Confronting the Eyes Cavern (Ice Cavern with Cloob and Genz)

It was a long few months. Struggling with The Twister's metaphysical decisions wasn't a choice Evelyn took lightly. This would be her only shot at trumping her old combat style, making her power matter. Eve could feel it driving her to do things that couldn't be accomplished without motivation. However, she had to start from square one, as she was tossed into the dusty streets with a curse. She couldn't even look at most people without suddenly wanting to run up to them to give them the definitive knuckle sandwich.

It wasn't tragic, even to herself. There was just something funny about magnetically being dragged into things and having beefy arms smash them into refuse. However, this made social things a bit. . . awkward. Eve realized eventually that the only way to return to town and receive quests was to just go in there blind. The most this could risk was a broken quest board and a few confused people. So, Eve took on one of her spare dress sashes as a blindfold to stop her from hitting people long enough to view the quest board.

It was a wonky fix but a fix nonetheless. Besides, being a total freak was nothing new to her. Eve peaked out from under her sash. Finally something on the quest board caught her eye. She knew this name. . . Julius Surgate of the guard. He was the guy who broke her out of the Forsaken Fortress that one time. Probably also the guy from twenty years ago during the war. Eve didn't remember any of this, she just thought his name looked funny. The acquisition was to clear out a frozen cave to protect some Zoras from some horrible fate of being attacked or frozen. It looked like it was also about. . . carrying out some "dank ores" he thinks are in the cave. Eve wasn't entirely sure of this as she stuck the blindfold back on to get right out of there. She bolted for her hoard of clothes, squirreled away in some vacant part of town. This job was going to require a scarf.

After a brief change of clothes, Eve bumbled along to the stated address. She wasn't sure where she was, actually. Sometimes a cave was just in a really vague place, where you weren't sure how you got there once you followed the address. Kind of like going up a mountain trail where the trees weren't colored for the opposite direction. As always, Eve's really comfy boots took a lot of the edge off of the frosty terrain. Approaching the entrance was easy, she just had to spot it from far off by the dark opening in the white ice and snow. The difficult part was getting the blindfold on in case Julius was already in there. She took the safe option and put it on early. It would be a bit of a stumble getting in there but it would pay off in many rupees soon enough.

Eve put her hand in her mouth as she entered the cavern. She knew sudden movements or noises could set something off. Her breath turned to white steam in the frosty enclosure. A faint sparkle glistened off of her extravagant outfit, gleaming bits of light onto the wall off of her bracelets and such. The smell was surprising as she entered. . . smoke. There must have been some kind of torch burning deeper in. As designated, she planted her feet somewhere not far from the entrance so her accomplice could spot her.

Julius approached in his usual garb -- at this point, it was his typical blue-black-gold armor, which actually looked quite appealing against the backdrop of the snow. Underneath it, however, he wore clothing constructed from a combination of White Hide and Dodongo Hide -- and, with his ensemble completed, he could go wherever, whenever, however he wanted.

This included the almost surely freezing depths of the Ice Cavern. A while ago, he had gotten word that some Zoras had been holed up there -- why, he almost certainly could not discern, but it aligned with his interests twofold: first, he could save hapless denizens of the Goddesses' fair land, while simultaneously excavating the ores he thought to rest there.

But the caverns were not without peril. Julius was aware of what was likely there: Wolfos and Freezards. Those two seemed to be... somewhat of a given, though he couldn't quite tell why. Of course, he was more a history buff than any kind of biology enthusiast.

It would all be mostly useless, however, given that the true enemy would actually be the one who had decided to take his request of helping him remove the valuable ores from the premises... preferably after the Zoras were evacuated. He had no fears that they wouldn't be able to fend for themselves after they escaped the caverns -- but he knew that Zoras were particularly susceptible to lower temperatures.

He approached the entrance of the cavern, next to a frozen lake. There was... a rather small girl there, who seemed to be rather unprepared for exactly how cold things were going to get inside of the cavern. Still, she seemed rather familiar... It must be old age getting to me, he thought to himself as he drew closer to the girl. Something was... bound, over her eyes.

"Hello," he began, noticing all the light reflecting from her body. He could only imagine how bad it would get once he drew his sword... "I assume you're the one who's taken my request, yes? I'd advise you to be careful. The floors here are rather slippery, and I don't want you getting yourself hurt before we get those Zoras and those ores out of here." He looked across the opening of the cavern. He could already see bits of Red Ice around the opening, and some of the larger pieces of ice... This was going to be fun.

And it was not going to be actual fun, for anybody. Julius made a motion as a Keese poofed into existence. He communicated with it to scout the area -- which was more like flying off in a random direction, and then seeing if it returned or not. Not that Julius necessarily cared, which... sometimes he did. But these Keese came from nowhere, and likely returned to nowhere after their service.

Julius marched forward into the cave, bringing the young girl -- a Kokiri, he thought she looked like -- along with him. But of what awaited them further inside, none could be sure...

"Hey you! You must be the guy. I'm not as wealthy as I look, so I do need my payout after all of this mister clanks." Eve gestured, looking the wrong way. The faint sound of his armor cued her to turn around. "Speaking of such I will personally lead the way for this section. There's some ice I want to test." she finished as she paced forward carefully.

There was sure enough a formation of ice sticking up from the ground. Without intending to remove the blindfold, Eve approached it carefully. She wanted to make sure Julius could see. Her goofy lips perched up the side of her face into a sideways smirk. Eve threw her fist, bare except for the gloves that coated them. The small hand crashed against the ice and rebounded off the slick surface.

