Forbidden Forest - (Tsubori/UNLM)

Keiliegh curtsied lowly when Kinoso allowed her to go in first. "Ladies first? What a gentleman~" She said cutely. 

"Oh, by the tree, I'm gonna throw up." Leronah said, hovering nearby Keiliegh, who'd walked onto the next cliff with two spinning mechanisms that drew a platform. "Huh... It looks like those wind catchers turn and pull the platform this way." 

"Hey Leronah?" Keiliegh said innocently. 

"........What?"

"Get pushing." She said, pointing to the mechanism. 

"You're kidding right? I can't push that thing on my own!"

"Not with that attitude you won't," teased Kinoso, "Go help her out, Le'ip. There's no way else to get through." Le'ip grumbled as she did his bidding. Surprisingly, it wasn't to hard to move, and she surmised that the mechanism was intended for a wind current to push it through. As she spun round and round, the platform slowly made its way across.

Le'ip grumbled to her fairy counterpart, "We should just find a crevice to fly out and then wait for them to make it out."

"Oh, I would, but you know the great deku tree and fairies ditching their kokiri."

Laughing gently, Keiliegh waited for the platform and boarded it when the fairies manage to spin it around. "A little faster, Leronah, I know you can go harder!" The kokiri chuckled, feeling the platform move slowly but surely. 

Once they'd reached the other side of the chasm, Keiliegh allowed Kinoso to jump off first,  but the second he jumped off, a rope snapped and the platform titled, throwing Keiliegh off with a scream. At most, the girl had time to twist her feet properly so that her hover boots activated, giving her a tumble and one chance at a dive before the effects wore off.

This dive gave her time to plunge a katar into the earthly wall, about a foot under her destination. All the girl could do was hold tight, lest she let go and fall into the abyss.

Kinoso turned around as soon as he heard the rope snap and then the subsequent crash of the wooden platform upon the abyss below. Leronah was screaming obscenities in panic, but since Keiliegh wasn't too far down, all Kinoso had to do was reach over with both arms and pull her and the katar up. He didn't have too much trouble since he estimated that the girl weighed about twice as much as the longsword that he was wielding. All in all, it took no more than ten seconds to pull her to safety.

"You okay?" he asked, brushing some of the dirt off his clothing. He turned around to open the next door. He peered in and saw a tall, spacious room with the same flower that shot him upwards he had seen in the first room. He suspected that he was going to use it to make his way up the cliff. Great, but first, he spied a new sort of monster that had a little propeller that kept them afloat.

He ran and attempted a slash, but only to have the propeller parry his attack effortlessly. "Uh, anyone have the slightest idea how to fight these things?" he asked the other three.

Keiliegh sat still for a moment with her chest heaving in fear. Kinoso had saved her… again. She stood up and looked at Kino, feeling embarrassed. “I… Guess that’s another one for you… I really owe you quite a bit.” She then followed the Kokiri to the next room, smirking.

“How? Same way as everything else here. I take ‘em down, you finish them?” She said, loading up a bunch of chill seeds on her slingshot. There were a total of three Peahats, and within a few quick seconds, all three were stunned on the ground, awaiting execution.

"Fair enough, sounds like a good plan," said Kinoso. With Keiliegh's chill seeds, the peahats were too easy of targets to mop up. Kinoso raised his sword and let it fall to the first peahat, causing the ice and the monster to shatter into pieces. The second peahat was nearby, so all he had to do was swing his sword while simply pivoting his feet around, and the peahat was destroyed. The third peahat required a bit of effort to run to because as Kinoso turned his head to locate it, the ice was just started to melt and weaken. Fortunately, by the time Kinoso reached the peahat, it was still stunned.

He had never felt so alive before in his life. Usually, his job involved killing only one person, three at max if the person had bodyguards. But he had never been on an adventure like this before. As a result, he was experiencing a little bit of a combat high. Sheathing his sword, he jumped into the flower, which launched him up another flower, which sent him upwards again to the intended platform, only to have another door blocked by the creepy flower and vines.

He looked behind him and saw a platform that required the fairies, but after the last mishap and Keiliegh almost falling to her death, he figured that he would bypass the platform and just wait for Keiliegh to take care of the door for him.

Keiliegh noticed when all three enemies were gone that there was another set of launch plants for the two kokiri to use to reach the top. Keiliegh was energetically feeling rather bouncy due to her injuries but upon flying from the final plant, the girl landed on Kinoso's back, giggling all the while. 

