Forest Temple [OOT] [Quill, U5, BP]

Harry looks up as the lightning strikes. "Hm...sounds like rain. I should put my cards up." Harry grabs his cards out of Loft's hand and places the deck back into his suit pocket. "Hm. I haven't smelled burnt Rito since Mac made the Verloc's engine explode that one time." Harry chuckles pushing up his glasses.

Harry looks at Ni'Ran's arm before Marcus heals it. "I have never seen lightning do that before though. Although I suppose it is possible to over load the arm nerves with electrical input which could cause them to either shut off or ignore and additional pulses until the residual electrical energy is gone. Hm." Harry strokes his chin feeling some beard stubble. "I need to shave again soon. Aaaaanyways I wonder what that flag is for." After turning his head popping his neck several times Harry starts walking towards the flag whistling to himself spinning his cane in his hand.

When Marcus worked his magic, Ni'Ran saw Alice hop back and puff up, seemingly considering to spread her wings out to seem bigger. Although tamed, she was a monster, and she really hated it when people started using magic around her, used as she was to having to flee from it. Even though Marcus' spell was benevolent, she still feared it.

Ni'Ran himself waited until the pain in his arm subsided before he tried to move it again. When he could move his arm, he drew his sword, threw it into his left hand and took a few practice swings. Satisfied with the results, he sheathed the blade again. "Thanks. I'm not sure what happened, especially now that the skies have gone clear again." He looked up. "I wanted to scout ahead, but when I got into the air, I was shot down. Lightning." Shaking his head, he crouched and held his hand out to his Kargorok. "At any rate, the message is clear. No flying." The bird hopped onto his hand, apparently having calmed down when Marcus' spell ended.

"Let's see what Harry found, shall we?"

"Hey!" Loft cried as his friends were taken from him, "I had all the Queens in the same dinner-party!" Groaning and moaning, he dragged himself after the others. Bla bla burnt wing whatever. Didn't interest Loft in the slightest. The only thing it meant to him was that everyone was staring at the accursed bird! That deplorable, beautiful, disgusting, appetizing, agonizing, scrumptious bird! He rubbed his hands together and gave it the death glare. "Soon," he crooned quietly, "you will be mine, my sweet...."

Loft sniffed at the flag, turning his nose up at it. "Whatever," he said, still pouty from having his party interrupted, "who cares about a stupid flag?" He marched right on past it, but he had not gone fifty paces before his figure faded away.

"Loft?" The name had barely left Marcus' lips, and he had no time to wonder whether he should feel upset, worried, or happy over Loft's disappearance, when a scream from overhead made him look up. Loft was falling from the skies, and Marcus hastily jumped out of the way to avoid being crushed. It was a soft landing, but painful nonetheless. "He must have gone the wrong way," he said shakily. Loft's skin was red, and it looked like every inch of him had suffered a horrible sunburn. As Marcus knelt down to heal him, he saw the faded outline of another flag. It didn't look horribly far away, but it was still vague, as if barely out of his vision's reach. Either the distance was fooling with his eyes or the magic was playing tricks with his brain. Probably both.

Harry looks over to Loft and casually speaks, "This is why you should always use proper skin protection. I don't know why, but this is reminding me of stories I have heard about some Haunted Wasteland or something like that. Although that was a desert not a field. Although sunburns are more acceptable in stories about deserts than fields. Hmmm...." Harry strokes his chin in thought staring at the flag in front of him and the flag in the distance.

Harry stares for a while before pushing up his glasses and dropping his hand to his side. Suddenly and very loudly Harry shouts, "I CHOOSE DISBELIEF!" As Harry says that the field starts to melt away, for him at least, and give way to a vast empty desert whipped up in a vast sandstorm. "Ah HA! I thought this seemed familiar. It is the Haunted Wasteland, not a field." Although Harry looks rather stupid to everyone else who are still looking at a field.

A ragged, red flag... and a field that was enchanted in such a way that if it was walked through following any path other than the one its creator had intended, the perpetrator would pay for it with pain, and be returned to square one. Considering the field's reaction to him flying before, up was clearly considered 'a path other than the one its creator had intended.' This also explained why Alice refused to climb any higher than his hand would take her. Sometimes he wished the Kargorok could speak, so that she could warn him of stuff like this.

