Spirit Temple Ilona Raquel, HAREONite (4/2/3 Hylian) [Blonde Panther] Reward: Ember Seed Supply, +20 Rupees Kieran O'Halley, Hyrule Castle Guard (3/3/1 Hylian) [Samusbot] Reward: +40 Rupees Dungeon Music for ambience The desert was gentle today. Yes, the Haunted Wasteland was terrorized by one of the worst sandstorms of the season, but the Desert Colossus, home to the enormous structure known only as the Spirit Temple, was calm. Bathing in shade from the statue in the likeness of the Sand Goddess, the Desert Colossus was no longer tormented by the ridiculous heat that the rest of Tantari desert suffered under, and the breeze was fresh and gentle. However, Ilona Raquel didn't care about any of that right now. What she did care about was the horde of Leevers that had been nipping at her feet from the moment she had set foot in the Desert Colossus. For the past fifteen minutes, she had been doing nothing but fighting Leevers. It wasn't that she couldn't handle them -a couple of Spin Attacks more than sufficed to get about five off her back in one go- but there were so MANY of them... She could take down one batch, but as soon as she did, another was upon her within seconds. Finally, she had reached the tiled floor in front of the statue's entrance, where the Leevers couldn't reach her. Sheathing her sword and adjusting her white mantle, she turned to the man with her, who had also made it. "That was, eh... the opening salvo, I guess?" she said. "We've reached our destination though. According to my briefing, this is the Spirit Temple."
Kieran O'Halley was still looking out into the desert, glaring at the general area where the legendary Blue Leever burrowed back into the ground. 'Stupid Leever, now I've got all get all of these needle out of my stuff! If I see that thing again...' He looked over to Ilona. "From what I gathered from the local tribes, the Spirit Temple has no shortage of deadly traps or monsters, so we'd best take care not to set any off if at all possible." Kieran took a swig of water. "Remind me again what we're supposed to be doing here?
Ilona stepped inside the temple, removing her mantle as there was no longer a sandstorm she needed protecting from nor a burning sun that she had to keep from her skin. As she folded the mantle over her arm, she made motions as if counting on her fingers. "Well, the Spirit Temple is supposed to be home to a great evil that's always been dormant and sealed. Reports have reached us that said evil is stirring, though, and the Gerudo are alarmed. You, Sir Kieran, were sent to deal with it. Captain Denolle of HAREON has sent me both to help you and to retrieve something from deep inside the temple." When she set foot into the first room at the end of a long hallway, she heard something cutting through the air. As it came closer to her, she jolted back, raising her new shield between her head and whatever was coming her way. She immediately felt feedback from it, and heard something shattering. When she lowered the shield and looked at the ground in front of her feet, she saw shards of what looked like terracotta. Bending forward to pick one up, she felt it, confirming her suspicions. "Flying pots?" she muttered, "Now I've seen everything..."
Kieran's attention lay not upon the shattered killer pottery, but instead began to move about the room while identifying any potential threats. The only obvious threat in the room were two Armos statues resting on the floor past the staircase. He could also see the beginnings of two paths, branch to the left and right, though he would have to take a closer look. For now he turned to the expertly carved cobra statues on either side of the staircase, both with similar writing that was completely unfamiliar to him. "I don't suppose you can read these?"
Dropping the terracotta shards, Ilona rose to her feet and climbed the stairs to join Kieran. "I can't read Gerudo," she said. "I should probably invest in learning my languages, but for the moment, these writings are of no help to us unless we're going to be joined by someone who can translate them." Judging from his question, Ilona assumed that Kieran couldn't read them either, and she looked around. Careful not to touch the Armos, she immediately took off to the left side of the temple. At a first glance, it seemed as though the path ended almost as soon as it started, but the blonde's sharp eyes had been trained to discern the smallest thing- such as a coloration difference in the wall that warranted investigation. "This wall isn't... uuuuurgh..." She managed to squeeze her hand between the wall and the slab of stone that she had initially mistaken for a dead end. With all her strength, she succeeded in moving the slab a few feet, pushing it into the other side of the wall. Once done, she had created an opening that she could fit through if she pressed herself against the wall. "There's a passage," she said. "What about the right path?"
After hearing Ilona's response Kieran followed her up the stairs, Kieran did not disturb the dormant Armos despite being distracted by thoughts of the untranslated writing. Due to his lack of focus, he noticed neither the dust that fell from the ceiling, nor the barely audible groans of the stone as it shifted. "There's a passage, what about the right path?" Kieran forced himself to focus. He turned to the right side of the temple, only to find a massive block barring the path. The block was gray in color, adorned with the symbol of a crescent moon and a star. He did not attempt to move the block as he knew it was far too heavy to for him to move. "There's a huge block in the way, and I suspect that it isn't going to budge even if we work at it together. We probably need at least four people to move this thing."
"This way it is then," Ilona said, giving Kieran time to catch up to her before she squeezed past the fake wall. It was thin, fortunately, and on second thought it would likely have been entirely possible to blast it to smithereens with a Bombchu, but the opening was large enough for her to squeeze through and she soon came out on the other side... Only to have to dive out of the way of a laser. She had come out in a smaller, circular room, which had no cover to offer her and a Beamos in the middle. "Looks like that Bombchu is going to see use after all," she muttered, reaching into the pouch on her waist and jerking out a particularly large explosive rat. She pointed its nose in the general direction of the Beamos as she set it on the ground, before diving away from a second laser from the construct in the middle of the room. All she really had to do was keep dodging until the Bombchu made contact. With an enormous blast, the Bombchu hit the Beamos and obliterated it. Ilona sighed, standing straight and looking around. There wasn't much to be seen in this area, aside from two ceiling-height doors right next to each other and a couple of Keese on the ceiling. Some of them had dislodged from the rest in response to the shockwave from the Bombchu, but they seemed to have little interest in Ilona or Kieran.