Her landing was safe thought, landing with no bony parts hitting him and at most the force of her body bringing him to the ground. She snickered the whole time she was on his back, wondering how she could get out if here without losing Kino again. Over 40 years was tough to see someone go. "Guess who~" she said, covering his eyes.

Kinoso felt the girl land on his back. It was a surprisingly good landing, though the most surprising part was still him not expecting the move. Even though his eyes were covered, he rolled his eyes all the same when she played the "Guess who" game. "Oh I don't know," he chuckled to himself, "The only person I could think of who would want to attack me from behind is Leronah." He squatted, leaned over, and then lifted his hips, which flipped the girl safely onto the ground.

Le'ip looked at the two in wonderment. It had been a long time since she had seen Kinoso this happy before, though it may have been the last time the boy was able to afford a 10 pound meal. The boy always had an affinity for food and the shadows. But now that a girl had entered the picture, she wasn't sure how to enjoy this moment fully. Kinoso may not have realized it, but despite this day being a sour one so far, he had smiled more in the last hour than he had in the past month alone. Le'ip noticed it at least, and she smiled with him. She thought to herself, Who knew. Here I've been trying to laugh like a child for the past six years, and all it took was for him to meet another Kokiri.

With the innocent smile still on his face, he asked her, "Now are we ready to continue? Last I checked you had the key to opening this door in the pouch where you carry your chill seeds."

With a heavy giggle upon being flipped, Keiligh didn't really make much of an attempt to get back up afterwards. Keiliegh shook her head. “A key? I never got a key...” She looked around, perplexed. “We're so screwed...”

“Hey dumbass, over here!” Leronah shouted, hovering near a chest on the other side of the room across the platform chasm.

Keiliegh slowly stood up, jumping onto the platform and firing a seed at the turning mechanism. It started spinning and within two or three shots, Keiliegh was at the other side. “You... You could have done that the whole time?!” Leronah yelled. “Le'ip and I busted our asses before and you coulda SHOT it?!”

Keiliegh shrugged, retrieving the key from the chest. “Well... That was funnier...” She then ignored the screams from her fairy as she made the return trip back. She handed Kinoso the key, smiling. “And there you go. One small key.”

Kinoso laughed at Leronah's frustration as Keiliegh handed him the key. Thanks! That was well done," he said. He slid the key into the keyhole and turned it clockwise halfway around. Suddenly, the lock disappeared with the key, as well as the chains binding it. Interesting locking mechanism, thought Kinoso, having never seen anything like it before. Then he supposed that in this dungeon, he would see more that would surprise him.

The next room was just a simple hallway leading to a door. Something was amiss though. Every room they had gone through had some sort of obstacle, so he suspected some sort of ambush. It seemed that nothing in this cave would come easily. "Tread carefully," he said aloud to Keiliegh, "I get a bad feeling about this room." He slowly tiptoed toward the end of the hallway.

Keiliegh nodded, curious about the hallway as well. It seemed oddly plain... She stepped forward a bit more and as she neared the middle of the hallway, plant-like tendrils blasted up from the ground, knocking her to her rear and cutting her arm with the spikes.

"Ah!" She gasped, standing back up. She navigated around the tendril, noticing that it only did anything within a five foot radius of the middle. "That's just mean!" She exclaimed, shooting the door flower at the end of the hall and smashing it. 

She proceeded trough the door, starting too look bloodier and bloodier as time went on. This room was massive, with a huge structure in the center, held up by vines. Those massive tendrils reached into the room with many wooden platforms moving of their own accord. "Wh-what is this place?" She asked, nervously.

The room was beyond enormous. He wondered if this was the same room as the first one they had entered. The moving platforms made Kinoso feel a little uneasy. All it took was for one slip up, and then he would be falling to his demise, a thought that made him shudder inside. He looked upwards, and it seemed like there was no end either. He surmised that they were in the center.

A smile crept on his face when he looked at Keiliegh. "Race you to the top," he challenged her. And with that he took off and jumped onto the first platform and waited for the next to come near.

"KINOSO! THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!!" yelled Le'ip, but she was powerless to stop the two. But she supposed that Kinoso and Keiliegh had means to prevent the falls from being too harmful.

It was a lot of jumping, and once, Kinoso's legs missed the edge, but his arms caught it. Pulling himself up, he looked around. I wonder where we're supposed to go next? He saw a locked door, but he knew that they would have to continue farther up. He jumped to the large tree trunk suspended in the middle of the room and continued looking around for an exit to the spacious room.

