by N Felts
to her.
“Hey,” Rift replies, briefly lifting a greeting hand. Not in the mood for conversation, he sees no reason to be unnecessarily rude.
“What are you fighting for?” She asks after a moment, reflecting on the question herself as she waits for his answer. It is a question she has asked herself time and again, yet the answer has seldom been the same.
“An end to suffering,” he stoically responds, shocking her with his immediate retort.
“An end to suffering,” she repeats, staring into space and nodding with comprehension. “Seems noble enough. Maybe that’s what I need.”
“Huh?” He inquires, leaning closer as her voice trails off.
“A noble goal. A just cause. You know, something worth fighting for,” she explains, simply thinking out loud at this point. “Something that will be there tomorrow, and the day after.” A short time passes with no words spoken, the two warriors contemplating their individual purposes.
“What will you do now?” Rift finally asks, breaking the silence.
“I’ll return to Gerudo Village. The traitor may not have been what she seemed. Maybe all Gerudo start to think this way once they’ve escaped the king’s influence. Think about living an honest life. A peaceful life. I only want what’s best for my people.”
“I understand,” the boy nods, smiling genuinely at her personal revelation.
“What about you?”
“I’ll just keep fighting I guess. They didn’t kill me. They’ll regret that,” he subtly proclaims, rising to his feet and dusting himself off.
“Haven’t you heard the stories about them? You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” she insists, standing upright herself.
“Maybe not, but that won’t stop me,” he shrugs, spinning into a defensive position when a scratching sound emanates from behind. A shadow beast crawls out through the opened portal stone, pulling its inverted form up onto the top of the dark monolith before spotting its company. The creature shakes with rage, its bulky, humanoid body topped with a large mask concealing its entire head. Dozens of thin tentacles protrude from the top and bottom of the faceless piece of intricately carved stone, hanging heavily while the creature takes in its surroundings.
“I’ll handle this,” Less declares, pulling a weighted kunai from the small of her back. Sensing the danger, the dark beast suddenly utters a terrible howl, quickly scampering down the side of the massive stone. Seconds later, dozens of the angry shadows climb out of the portal like ravenous insects, scouring the area for prey.
“You were saying?” Rift asks with a hint of anxiety. Rapidly locking onto the unfortunate duo, the creatures begin to encircle them.
“Follow me,” Less exclaims, plucking a special knife from a sheath on her arm and spearing it into the ground. An explosion of disorienting smoke engulfs the area as the monsters collectively charge inward. Struggling to keep up with the nimble scout, Rift only makes it halfway to the entrance before several more of the creatures appear in the archway.
“This way,” the boy instructs, grabbing the Gerudo by the arm and tugging her toward the outer wall of the coliseum. The number of aggressive antagonists continues to multiply as Rift leads Less to what appears to be certain doom.
“What are you doing? We’re trapped!” She shouts, jerking her arm free and loading her knuckles with projectiles. There are far too many to fight, but she has no intention of going down easily.
“Trust me,” the boy assures, scooping an arm around her waist and leaping toward the wall.
“What are you,” she shrieks, enraged by Rift’s seemingly thoughtless antics.
“Now!” He shouts, diving through the conjured portal on the wall as the monsters dive in for the kill. Tearing herself from the boy’s grasp, Less gracefully flips back onto her feet, though gravity betrayed her senses briefly. Ready to strike her brazen ally down, the sudden change in scenery finally eases into her perception.
“What,” she starts, absolutely confused when she spots the teeming mass of black on the ground far below them. High atop the crumbling walls of the structure, the entire desert is visible through the blanket of black cascading outward from the structure. The afternoon sun seems more like a full moon, the effect of the merging Twilight Realm causing midday to seem like midnight.
“It’s hard to explain. I wouldn’t think about it too much if I were you,” the boy shrugs nonchalantly.
“But,” she mumbles, blinking several times and shaking her head.
“Don’t you have a village to protect? These things will probably find it soon,” he points out, squatting down near the edge of the lofty balcony overlooking the area.
