Shadow Temple (Cat + Cloud)

Abigail Cataphractoi (1/5/3) - Magic Power (2) + Kinstone + 4r
Tessa Smith (3/1/4) - Mercenary Level 1 + 5r (profession post-quest) + Kinstone
Julius Surgate (4/1/4) - Piece of Power + Three Shock Gems + Two Compaction Seeds + Kinstone + 47r

----

If anything good could be said about Kakariko these days, it was that too little remained to sustain a population. Normally, that would be a dire circumstance, but right now it only limited the number of monsters hiding in the ruins. Time- and Ganon- had not been kind, and no one had even attempted to rebuild the city since it was destroyed. Only a few rare buildings could be called intact, and that made it pitifully easy to avoid what few inhabitants remained, as they could be counted on to seek what little shelter there was.

Kakariko's occupants had done nothing to clean up after themselves. Bodies were strewn haphazardly, decorating both the streets and the rubble. Many had been dragged out of their homes when Ganon arrived and killed in the streets; others had been killed as their shelters collapsed around them. A few intersections were home to piles of long-forgotten remains. Every single corpse had been reduced to its skeleton ages ago, and the bones left behind were bleached white by the sun. It was ghastly to behold...and yet, Abigail was thankful for one thing. At least the smell had long faded.

Officially, she was here to survey the ruins and determine how much of Ganon's army had been left behind. A pretext, really. That information was easy to come by, and if the crown really wanted to know, they would have simply sent a Rito scout to fly over the ruins. No, Abigail was here to investigate the Shadow Temple beneath the city...and ensure that if it was no longer sealed now, it would be by the time she left. Moreover, she needed to make sure the monster sealed in it was either still dead, and to make it dead if it wasn't.

She had argued she could do all that herself, especially at her current rate of casting. Her superiors had said shut up, put away the ego, and take someone that has actually been to Kakariko before. Hence her traveling companion, guide, and nominal bodyguard: Julius Surgate.

They had just reached the well near the center of the city when the ground gave out beneath them. After a brief moment of shock, Abigail willed herself to slow, and floated safely to the ground. She'd been casting that spell since she was five.

"I suppose we know where the Temple is now," she muttered on the way down. "Wait. We. Julius?"

----

Tessa turned onto the next street sharply, and some of her larger pursuers stumbled trying to emulate her- causing even more of them to trip over their fellows. One particularly bold Lizalfos ranged out in front of the pack, and Tessa wheeled around, an arrow finding its way into her newly acquired bow. She caught it in the leg, and it went straight from sprint, to stumble, and then right into a violent, heels-over-head roll that left it dazed and confused on the cobblestone.

Briefly out of sight of any enemies, she ducked into a burnt out old house and hid in the remains of a chimney for a few moments- long enough to be sure anyone in the area had moved on in search of her- then for a few moments longer just to catch her breath.

"Practically ran a marathon there," she exhaled. "Note to self: do not steal from Moblins. Especially Moblins with friends. And especially in the middle of the day."

Slinging her trophy- that is, the bow- over her shoulder, she stood and dusted herself off. Tessa began a rather circuitous trek out of Kakariko, which she hadn't wanted to enter in the first place (unfortunately certain monsters had had other ideas). Despite the hunting party on her heels, the area seemed deserted. It was just too big and too sparsely populated.

She froze in her tracks as something crashed in the distance. It sounded like falling rocks, but...

"I should probably stay away from that in case nnnnnnnnnope curiosity is calling me. Loud, obvious noise, here I come!" At a dead sprint, she made good time, and soon she was at the lip of the newly-made crater. Tessa had just begun to peer over the edge when another paving stone gave out, dropping her unceremoniously- and with a very ungraceful yelp- down into the cavern below.

This one...might have a few screws loose. Might he have struck his head plummeting down? Abigail thought, noting Julius had apparently barely even registered he'd fallen at all. At least the woman had the decency to cry out!