"OW the stuff is hard! I think I cut my hand." the Kokiri fumed as she held her thumping hand upward. "Don't say anything I meant to do that!! Just keep going."

Frivolous as it was, Eve had just proven that it would take the steel of a weapon to chip the stalagmites of dense ice. She couldn't go running around blind for the whole gauntlet of challenges this place probably had in store. Eve took the next few steps carefully, commanding her unhurt hand to her adventure pouch to slide out a warhammer. Something of this ilk would be more than effective against ice formations. It suddenly occurred to Eve that she would also submit to the cold if left long enough. She tried to think of a solution as she bumped into the wall, Julius likely keeping up with her easily.

"I have an idea." she suggested as she faced the wall with a now-reddish face. "Those Keese you keep sending out, it might be brighter and warmer in here if you turned some of them into Fire Keese with these torches. As an old dungeoneer I had to learn to avoid that! But you're their boss so they won't attack you right?"

"I... do not understand how you knew of my summons, but that is an idea, and I thank you for it." Silently, he commanded the Keese to alight itself with the flames -- it seemed almost happy to do so, but considering their nature... it might not have been strange; for Keese, at least.

"Anyways, as to your last question-- I know little of how this works, but they follow my commands to the best of their ability. Though... given the fact that they are Keese, they can follow no commands more complex than 'Fly here' or 'Attack this' or that, and so on and so forth. At the moment... I would estimate I am able to currently sustain only one Keese with however much energy or whatever you wish to call it that allows you to summon forth such creatures -- but, given enough time, and perhaps someone to study under... It would not be long before I perhaps would be able to summon, what, a dozen? And maybe as I gain more knowledge of this ability, I'll be able to summon other creatures as well; the next creature that comes to mind is a ChuChu, though perhaps a Skulltula, or Wolfos, would eventually be possible... It is strange, though. For the longest time I had thought myself inept to magic; though perhaps I am simply... inept, I suppose, when it comes to spells like Fire or even a simple Magic Bolt. Of course, I could be entirely wrong."

That entire time, they were walking somewhat unobscured into the deeper parts of the cavern. However, only a short while after he finished his long, almost monotonous speech about whatever his strange ability was. It was... the first, maybe the second time he found himself plagued by the enigmatic being known as The Twister -- but next time, now that his presence seemed more . . . solidified, perhaps, in the mortal realm; next time, Julius had something in mind for him. He knew he could find him again.

Anyways-- past Julius' rather off-topic thoughts, the duo would find themselves in a rather wide, yet flat room; there were plenty of alcoves and ledges that seemed to lead deeper into the cavern... but where would they go from here? Unfortunately, due to the extreme cold the environment presented, the location lacked a complete map -- it seemed to stop just a bit away from the center of this room. If Julius had to force a guess, this was where the cartographers got too cold to continue mapping and writing, but Julius was fine. He knew little of how the Kokiri fared, but he was much too caught up in surveying the area to pay mind to her current state.

"Now, thanks to how undisturbed this place is... There should be plenty of the rarer ores here -- perhaps Goron Iron, though it is probably... the most common, I would argue, of the rarer minerals that we might find here. Splinter Crystal is a possibility -- though I haven't heard of a deposit of it that wasn't so heavily infested by monsters that it could readily be accessed. Mirror Silver, like my sword, Litonium... perhaps we might find Cloudstone, but I'm unsure if it would be here. It seems cold enough for it... I'm sorry, am I boring you? I don't know what you know of blacksmithing, or how interesting any of this is to you." Julius finished up his drivel -- boring to some, yet intriguing to the few who understood his craft -- but, surely, the amount of ores they could conceivably find here would outnumber many of the 'confirmed' locations of the others. There was a reason, after all, as to why Gorons had such an easy time mining Goron Iron.

Either way, his eyes came to rest upon the enormous cubes of ice that were lying upon the ground; surely, they could slide upon the ice-slick surface, though it might take rather incredible strength to do so. At the least, surely himself and his underling could push them with effort.

Eve yawned loudly and blatantly.

"This is mostly boring to me, the technical blacksmith deal. Though I really like hammers. . . Tell you what, Silver. If these ores will make us some delicious rupee action then I'm with you all the way." she off-handedly remarked with her hands against a huge ice cube.

Things were getting cold, even with Eve's best clothes. She found it harder to ignore the cold with her hands planted on the ice. A few inches more and Eve realized she didn't know where she was pushing the block to. Eve stopped and turned her head toward Julius. It remained clear that she was blindfolded. Following Julius' advice, she noticed she could be looking for ores deeper in the caves. Her hands came off of the block and she stood up straight.

"Sorry Silvs I should probably take this blindfold off. But you don't wanna be near me when I do. It's a long story from me running into one of those curse-peddlers. You know who I mean I think? Creepy smiling dude. I can look for stones without looking at you though. So I think we should test this out, if you don't mind me wandering a few feet ahead for a minute." Eve explained to the guard. She imagined a stern face from beyond her blindfold. She found it hard, even with the curse, to want to eye-punch somebody serious and cooperative and profitable and handsome like that. It was a shame.