When Harry shouted that he chose disbelief, Ni'Ran frowned. His frown only grew deeper when the Hylian claimed that they were now looking at the Haunted Wasteland. The Rito briefly exchanged glances with Marcus, but decided to not call Harry out on his hallucination; crazy people could become dangerous when told that they were just that- crazy. Instead, he walked forward. "Well... I don't know about you, but I'm not going to let the first illusion that we chose to face stump me into staying here until I starve."

With those words, he stepped up to the flag, put his back to the pole and aligned himself thus that he was looking straight at the barely visible next flag. From there on, he started walking in a straight line towards the flag, which was as ragged as the first one had been. Looking around, he realized that there were two flags visible from here, not counting the one he had just come from. How to decide which to pursue?

The Haunted Wasteland? Marcus looked out to the field, but he could see nothing even slightly like the infamous desert. The breeze was small- certainly not enough to make Harry have to shout, as he was doing now. What was going on? Marcus thought back to what they had already encountered- the unsettling aura, the sentient door, the tricky choice, the vanishing portal... could this be another trick?

"An illusion?" He said under his breath. Ni'Ran apparently shared his thoughts, and when they walked on, Marcus wasn't surprised to find that the flag- the sole object out of place in the serene field- showed the proper way through the invisible maze.

They stopped, and Marcus glanced back and forth between the two flags. Ni'Ran hesitated, and Marcus understood why. There was no way to tell them apart, and they had to be sure before trying. Marcus was tempted to send in Loft, but then he remembered the awful burns- he couldn't do that to him again. Plus, tapping out his magic this early was a bad idea.

He noticed something different in the flags. The first, the one to the right, was waving madly, as if tossed by a high wind. The second was still, the tip barely ruffled by the slightest breeze. A high wind and a tiny breeze? What did that mean? Was one false and the other true? Marcus suddenly remembered Harry's exclamation, and the tone he said it in- as if he was in a high wind. A desert wind, the wind of the Haunted Wasteland. The other one... it was blowing to the field's breeze- that must be it!

But he had to be sure. "Harry," he said, "is the wind strong? If it is," he pointed, "I think that may be your flag. That one," he pointed to the still flag, "is blowing to the field's breeze. I'm thinking that we're all supposed to follow whichever one corresponds to what we see." He glanced at Harry. "What do you think?"

"Hm. Yes it is rather windy voice from nowhere. You sound like that Marcus fellow, but I do not see you. Oh well. Hm. Welp. I hope the voice isn't trying to kill me." Although the others could hear and see Harry, he could not see them. He begins to walk towards the flag he sees that is flapping wildly in the sand storm.

Harry faces no difficulty in getting to the flag. "Hm. A stick with a red clothe tied to it. Not very fancy, but it works." Harry notices two more flags. Both flap wildly in the sand storm wind, but one flag is white and the other is red. "I do not want to surrender, but what do you think disembodied voice from the great beyond that reminds me of Marcus?"

...Harry was definitely seeing things, and by now Ni'Ran was wondering why the spellcaster had been affected, but he, Marcus and Loft hadn't been. He followed the healer in a straight line to the flag that was flapping gently in the field's breeze, only to feel Alice starting to rub her head against his chest when he was about halfway there. "What's the matter? You've been acting strange all day," he complained, holding her up at roughly eye-height.

The Kargorok was clearly upset at something, but she didn't act upon it any further. When he reached the flag, he sighed in relief, realizing that he had reached the third flag in the field without further repercussions. He decided he'd leave the more illusive and magical matters to Marcus, instead turning to find the fourth flag. He started to wonder for how long this would continue on as he started jogging towards the new flag.

About halfway through though, he heard something above him, and when he looked up, he saw the palm of an open hand rapidly approaching him. "Holy mother of Valoo!" he shouted, unable to jump out of the way or to use his Shuttle loop, so instead he used his left hand to jerk his sword out of its sheath and stab it upwards, catching the black disembodied hand on it and tossing it to a side.

It was disturbing, to be sure. It was all black, and appeared to have been severed from a giant's body at the wrist. Like the hand of a corpse... Fortunately it was not very strong, and Ni'Ran could sheathe his sword as he saw the hand dissolve. He hurried onwards to the flag, turning around to Marcus and Loft. "Be careful! This place has a morbid sense of humor!"

