...back into the hall. It was quiet and still, like it always seemed to be in here. Likely due to the fact that air couldn't move freely in the building. As Link stepped out of the room, he pulled the manual back out of his belt. How it had survived intact through that fight he didn't want to question. All he wanted to know right now was how to finish restarting the greenhouse and deal with whatever was polluting the woods.
Link leaned against the wall across from the door. He put his hand up when his companions started to follow him out. "Just wait a moment. That shadow may be gone, but that may have woken something else up."
"Jumpy," Saruo sneered.
Ignoring her, Link flipped through the manual for where he had left off. "So we restarted the humidifier. What- Ah, here go. It looks like we need to restart the irrigation system. The pump for that is...behind the greenhouse?"
"In the nursery gardens!" Mismawn shouted from on top the seed pod. As everyone turned to him, the korok explained, "Behind the Greenhouse there was a big garden where all the sprouts would run around before going home. It was filled with flowers and sprinklers and a big pond with ducks."
"This was a full botanical garden, huh?" Link asked, looking between Wudhi and Saruo. It seemed like they would know, having lived so close to the Greenhouse when it was still in working condition.
Wudhi nodded. "It was filled with some of the most beautiful flowers in Hyrule. Probably not as big as the gardens at the Castle, but it was big enough for us. It's been such a long time since I was there."
Link walked back into the room where he had fought the shadow. He kept walking until he reached the back wall. "For some reason, I feel like going out the front door isn't the best idea to solve this." He paced the back wall, looking for some way out of the building. Part of the upper wall was crumbling away, too high to lift the seed pod through, but a large enough gap that Link thought he could slip through on his own.
Giving himself a short run and jump, Link pulled himself up the wall to the gap. He shielded his eyes for a moment as clear sunlight hit his face. After his eyes adjusted, Link swung down to the outside of the building. He hope that this would open a more reasonable passage back through the greenhouse once he restarted the irrigation system, but he doubted things would be that simple. They never seemed to be in these places.
Saruo blinked in beside Link as he landed on the far side of the wall. She hovered behind him as he scanned the garden. "I guess this is where all the monsters are."
Leering out of the garden beds were dozens and dozens of baba creatures. The carnivorous plants fought among themselves even as they snapped for sunlight in the ruins of a once tremendous garden.
"If one of those sees you, you're as good as dead. There are too many to fight off at once," Saruo stated. "Do want to burn them too?"
Link studied the meat-eating bed of plants. He didn't doubt he could burn his way through this tangled nightmare, but with the number of heads reeling beneath those sticking out, he wasn't sure what good burning these boko babas would be. Another layer of monsters would just come through as soon as he started the flame, and he would need to maintain the energy he could to navigate through the garden beds to the far side.
After a moment, Link became aware of a second sound. He looked up to follow the noise and saw a triad of leaves swirling around like a propeller. Suddenly, a sac of discolored fruit dropped from the twirling leaves. And as one of these appeared, Link began to note more and more of this grotesque creatures popping in and out of their leaf propellers.
"That's a lot of crap to fight through," Link murmured. Instead of reassessing the scene for a better way to fight through the garden, Link just pulled his hood back on. And like that, he felt any problems navigating the garden vanish.
Ignoring Saruo's confusion, Link jogged towards the garden. With the boko babas and peahats unable to see him, he didn't worry about walking into the paths. Still, he felt a little unnerved being so close to their toothy maws and gave the man-eating plants a wide berth.
Link woved his way through the overgrown pathways. The journal noted that the irrigation system should have been in the farthest corner of the garden from the greenhouse, hidden in a copse of fruit trees. Still, through all the ravenous plant growth, finding a copse was surprisingly difficult. Sure, there were the looming trees that made up the Lost Woods, but no trees bearing fruit. It was late fall, Link was surprised there weren't more trees turning orange and red, but there were certainly no trees in sight bearing fruit.
After a while, Link stopped. He hadn't really gone terribly far into the garden but far enough that he couldn't see where he had been. He looked at the two paths ahead of him, his ear buzzing. He felt like he could hear a high pitched ringing, but there was nothing nearby to make it. The only other noise was the noise of the boko babas' tongues running over their mouths and the peahats hovering overhead.
Pressing his hand over his ear to stop the ringing, Link looked around the boko babas. Nothing. Nothing besides demon plants as far as the eye could see that could possibly be making that sound.
The smell of ash began to fill Link's nose. He wrinkled his face at the smell, confused as to why his senses were picking up these strange things. Turning towards the scent though, Link thought he could faintly make out a light. A bright, cyan light.
Link's eyes widened before he forced himself to roll sideways. He clutched his hood at he landed, not wanting to get devoured by a boko baba by his hood falling off. The plants screamed as a massive laser cut through them.
There was an active Warden in here with Link. Carefully, Link walked over to the gap the laser had created. Already, new boko babas climbed up to replace the ones that had been cut down. But through the space Link could still see the glowing eye of a Warden. Fortunately it seemed to remain stationary where it was, but its eye was trained on Link.
"Yeah, that seems about right," Link muttered, before pushing himself off to the left again out of the way of the blast. Right now, he didn't want to know why this particular Warden was shooting at him. He just wanted to get to a place where he could deal with it.
There was at least one good thing to come out of this burst of attacks from the formerly inactive robot. When the Warden's laser cut through the boko babas, Link could see the far side of the garden. That side of the garden also had a crazy Warden shooting at him, but that was a problem he would deal with when he got there. Right now he just needed to get there.
