He owes me some rupees, I'll be right back!" and with that she kicked off and glided over to the shop-ship.
"John stop," Roxy said, grabbing his arm. "There are lots of Beedles!" He looked at her, stunned by the revelation.
"But that's the same ship!" He sputtered. "It has the exact same face with the exact same awkward bowlcut!"
"It's true John," Roxy insisted. "There's one almost everywhere these days! I was surprised too the first time I left home but the plurality of Beedles is just a reality of life."
Aradia came back, looking slightly disappointed. "He's not the same guy," she said. "It's too bad, the other one gave me a way better price for my artifacts. I ended up trading one of those joy pendants we collected for a hyoi." Here her face lit up like a flower blooming towards the sun and produced a huge yellow pear. It had brown depressions on its surface that made it look like a ghost groaning in agony. "Isn't he adorable?" she asked, rubbing it on her cheek.
Both John and Roxy blinked at her until she stopped. "Fine I'll put him away," she said, tangling the unsettling fruit in her hair so that its ghastly face gazed eyeless to her left.
Roxy cringed. "What's that creepy thing do anyway?"
"Nothing!" Aradia beamed. "He's just a cute accessory." And with that she fluttered to the topmost terrace and skipped off up the path. Then a huge mouth on a spindly neck burst from the bushes like a jack leaping from its box and clamped her in its jaws.
Author's note: DUN! Whoa we're back with this fic finally it's been too long etc. I may or may not be branching out with something new…again, soon. Sorry.
Oh Dave you are such a card. The enemies he fights are Wind Waker ReDeads and a Gibdos knight from TP. I implied that he fought OoC style ReDeads in something called the Temple of Illusion. I mentioned once that those look like Flesh Atronachs from emElder Scrolls,/em and so it became my headcanon that WW ReDeads are sort of traditional zombies but OoC ones are fleshy golems. He has, in fact, been having adventures of his own. Coldman9 emstill/em probably doesn't know what I meant by me fooling everyone, but at least he inspired me to write this chapter, rather than you know, letting the story advance any more :P
To be entirely honest, if it seems that I may have been padding out the time between the first two real dungeons, (Dragonroost Cavern and Forbidden Woods) it's because I have been. Of course, all the reasons I gave are still valid, such as trying to extend the game to a more appropriate length so as to avoid the third act being repetitive, but in actual fact I just had a lot of trouble planning out the forest arc. Still, I think I finally got it, and we'll be getting to that hopefully more quickly than the last update.
…John has been screaming for like, four months.