The Legend of Zelda - Soul Song

Part Thirty

Part Thirty

When Link re-entered the wide first floor room and approached the pedestal in the middle of the room that now glowed with gold and crimson lights, he stopped to catch his breath, rotating the violet orb in his hands. He caught a tinted glimpse of his reflection in the orb, and he noticed the dark streaks of what must've been his own blood covering the right side of his face. He could almost see the gash that he knew had vertically ripped through his skin from his eyebrow, over his eyelid, and to his cheek bone. Sighing, he lowered the orb and his hand to his side and looked around the room. The red and gold lights, though the pattern seemed random at first, seemed to be creating some kind of mural on the walls, ceiling and floor of the large room. Already, what looked like one large triangle had formed on the ceiling and a smaller red one took the space at its tip.

Curious, but also ready to move on, Link circled the pedestal and placed the orb in the slot marked PURPLE. He stepped back as the violet light filled the room, ready for it when it snapped back into the orb and then began filling the glass tube. He watched as it weaved across the floor almost like a snake, and the traveled up the wall, circling once and then twice before moving on. Across the room from its spiral, the purple filled a few circles that could have been anything, and then continued up to the ceiling, decorating the stone in purple swirls and lines, though never touching the triangles in the middle. Eventually the light moved back down the wall, encircling the spiral, and then moving down to its door. It filled the patterns decorating the door, and then, saving it for last, filled the Triforce with the deep purple hue.

There was a scraping sound, and dust puffed from the cracks around the door and it rose towards the sky and cleared the doorway. Looking back around the room, Link was even more curious as to what the mural could be, but decided his curiosity would have to wait until he collected the rest of the orbs. He passed through the purple doorway and waited for it to take him up to the second floor. The door marked PURPLE was wooden, the same as the others, and he pushed it open easily, cautiously entering the room.

The door swung shut behind him and he was taken off guard by the apparent size of the room, or rather the lack of. On either side of him was a floor to ceiling wall that acted as what seemed to be the outlines of an empty hallway. Looking closer, Link noticed that the hallway didn't end as he'd originally thought, but actually split into a hallway perpendicular to the one he then occupied. He walked the length of the hallway and looked in each direction the hallway took. It split in two ways on either end of it as well. That was when he and the wisp both realized.

It's a maze. The wisp floated around in front of him. Link, be cautious. There are often beasts and booby traps around every corner of mazes like this.

Link nodded and drew his borrowed silver dagger from his belt. At first he travelled aimlessly, running into at least four dead ends in a row before he ended up back where he'd started. He took a different path than the one he'd originally taken, and he almost instantly heard the now familiar hiss of a Skultula. His immediate reaction was to jump backwards out of the way and look up. But the Skultula was no where to be seen. Confused, he stepped hesitantly forward, and the Skultula hissed again. Another step; nothing. One more. The hissing only got louder, echoing off the stones so that he couldn't tell where it came from. He gripped his dagger tighter. One last, slow step forward...

Catching him completely off guard, the Skultula jumped out from underneath a false stone in the floor, knocking Link over on his back. The Skultula managed to sink it's hooked front legs into the fabric of Link's boots, and it started dragging him back towards the hole it had come from. Due to the beast's weight on his legs, he couldn't move them to kick the thing off of him. Acting on instinct, he shoved his upper body forward so that he sat up in a sitting position, and he used his dagger to swipe at the Skultula's legs that kept it's hold on him. The monster hissed as its legs snapped and jumped back away from Link. Quick as he could, he rolled out of the beast's reach and stood  back up, keeping his eyes on the Skultula as he did so. Angry, the Skultula jumped at him blindly, and he neatly dodged its attack, causing the beast to try to stop, but ended up flipping itself over onto its back. Using his dagger, Link leapt into the air and stabbed the beast using the force of all of his weight right in the middle of its belly. The beast screamed, flailing it's remaining legs for a moment before it curled up and then disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Must have been a Trapdoor Skultula. I didn't know those still existed. They're notoriously weaker than Hanging Skultulas. I thought they'd died out ages ago.

Link nodded absently, cleaning his dagger off on his tunic before he continued through the maze. Eventually, he came across a door. He had a hunch he knew exactly what was inside the small room. The Purple Zardence. He braced himself, keeping a firm grip on the hilt of his dagger, whilst using his other hand to grab the doorknob and tu- It was locked.

"Huh. Must be a key hidden around here somewhere." He murmured mostly to himself. The wisp glided ahead of him as he walked back the way he came.

We haven't been down these two paths yet. The wisp pointed out.

Link chose one of the two paths and followed it. It didn't take him but a few minutes to locate the wooden chest that must have had the key in it. The problem was getting to it. The path the chest sat at the end of was not only blocked off, but also coated with a sticky mess of Skultula webs.

Look, Link. The wisp travelled through the webs to the corner of the hallway behind the wooden chest. A torch.

The plain stone torch was coated almost completely in the Skultula webs, camouflaging it against the rest of the hallway so that it was nearly invisible to the untrained eye.

"But how would we light it?" Link wondered aloud as the wisp returned to his side.

Sometimes a switch like the one we used earlier in the temple will light a torch. Or possibly a button or lever of some sort. Let's go back through the maze. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

Link nodded and turned on his heel, ready to make his way back through the maze, but was stopped in his tracks at what stood behind him.

"Thought I might find you here." The woodsprite snickered.