Eve went around the ice block and slowly removed her blindfold. She was soon overcome with wonder. Everything sparkled in the light of the Fire Keese and the torches, as if the cave were made out of polished sapphires. Was that. . . ruby? Eve remained confused by the Red Ice. She figured it was better not to think too hard about it, as Julius would have spotted it if it were valuable. The lit area was filled with other blocks just like the one she had been crawling around with. There MUST have been more to this cave. The monsters, the freezing Zoras, they all must have been connected. Regardless, they'd have to travel deeper if they wanted to find something truly valuable. Eve continued to scout the room.

It seemed there was indeed a door to the inner chambers. Eve legged it over to the large slab door. It was locked? She took this moment to relay the message.

"Sparkles! There's gotta be some mechanism to unlock this thing, mister!" she echoed down into the other end of the chamber.

She did see a faint glint of his armor from the other side of the blocks. Better not keep looking at him. Though it seemed she was right about him being sparkly. If there was a switch, the guy could have been heavy enough to keep the thing down permanently, but she wasn't about to bring up the subject of his weight. She wanted to be professional today, or at least for five minutes. Figuring he got the message, she intended to find an alternate route. Eve yanked her battle hammer out of her adventure pouch. Somebody would have to crank up security if this worked. Eve slammed the hammer into the cerulean door. A painful vibration went up her arms from her weapon and she fell over. No dice.

"Sorry Captain Sparkles it looks like WE CAN'T BREAK THE DOOR!" she hollered back while stomping her foot. She slipped the blindfold on in order to head back.

Julius heard his associate's cries of being unable to break the door, which... Honestly surprised him that there even was a door, in the first place. He thought long and hard, before he started scanning the are around them. On a ledge, up above and beyond them, there was some kind of brass -- maybe copper? -- switch, sat well above and beyond any height that Julius himself could reach.

Thinking quickly, he began to push and shuffle around the blocks of ice -- taking care to holler out, "Don't touch any of the red!" He knew well about the dangers of Red Ice, having done his research before he embarked upon his expedition. It would burn to the touch -- just like how Blue Fire froze anything its flame touched. In a way, they were strange natural counterparts to each other, and it raised a few question in his mind that were quickly forgotten.

The blocks were finally all in place, and so, he began his ascent -- not that it was necessarily an easy ascent, mind you -- he was pulling up himself, plus the weight of whatever equipment he had upon himself. Either way, the surfaces were slick, only causing him further trouble -- but, eventually, he managed to get to where the switch resided without much of an issue. He pounded his foot upon it, causing it to depress into a groove, as the sound of chains hitting the floor echoed across the caverns.

He hopped down the blocks again, making his way to the door. He wondered, briefly, how she was faring. She had let out some kind of pained cry earlier, but he knew that she, at least, seemed capable of enough. Surely, there wasn't some kind of immediately life-threatening creature beyond the door that he had, most likely, just opened...

Eve smacked her hand to her mouth. What was that about touching Red? Her inferior mind immediately turned to thoughts about touching Rika. Poking his face... it was getting a bit too lewd for her. She tried to shake it out of her mind as she scouted the inside of the next area. Even she wasn't surprised that it was just another icy-cavey area. This one had tunnels, though. Tons of spikes as well. How would she look out for all the sharp bits with the blindfold on?

Eve thought for a bit, probably longer than necessary. There was a way to stop the urge to punch things, wasn't there. She remembered what the faceless face told her. That thing would follow her for eternity wouldn't it? She remembered some of the details. Sure she couldn't really go into a shop or something without looking at people. But this guy was in full armor. He was totally metal. All she had to do was bang on it a couple times. She had to trick him.

Eve slowly turned to Julius, who was quickly arriving at the door. Her plan was so moronic but it was too late to stop. She opened her eyes wide and cocked her entire body around. She spotted Julius' full body for the first time today. He was. . . blue, not silver. Whoops.

"Blue guy! Look out!" she shouted spontaneously.

Eve lunged at the guard with her whole body. She twisted her shoulders quickly and slammed a fist as lightly as she could into the thick part of his armor. There was a mild metallic thud as she whacked into it, then she recoiled.

"I got it! Good thing I was here, huh?" she confirmed before stepping back a bit. She'd rather do this than explain. . .

He could probably see it now. At the center of her eyes were broken-up pupils. As they were the same on each side, they almost looked like little purple fists. She quickly turned around so he wouldn't get a good look at them. Her blindfold tied snugly around her waist, like a belt or a sash. She bumbled forward, sweating internally.

She took several steps into the tunnel, expecting Julius to reply immediately. Though she was already moving slowly, she soon came to a stop. To the right was an enormous figure. An actual sweat drop formed on her forehead before slowly freezing on her face. Something was watching them. Evelyn twisted her mouth before nervously bending toward the thing to get a look. She was relieved to find it was just a pile of snow. But it was definitely staring directly at her. It had a face, a cape, and mysteriously a full mouth of yellowed teeth. The demented snowman did not budge an inch, so Eve tried to relax. Moving on now, she thought.

"What the--" he struggled to say as her fist suddenly slammed into his armor. Thankfully, he didn't feel much -- she hit like a girl, anyways.

Either way, he chose to not think much of it. She had mentioned something or other about curses -- but it was ludicrous to think that she would be doomed to ineffectively punch whatever, or whoever, she saw. He knew of his own curses, from the Twister -- and they were all, in one way or another, a boon as much of a curse.

However, she soon came to a stop before him in the hallway. There was... some kind of twisted snowman. Maybe whoever -- or whatever, more likely -- was keeping the Zoras here had built this as some sort of practical joke. No, that's too childish, he thought, before meeting its gaze and noting its absolute lack of dental care.

