PART 1 - CHAPTER 8
It had been two weeks since the demon attack, and the paranoia was starting to wind down. There had been no more demon sightings. A kargarok had almost flown off with the potion shop owners’ three year old daughter, but she was rescued, and the general consensus was that the incident was unrelated.
For the knights and council, however, the danger was all too real. Especially for Talor. He had been ordered to carry around a can of red paint and green clothes in his pack at all times, so when the next attack happened, he would be ready. He secretly wished he hadn’t said anything during that meeting. His twin had said multiple times that the idea had been “crazy, but brilliant.” Easy for her to say. She didn’t have to actually do it. And his parents weren’t much help either. His mother kept insisting that he also have a bunch of heart potions available constantly, which was understandable since no parent wants to outlive their child, but not coming back alive was the last thing he wanted to think about.
“You seem worried.” The young woman looked up from her breakfast, her brown eyes full of concern.
Talor blinked. He had been seeing Jayla off and on for the past month, and she had noticed his sudden mood change...but she couldn’t know why! Not only was it classified information, but also, he was supposed to be a fearless knight. Jayla was a civilian, she didn’t have to deal with the dangers he faced just about every day. She wouldn’t understand.
A crash sounded from behind him, and garbage rolled across the floor. A fire orange loftwing began pecking at the spilled contents of the garbage can as her human companion spouted a slew of curse words. “I’m worried that Blaze will get sick from all that rotten trash. She does that every chance she gets.” That wasn’t a lie, even if the main reason he was worried had nothing to do with his sister’s loftwing’s gross habits.
Jayla shrugged. “I wonder if the vet can do something about that? I know they make sprays that are foul tasting to remlits that you can put on whatever you don’t want them to eat. Then again, it might be too much trouble to spray all the garbage cans in town...”
“Bzzt! You get that big feathered nuisance out of here this instant, human! But clean this up first!” The scrap shop robot was literally steaming. If looks could kill, and if robots could make facial expressions, Cass would be dead.
“Who died and left you in charge?” Cass snapped back. “Can’t you see I’m trying?”
“Scrapper! It was an accident, leave her alone!” Gondo shouted from his workshop.
“I better go help...” Talor stifled a grin.
Jayla smiled. “Okay. See ya.”
“Perfect timing.” Talor said as soon as he was out of Jayla’s earshot. “I almost spilled the beans...”
“Yeah, I don’t think that would go over too well.” Cass replied, chuckling. “And as for you,” she added with a slight glare toward Blaze, “I feed you enough. This is ridiculous.”
Blaze’s head shot up. She squawked and began hopping toward the bazaar entrance. There was no room to fly in a building, but loftwings were clumsy on the ground, so she almost ran over several people in the process.
A dusk blue male loftwing was at the entrance. He chirped a greeting to Blaze and the approaching humans, looking around like he was confused.
“What are you doing here, Nimbus?” Talor asked the bird. “Why aren’t you with Zelda?”
Cass shook her head. “Doesn’t Nimbus have purple wing tips? I don’t think this is him.” Each loftwing had a secondary feather color that appeared on the tips of the wings, on the chest, and around the eyes. While this one was the same main color as the queen’s, he had brown for his other color, not purple.
“I guess not.” Talor shrugged. “He’s friendly though. He can’t be from the wild...is Brandon’s loftwing still missing?”
“As far as I know, he is. Only one way to find out.” Cass snapped her fingers to get the loftwing’s attention. He looked at her, blinking. “That’s a good boy...” She patted his head. “Are you Rob?”
The bird blinked again, then flapped his wings and screeched softly.
“Looks like that’s a yes.” Talor shoved past Rob and walked out of the bazaar. “While I go get Frostbite, can you ask around to see where Brandon is?”
“Sure...”
When Talor returned with Frostbite, Cass was waiting outside the bazaar. “Pipit said he saw him go toward Skyview Temple, everyone else said they had no idea. And Zelda told me to tell you to keep the paint and the green tunic.”
“Like I have any other choice!”
Cass smirked. “She knows that. I think that’s just her way of giving us permission to go.”
“Well there are better ways if you ask me.” Talor said bluntly. “But then again, it is Zelda. Her method of courtship involves pushing the guy she likes off high places.”
“Yeah, Link never lets her forget that.” Cass laughed. “But it obviously worked. Even if it is risky. She’s lucky she didn’t make him break his neck.”
Rob waddled over, positioned himself between the twin knights, and clicked his beak loudly.
“Right. Let’s go.” Cass hopped onto Blaze and led the way.
Deep in the forest, there was an old overgrown building known as Skyview Temple. It had a serene, yet possibly dangerous feel to it. Strands of cobwebs hung from the entryway.
“Either the skulltulas moved, or someone or something came in here.” Talor announced.
Cass had a piece of paper in her hands. “There’s a spring in the back of this place? Wow...”
“Wha?”
“Zelda gave me Link’s map.” Cass showed Talor the paper.
“Link makes maps?” Talor blinked.
