Glad the Sheikah are finding favour, Mimi! :-) I figure there just have to be more of them, and if there are, of course they will help; they're only fanatically loyal, after all.

You're welcome, Birdie, and I'm very glad to hear it! =D I also absolutely agree, one Ghirahim is quite enough! XD

Chapter 26: Underground

The scant seconds of Link's fall seemed to stretch out forever and yet end in an instant as he leapt out with sailcloth flung wide, billowing above him and snapping taut, seeming to fill the entire shaft; as he leant his weight this way and that in tense and subtle shifts to pull it back from veering, careening into a wall – and then all of a sudden he had hit the ground, solid rock bottom, hard enough to drop him to hands and knees as the sailcloth billowed slowly, gently, down on top of him.

Link tugged at the thin, light fabric until he finally pulled one side off his head and could look around. The sailcloth had crumpled somewhat against one of the walls, but thankfully didn't seem to have been caught on it. The dull light that filtered down from above illuminated an implausibly flat rock floor, furrowed and ridged beneath a thin layer of ash with patterns as if the rock itself were treacle. Link could all too clearly imagine it flowing beneath his feet, red-hot slow liquid like the lava outside, but it was hard and dark and cool to the touch.

He stood slowly, and turned to refold the increasingly filthy sailcloth despite the urgency and impatience that twisted through his heart. He'd already needed it once; he couldn't risk not having it ready. A lack of preparation for the weather kills as many fliers as the weather itself, the instructors had always said, in the classes that covered the dangerous flying that all Knights were expected to be capable of; Fi herself had reminded him to be as prepared as he could be before entering the crumbling old temple in the forest.

As soon as it was packed, he turned back to the path ahead: an almost circular opening in one wall of the shaft, its flat floor merging with the one on which he stood and sloping very slightly upwards into the darkness. Other than the rock chimney stretching high above, it was the only way out, and the faint and subtle prompting Fi lent him told him that this, too, was the way that Zelda had gone.

Lighting his lantern, Link set off into the dark.

. . .

The passage climbed mainly upwards, at first slowly, then more steeply, then slowly again. Link followed the faint sense of direction that sent him after Zelda, twice reaching intersections where the cave forked and each time focusing on the subtle prompting that told him this way, this way. A couple of times he'd noticed strange, rounded mounds of rubble on the ground, and once one spilling from a hole in the wall, so strange that he'd asked Fi about it. She'd explained that it was most likely the filled-in tunnel dug by an exploring mogma; that the subterranean people were known to use earthen magic to render even solid rock vulnerable to their sturdy digging claws.

As the flickering light of Link's lantern began to illuminate another cave mouth, something that might have been a boulder loomed large in it, only to abruptly move before he could fully make it out, startling him into reaching back for his sword.

Fi?

The creature immediately ahead is a mogma, Master. However, I detect multiple demonic beings in the cavern beyond.

Relieved and concerned in equal measure, Link left the sword sheathed but advanced softly, circumspectly. The mogma didn't notice him at first, intently peering into the darkness beyond, and Link dropped a couple of the shutters on his lantern to reduce the light in case the bokoblins, wherever they were, saw it.

As he drew close, the mogma turned suddenly, twisting in what Link realised was indeed a pile of rubble similar to the others he'd seen.

"Yeow!" Somehow the quiet, strangled squeak managed to be a definite exclamation. "What're you doing? Don't be sneakin' up on me like that!"

"I'm sorry," Link whispered. He couldn't see the bokoblins, but who knew how far the echoes of their voices would carry in the echoing rock tunnels. "I didn't mean to scare you. I'm only down here to look for a friend, and I know it's dangerous up ahead."

"Yeah," grumbled the mogma, almost growling. "This whole bunch of red creeps just came right on in here and took over our territory." He pointed with a heavy-clawed hand into the darkness of what looked, as Fi had said, like a large open space – one in which Link, as his eyes adapted to the dimmer light of his half-shuttered lantern, could now see faint flickers of light. "They've even set up, what d'you call it, houses, like the stories say surface-people have." He squinted at Link, who stepped obligingly closer. "You look like some sort of surface-person, am I right?"