Someone needed to find a better dentist. Or maybe a proctologist, what with the sour expression seemingly glued to its face. Julius was suddenly glad he was in good health, even in his old age.

"Well," he began, still somewhat nervously eyeing the snowman, "What do you think we should do here?" He asked Evelynn, who seemed almost literally frozen with fear at the sight of the snowman. Still, he didn't think that he felt any sort of malicious energy or whatever coming from the ice golem. Probably.

Maybe it was just the annoying, actually natural Keese here. He soon commanded his own summon to take care of them with relative ease.

Grave thoughts on dumb looking snowmen set aside, Eve made her way through the hallway. She had to adjust her eyes to what little light was in the cavern. There was a glow peeking through the opening of the current tunnel. Eve stopped to squint at the doorway, bending slightly. A sound crackled above her like the shuffling of stones.

All at once, a massive icicle fell inches from Eve's face violently to the floor. Her often-goofy eyes cocked in bewilderment. If this were likely to happen every few steps, they were in for the camping trip of their lives. Eve squirmed, unwilling to keep testing the cave walls for what patience they had for letting loose. There were a few options, at least at the limits of Eve's own imagination. She could run really fast under them, she could have Julius try to block them. The third and final moronic idea she cooked up; try to figure out if the icicles were actually sentient using a vast set of parameters and controls for said experiment. The circle of stupidity was complete. It became clear that being scientific for once was the single dumbest thing they could do. The big guy would certainly lose interest and leave if she showed interest in stalling that long. There was minerals he was here to find, after all.

Step one seemed like the best plan then. Eve braced her head and dashed toward the light. She could hear the creaking and squeaking like nails on a chalk board as multiple allegedly cognizant icicles busted from their stone prison. An apt analogy if the icicles hadn't been falling to their deaths and shattering to bits. Not even Eve's memoirs would be insane enough to record a story about icicles committing mass suicide. That's where she drew the line. Well, that and lewds. No self-respecting citizen of Hyrule leaves their private matters in writing for adventurers to find. That's just asking for disaster. Anything weird was staying right in Eve's head where it belonged.

She came to the edge of the better-lit cave. It seemed to be about the size of the large chamber they found the switch in. This one was more cluttered and less empty, though. The first thing that caught her attention was a huge blade of ice, which twirled menacingly. It took a moment for her to wrap her head around it. The ice traps seemed logical and efficient compared to this. It was just supposed to spin here forever? To chop up people who can't keep away from it? Eve would have fixated on this concept if the place hadn't been filled with so many things.

Notably, the place was filled with creepy looking horned ice sculptures. Without some sort of monster encyclopedia, Eve couldn't really know what they actually were. Logic would have it that they were the reason the giant whirling blades were so effective. They would be the moving entities that shoved people into them. Eve also didn't have the capacity to figure that out, though. She tilted her head back. There would suddenly be less or more of them as she turned her head. They were disappearing? Was it a trick of the light?

The final strange thing about the cave was the floating metal. Eve wildly kept track of each thing in the room. She spotted more than a few times the presence of some odd rupee-shaped metal objects hovering peacefully in place. The floating treasures were positioned in such a way that, each one individually was difficult to reach. As such, it was also hard to place a number on how many there were. They did seem rather inviting, though. If this was anything like previous puzzles she had seen, they would probably need them to continue. Eve tilted he head around more. . . there was even one metal rupee near the ceiling next to some sort of hook. There was no way in hell she was jumping that high. She knew she had to tell Julius. It also occurred to her that there was another reason for collecting these. The metal they were made out of could end up being a specialty material, should they unlock the door after gathering them.

"Uh, Buckets, you might wanna take note of all this metal I'm finding. There's one up there! I hate how high up it is! IT MAKES ME FEEL TINY! GET IT DOWN!" Eve hassled the soldier.

As she made a scene of things, the ice sculptures began to move. One hefty Freezard made its way silently toward Eve.

Julius stepped onto the icy floor, unaware of anything going on in the next room. However, as his foot connected to the floor, he found himself slipping and sliding -- bowling almost immediately into the path of the twirling ice blades.

He was extremely lucky in this scenario, however. Firstly, he was wearing actual armor -- so they woldn't have hurt him that much. Probably, at least. Secondly, he had actually fallen down (and probably broken a hip in the process), out of the way of the contraption.

Then, he did exactly what she had asked, and took note of all this metal she was finding. He hadn't ever seen anything like this, but their properties didn't seem to match anything he was aware of -- not Mirror Silver, or Memory Metal, or...

He didn't have any time to ponder that next 'or'. One of the Freezards -- or whatever they were -- was closing in on his hired help. "Watch out!" He yelled, before pulling his Hookshot from his Adventure Pouch, targeting where the highest rupee hung. He considered, briefly, as to how he was going to exactly survive the fall; he could probably catch the hook, and then... Well, it worth a shot.

He took the chance, and rocketed upwards, past the spinning blades of icy doom, and out of the trajectory of a few of the Freezards. "They can breathe ice, too probably!" He yelled, as he launched towards the metallic rupee at an increasing speed. She didn't have the benefit of White Hide as he did.

He hoped he could protect herself -- he would probably spend the majority of his time up here, collecting the gems to complete whatever completely asinine puzzle had somehow been set in play here.