"Julius, perhaps we might give the poor dear a moment's respite? I surmise, given the paving stones which accompanied her, that her descent was not intentional," Abigail admonished as she finally landed. The Hylian woman on the ground seemed a bit dazed, and Abigail suspected she might really have knocked her head against something.

"Owwww..." Tessa groaned, finally beginning to move. She glanced up to find Julius' halberd pointing at her and reached out to nudge the point away from her face. "That...that is sharp. And pointy. Your bedside manner needs work, doc."

Abigail cleared her throat and raised one eyebrow at her.

"Oh. Right! Tessa Smith, at your service. My family had a large trading company here you may have heard of? I mean, you're pretty old. Ganon didn't hit us that long ago. Yes? No? I lived a couple blocks over. I'd give you the grand tour, and maybe some tea and cakes, but, y'know, that's all a pile of ash these days. Didn't even mean to visit myself! I saw this Moblin with a nice bow and thought to myself, "self, that's a really nice bow and why should the bad guys have it" and the answer to that was they shouldn't so I thought I'd swipe it for myself and then this silly Bokoblin saw me and went "Ahhhh!" and I was all like "Ahhhhh!" and then they chased me all the way into town!"

Abigail face-palmed. Tessa kept. On. Talking.

"...buuuuuut then I lost them in the ruins and after I caught my breath I heard this big noise like "boom!" and I figured, hey, going over there is a really bad idea, but here I am. I guess I was right the first time, but I just had to know what that sound was!" Tessa finally paused for a breath- Abigail thought she hadn't breathed for a good three or four sentences there- and Abigail decided to cut her off.

"Motive established. Summation, Julius, in case you opted to tune all that out: her name is Tessa, she is a former resident of Kakariko like you yourself, and it would seem she is plagued with poor impulse control. Nonetheless, she is trapped with us for the nonce, so unless she can scale thin air-" Tessa shook her head- "we may as well bring her with us, as the only way out appears to be through." Returning to Tessa, Abigail narrowed her eyes in appraisal. "I am Abigail, and this is Julius. You have survived thus far, so by all reason you must be skilled. We may as well begin."

"I was literally ten when we left, so I have no idea whatsoever!" Tessa declared happily. Julius seemed content to leave it at that, though, so she gravitated toward Abigail. She seemed more talkative. "What is all this anyhow? Had't've been built really carefully to not run into any basements. Almost like...it's part of the original city plans. Kakariko was built around this place, wasn't it? The heck did we need murder caves full of illusions for?"

"While I am here on a mission, I am not well-versed in the history of Kakariko. I know not what logic contributed towards the layout of your city." Abigail paused, considering how much to tell Tessa. Most of it would be self-explanatory soon enough, but it was never meant to be common knowledge, and how much she might learn via observation was questionable. On the other hand, if Tessa was going to be fighting with them, she needed to know what she was up against. "Demons were sealed beneath it, however; this I do know. Technically that would fall under the heading of 'classified information,' but you will encounter them yourself momentarily. Theoretically, the majority are dead. It is suspected that Ganon is possessed of the power to revive such creatures, so we must ensure that remains true."

"Demons? That's a new one. I should start keeping a list of things I've killed. Looks like it's about to get a lot longer, y'know what I mean? And more exotic. Like a collection of evil dead things, except I'd only have them on paper," Tessa replied at length. She continued to ramble about lists and trophies as Abigail accepted the Lens from Julius and raised it to her eye.

"The fog is an illusion," Abigail stated, cutting Tessa off. For her part, Tessa took that in stride- interruptions meant danger, and danger meant mock the enemy instead of distracting teammates. When the enemy bothered to show up. "It hides pressure traps on the floor and obscures an illusory wall to the left. If I am correct, and I often am, the straight path will take us into a thicket of assorted deadly contraptions, while the other path will guide us to our destination. The lack of pressure plates leading towards the natural route is itself rather suspicious."

She paused a moment to examine the area more closely, then began picking her way past the sparse number of traps blocking the way off to the side. Tessa simply activated her Hover Boots and glided over them, but Abigail indicated where to step for Julius.