Beaming, Keiliegh dashed towards the platform, but instead of stopping like Kinoso, she simply ran over the gap with her hover boots, turning and sticking out her tongue at her friend. Continuing her tactic for reaching the top, Keiliegh found herself on top of the strange suspended structure. She called to Kinoso while he neared. “See? You can’t beat me in a race, Kino! Beaten by a girl!” She made a funny face, but her smile faded as she looked around. “Well… what now?” She asked, not seeing any obvious indications.

Kinoso's pride was a little wounded, but not by much. Instead, he blamed most of his loss on the hover boots that she wore. When he finally reached the top, he saw Keiliegh looking around for where to go. "Well ... what now?" she asked him.

"That is a good question," he said, sharing the same sentiment as Keiliegh. Only thing he saw worth jumping onto was a large flower suspended by six, blue vines in the middle of the room, but it was about a ten feet down from where they were standing. Nonetheless, without hesitating, he jumped onto the flower, using his feather fall spell to lessen the impact upon the petals, though judging by how softly he landed, he figured the feather fall spell was unnecessary. "Come on down!" he called to Keiliegh.

He then hatched an idea, though he wasn't exactly thinking of the consequences. In his mind, he was thinking that the vines were preventing the flower from using its magic, with the assumption that the flower was magical. But when Kinoso cut one vine with his sword, it grew back a few seconds later. "What are you doing!?" Le'ip demanded. She had no idea what the was or what it was capable of. Still, it didn't stop Kinoso from trying to cut the vines again and again.

"We have to cut the vines at the same time," he finally concluded.

Keiliegh smirked at Kinoso as he approached, then joined him on the flower. He suggested the two cut the vines at the same time, so she took position with her katars, ready to move quickly. When she saw Kinoso start cutting, she too dashed across the flower, slicing the vines holding it up. With the last cut, the flower fell. Unfortunately… Keiliegh’s hover boots were still on.

She felt a strange stall and looked down in horror. It… was falling far… She let out a scream as her hovering effect ended, plunging her down extremely far. She landed on her back, and though the petals provided some bounce, a sickening thud and crack could be heard. Keiliegh opened her mouth to scream in pain, but found that she couldn’t. The wind had been knocked out of her severely, and she twisted and writhed, trying to get any air into her.

The large flower fell once the last vine was cut, except Kinoso realized too late how terrible the idea had been. For vines sole purpose was to keep the flower afloat. Kinoso felt the ground give way and fell down along with the flower. The flower made its way down the large room, and its long fall gave it the momentum it needed to crash through the bottom floor, revealing another hidden floor beneath.

Kinoso had cast feather fall so many times in unexpected falls, that he didn't even remember casting it or spreading his cape. The lessened change in speed coupled with the petal extending the amount of time it took for the boy to decelerate allowed for a harmless landing. Keiliegh was not subject to that same luxury, and when she fell, everyone heard a loud crack, despite the cushions of the petals. "Keiliegh!" yelled Kinoso when he heard the girl use all her effort to gasp in air. Leronah was screaming some unintelligible obscenities as she hovered in a panic around Keiliegh. Le'ip was doing the same, except without the obscenities.

All the while Kinoso was trying to figure out how to make Keiliegh feel better, the four of them neglected to notice a monster quietly slithering up to them. It was a large insect the size of a wolfos with only one eye. With two large pincers, it was capable to driving them cleanly through anyone. It kept its large butterfly-like wings low and flat on the ground so as to attract less attention, but its rainbow colored abdomen gave it all away.

"WATCH OUT KINO!!!" cried Le'ip. The boy swiveled his head in time to see the large monster leap towards him with the pincers wide open to bite down hard on Kinoso's sides. He quickly picked up the injured girl, still fighting for air but succeeding nonetheless, and dove out of the way. It was such a close call that when the monster flew into the air, Kinoso felt its legs brush against his foot while he was in midair.

His sword! He had completely forgotten that the sword wasn't sheathed when he fell, and didn't bother locating it when Keiliegh landed. He looked frantically for the weapon, but he realized the first thing he had to grab the monster's attention. The monster flapped its large wings to hover a distance away from Kinoso and Keiliegh. Kinoso charged at the monster barehanded and made for a jumping punch, with one hand ready to grab the pincer and the other ready to punch the eye.

