...further down the tunnel. Everything echoed against the walls, making it difficult to tell where any sound was coming from. The steady flow of water continued to distort Link's sense of direction as the sound of ripples and drips added to the reverberating sounds.
The best he could do was keep running until he found some way up or out. He tried to keep the layout of the Greenhouse in mind, heading in the direction he thought went back towards the building, but in the end, he had no idea. The tunnel rarely divided, and when it did, one end remained blocked off by a series of metal bars not far after the pipe would split. Everything else looked pretty much the same otherwise, making keeping directions difficult.
Finally, the sound of the boko babas above stopped. Link figured he was beneath the greenhouse now. Or he hoped that was the case and that he wasn't further away. As he continued, he started to wonder what was in here before he restarted the irrigation pumps. Thinking about the boko baba hoard in the garden, he decided that he didn't really want to know and that this was likely much better.
Not much longer after he found himself beneath the greenhouse, Link started to hear screaming further down the pipes. Guessing Saruo was in trouble, Link picked up the pace and sprinted on towards the sound.
Rounding a corner, Link saw Saruo cowering behind one of her puppets as the other one smacked the front side of a skulltula repeatedly. The giant spider's shell would shudder with each hit, but the monster itself didn't move away from the attacks. It just kept its mandibles raised towards Saruo's puppets, warding off the attacks its front legs.
Link snapped the Spirit Whip out of his pack. He lashed the weapon out, catching the skulltula by its right legs. With a hard yank across his body, Link flipped the spider over. The next time one of the puppets attacked, their wooden claws managed to sink into the monster's soft underbelly.
As the skulltula disappeared, Saruo looked up. Before she could turn to face what remained of her attacker, she saw Link approaching her, whip and sword in hand. As Link put away his weapons, Saruo asked, "Did you kill it?"
"Not technically," Link answered, extending his hand for the skull kid. He knew she could float, but he felt that it was the gesture that counted. Saruo didn't seem to care, and took his hand as she floated back up into her normal hover. "Those puppets of yours are pretty mean."
Saruo nodded, silent. She seemed embarrassed again. Perhaps about needing to be rescued. Link asked, "Do you want to go protect the others?"
"No!" Saruo shouted, snapping out of her mood. "I'm not looking after those shrubs." She lowered her head a bit again as she muttered, "I'm braver than them."
Continuing down the tunnel, Link replied, "Bravery doesn't mean rushing into dangerous situations. It just means that you're willing to do something when no one else will. But that doesn't mean you have to run into it blind or unprepared."
Floating on behind him, Saruo grumbled, "Because you'd kno-" She stopped in the middle of her sentence, getting embarrassed again. Because Link would know, out of anyone. Parts of the Triforce didn't seem to pick the second best at something. But he wasn't the kind of person to brag about that, or to drive a point in.
Besides, regardless of how big her struggle was compared to Link's, Link still respected the fact that Saruo was struggling with a lot of guilt about her home. She blamed herself for the state the greenhouse was in already. He wasn't going to make her difficulties seem petty because he had to save the whole world. That just seemed like a rude thing to do.
Eventually, the tunnel ended. Another series of metal rungs had been driven into the wall, leading up to a wooden trap door. As Saruo continued to sulkily float behind him, Link climbed up the short ladder to push on the trap door. It start to open, before hitting something resting on top of it.
The gap wasn't large enough for Link to crawl through. "Saruo, do you think you can teleport into this room and tell me what's in there?"
Saruo crossed her arms. "I thought we weren't rushing into anything blind."
Link sighed and looked back through the gap. He scanned his small field of view and listened for any sign of movement. Nothing stirred in the room. Either it was empty or whatever was in there was very still.
"Why don't you throw a bomb or something in? That should take care of it," Saruo suggested as Link searched.
"I don't know what I'm throwing a bomb at though," Link said. "We'd really just be wasting bombs until something hit."
Saruo pouted. "Do I have to?"
Instead of nagging her about courage, Link answered as kindly as he could, "No, you don't. If you don't though, we're going to have to go all the way back around and find a solution from the other side."
"Would you be mad?"
"No."
Saruo rubbed the back of her right leg with her left, not looking at Link. She didn't say anything for a long while, and Link didn't want to push her. After the silence had persisted for a few minutes though, Link pointed out, "I'm only concerned about the others. I doubt anything is happening to them, but they may be getting nervous about us being gone so long. Either way, I don't want to leave them waiting."
Just like that, Saruo was gone. Link blinked as he watched her puppets come looming towards him on the ladder. The two wooden constructs pressed against him as he heard a voice overhead, "There's nothing in here but vines."
Link tried to push himself off the ladder as the puppets banged into the trap door, trying to get to Saruo. He didn't think they would actually be that heavy, but they were surprisingly sturdy. Unfortunately for Link in that moment. Head pressed to one of the iron rungs, Link tried to get Saruo's attention from his trapped position. "Sa-ruo."
"Look, I did it, ok. What else do you want me to find?"
"Saaah-ruoh." Link started to push himself down, searching for the rung of the ladder below him. One of the puppets bobbed upwards, causing him to lose his balance and clutch back on the rung where he was.