"Yeah!" Marcus said to Ni'Ran, looking down at the corpse. "Definitely!" Harry seemed to have made it to his flag alright, and Marcus couldn't do anything but trust that he would figure his way through his own maze.

Loft started moaning. "Are we there yet?" He groaned. "I'm getting hungry! How many more tricksies are there in this place anyhow?" As if in answer to his question, a fifth flag, white this time, appeared on the horizon. It was set directly before the entrance to a small stone mound, a mound that looked ancient and ruined.

A ruined stone mound... It looked more than a little out of place in the field. Ni'Ran elected to not sheathe his sword, and redirected his attention to Alice to see her reaction to this new development. She shook on his hand, finally returning to puffing out her feathers in hopes of intimidating whatever she sensed was here.

when Ni'Ran looked in front of him again, he let out a loud yelp, stepping back. In front of the ancient mound, there stood the vaguely translucent, but mostly solid and breathing form of a youthful Rito boy. He didn't look older than fifteen and clutched the remains of a broken shortsword. While his eyes were darker than Ni'Ran's, brown in color, he had the swordman's hair color.

The boy looked altogether more nervous than anything else, and directed his gaze up at the elder's face. "W-wait... why are you here?!" Ni'Ran exclaimed, refusing to step closer to the apparition of his deceased younger brother. He'd started shivering as he relived the moment of the younger's death.

Had his grave been desecrated? His rest disturbed?

[[Ultra5 posted that he's done with RP'ing. Since he's already in a different set of illusions, it should be easy to quietly fade him out. BP, I love the twist with the ghost. For the sake of time, can we lump some of the Poes together in one place? We may not have time to go through an intense gauntlet for each, lol.]]

The stone structure squatted on the green fields of the illusory world, the only break in a horizon of rippling green and floating blues. Marcus registered the cries of his feathery companion, but he was too busy staring to pay them much mind. A woman stood before the ancient mound. Her body was still and slightly see-through, but her chest moved gently up and down as she stared at him with eyes of ice.

"Sister," Marcus breathed. Ni'Ran exclaimed loudly, questioning the apparition, and Marcus felt a wave of- of shame? Annoyance that someone else was witnessing what should be a private reunion? Thanks that he would not be left alone with-with-whatever this was? "It's my sister," he explained to the winged warrior, "but what's going on?"

He barely noticed Loft fall to the ground beside him. "Daddy."

[[Sounds like a plan, Quill. One battle for the poes and then another battle for Phantom Ganon?]]

"Your sister?" Ni'Ran looked over at Marcus, but almost immediately directed his attention back to the other Rito. "We're seeing things again, then... Because I recognise my brother when I-"

"Amos," the apparition said, sending Ni'Ran back so fast he tripped over his own feet and fell to his backside. He was startled, and he was confused. His brother was DEAD. Run through by the spear of a Moblin. Buried near Hyrule Bay, where Ni'Ran often checked the grave, prayed at it, left offerings at it, ensured it wasn't damaged or assaulted- why was his brother's spirit here?! And why was it TALKING to him? Using his actual name, no less?

"Ni'Ran, I..." he ran a hand through his hair as he tried to regain his stance and his dignity. He saw the other two caught up in conversation of their own. "H-how did you... Did something happen to your grave?"

"My grave..?" Ni'Ran cocked his head to a side, a gesture that sent another shiver down Amos' spine. It was a characteristic gesture of his younger brother, he always did that when he was thinking. Or at least, he used to. "But Amos... I'm not dead. You're the one who's dead. This is your grave, not mine."

"WHAT?!"

[[Sure! I mean, we're both really active, so we could probably do things in between, but I don't want to take the risk that venturing out to find 4 Poes, doing battle with each, then finding P.G. is something we don't have time for.]]

Daddy- how was Daddy here? Standing calmly in the green grass, simply staring as his pale body was framed by the stones behind him? But no, this wasn't the Daddy Loft knew. He wasn't the Daddy that came to him in dreams- he wasn't the Daddy that Loft remembered. There was no gaping hole in his chest from which the crimson sea found its source, there was no charred, melted face gazing up at him in empty listlessness, and there were no flames rippling around his screaming body.