"I see no traps amongst the tiles immediately past this wall," she assured the group, waving her staff through the false obstruction.

As they descended further into the temple, the walls began to echo with disconcerting groans. It started off quietly, but grew in pitch as they continued on. The walls had begun to crumble in places, leaving occasional holes from which the sounds seemed to be emitting. Prisons for the damned, likely accessible by some other tunnel but only opened enough to this one to create a foreboding atmosphere.

Abigail wasn't the type to panic, and Tessa was practically oblivious to the existence of fear. But Redeads were created from evil magic, and no one could entirely resist the primal terror they evoked. The crippling, paralyzing horror their screams drew forth. The group was out of sight from them, but the moaning was more than sufficient at creating an underlying, almost unnoticeable, current of dread.

By the time the party reached another chamber, the sounds had had time to fade into background noise, and yet they persisted in making itself known, bouncing about the rounded room and amplifying. For a moment, Abigail failed to realize that some of it was coming from inside the room itself. Tessa had raised her shield, instinctively, before even fully registering that fact.

Several Redeads milled about aimlessly, bumping into each other and the walls occasionally. Suddenly, one froze in place. Its neck twisted as it slowly brought its head around to regard Tessa, then screamed. With Tessa incapacitated, Abigail planted her staff, pulling stones out of the floor to cast at the Redead. Its papery flesh was little impediment; the stones tore it to shreads, and it dropped, bones broken, to the floor just as the other Redeads turned to face them.

Abigail drew in a breath and began to call upon her ice spell.

Tessa's eyes darted about, the only part of her currently able to move, as Abigail and Julius each dropped one of the Redeads opposing them. Her heart hammering against the magical fear effect, she strained against its paralyzation, ineffectual though the effort was. She could almost measure the time it took for the effect to wear off based on how scared she was- Tessa didn't really feel fear naturally, so it was as good a metric as any.

Jumping into motion in a split second, she flung herself into motion the second she found herself able to move, neatly decapitating the Redead which had just frozen Julius. Deliberately having over-balanced, she spun, smacking another zombie in the face with her shield as she came around just before it could scream. It staggered back, a momentary reprieve broken by a bolt of ice from Abigail, which rode the Redead to the ground and shattered its head. Suddenly, the room was quiet, a heap of destroyed Redeads around the party...mostly around Julius, after his spin attack frenzy.

Abigail stepped forward, momentarily stopping to confirm that Julius was uninjured, and noted the bleeding eye of the Sheikah ahead- with each of the three triangles pointing towards a door. Only the middle door was accessible, but a raised dial sat where the drop would be, currently pointed towards the middle. which was clearly locked. Bars blocked the other two. After a moment, Abigail looked back.

"Tessa, Julius, I expect one of you will need to turn this dial that we may proceed. Perhaps the side passages will reveal to us some method to open the way forward."

(I'm making this up as I go along feel free to design what happens in one of those two rooms it'd probably help)

This is taking too long! Eeeny meeny miny moe the thing or something, come on! Tessa thought as Julius carefully deliberated over the dial. There was literally no indication of what was behind either door, as far as she could tell! What was so hard about this!?

Just as she was about to say something, he chose, turning the dial to the left. The door that side opened, and for a moment nothing happened. Suddenly the room shook, and Tessa lunged to catch Abigail before the Sheikah woman entirely lost her balance. When she looked up, Julius was gone, but the door was open and both women could feel a pull coming from the opening.

"We have but one option, I would think," Abigail stated, stepping towards the opening. Tessa concurred, a bit more loudly than she had really intended, but she stepped forward as well, and before long they found themselves dragged inexorably closer to the doorway.

Tessa moved to help Julius back to his feet while Abigail checked their surroundings, but the vision before them was perfectly real- the Lens of Truth found nothing false about their surroundings. Nevertheless, she remained wary, not allowing herself to become fixed on any one direction. The ship seemed to be flat, for the most part, with no raised deck to aft. Small, too. A galley at most. No rowers, but no water either.