"I'm in here with a creepy Warden too. Do you think it's going to wake up? It's looking right at the trap door, but there's this table in the way. Oh, I wonder if it can't see the vine cause of that. Link, are you listening to me?"
One of the puppets snagged the back of Link's hood. Link tried to pull the hood loose, moving left and right to try and unsnag the cloth, but it just ended up with the hood falling over Link's head. Still trapped between the wall and the puppets, Link just set his head on the rung in front of him and prayed this wouldn't end in a disaster.
The whirring of the Warden started to make its way into the tunnel. Link heard a faint scream before the blast of the laser slammed into the the wooden trap door and then the wall behind him. Link felt his stomach turn. The puppets stopped bumping him as they fell over, emitting a cloud of purple gas. Link quickly removed his hood and pulled himself away from the ladder.
"What was that?! Did you make that thing shoot at me? What is- Are you ok?!"
Link only had a brief moment to feel relieved that Saruo had managed to get out in time before the attack. He leaned against the wall, spinning. The world around him was an unidentifiable haze. Link didn't want to know what kind of poison had just entered his system, but it wasn't any good kind.
Saruo, panicking, starting splashing water on him, before blinking in and out of the tunnel. Link pressed his back against the water, trying to stay awake as the world fought to go dark. He didn't think the poison was lethal, but passing out was not going to help his chances on testing that.
"Link, concentrate."
Something happened after Endeavor spoke though that Link had never heard before. The voice coming from Yore changed. It was gruff and distant, almost as if it wasn't speaking directly towards him, but somewhere near Endeavor.
"Did you hear that?"
Link thought he heard Endeavor cough, a wet cough. He couldn't tell for certain. Everything was already echoing because of the poison. But it sounded like she was coughing on something.
"Hero, find a baba pod. Fill it with fresh water and drink."
"I heard it. That rat's still in here. Find them."
As the voices went silent, Yore began to panic as well. Link set his head back on the wall. There wasn't a chance he was going to be finding anything in this condition. Saruo raced up, gripping his hand. "I've got it! Hold on!"
Saruo blinked out, to where, Link could only guess. What was happening with Endeavor? Was she hurt? Link gripped his stomach as pain began to burn his insides. He almost pitied any monster that ingested this toxin. Almost.
Moments later, Saruo reappeared, dropping down to the clear stream in front of them with the severed but intact head of a boko baba. The flower had withered significantly and the fangs were almost entirely gone. The grotesque tongue was dissolving as the pod filled with water, turning the liquid an opaque blue.
As Link started to slide down the wall, Saruo rushed the filled pod towards Link. She mostly splashed the mixture on Link's face, but some of the putrid mixture made its way down Link's throat. And as the liquid began to dry, it left a sticky residue on Link's face. The burning began to subside and Link's vision started to return. He let himself continue sliding until he was resting, taking a moment to breathe. "Thank you, Saruo."
"That's what you get for setting that Warden off on me!" Saruo exclaimed, snapping another pair of puppets in behind her. "You almost got me killed."
Link didn't bother arguing with her to correct what had really happened. Right now his mind was too worried about Endeavor, and what the Drex was facing. Yore seemed a little less panicked, but the hawk was still fairly restless. "I need to get out of here."
"You're going to leave?" Saruo asked, audibly worried.
Shaking his head, Link answered, "No, I'm still going to deal with whatever it is in that main chamber. But I think Endeavor is in danger, and I need to help her before it's too late. So I need to hurry."
Saruo seemed to understand how seriously Link felt about this. She just nodded, stating, "Well, it's a good thing you trying to kill me knocked out another chunk of that stupid vine."
After another minute of rest, Link made his way back to the ladder, climbing up into the now open room. It was filled with shattered pots and dirt, as if this was some kind of nursery for the other plants grown here. Unfortunately, the room was in serious disrepair.
As Link looked around for an exit, Saruo blinked in behind him. She looked around for a moment, saying, "I remember this place. They grew flowers here. For the school teachers and the gardeners."
"Were these other Sheikah?" Link asked.
Saruo shook her head. "I don't think so. It's hard for me to tell you fleshy people apart though. I think they were Hylian though."
"Humans?"
Again, the skull kid shook her head. "No, they had pointy ears, like you." After a moment, Saruo snapped up straight. "That's it!"
"What's it?" Link inquired, turning away from his search of the room.
"The school! The inside one. They would give us lessons in there, but one of the teachers had this big key they'd use to take us to go see the babies when they hatched," Saruo explained, getting really excited. "I bet their key is still there!"
Saruo blinked back into the hallway outside of the plant nursery. Link could hear her shouting down the hall at their other companions, who had been patiently waiting for their return. Link opened the door back into the hall, picking up the tail-end of her explanation, "-and so we gotta go into the classroom and find the key!"
"Is it really that easy? We could have started there," Wudhi said.
"Yeah, well, none of you thought of it," Saruo huffed, crossing her arms.
"Neither did you," Mismawn pointed out.
Link looked behind him. The plant nursery was closer to the front entrance, making this classroom the room in the back left corner of the greenhouse, still buried in vines. He had an idea at least on how to unbury it at least. Walking towards the end of the hall, Link drew the Sage's Rod...