"Uh… sort of?" Link had been about to say no when he realised that the idea of living in the sky was probably even more alien and impossible to the mogma than the idea of living underground was to him. "And so's my friend. I'm Link, and she's Zelda. Have you seen anyone else like me?"

The mogma shook his head. "Can't help you there. The only things I've seen come through here are those red creeps. I'm Nackle, anyway." He twisted back to look dolefully into the blackness beyond, with its flickers of light. "This used to be a great cavern, you know. These old lava tubes cracked into another big old cave after the magma flow clogged up, and the place is practically lined with riches. My den is just under the surface near the other side, but with those creeps there, I don't dare get any closer in case they try and dig me out. One or two I could deal with, but there's just too many." He looked back at Link. "You should try the other tunnel. Those creeps only-"

A sudden, unexpected sound echoed through the caves, drowning out the quiet voices, ringing in Link's quiet-adapted ears and leaving him unable to even tell where it was originally coming from. He snatched for the Goddess Sword, drawing it in a jolt of alarm, glowing softly blue-white in the darkness.

"They've seen us!" Nackle yelped in alarm. "Dig for your life!" He vanished back into the hole so swiftly that Link could almost have missed him moving at all, nothing but a mound of jagged pebbles to mark his passage. The sound rang out again, and this time Link recognised it as a horn, off-key but most importantly loud. He slipped the shield from his back and braced himself: if the bokoblins chased him and he ran, he'd risk losing Zelda's trail, and then losing his way down in the blind darkness of the caverns. The thought of being trapped and lost in the black underground frightened him more than the idea of standing his ground did, even as several bokoblins appeared screeching in the darkness ahead, one brandishing a flaming torch that looked little more than a branch set on fire, the others waving chipped blades and crude clubs. A steep climb between him and them slowed the creatures, but didn't stop them: Link ran forward to see what they were doing despite a couple at the back throwing rocks up at him. Looking down, he saw their slightly quicker fellows had already began to climb, ungainly but all too fast, up the rock wall towards him! Even as he brought the sword down point-first into one climber's shoulder with a yell, another was scrambling up on his other side. The dying bokoblin below him shrieked its agony and fell from the wall, dragging Link down with it for a desperate heartbeat until its body fell from the flawless blade, and as the one that had just scrambled up swung at him, chittering foully, he jerked away from it – and overbalanced.

The world spun dizzyingly around him as he turned in the air, a flier's reflex instantly shifting his weight, rolling him – he landed hard, winded, on his back across something soft and warm and vile; rolled away on instinct though his dazed thoughts wanted nothing more than to be still for a moment; came back to his feet almost in the face of one of the stone-throwing bokoblins, throwing his shield up just in time and felt the spray of spittle across his face as it screeched and tried to hit him with the stone already in its fist only to smash stone and fingers against his shield and back off, squeaking in angry pain. Link pursued it, knowing that the others were already at his back, maybe even already swinging; perhaps it was his imagination, but he could have sworn he felt something pass so close the wind of it fluttered his hair as he dashed past the bokoblin, striking as he did.

To his own shock, the sword in his hand took its head from its shoulders in that single blow, offering less resistance to his blade than he had quite expected; the bokoblin crumpled in a silent spray of blood as Link gained a precious several steps of distance, intending to turn and face the others when the horn sounded again and he realised that he had at last seen the creature blowing it: another bokoblin, weaponless and dancing madly from foot to foot atop a crude stack of chipped rocks that Link realised to his surprise probably served the creature as a watchtower of sorts. Changing his mind in an instant, he ran towards the crude tower, slinging the shield back across his back and sword back into its sheath as he threw himself at it, risking the climb to silence the sound that had to be calling every last bokoblin in the caves towards him. The bokoblin chittered as he reached up towards it, a gleeful and greedy hatred in its piggy eyes, distracted from blowing its horn by trying to hit him with it, stubby arms falling only just short of his right hand.

