Snowhead Temple (MM) [Ink, Sinistrari, Cataphractoi]

"I KNEW IT!" Tessa screamed as Fairy Blue dissipated and reformed. The golem turned and made to swat at her, hearing the noise, and she ducked out of the way. Meanwhile, Seven tried to rap its knuckles, but only got a small rebound of his shadow enchantment upon his own hand for his troubles.

Layla roared, charging forward and gripping the monster about the waist, holding it in place and pushing it backwards.The moment she started to push she was bounced backwards cursing, landing on her ass with a crash of metal. Tessa hopped up and gripped the edge of the pit, pulling herself up to look for another avenue of attack.

She remembered the cracked rock.

"Layla, lead it over here!" Tessa called out as she positioned herself under the rock.

"I shall try!" Layla drew the creature's attention and back up, ducking under a flying fist that nearly struck the pillar. She hopped sideways out of the way as Tessa shoved the pillar over, toppling it onto the monster's head. A great groan reverberated around the room at the impact, the pillar shattering over the golem to reveal a spiderweb of cracks across the thing's left arm and chest. Layla swung her axe to capitalize on the damage, then drew back with nothing to show for it but a dented pauldron and some more buises.

"The pillars are the only way to hurt it! Draw it to them and drop them on its head!"

Seven flinched backwards and almost dropped his sword as the enchantment backfired on his own hand, the shadow enchantment's pain mercifully not as strong as it might have been had he struck the creature harder. Fairy Blue pounced at the creature and was launched backwards, blurring into blue motes before taking shape again, for her troubles. When Tessa yelled Seven whirled to see her shoving a pillar onto the creature's head- and it worked. Seven immediately sheathed his sword at Tessa's instruction, instead opting to try and draw the creature over to the next set of pillars.

"Tessa, go around!" he yelled, pointing at a pillar, before executing the age-old hey-monster-look-at-me method of throwing a rock at its head. The creature turned momentarily from Layla to see Seven, who waved his arms.
"Over here! Follow me! I'm a squishable Hylian!" he shouted at it, jumping up and down. It ignored him.
"For Din's sake, you useless boy," Fairy Blue snapped, before leaping back upwards and mid-air transforming into a crow. "Hey, monster! Move your dumb ass!" she cawed, swooping at its head. It paid more attention to the crow dive-bombing its face- especially when the bird attempted to briefly land directly on its eyeball. Seven ducked out of the way as the golem lunged after the sword spirit. Apparently it wasn't a quick study at all, because it was directly in the path of another of the pillars.
"Tessa!" called Seven. "Now!"

Layla rolled her shoulder and winced. That pauldron was pinching her, reducing her range of motion. She'd have to remove or the real final opponent would be a real bitch to defeat. Doing that with help was hard, but not impossible. While Seven distracted the golem she rested her axe against the arena wall and set to work, reaching around and under the damage to release the straps holding her pauldron in place. The polished metal rang as it hit the ground, bouncing a bit before settling down. She hefted her axe again, although it was of little use her except as a shield.

Meanwhile, Tessa followed after Seven, circumnavigating the room along the arena's edge. She watched Seven's attempts at distracting it and laughed out loud, but braced herself for the moment the golem sent a punch her way. The room shook and another pillar cracked.

"How many years of bad luck d'you figure breaking this guy'll be?" she asked no one in particular, then she charged forward and slammed her shoulder into the second pillar. It toppled slowly, but the monster was slow to recover. Cracking and falling rocks sent the sound of stone-on-stone throughout the room as it fell. It impacted the golem's right arm, leaving the entire body covered in cracks now.

Seven whooped in triumph, backing swiftly away from the enormous golem. The entire thing was cracked like it had been mashed with an enormous hammer, and it was standing just close enough for Seven to jump it. Which he did. He raced across the run-up he'd given himself, arms and legs pumping, and launched himself off the edge towards the monster, catching onto its waist and digging his fingers into the cracks to steady himself. Shards of mirror were kicked free by his feet as he scrabbled for purchase, and he managed to find a foothold in one of the larger cracks.

Gritting his teeth, Seven began to climb the creature, even as it whirled to try and grab the Hylian on its back. He felt vaguely seasick and suddenly hoped that his companions knew he was here because it would really suck if they dropped a pillar on him. The deep cracks in the creature's mirrorlike...skin? Hide? Whatever it was, the cracks provided an excellent foot- and hand-hold as he scaled it, and when he reached its shoulders he pulled himself up, straddling it like he would Torygan's saddle, before pulling out his sword. Hopefully his theory was right and the cracked areas wouldn't rebound the enchantment like it had before.

Fairy Blue circled the beast, doing her best to distract it again as she hurled verbal abuse at it, landing on its face every now and again. The golem finally caught the crow and crushed it in its bare hand; Fairy Blue shrieked in pain and Seven cried out in fright, fearing her actual death- instead, blue motes dripped out of the golem's clenched fist and fell downwards before sluggishly making their way back to the blade. She wasn't dead, at least, he hoped. But this golem had hurt her and that was not okay.

Growling, he raised the sword and plunged the blade into the cracks across the creature's neck.