With his opposite hand free, he caught his intended destination, and stowed his Hookshot for a moment before pocketing the rupee. Now... He just had to aim very carefully at his next target, and he should be fine. Hopefully. It was probably completely luck that he had even made it to this one.

He wasn't sure how old his Hookshot was now; all he knew was that it had travelled potentially hundreds of years into the future, and that it was serving him damn well now. Very carefully, he began to take aim like he was hunting a particularly meddlesome hare.

He swore to Farore that his aim would be true.

Upon being told to watch out, Evelyn turned around. She snorted at the sight of one of the ice sculptures sliding toward her. It looked very crudely made, with sharp edges jutting out all over. With a huge nose, she added. Having defeated a Freezor before, she greatly underestimated the glorified chunk standing before her.

Her hire then shouted over that he thought they could also "breathe ice."

Eve began to chuckle at the thing. That's impossible! Ice is solid!

Soon, the gaping mouth came upon her. A sub-zero wind shot out of its orifice. Droplets of water and rapidly chilling wind blew all over her. A shell of ice formed over her clothes and she found herself slipping away toward the wall. She wasn't about to let this happened again. Crashing into the wall, Eve felt her internal organs shift as her spine collided with the dense ice.

Desperately, she tried to finesse the ice off of her. A good amount of it managed to come off, as it wasn't stuck to her skin. Her attitude quickly changed from mocking the stupid ice monster to unbridled fury. Her face red from the cold, it matched her attitude swimmingly. She stomped to get her footing, attempting to force a lunge.

"NO MATTER WHAT YOU BREATHE ON ME, COULD A RABBIT FIGHT A MAN? NO NO NO NO NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER!" she exploded at the earless hunk of ice. Gigantic muscular arms sprouted from her face and began to rush the Freezard with a blinding series of punches and slugs.

The Freezard went reeling, falling apart into differently sized lumps of ice. However, without the head, it continued moving to attempt to retreat. Stumbling on the ice, Eve couldn't give chase. A wrong step could send her into the blades. Eve peeled open her Adventure Pouch, reaching for a blacksmith's hammer. The arms on her face bashed the hammer out of her hands and sent it careening into the Freezard half. As the heavy metal crunched into what was left of the monster, the weird arms shot back into Eve's eye sockets. With a snap, her head recoiled and sent her onto her bottom. Explanations were not needed, she limped over to regain energy.

Julius rocketed to his next target, almost completely oblivious to anything happening below him. He was sure that Evelyn was handling herself; if she could heft that hammer, after all, then surely she'd be more than prepared for whatever the Freezards below could dole out.

He collected the next metallic gem, before noticing his hire apparently getting her ass handed to her by the monsters below. She also... had arms coming out of her eyes? First of all, what the fuck, was the very first thing that crossed his mind. A more measured response came just a second later, when he called, "Hey, fist-for-eyes!" He leapt off of the ledge he was seated upon, diving onto the floor only a few feet below him. The icy blades swirled overhead, and the Freezards continued to slip and slide all over the place.

He noticed that some of them fit under the blades, while others collided with them and where sent in other directions quicker than they had been before. The ones that fit under the blades, he had noticed, seemed to have been splintered or shattered in one way or another, leading him to believe that others had, somehow, inflicted this damage.

It mattered little, ultimately, as he deflected the blocks of ice as they came at him. What was more, is that their icy gales seemed to not affect him at all; he had come prepared, he supposed. But, he similarly had more experience in icy climates than many in Hyrule already; while he hadn't been to the Ice Plains on the glacier to the east, he most certainly had been to the northern mountains plenty of times. More experience than his rather ill-prepared hired help, at least.

He saw another gleaming metal rupee. He grabbed it, as the blade whirled harmlessly over his head. He was close to its center bearing or whatever it was that made it spin, now. He pondered if he could possibly make it stop moving -- but, he wasn't exactly a specialist in mechanics, or engineering, or anything of the sort. He was simply a well-read guardsman.

He moved on, looking for the other silvery rupees in the cavern's chamber.

Eve was making her way to the right of the cave. She clamored behind an ice formation, lucky to find a metallic rupee sheepishly hiding behind it. It seemed like the things weren't exactly "hidden" but scattered around to lure adventurers into the traps and monsters. She slipped onto the floor and collected the fallen hammer from before. These little things were handy to have around. With due caution, she worked her way around the large blades.

She raised her arms in front of her head, scrunching her face. There had to be another Freezard lurking around. There were quite a few of them visible when she entered. Fully expecting it, a Freezard materialized beside her. It blasted her with chilling shards of ice. As if being ready couldn't even help her, she was thrown back to the ground. To her luck, she was sent toward the right of the cave rather than the left. The blades still spun menacingly in the majority of the room, she had to be more careful. Her arm was coated in a thick frost. She used the chilled arm to break her fall against the wall.

The Freezard inched closer, its rigid face smugly looking down at her. These crass little blue Daleks were just asking for trouble. With another eye-arm she slugged it in the face. Eve hated smug faces that weren't her own. Though, she also didn't like mirrors so maybe her own face had a little to do with the matter. The monster slid and teetered from the punch, though it wholly deflected off the top of its head. Eve renewed her footing, clutching her hurt arm. The Freezard was still sliding a bit. With a straight lunge, she booted it into the whirling blades. While the head was sliced off, the body remained and slid off. It would be no danger for at least a few minutes, or if the big guard caught it and eviscerated it.