“Yeah… Who are you?” She finally asks, her curiosity peaked. Taking far too long to contemplate his answer, the boy studies the woman’s face before offering his reply.
“Nobody,” he sighs, turning away and dropping through another portal. The ghostly blue hue of the dimensional window fades away seconds later, and Less is left with more questions than answers. Nevertheless, the mysterious young stranger is right, and with no time to lose, she departs for Gerudo Village.
“She seemed nice,” Mai quips, insinuating something more.
“Oh don’t start,” Rift sighs, carefully eluding the patrolling beasts as he makes his way into the bowels of the prison. Their antics that of thoughtless animals at first, the boy notes their movements gaining a sort of purpose. They seem to communicate through inexplicable noises and gestures as they form a perimeter around the prison and prepare to move out across Hyrule.
“What? I only said,” the goddess starts, quick to defend herself.
“You don’t have to say it. You’re jealous,” he accuses with a smile, stealthily moving past chasms of sand, spiraling down into pits of certain death. The massive stone architecture of the structure implies its ancient nature, having been constructed long before the majority of the oldest buildings in Hyrule. The further Rift ventures inside, the less shadow beasts he encounters.
“How dare you,” Mai states slowly with an exaggerated attitude.
“Oh, here we go,” the boy chuckles, rolling his eyes. “I can’t even talk to a girl without you acting like this,” he asserts, the pair bickering like an old married couple as he searches for the entrance to the final temple.
“That tears it!” She asserts, her tone teetering somewhere between sarcasm and seriousness. “I’m not talking to you for the rest of the temple.”
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry,” he sarcastically groans.
“Nope. Too late. And I don’t like your tone either,” she points out, growing more and more stubborn all the time.
“Don’t be like that. I didn’t’ mean it that way,” he admits with a hint of sincerity. Even so, Mai holds true to her threat, and the boy continues forward in silence. A faint amount of light spills through a large crack in the ceiling, illuminating the otherwise dim area. Leaping across another death-trap of hungry sand, Rift reaches a corner of the room where the wall is oddly discolored. Apparently some sort of bizarre effect of the lighting, the boy knows better, stepping through the magenta-colored portal without a second thought. The Dark Spirit Temple is far more intimidating than Rift had anticipated. Standing within a small alcove of stone, a waterfall of deep, purple sand slowly pours around him, churning into a vast lake of inescapable grains. A barely perceptible hissing quickly becomes an unnoticed white-noise, the grains tumbling over each other in a slow race to the bottom. The setting is much darker than he would prefer, but four steady streams of dim, pink sand slither through the rivers of purple from the corners of the massive room. The pink sand seems to be the only source of light, glowing brightly at the sources, then slowly dimming as it disperses into the dry ocean. A staircase directly in front of the alcove leads gradually down, but the flow of sand has all but overtaken it, only small, elevated sections revealed between the rivers of purple tumbling over the path. Without
much choice in the matter, the boy begins downward.
The sand offers little current, Rift’s every step sinking knee-deep in the pink and purple mixture as he tries to avoid buried pitfalls. The crumbling path of the ancient temple drifts left and right as the boy continues down the twisting stairs, the amount of light slowly eroding away as he finally reaches the base. Held aloft by four stalwart pillars, a platform stands alone high above the whirlpool below. The roof of the lofted room points steeply upward like a short silo with a sharpened roof. His vision drifting up to the ceiling of the temple, the boy sees indiscernible shapes, the area above his position too dark to make them out clearly. A gazebo of sorts, the small structure before him has an octagonal exterior offering four entry points, but upon leaping the short distance into the tent of stone, Rift finds nothing of interest inside. Confused by the seemingly pointless area, he walks to the opposite side of the enclosure to find another small alcove similar to the one housing the portal at the entrance. At its center rests a large lever begging to be pulled. Two pillars stand between the boy and his goal, obviously having held up a bridge at some point in the past. Three brief leaps later, he has reached his destination, though the pillars expectedly crumbled and collapsed in his wake. Squeezing the handle of the large lever, Rift pulls it all the way to the opposite position