“Pretty sure he just marked it up, and that spirit that helped him out made it. Look at it, the captions are written in black ink, and everything else looks like it was burned on, almost like a magic brand kind of thing.”
“I still wonder if that spirit had any relation to the desert robots. From the way he says she had a statistic or a percentage for everything...sounds robot-y.”
“He also said she looked more like a person than the robots, but who knows.” Cass shrugged, then turned to the three loftwings and pointed to the roof of the temple. “Up there. Stay.”
Blaze and Rob flew up and perched on the roof. Frostbite stood there and looked at his master. “Din, Nayru, and Farore!” Talor snapped. “You go up there too, unless you want to be attacked by moblins!” Frostbite chirped and obeyed.
“Won’t listen to anyone but me...suppose that could be a good thing.” Talor walked into the temple, keeping his hand on his sword, with Cass behind him.
The building was full of mushrooms, cobwebs, and small trees. It smelled a bit musty, and the pollen in the air wouldn’t be good for someone with allergies. One sneeze would likely stir up a massive cloud of dust and attract the attention of the monsters in the area. Luckily, neither of the twins was allergic to anything.
Talor pointed at a tree with a broken branch. “You’re the tracker, Sis. Does this mean anything?”
“It could...” Cass looked at the branch. There was a clear, sticky substance where the break was. “But it looks like a skulltula bit it.”
As if it heard, a skulltula dropped from the ceiling, and would have landed on Talor if he didn’t move. The silk thread holding it up was promptly cut, and it fell to the ground, landed on its back, and was stabbed in the belly.
“Oh my gods, we’ve killed a pregnant skulltula!” Talor had a ball of silk on the end of his sword.
Cass made a disgusted face. “Yeah, that’s definitely an egg sack. We better smash it up. We don’t want a bunch of skulltulas with a vendetta against us for murdering their mom.”
“I’d rather have stupid bugs for an enemy than smart demons though.”
“Well, you’d end up having both.” Cass took the egg sack and chopped it into a pile of shredded silk, then looked at the map. “There should be a shortcut somewhere around here. It’ll take us to a big room, then there’s only one room between us and the spring. Otherwise we’ll have to go through more rooms and hallways. The sooner we get out of here, the better. We’ll be lucky if we don’t run into any more monsters.”
“You sure he’s at the spring?”
Cass shrugged. “Or near it. It’s a pretty straightforward path through the place. I’m thinking anyone would gravitate toward it anyway...” She scratched her head, then pointed to a note on the map. “Shortcut, look up. What?”
Talor glanced upward and saw a hole in the wall. It was big enough for the average person to crawl through. Climbing up would take some effort, but it was still possible. “You think that’s it?”
“Wow. That’s...the most unique shortcut I’ve ever seen.”
Talor chuckled. “Yeah. Looks just like something our lazybones king would try shoving his way through, too. He probably found out it was a shortcut on accident. This time it looks like curiosity did NOT kill the remlit.”
Cass was already climbing the wall. Slowly but surely, she was getting to the hole. “Gods, I wish I was better at this.”
“You look like a drunk squirrel trying to get to a songbird feeder. In the rain.”
“Oh, and I suppose you actually know what that looks like?” Cass had reached the hole and was now crawling through it. Talor shook his head and followed. He wasn’t much better at climbing the wall than she was. He kept his mouth shut this time.
On the other side of the wall, there was a moment of silence, then a loud yell sounded from the next hallway over. “That sounded like Brandon!” Talor grabbed his sword and started running toward the sound. Cass did the same.
A blade wielding skeleton had Brandon cornered. He had his sword out, and was backed up against the corner of the wall, glaring up at the monster.
“Leave him alone, Bonehead!”
“Go back to the cursed crypt you came from!”
Amazingly enough, the stalfos could still tell it had company, even without functioning ears or much of any other senses that the living take for granted. It rotated its skull and neck bones to look at what was approaching. Its eye sockets glowed red with undead energy, and its teeth chattered menacingly.
With the monster’s back turned on him, Brandon struck. The blade connected with the ribcage and crushed one vertebrae. The stalfos quickly whipped back around, flashing a blinding light from its eye sockets and holding its weapon above Brandon’s head. Then two swords slashed at it from behind, hitting the neck and disconnecting the skull. The stalfos collapsed into a pile of bones.
“Somebody didn’t pay attention in school...” Cass put her sword away and kicked the remains of the stalfos. The skull rolled away slightly. “Stalfos are easily disposed of by getting rid of the head. Aiming for the chest is asking for trouble, all that does is piss it off.”
Talor blinked. “There weren’t stalfos in the sky. We didn’t learn about them in the academy. They were one of the monsters Link told everyone about, remember?”
“What are you guys doing here?” Brandon asked, blinking.
“The question is, why do you wander away from the colony so often?”
Brandon hung his head at Talor’s question. “I search the woods as much as I can for Rob. I’m beginning to think he’s gone for good...”
“No he’s not.” Cass smiled. “He’s outside. He came back to the bazaar this morning.”
The flight back after the happy reunion was quiet and uneventful. Nobody noticed the glowing pair of yellow eyes hidden in one of the trees, watching...