Eve maintained her footing and shuffled on the ice to a small pile of snow. Atop the clump of snow was the tip of another one of the rupee shaped tokens. She wanted to stress that they weren't actually rupees so she wasn't tempted to try using them at a store only to get arrested. . . again. She quickly dug it out of the age-hardened snow bank. It seemed they had gathered most of these things already. Eve figured she would clear a path toward the door if possible.

Now that he actually thought about it -- he was likely strong enough to break the blade, especially if it were made from ice. Of course, that begged quite a few other questions -- but he wasn't here to ask questions, or even answer them.

He was here to get the loot and save damsels in distress. That was all there was to it, really.

He watched the blade whirl above him. It wasn't going fast, and he doubted it could penetrate his armor... So, he stood straight up, catching the blade in his gauntlets as it swung towards him. It carried force behind it, but it wasn't enough; Julius stood there, pushing on the blade, digging his feet deep into the ground, before it eventually began to crack. Eventually, it snapped straight off, leaving him wielding a gigantic blade of ice.

Without much else to do with it, he slammed the thin blade onto its twin, severing the arm in nearly a swing. These things were especially fragile, it turned out. With the trap dismantled, and many of the rupees collected, he yelled for his help to meet him at the door and, "smash those damn freezards!" She was doing a good job for a completely random hire.

As he made his way to the door, he realized how lucky he was to have gotten such competent help. Literally anyone could have showed up for the job -- but it was fortunate that she did, at least, know how to fight, considering the dangerous nature of this place.

A freezard tried sneaking up to Julius from behind. Its ambush failed, however, as even though Julius couldn't technically sense things like them, their icy breaths still did not penetrate the White Hide raiment he wore under his armor.

Perhaps he could recommend Sienna to this rather eccentric Kokiri. They both seemed at least mildly psychopathic, to say the least of either party. Well, perhaps not Sienna, but still.

ooc (open) ooc (close)

(( don't get ahead of yourself bro I actually tried a Sienna + Eve thread and Guy managed to bail early after there was some debate about the size of the prison complex)) wait isn't that exactly why our forsaken fortress died? you know i should make maps of basically everything I do from now on

With Freezard bits lying everywhere and frosty mist rising out of the pieces, Eve considered herself finished. That was until she spotted a straggler. She dug around in her special pouch for the various tools from before. Eve took point at the construct and unloaded an array of mallets, tack hammers, wrenches, and pliers on it. Though the force of the handheld tools wasn't enough to smash the ice thick enough that a broadsword was needed to crack. The barrage did however, knock the monster sliding quickly into a wall where it broke. It broke in a sense that it was fractured internally to the point that it simply stopped moving. Eve stared at it suspiciously as it seemed to die without falling to pieces like the others.

Knowing they were officially done here, Eve took the initiative to collect the remaining rupees from Julius. They both must have figured out by now that all of them needed to be together for the door to open. There seemed to be a long slope winding around the edge of the wall, presumably to prevent intruders from skipping around the carefully placed hazards and straight to the door. Which, now that Eve thought about it, might have been something Julius would try if he had two Hookshots instead of one to navigate himself to all the rupees and the door. Eve felt something vaguely resembling compassion as she felt the urge to share her idea for later incidents.

"While we're doing this, twinkles. I raaather think you should get two of those hooks, and expedite the process of these little obstacle courses." she scoffed, soon wondering exactly who was making all these puzzles and getting irritated as a result.

She shuffled patiently up the incline, with an armful of the shiny and surprisingly sharp metal tokens. She took care to prove her usefullness both by keeping the pile steady, as the captain's armor could lose grip, and of course simply to show that she knew when and how to complete a task. After all, she didn't need to be the work mule of a guy that could bench himself twice over for fun. She figured during the final quarter of the frosty slope, that she shouldn't by her own standards be trying to redeem herself over any lack of ability. Stupid puzzles, stupid contest, she repeated to herself in her head. She was quickly tilting toward another famous tantrum when she remembered the task at hand.

Right, they had solved the problems without any outside help, and she was about to open the door of her own free will. This was the tricky part. How was she going to interact the door with the tokens to show it that they collected them all? Curiously, there was no slots anywhere on the quaint wooden door for her to affix or insert the rupees. But the bars did seem to hold the opening fast shut. Eve blundered into the door, nearly tripping on her own feet. Any manner of falling would end badly on a ledge this high from the floor. Of course, just bringing every metal rupee near the door seemed to be enough as her face collided with the wood. The metal rupees had quickly shot the bars up into the ceiling by some unseen force. Eve hated the smoke-and-mirrors portions of the puzzles almost as much as the puzzles themselves. With her face bumping on the door, the rupees blustered out of her arms and scattered onto the frost.

As Eve seemed to be noticing things left and right, she also went on to notice that the rupee tokens had not magically disappeared. She shrugged at this after maintaining her footing. The guard didn't seem to think the metal was valuable. But even so, now he was free to pick them back up off the floor should he change his mind. Eve carefully proceeded, being sure Julius was close enough to the door before moving ahead.

The new area past the door was once again pretty dimly lit, like the length of dungeon was beforehand. It felt like that puzzle was thrown into the brighter room so that people had a chance to see the rupees. Eve picked a frozen booger off the tip of her nose as she wondered if that was so the dungeon owner could get through on their own. Upon examination, the next area was actually a long hallway, sloped downward and rounded at the sides like some kind of diabolical slalom track. Eve forgot to maybe think about the danger before just dropping into the hallway. She immediately planted her boots into the snowy surface before giving a second thought.