The closer and closer Link got to the far side though, the sharper the turns he had to pull off to dodge the lasers. Before, he hadn't felt like the pathways between flower beds had been too close. Now he was pulling hard to make sure he had cover and room to escape when he heard that high pitched ringing signalling another attack being launched at him, while also making sure he didn't get too close to a boko baba that might still enjoy an invisible Hylian meal.
Finally, Link rounded the bend out of the mess of boko babas. The Warden was still trained on him. Thirty feet away, Link could see the circle of fruit trees marking the location of the irrigation system's controls. He pulled his sprint away from the copse, worried about the Warden damaging the system. Still, he had to take out this machine before he could deal with rebooting the greenhouse anymore.
Link pulled his hood off and drew his blade, prepared for a fight. All he had to do was stab that thing's eye, right? If it couldn't see, it couldn't shoot. He could get close enough to do that.
But as Link turned to charge the Warden, he found it inactive. The machine had gone quiet. Link lowered his sword and set his head back. Was he seeing things?
"What is going on?!"
Saruo's voice floated over the garden. "Are you alive over there?!" she shouted. "Heeeeeello?"
"I'm alright," Link answered, walking up to the Warden. He wasn't entirely sure about walking right up to the thing that had just been firing lasers at him, but right now he wanted answers. He figured he would be able to tell easily if the robot decided to come back online.
Behind him, Saruo teleported over to his side of the garden. "Could you have done that to begin with?" Link asked.
"Maybe, but I didn't know what was over here," she replied. "Evidently there was an active Warden."
"Fair enough, but it doesn't seem active now." Link placed his hand over the Warden's eye. "This thing could see me when I was running through the garden, even while I was using the Cloak."
"So it was shooting at you?"
Link nodded. "Yeah. Did it hit you?" The skull kid shook her head. Link went on, "Good, it tore those boko babas apart. Would hate for you to be caught in its line of sight."
Saruo shuddered as Link continued to poke the Warden's eye. She asked, "Is that going to turn on again?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out."
"Is poking it the best idea then?"
"Probably not, but we don't exactly have anything better to do to figure it out." Taking a step back, Link gave the Warden another look. "When it activated before, it was because of the vine."
"But it's not hunting these boko babas," Saruo pointed out, gesturing to the swarm of plant monsters beside them.
Link crossed his arms, studying the robot. "I wonder if it attacked me because of the Cloak. It thought I was from the Spirit World, like that shadow. Perhaps then the Wardens are still hunting the shadow, and they'll attack anything from the Spirit World. It could be impossible for them to tell the identity of objects from the other world, so they just treat them all as threats."
"Then how are you going to get back to the other side of the garden?" Saruo asked. "If it's attacking you because of the Cloak, then you can't wear is again without it constantly shooting at your back while you're running. And if you don't wear it, all those plants are going to eat you."
"Let's get this irrigation system working again and see if maybe that helps solve some of our problems first," Link suggested, walking away from the Warden. "One problem at a time and all."
The two made their way back into the circle of trees at the rear of the gardens. Link pulled a bush aside where a lever was hidden beneath. He pulled the switch down and then back into its original position, hearing a click as machines began to turn. A pump starting somewhere nearby and water starting to rush through pipes.
"How do we know the vines won't corrupt this water supply like it did with the pools?"
Link shrugged, standing up. "We don't, but at least we can come back here if they do. Not much we can do to test that right now."
The ground rumbled beneath them as water began to rush through the pipes running below their feet. Link looked around, wondering if there was any kind of access to the tunnels below. Going through the the pipes was probably going to be faster than trying to find his way back through the the maze of boko babas.
His boot hit metal. Link looked down at the metal grate before bending over to try and pulling it open. After a moment of pulling, the grate pulled free, revealing a steady stream of water running towards the greenhouse. A row of metal rings were driving in the wall beneath the new opening.
"Should you really be going down there?" Saruo asked as Link dropped down to the middle rings of the ladder.
Link looked up, confused. "A while ago you thought I was overly jumpy. Now I'm exploring the greenhouse and you're being jumpy." The skull kid shifted uncomfortably. Link continued down the ladder to the floor below. He shouted up, "If you're nervous, go keep the others safe. This might lead into another section of the greenhouse behind those vines. I should at least check it out."
A moment later, Saruo appeared beside Link. She retorted, "I'm not babysitting those shrubs."
The tunnel echoed with the sound of flowing water. Overhead, Link could still hear the salivating of the boko babas. A few of their roots managed to find their way down through the cracks of the tunnel. Even worse, a few full grown plants hung upside down among those roots.
Drawing his blade, Link watched the plants carefully as he approached. They were high enough up this his sword would most likely just bounce off their tougher outer form instead of being able to land a hit on them.
Saruo whispered behind him, "Are these things really that bad?"
"No, I just don't have the reach to hit them," Link answered, keeping his back to the wall. "I'm going to slip by them."
"I'm gonna kill them," the skull kid responded, snapping her fingers. Immediately, two puppets dropped down out of thin air. Their unnatural bodies contorting at odd angles.
At the sight of the larger, floating creatures, the boko babas turned their attention to Saruo's puppets. A boko baba lunged at one of the puppets, but found the hard, claw like hand of the puppet piercing the back of the boko baba's head. A moment later, the speared plant evaporated into smoke.
Floating out away from behind Link, Saruo laughed. "That was so easy. You're scared of nothing."
Link raised his sword up to the full extent of his reach as the puppets finished off the few boko babas. "No, I really could not reach them from here."
Still laughing, Saruo just shook her head. "Alright, Mr. Hero. I'm going to go save the greenhouse while you check corners." With that, she floated off down the hall, her puppets in toe.
As Saruo vanished around the corner of the tunnel, Link sighed and shook his head. Keeping his sword at the ready, Link jogged on after his companion...