Shards of mirror fell to the ground and shattered with every movement Seven made, littering the floor with sparkling silver rubble that crunched under the golem's feet as it fought to shake Seven loose. Seeing Seven's intention, Tessa dropped to the arena floor and rushed in, plunging her sword into a crack in the golem's leg. It stumbled and swatted at her, taking its focus briefly away from Seven.

Briefly was all he needed.

As the sword plunged into its neck, the golem bellowed in distress. The sound soon gave way to a series of progressively louder cracking noises before finally the creature shattered, showering Tessa in mirror glass shards. She was quickly buried under the rubble...which Seven promptly fell on.

The room was dead silent for a few moments save for the sound of glass settling. Then, from beneath the pile...

"Owwwwww..."

Layla stomped up to the mound and cleared some of the glass away, then pulled Tessa from the rubble. She was covered in minor lacerations, in addition to a couple larger, bloody flesh wounds, but nothing seemed to be broken or otherwise crippling.

"A glorious victory!" Layla proclaimed, clapping Tessa on the back. Tessa fell over. "Stand, friend Tessa, that we might bask in the light of our accomplishment! The golem lies defeated at our hands, and Seven has landed the final blow! Were that we had a bard here that we might have our deeds recorded in song! And still one more battle awaits! What last challenge shall this place present to us, I wonder?"

"Sweet Farore why wasn't this the last fight," Tessa mumbled grumpily. Her usual demeanor was somewhat dampened by the widespread pain. "I'm just gonna take a minute and bleed all over the glass. I'll be with you in a minute."

The creature’s death ended up serving as evidence that Seven really ought to spend more time thinking through his plans. He hadn’t expected it to just shatter, and he didn’t even have time to yelp as he registered the loss of support beneath him. He smacked into the glass shards with a tinkling thump, followed by a most un-childlike curse. The broken mirror had made quick work of his exposed skin, slicing numerous gashes into his tawny skin, and it was with a low groan that he rolled onto his aching back and sat up.


Where had his sword gone? Layla was espousing some dramatic proclamation of triumph but his concern was Fairy Blue. He found the scimitar towards the edge of the rubble, the blade chipped where it had met stone as it fell. The usually swirling and shifting hues of the blade were instead a blank, abnormally pale lilac, almost white, and he swallowed hard as he picked it up.


Fairy Blue? he tried, scanning the blade for any sign of life. A slight tinge of a deeper purple, like ink dripped into goat’s milk, was visible across the blade for a few moments, before dissipating into the wider lilac.

”Hmmm…” he heard, sounding like she was fast asleep. Probably knocked unconscious, or recovering from the battle. Satisfied, he sheathed her and turned towards the others.


“If we want to get out of here,” he said grimly, “then I’m gonna guess that we need to figure out where those kids went from here. I guess they either got pulped or missed the golem,”

This had...backfired. Hard. It was his fault the kids were in here and he vaguely felt bad for that? But also they were idiots? And, well, he hadn’t lied, really- mirror glass as smooth as this, without any warps or bubbles, could certainly be considered a treasure of some sort.


...Okay, he had lied. And almost certainly got a bunch of yeti kids killed. He had done this, even if he wanted to blame his sword for having the idea in the first place. And...like, objectively he knew it was bad? It had just seemed...like a fun prank at the time. And if he admitted to these women that he’d done it, they’d probably skin him alive. He didn’t want to be on the business end of that Layla’s axe.


He leaned against a wall and let out a long breath. “Okay, so...somewhere in this room has got to be a way forward, right?” He shook his sword’s hilt gently. You awake? I need you.


“When don’t you need me,” grunted the occupant, and a flickery cat came back into his vision. ”What do you want, you disaster magnet?”


“Can you find a door or anything?” he asked aloud, and the wobbly, out-of-focus cat streaked off across the room, searching for an exit. It took her a few minutes, but she didn’t even have to return to alert him; at her presence what seemed to be a switch in the floor was depressed into the ground, and nearby the wall pulled aside, achingly slowly. “Oh,” Seven said dumbly. “There’s our exit,”


He looked at the two women. “Come on, then,” he said, following Fairy Blue into a narrow room. At first he thought it might be a T-shaped intersection, but then he realised it was curved. Fairy Blue returned to his side.


”It’s like that the whole way around,” she said weakly. “A big circle. There’s a bit I couldn’t get into, it’s all frozen up. See?”

She indicated his right and he turned and gawped. There, frozen in a strangely perfect wall of ice, was a colossal creature of some sort; four-legged, hooved and horned, it reminded him of a farm bull somewhat, but far too large and strangely shaped.


And in the ice beside it were several Yeti children, one of whom seemed frozen in a shriek of exertion. The ice was thick and almost opaque around the Yeti boy’s hands, almost like…

“That kid cast the spell,” he realised. “He must have realised that the bull was going to kill them and frozen the lot of them to save themselves,”

”That, or he panicked and reacted in a way to incapacitate both of them,” Fairy Blue remarked, laying down.


“Uh, Tessa? Layla?” Seven ventured, “I want to ask you to smash the ice, Layla, but...it’s thinner around the bull. That thing will get out before the kids will. Does anyone have a plan?”