Of course, danger erupted the moment she was fully inside. Snarls echoed down from the ceiling, before ape-ish muscular werewolves fell from the darkness. Their biceps were as wide as logs and their eyes were as bright as light-houses. It was then that Eve knew she was looking at White Wolfos. She considered briefly that many creatures fought bipedally seemed to have the suffix "-fos" at the end of their names. Eve clapped a fist to her open palm in revelation as the hairy canid lycanthropes came upon her. A fistful of claws came down on her as another beefy arm came to block it... one inflating out of her own eye socket. This was not a tale for the serious songs, and any bard singing it may earn his weight in spoiled tomatoes.

Julius hurried after Eve as she stepped through the door. Almost immediately, he felt the killing intent from the Wolfos that had just dropped from the ceiling. Now was not the time to be asking ecology questions. He drew his sword at the same time an arm, bigger than his, sprang forth from her eye, of all places.

Almost immediately, he lost his grip on his blade. No, he had seen stranger things, he reassured himself, tightening his grasp on the blade. He had these things to deal with before he could any questions.

It was darker here than it had been outside, but his Keese was, astoundingly, still alive and on fire. That gave them marginally more light to fight by, and if Julius wanted it to stay alive, then he'd need it out of the way of most of the serious fighting anyways. It would be difficult, but he could do it.

Almost immediately, a Wolfos was upon him. He held up his shield, hoping to deflect whatever it was about to bear down on him with-- and, just like that, he stuck struggling with all his strength against the gorilla-like creature. This was far from an ideal situation; he couldn't set himself up for a Spin Attack, or use his shield -- both of which would prove to be problematic in a prolonged fight.

He stabbed the creature once. Then twice. It still didn't move. These beasts were nothing like what he'd fought before -- no, they were something much more powerful. More deadly. Even so, he couldn't help but try to fight it on his own. He took a step back, disengaging the creature, before almost immediately arcing over its head, his sword pounding against its thick skull. He could at least see the blood on its hide, now. As he landed behind the beast, he prepared a Spin Attack, before being charged by the creature.

How many Wolfos hid in the darkness? Eve wondered how many more of them hadn't shown themselves yet. That was a revelation for another moment, as she was holding back a single Wolfos as another made a rush at the defending Julius. Eve reacted by making a swift left-hook at the beast holding her down, with a meaty eye-fist as well as her real one. She managed to teeter the foe just long enough to break away. In this time, she rushed the Wolfos next to the focused Julius.

In an attempt to help Julius finish his attack, the flailing Eve slammed the fists into the Wolfos for a nasty headache-maker. She snapped her body back into place, assured the monster was reeling. With the creature stunned, she whirled back toward the other Wolfos, which was furiously after her once she'd escaped him. Sandwiched between enemies, Eve rustled through her bag to see if there was anything worth mentioning to keep herself defended. She was less-than-surprised to find that her old battle hammer was inside. This would have to do until she got someone to forge her a shield of some kind.

angling the hefty hammer toward the ground, Eve formed a small pillar of metal between her and the enemy. It was just barely enough to keep the trajectory of the Wolfos' raking claws away from her body. Snarling and furious, the unkempt creature bowled Eve over when his claws wouldn't reach past the metal handle. The rejecting force of one of Eve's Fist Eyes made a blow to his chest. The spacing wasn't perfect, but if Eve could keep the illusion of a fair fight going she might not disappoint her employer. The Wolfos recoiled back, and the small but capable Evelyn continued to bludgeon the creature back. Her hope was to keep a good amount of space between her fight and Julius', as having just two of these things was enough to corner one of the adventurers in a bad position. However, Eve knew it wasn't quite enough to punch a monster with this kind of constitution. Once Julius was finished with his fight, she sort of wanted him to be generous enough to help her cut this one in the weak spot as well.

That got Eve to thinking, where was the weak spot on this type of monster? She wasn't sure about it, but every part of the damned thing seemed reinforced. Eve didn't know about many kinds of monsters but she knew to make note of the important ones. Stalfos, Tektites. . . she actually only knew a handful, even after how long she'd been running around in the wild. What was it about Wolfos, she continued to think. There was but one part of their body that stood out. Their tails reached out fairly long, and had no visible protection of any kind.

Rats! Eve internalized some great sorrow in the fact that she did not in fact have any sort of dextrous cutting weapon for attacking a tail with. As much as she didn't really like swords, she had to admit that was the one tool that fit this situation so perfectly. This was turning to the train of thought that might convince our Evelyn to run around with a sword and shield, like some walking cliché. She was standing there, holding her foe off rather brilliantly with face-arms and the long handle of what amounted to a sledge hammer. Naturally she stopped herself from flat-out asking for a sword and shield, for as long as it would take for her to hold the idea happened to be long enough to know she didn't need it.

Julius wasn't sure where a weak point was likely to be on this thing-- and he didn't have time to ponder it, either, as it was slowly but surely winning the contest of strength. He would have to move to a position where it was less about strength, and more about vulnerability.

His defense crumpled like paper, and the Wolfos came barreling at him like a bolt of lightning. Julius was not only prepared, but had exactly planned on this. He stepped to one side of the Wolfos before executing a Helm Splitter; its gigantic arms blocked its head from any real damage, but he had drawn blood. It was vulnerable now.