Something struck him hard in the back of the leg, and Link gasped in sudden pain. The other bokoblins had to still be behind him, throwing stones and whatever else they could find; perhaps even now beginning to clamber up below him. There was no time to turn back, or to second-guess himself. As another stone bounced harmlessly off the rocks beside him and the horn-wielding bokoblin again attempted to hit his right hand with it, he lunged upwards, using his greater reach to grab the bokoblin before it could pull back and yank it past him with all his strength. It lurched forward, screeching; tumbled past him flailing as he pressed himself flat to the stone pile, and in another moment it landed with a soft and sickening crack.

Everything but the immediate moment pressed to the back of his mind, Link hauled himself up onto the top of the crude tower, rough and splintery wooden planks lashed together with poor and poorly knotted rope. A torch that was definitely a simple branch set on fire burnt smokily beside him; as he turned, he could see the remaining five bokoblins swarming its base, ignoring the twitching body of their fellow. Snatching up the torch, he threw it down amongst them, making them squeal and draw back, and swung himself over the far side of the tower before they could look back at him.

To his own surprise, his hands and feet found what was almost a rough ladder of protruding planks jammed between the barely-cut rocks, and he clambered down far more easily than he had up. The cavern echoed with squeals and screeches as the bokoblins came spilling around the side of the tower towards him, clearly – unlike Link himself – knowing that the ladder was there.

He was just in time to meet the first one with his shield; to use its moment's disorientation as its club cracked against it to slash around and lay its weapon arm open to the bone. The bokoblin dropped the club, and Link dashed away again, turning after a couple of paces to back up: the others were behind him, and he couldn't let himself get surrounded. They attacked as a horde, with no real coordination, no strategy, and he feinted leftwards as the foremost one closed again. It fell for it, eyes glinting with a brutish savagery as it swung its crude sword, and Link stepped right, leaving it to hit only air as his blade sank into its skull and it fell still upon the rock-strewn floor.

There were still four more, and they were too close; Link's strike had almost taken him into another club-wielding one, and the one with the flaming brand almost leapt over its fallen fellow to stab at him with it. His frantic and instinctive block with the Goddess Sword sheared the entire burning end from the branch, but the club-wielder hit his shield with a force that jolted up his arm and almost forced him to step backwards, and behind them he could see the other two scurrying to take their turn at killing the intruder in their midst. The formerly torch-waving bokoblin struck again, screeching its fury, its truncated weapon slipping just past his guard in the dark and shifting half-light of lantern and fallen torch, splintering end slamming hard into his arm – Link forced himself to keep gripping the sword though his fingers weakened treacherously, risked everything in a single desperate thrust that drove under the bokoblin's arm and sank deep into its body, clearing him precious space; he whirled into it, sword out, as the bokoblin staggered and sagged aside, and the slash that had been intended to do nothing more than ward them back from him as he turned struck something, sinking deep into another bokoblin's side, and suddenly only two of them remained to face him: one with a bleeding arm and a chipped blade clutched in its other hand in a way that suggested it had never once even attempted to fight with its non-dominant hand before; one still, for the moment, uninjured. Desperate not to allow them a moment to strike, Link focused on the uninjured one, its companion's swing going wild as he drove it back, blocking, blocking a second and even a third time with its crude and heavy blade until at last he cut it down and turned in time to catch the last one's poorly-aimed blade on his shield, knock it aside, and deliver a fatal blow.

The cave fell silent, and, gasping for breath, Link staggered to the rock wall, steadying himself against it, listening for sounds that no longer echoed in the almost lightless underground.

Was it over?

Sorry it's late; I've rather lost track of time over the holiday and whoa suddenly posting time where did that come from?

Patch Notes:
- Parachutes remain parachute-sized, i.e. huge.
- Link no longer charges hordes of bokoblins while on an unrelated time-sensitive mission just because a nearby mogma expressed mild displeasure. He hasn't learnt to hate them that much yet.
- Amount of wood available on extremely active volcano reduced.