"Dead," Loft said to himself, rocking back and forth on the ground, hugging his knees to himself tightly, "dead, dead, dead."

"Loft." The voice was soft, but Loft wasn't comforted. He rocked even faster, whimpering as he continued the mantra of 'dead, dead, dead.' "Loft, my son, my beautiful son, why do you say such things?"

Fire and flames, rage and blood, betrayal and tears, no, no, no! Loft wouldn't, couldn't, think about that. Daddy was dead, Daddy was burned, Daddy was gone. Daddy had left him, and now he was standing here, and Loft was left huddled in a sobbing ball, his hands pulling his knees tightly up to his burning face.

"Daddy dead," he said, his voice hitched.

"Oh my child, fate has been cruel to you. Even in death, you are not free from the moon's madness." The voice was sad, so sad, and Loft couldn't do anything but mumble and mutter and moan in response. "Loft, I am not the one who's dead- you are. This," he motioned to the stone cairn behind him, "is your grave."

"W-wait." Amos staggered, pressing one hand to his forehead. "You're making my head hurt. What do you mean this is my grave?"

"You died in Dragon Roost Cavern," Ni'Ran said, stepping closer and detaching one hand from his broken sword to extend it towards his elder brother. "You tried to protect me, but couldn't protect yourself while doing so. Here," he pointed at his brother's neck. "That's the wound that killed you. A Kargorok sliced open your neck. Blood everywhere... Mom and dad were so mad that I hadn't saved you."

Amos touched the wound on his neck. It was true that it had been sliced open by a Kargorok... but it had been long after Ni'Ran's death, and it had been nowhere near fatal. "Brother, what are you..." he was starting to feel light-headed.

"I visit your grave every month. To chase birds off of it and to put down flowers. But why are you here?" Ni'Ran took Amos' hand in his own. "Come, Amos. You need to go back down. You must be so tired."

His light-headedness wasn't going anywhere. If anything it was getting worse. "You know... you... might have a point..."

Loft rocked back and forth, shaking his head as the smooth voice of his father wrapped itself around his ears. It pushed down at his head, sighing across his skin and brushing back his hair. It tried to calm him, to soothe him, but Loft only rocked faster. His knees were pulled tightly to his chest as he moved back and forth, back and forth, and his blue eyes stared wildly out at nothing, reflecting naught but the blue sky but gazing through time and space into a room filled with burning fire and screaming blood.

"Come with me, Loft," Daddy said. His fingers brushed against his forehead. "Come with me, my baby boy, back into the sanctity of stone, the safety that lies in solitude. You look so tired, little Loftwing, back to the sleep that lasts forevermore."

Little Loftwing. Loft felt something shatter inside him, something safe and sweet that he'd always kept hidden from the flames, the literal burning fires and the metaphorical pyre of self-hatred and introspection. It was something only his Daddy said, and only when he'd been tucking a very small Loft into bed each night. It was the last thing he'd heard his Daddy say when he'd locked Loft up in a prison of stone.

"No," Loft groaned, "no," he shook his head, something hot searing his cheeks and stinging the flesh of his face, "no," he said again, pushing himself away from his Daddy and stumbling to his feet, "no," he said, pointing a shaking finger at the apparition, "no!"

It was a reflex. It was something that had been burned into him by times spend in the wild, with nothing to protect him from bad people and bad monsters but his knives. It was an automatic response for whenever his body went into total-panic mode, an instinctual reflex that he only recognized once the deed was done. Before he knew what he was doing, the knife was twirling through the air, end over end, flashing steel over flashing steel, and it sank into his Daddy's chest.

[[That was really fun to write c: ]]

The Rito swordsman didn't have Loft's exact reflexes, and the ghost of his brother hadn't done anything to provoke any similar ones. However, he did have something the Hylians didn't have. He had a bird. A bird he hadn't actively taken note of since spotting his brother, but who had observed him looking at and conversing with nothing.

When her master started moving towards the mount of stone, Alice hopped up, soaring towards his arm and landing on it hard, screeching in the direction of the ghost. The shrill sound broke into Amos' head, temporarily snapping him out of his light-headedness. Ni'Ran turned around and made an angry gesture at the Kargorok, trying to get it to fly off and leave him alone. It only served to anger the bird further.