Keiliegh looked around frantically and dazedly when the fight began. She was terrified, and didn't know what was going on. Kinoso was fighting the moth thing, but he was unarmed. Keiliegh knew he wouldn't last long against something with pincers like that. 

And then she saw it. Leronah hovering around something just a couple meters away. His sword. She pulled herself along the floor, breathing still difficult. Tearing through her body, flashes of pain erupted and made her stop a few times. 

But eventually, she made it, and gripped his sword, flinging it towards the fray. It landed hilt up in the ground, only a few feet from Kinoso. "Kino.... There!" She breathed out, still finding talking difficult.

The monster jerked its head around, trying to throw the kokiri off. Of course, it wasn't too hard, seeing as how Kinoso only weighed around seventy pounds anyways. Kinoso went flying into the air and landed flat on his butt, and the flying insect wasted no time in pressing the attack. The monster attempted to pierce its pincers through Kinoso, to which the boy responded by holding up his hands to garb the pincers and grapple the incoming pincers. The monster wasn't too heavy, thankfully, which explained its ability for its large wings to lift the monster off the ground. With a burst of strength, he threw the large insect to the side.

It was then his eye caught Leronah hovering around his sword. But just when he went to run over to grab it, he felt a major pull against his leg. Looking down, he noticed some large burr-type creature attached to his leg. It didn't hurt, but the friction of the two and more incoming spiked creatures were causing Kinoso to slow his movements down. Prying the morths off of himself proved fruitless, for as soon as he would try to pull a burr off, the small monster would just stick to his hands. It not only served as a good hindrance to his movements, but also a good distraction. Kinoso looked in time for the monster to swoop down and dove to the side, but he wasn't quick enough to avoid the pincers and leave a deep gash that ran from his ear to his nose. With a scream, he made a clumsy fall to the ground.

But now was not a time to feel pain. He looked to his body and noticed that some of the morths had left his body. Apparently, they didn't like sudden movements. So he rolled in the dirt to get them off, which worked. The mothula was preparing to make its next charge. Instead of waiting for the charge to come, Kinoso ran for the sword. The insect followed after him, hard on his heels. He was just about to reach down and scoop up the sword, but the mothula proved the faster creature. The pincers didn't puncture his skin, but it made him fall into the dirt, aggravating his wound further.

Still, he wasn't too far from the sword. The mothula swerved around for another charge, but this time, Kinoso had his hand on the hilt, and when the mothula came in, he spun to the side and made a powerful downward swing, taking off one of its large wings.

"Yeah!" he cried out, taunting the creature, "How do you like that?

Keiliegh tried to do more when she saw Kinoso get cut. "Ki-..." She scrambled to her feet, clutching her slingshot. 

"Keiliegh... Lay down, Kinoso's got this." Leronah prodded, not even caring to disguise her concerned tone. 

"Shut up." The girl then wiped her mouth if blood and brought up her weapon, taking more shots and ignoring her pain the best she could. None of the shots actually hit, but she still felt like she was at least doing something. 

Several seeds whizzed by the two combatants. Kinoso didn't turn to see Keiliegh's futile attempts to hit the mothula, but the seeds grabbed the mothula's attention. A split second was all Kinoso needed to spin, swing the sword upward, and then the bring it back down onto the hard carapace. The wing came flying off, but the second hardly scratched the bug. The mothula lurched backwards and screeched at its frustration in trying to fly with no wings. It retreated backwards to make another charge at Kinoso.

The kokiri met the mothula's charge with an upward swing, hoping to catch the underside of the bug's head. Instead, the mothula dipped its head in time to catch the blade with its pincers, but the motion of the swing coupled with bug's own momentum caused the bug to fly upwards and then land on its backside. Kinoso took the opportunity to stab at the underside, only to find out that the carapace there was just as hard. So he tried again, this time for the rainbow colored abdomen. This had a much better effect. Steel met flesh, and the mothula screamed in pain. It somehow found the extra energy to climb back onto its feet and scuttle away quickly in retreat.

"Run off! I got some more waiting for you here anytime!" he yelled out in the direction that the monster had retreated. But it was too late for him to realize that the mothula had used the cover of the tall grass to hide its approach. Kinoso whipped his head left in reaction to loud rustling in the grass. Instead of trying to charge at the kokiri again, the mothula had its rear turned towards Kinoso, then it fired off several morths.

The mothula then scuttled away, and while Kinoso was busy trying to get the morths off, the large insect went for the easier prey shooting her slingshot.