In another second, he had charged and executed a Spin Attack. It was almost satisfying to see the splash of crimson from the monster's body. It wasn't dead, necessarily; but Julius could tell that it likely wouldn't want to move around much, or else it would be dead very quickly.

He looked over to where Evelyn stood. She was currently attempting to wrestle with a Wolfos, and-- Great Din there those arms were again. He would never be comfortable when it came to her... rather unique ability. Either way, watching the Wolfos get pummeled in the face by the gigantic fist was both oddly satisfying and slightly humorous.

He could, however, tell that the everlasting youngling needed his help, so help he did-- even with two more of the creatures breathing down his neck. While the girl was distracting this one, he ran towards it, perhaps drawing a bit of its ire-- but ultimately, Eve kept it pinned down, allowing for Julius to swiftly deliver a number of attacks that penetrated sturdy hide and flesh; corded muscle and bone alike were nearly sliced clean through in his storm of sword strikes. Finally, the Wolfos turned to him, only angrier and more irate than it already was.

He began to struggle for dominance again. "Eve," he shouted over the commotion, "finish it!"

He had little doubt that a blow to the back of its head would end the fight.

Keeping herself a safe distance back, Evelyn nervously waited for Julius to deliver a blow. She was awfully close to losing a tiny arm to the worryingly strong claws flailing at her. Her grimace continued even as Julius donated an attack to her cause. At his command, Eve threw her leg inward to swing her battle hammer with her real arms. With some luck, she crunched the weighty number into the back of the Wolfos' neck.

Though incapacitated, Eve furiously let go of her hammer so she could stomp the quickly dying Wolfos for good measure. Her thick all-terrain boots danced to the tune of her rhythmic kicking. It was clear enough by the face she was making that this wasn't meant to be pretty. She swiftly pounded the defeated monster into the ice, stopping when she realized there wasn't much left to kick.

A gross hissing came from behind her. Not entirely remembering there were more Wolfos in the hall, she had let the brute up close behind her back. With the ending of her dance, she whisked off the body and brought herself to Julius. She had he back exposed, but by her luck there was enough power in numbers for the beast to stay back when she was near Julius. Turning back around, she was able to set up an attack. The Wolfos pounced, locking claws with the stony clink of the long hammer. Eve had just enough time to lift it off the ground after that gooey display.

The clash was brief, but foresight went into this one. Eve knew that if she couldn't take a Wolfos down with precision, she could use the next best thing: brute force. While clunky, a solid wrenching with the hammer pushed back the creature. They were on a slight slope, after all. With her psychedelic, mad eyes she broke out the unthinkable mutant fists again. Three and counting hard-placed blows broke the poor creature in its backward tumble. Defeated, the Wolfos shriveled to the ground of the slope. Its defeat marked a critical moment, a clicking and the sound of an alarm of some sort. Their lives were tied to another mechanism in the diabolical test.

At the end of the ringing of the unseen alarm, Eve twisted her head toward the ceiling. Her weapon now safely in her pouch, she examined the clicking noise which no doubt Julius would hear as well. Of note his Hylian ears would distinguish a clattering from further into the stone workings of the caverns. The clattering soon turned into a rumbling which metamorphosed into a clattering. Something large and heavy was rolling quickly toward the slope they were on.

Eve broke into a sprint when she realized the slope they were fighting on was actually a track. This track was designed for the sole purpose of killing them as a corpulent ball of ice the width of the entire room clashed down onto the icy slope like the crackling of thunder. With Julius no doubt behind her, Eve picked up speed in a blind desire to get out of there. As if the chamber was laughing at her, it noisily spewed out sets of large icicle fangs on the wall at the bottom. Eve was sprinting toward this wall of spikes with increasing velocity on an incline of ice.

At the sight of this nightmare, Evelyn had no choice but to dive as far to the side as she could. It was either a painful and reckless jump or she'd be impaled in several places. Eve disappeared quickly to the left, in the shadows at the bottom of the track. It seemed a small area had opened up when the spikes shot out. Probably as a fail-safe mechanism, the length of wall removed at what should be the exact moment the spikes were meant to kill the intruder. Now painfully strewn at the door's opening, she awaited Julius.

Julius saw the enormous ball of snow and ice begin rolling towards them, soon after noticing the subtle incline of the room they were in. And, of course, it meant to impale and crush them in the most brutal way possible.

He ran down the track, being careful as to not begin suddenly slipping... but it wasn't fast enough. His hired help seemed to disappear, diving to the left into a slight recess.

Anything was better than dying at that point. He took a chance, and leapt with all his might, diving into the cavern wall.

He sailed through the air, emerging in a room lit by a gout of Blue Fire. He came to a roll, eventually landing atop a patch of Red Ice. Breath sputtered from his lips, eventually turning into a gasping laugh. "This would hurt a hell of a lot more, if it weren't for the Dodongo Hide under this armor." He got up from his resting position, shaking bits of ice and snow from his armor. "Looks like we made it," he said, casting a look at the wider room, "even it was just barely."

They had company: two Freezards inhabited the room, one resting on top of the frozen surface of a water flow, while another sat on top of a snow bank. There were more patches of Red Ice, too, each concealing something, Julius imagined. A particularly large growth of the ice blocked the door way ahead of them.

He summoned a Keese, which soon set itself alight with the Blue Fire. It would work, even if it was a little slow... "I imagine that you've got the Freezards under control, right?" He looked around the area, identifying what might be several veins of ore. "I'm going to do some prospecting in the mean time..."