"Alice, hush," Amos said, putting his hand on the Kargorok's head, but all it did was make her look around at him, give a screech, and turn back to intimidating Ni'Ran. "What are you trying to tell me, lass? ALICE!"

She'd flown off of his hand and attacked Ni'Ran, raking him across the chest with her talons. Ni'Ran staggered back, and Amos grabbed on to his head, which had suddenly become subject to searing pain. "What in the-"

"I was so close, too."

Marcus' white fingers shook, making the entire Magic Rod tremble in his grasp. "You're not real," he whispered, "not real."

The jewel-tipped rod fell from his hands and clattered against the stone floor. The light of the braziers cast the circular room into flickering illumination, their three bodies throwing endless wavering shadows flying across the floor. Gone were the green fields of the past, gone were the endless expanses of blue sky; it was as if a layer of film had been stripped away, revealing the truth that lay beneath. Marcus glanced behind him and saw that the room was dotted with man-sized holes, and through them he could see the tips of red flags.

The only thing that remained the same in this room was the stone cairn, which was situated in the circular chamber's center. The ghost, the apparition, the illusion- whatever it was that had taken his sister's form- had disappeared. In its place hovered a single green flame, floating before the entrance to the cairn.

[[BP, I think it's awesome that we're doing this without PMs. It feels so exciting to me. Thanks!]]

"Valoo's hooked tail and fiery breath!" Amos swore as he dropped his sword in surprise. Were they... back in the manor? By now, the Rito had forgotten they'd ever been in a manor. Where seconds ago his brother had stood, now hovered a purple flame, which quickly started spinning around before turning into a spirit of sorts. Except this time, the spirit was a lot less defined, and it mostly resembled a floating set of rags with glowing eyes and a single hand holding a torch. The rags, as well as the flame on the torch, had the same purple color as the spirit had had.

Tsk tsk, the Rito swordsman thought. We would have gotten away with it too, if not for that meddling bird... it was now that he realized these weren't his thoughts, but the words of the phantom before him. Your name... it is Amos, is it not?

"Not anymore," he said, crouching to pick up his sword but never once taking his eyes off of the phantom. He now saw that there were three others like it, in green, red, and blue. "I am Ni'Ran."

Regardless, you are an intruder. Even though this place is not your grave yet, my sisters and I will make it such...

He thought quickly. "Marcus, Loft! Behind me!"

Marcus scrambled for the Magic Rod and stood slightly behind and to the left of his winged companion. Loft took up a position opposite him, another knife pointing at the lights. The boy's entire body was shaking, and Marcus could see from a glance that he was fighting back tears.

Marcus opened his mouth to offer some kind of comfort to his insane companion, but before he could do anything but part his lips to speak, the red spirit began to twirl its lantern. Fire blossomed from the lantern and unfurled towards the three of them, winding its way quickly through the air like a detached red worm.

Marcus slashed his hand forward, creating a barrier of blue crystal that hovered before the three of them. The worm impacted the magical shield and reflected straight off of it, its velocity remaining constant while its direction was immediately reversed. It slammed into the red spirit, which reeled back, stunned.

After the red spirit attacked them and Marcus deflected its attack, Ni'Ran acted quickly. Sheathing his sword, he rushed into the direction of the phantom while starting to turn skin to feathers, going through the early motions of the Shuttle Loop below it. On his way up, he sliced through the abomination, but he had to sheathe his weapon a lot earlier than he would have liked in order to spread his wings, angling them to catch as much friction as he could before flipping over to land his feet against the ceiling.

For a second, he just sat there, but he didn't wait for gravity to start pulling on him. Instead, he retracted his wings and put his hand on his sword once more, this time leaping down and drawing the blade as he came close enough to touch the phantom.

There was no time for the red one to respond, and soon the scraps of red cloth slowly twirled to the floor, but Ni'Ran had to leap to the ground and roll over to avoid being hit by blue and green worms not unlike the one the red phantom had sent towards Marcus. However, in doing so, he rolled himself straight into the torch of the purple phantom. Joelle! It cried, You will pay for this, intruder!