"Is no one going to mention the really obvious thing about flying boats?" Tessa put in, peering over the edge into the void. The ship was lit, although no light source was present, and the only sign it was moving was air pushing at their faces. After a few moments of silence and lack of scenery, ledges loomed forth from the darkness, figures upon them rapidly resolving into Stalfos. "Party on the Flying Dutchman! Boat-warming party, specifically. Lotta guests. Party of the year!"

Abigail ignored Tessa's rambling, as usual, and prepped herself. Within moments their ride maneuvered between the two ledges. Stalfos readied themselves to jump even as Abigail prepared to cast; as they leapt across the gap she fired, catapulting nearly two dozen stones towards the would-be boarders toward the starboard side. The stone cloud had a diameter nearly ten feet in length, and three Stalfos were caught by her missiles before they could land, plummeting into the seemingly bottomless space surrounding them.

On the other side of the ship, Tessa caught one Stalfos with a shield bash just before it landed, dropping it off the ship as well, and then she spun, severing the spine of another before it could regain its balance. Abigail backed toward the rear of the ship, which was clear of Stalfos already, preparing to cast an ice spell toward the bow. As if the maneuver had been practiced beforehand, Tessa slid into place in front of Abigail, keeping their remaining foes from entering melee with the little mage.

The final Stalfos fell. Tessa and Abigail regrouped with Julius, and the boat fell silent for a moment...but only a moment.

"Did you hear that?" Tessa looked towards the bow of the ship, Abigail following her gaze. There, just before the bowsprit, farther forward than any of the Stalfos had fallen, was a femur. "Where did that come from?"

"Perhaps it was merely launched forward from the force of its own destruction?" Abigail posited. Tessa shook her head and waved at another bone.

"No, it's too big to- wait!" As she spoke, another bone joined the first. Then another, and another, and another. Soon a rain of bones fell from the sky, creating an ever-larger pile before, just as suddenly as it had begun, the pitter-patter of bone-on-bone ceased with the descent of a skull, which landed neatly on the pile.

Then the skull launched upwards to a height greater than any of the Stalfos they had just felled. The bones below rose into the air in a skeletal whirlwind as each individual bone found its proper place and formed up. As the last piece clicked into place, armor sprung up around the figure, and glowing eyes appeared in the empty sockets. With a flourish, it reached back and pulled forth four swords, one for each hand, and raised them into a guard position.

"I think you blew right past overcompensating and into some weird inferior state of mind like two swords ago, my guy," Tessa cut in dryly. She could have sworn those skeletal features somehow managed a sneer in return.

Before the Stalmaster had even finished readying itself Abigail had readied a Stone Squall, but the rocks bounced harmlessly off the undead's plate. Tessa rushed forward a moment after, accompanied immediately by a ball of ice which knocked one sword out of position long enough for Tessa to get a hit in. The Stalmaster howled in fury as it reached back with two arms, telegraphing so much that Tessa had plenty of time to bring her shield up.

Even so, the blow launched her into the air and across the deck of the ship, nearly sending her right off the port side. She barely managed to catch the railing, almost losing her sword in the process, and hauled herself back onto the ship.

The Stalmaster locked its blades into a square formation and moved forward.

Tessa rolled over the railing and slumped back against it for a moment, collecting her wits. Just as she stood, she felt herself pressed back up against the rails, an invisible wave of force momentarily holding her back. Her head shot up, catching sight of the second Stalmaster- she'd missed its entrance, but it clearly intended to go for Abigail.

And she'd learned something from the first one.

Tessa sprinted forward to interpose herself between them. Abigail caught site of Tessa from the corner of her eye and fired a ball of ice at the enemy's foot, momentarily freezing it to the ground to buy Tessa time. Just as it yanked its foot free, Tessa came skidding in from its flank on her Hover Boots and shield bashed it in the back, audibly cracking several ribs. The Stalmaster spun to strike her back, but she had already slid on past it as if standing on ice.

Abigail slammed her staff into the deck. Magical stones rose up from nowhere, then shot forward at their opponent- and this time, the stones struck weakened ribs. Several broke off completely, and the undead monster staggered. It turned back to Abigail, but Tessa was there now, standing between them.

She ducked under one slash and rolled out of the way of a vertical followup, striking its arm on the way up. A wave of force shot out at her, but this time she was prepared, and the Stalmaster was forced to take a step back as its own attack rebounded off her mirror shield.

Another attack came, with all four weapons this time, and Tessa hopped backwards out of range, interposing herself between the Stalfos and Abigail once again.

Tessa crouched low behind her shield as the bomb came rolling in. Perhaps unnecessarily, Abigail waved her hand out front just as the bomb exploded, giving her a second layer of protection from the blast, though she was pretty far away from it anyway. The Stalmaster staggered and then collapsed as everything below the pelvis came apart, but instead of faceplanting it steadied itself with its lower arms and raised the upper ones to defend itself.

Tessa stepped up and slashed at it horizontally. It blocked with one arm and counterattacked with the other, but Tessa was ready with her shield and stopped it. Her next blow came in from above, but it was a feint, and she slipped through the monster's guard to bash it in the face. It lashed out reflexively, but Tessa was gone, having slipped behind it. With no legs it couldn't turn to face her, but as it looked for her an Ice spell slapped it in the face, taking its skull right off.

With one stomp, Tessa shattered both ice and skull, and the rest of the body fell to pieces.

"I am grateful for your assistance, Tessa," Abigail commented as she approached the body, toeing a bone distastefully. She would never admit she couldn't have won the day herself, but she saw no harm in thanking Tessa for making the job easier. Besides, she was clever. Perhaps she'd have found a way.

"That was fun! Did you see when I almost went over the edge? My heart was pounding with excitement! Does that pit even have a bottom? Would not have been very fun finding out but almost finding out is a great way to get the adrenaline pumping! Hey d'you think Julius needs help? It looks like he doesn't need help. I think he's got it. But I wouldn't mind fighting another of these guys so maybe I should help anyway. What d'you think Abby?"

"I think you should stop bouncing. It causes the planks of the deck to creak and the noise is raucous."

Tessa stopped, but it almost looked like she was vibrating. Close enough.

Tessa was off the boat and through the next door practically before Abigail could even register they had returned. She wasn't sure how Tessa spun the dial that quickly, but she was too busy trying to keep up to think about it.

Immediately upon entering the next room she was hit with a wave of death. The room absolutely reeked of corpse. Tessa started dry heaving a moment after entering, and it took every bit of self control Abigail had to keep her composure. The smell was multi-layered; they could detect blood, rotting flesh, feces, vomit- every scent that could possibly be associated with death was stacked atop each other.

Abigail raised her staff and glanced around the room. It was ringed with bodies that appeared to be a mix of Hylian and Sheikah, all somehow stuck halfway through decomposition like some bizarre decoration. She whipped her head around after spotting a hint of movement, but found only more corpses. Another movement, in the corner of her eye, then another- and then, all at once, the corpses began to move, as if some invisible hand was dragging them across the ground.

The bodies flowed past them towards the center of the room, leaving trails of bodily fluids soaking into the dirt floor. As the came together they began to deform. Grotesque sounds could be heard as the bodies rearranged themselves, dissolved, or broke into pieces, gradually forming into a shape almost like the top half of a man, but with bizarre proportions. Its torso was too tall -twice the height of Tessa at least, its arms too short, its neck too long and its face almost half mouth. Faces and limbs stood out along its pale white, rotting flesh, creating a picture of absolute horror that could never be entirely forgotten.

FLESH DEMON: DEAD HAND

"Annnnd we're locked in. Just us and the most disgusting monster I've ever seen," Tessa choked out. She drew her bow and fired an arrow, but it disappeared into the beast's fetid mass. "I don't suppose you have a plan?"

"All creatures have a weakness. Survive and discover its vulnerabilities."

"Right. Helpful. I'll get right on that."

((I haven't come up with a good way to make it a challenge for three people, not to mention Julius, so I'm open to suggestions. It's massive and hard to damage so there's that.))