Temple of Time (TP) - Tsu and Squish - FINISHED

“But this was quicker. Plus it’s got the same effect. Come on, who is going to miss that door? The only living things in here are spiders and that Darknut! It’s not like they’ll worry about a broken door and a bit of rubble! Be glad I got us out of here!”

Then she pulled him along with her pickaxe.

“Ack! Would you quit that?! I’m not your dog!” He yelled furiously, un-hooking himself and rubbing his neck. “How I manage to put up with you is a total mystery to me…”

Idris followed Terra back into the rest of the temple, quietly seething. He still hadn’t come up with a good nickname for her. Sure, he’d called her a maniac and barbarian, but that just didn’t have the same ring to it as… well, desecrator.

“Anyways,” He said after a while, with thinly veiled annoyance. “Where are we going to find that second statue?”

Idris stared at Terra with a raised eyebrow and a slight look of… unease or disgust.

“…Right,” He started slowly. “When you’re done professing your love for that scrap of paper, can we please get on with getting out of here? You can make love with it later.”

He started down the hallway again, angrily muttering to himself about psychopaths, maps and spiders. There was still no sight of the second statue, which was actually starting to worry Idris. Then again, they now had a map. A map which was hopefully going to help them.

He walked back to Terra, snatched the map out of her arms and studied it, turning it around a few times to figure out in which direction they were going.

“This place’s a damn maze! I can’t even see where we are! And there’s only the hallways on here, still no sight of that statue!” He growled in frustration, slapping a hand over his face. “This map’s utterly useless!”

“Just. Stop. Doing. THAT!” Idris grabbed the dominion rod to slap away Terra’s pick. “Why are you always trying to hit, hurt or maim me? Is that another fetish of yours, next to that map?! Sheesh…”

He was about to unleash a volley of insults when Terra took the map back and explained him how it worked. He swallowed his words, using every last bit of patience he had to listen to her. At least the map wasn’t totally useless, though he’d never say that to Terra’s face.

The statue was close now, and so was their escape from the temple. And, even more important, his escape from this… woman, who had yet again decided to drag him along using her pickaxe.

“Oh goddess…” He huffed. “Aren’t you a lot better off just buying a leash to drag people around? I’m sure you’d just love that.”

“Hmph. Then they shouldn’t have shaped it like a club.” Idris growled, batting the dominion rod in his hand. “And you bet I’m ready.”

A plan was already forming in his mind. His thunder magic was still out of the question for now, as his hand still felt a little raw from the encounter with the Darknut, but that didn’t mean he was out of options.

“Hey, you.” He started. “If you can keep the Lizalfos off my back, I could disable the beamos. …Without too much damage to your precious temple.” He added as an afterthought, hoping that would prevent the archaeologist from protesting.

“A little bit of my ice magic should do the trick.”

Idris waited until Terra had gone off to deal with the Lizalfos. Then he sneaked into the room, carefully hiding himself behind rubble and walls to avoid the Beamos' literally piercing gaze. He had never seen the things before, he wasn't even sure if they were living creatures or just magical statues, but he had read countless of tales about the terrifying light that came from their eyes and could cut through a man like a knife through butter.

From the gruesome sounds behind him, the woman had already dealt with one of the Lizalfos. He had no doubt she'd deal with the other one just as quickly. Hurting things with that pickaxe of hers seemed to come as naturally to her as breathing.

'Alright, now I've got to somehow hit its eye...'

Idris was crouched behind a low wall, just out of sight of the Beamos. He peeked just over the edge, looking where its eye was currently pointing. Luckily for him, the Beamos had the back of its head turned to him. Idris summoned a small ball of ice in his hand, and tossed it at the statue's rotating head, freezing it solid.

"Got it!" He yelled over to Terra, not realising she had been suspiciously quiet. "Now we've just got to- H-hey!"

He managed to dart out of the way just in time to avoid getting cut in half by the other Lizalfos. Idris desperately tried to get away from the creature, but tripped over a loose piece of rubble and tumbled backwards. The Lizalfos took its chance and leapt forward, pinning the Hylian to the ground.

"For god's sake woman, where are you?!"

It took a while before Idris could regain his breath and mutter a reply.

"If you would just... stick to the plan." He huffed, still slightly out of breath. Damn that woman and the ruins she loved so much! Had she reacted a second later, the Lizalfos would have bitten his head of and Idris was pretty sure he'd have been dead.

Fortunately, they had gotten rid of the enemies inside this room, which meant they could now move freely without fearing getting lasered in two or torn apart. Idris got up and dusted himself off before he stepped further into the room.

The statue they needed was at the other end, looking unscatched and not even that out of place, as if it had simply walked over when it got sick of its old place. He hurried over to it, examining it before noticing a hole in it much like the one in the room with the Darknut had. It also carried a rather large hammer.

A tiny smile crept over Idris' face as he lifted the dominion rod and cast its spell over the statue, which shuddered as it started to move along with its new master.

"Alright. Time to get out of here."

"If you had stuck to the plan I wouldn't have gotten in trouble..." Idris grumbled.

He was about to argue more, but decided against it, as the woman seemed to have a comeback to everything he said. He did however, react to her shock expression when he got the statue under his control.

"I don't have to remember the way back." He said, with a far too happy smile, and lead the statue to a wall. "I'll simply make a way back." And with that, he swung his arms down like he was wielding a hammer, and the statue followed suit, smashing straight through the wall.

To his surprise, the hole in the wall lead to a hallway close to the starting point of their trip through the temple, which meant they'd be able to return the statue to its original place very soon- and get out of the temple. After a few turns left and right, they entered the large room with the other statue. Idris moved the second statue back into its place next to the door, and stepped back, watching the door between the statues slide open.

"Now, let's continue, shal- What?"

Idris' eyes widened when the very air around the archaeologist seemed to tremble, lose all its colour and pulling her into some kind of portal, not unlike what they had seen in the gate that had let them here in the first place.

"T-terra!" The blonde tried to grab his companion by the arm, but the movement of the air was pushing him back, through the newly opened door, which promptly closed behind him.

"'...Can't always be here' alright."

Now Idris was all alone, he suddenly realised how quiet the temple actually was. Annoying and downright insane as she had been, Terra had been a companion to him, and more importantly, extra manpower to overcome the temple's dangers. On his own, the challenges would be a whole deal bigger.

The Hylian sighed. If he wanted to get out of here, there was no use in waiting for the woman to return. For all he knew she had been transported to a whole other moment in time, or simply back to the entrance, which had looked strangely closed off when they had returned to the central hall with the second statue. And the doors that had just shut behind him were massive slabs of stone, impossible to move on one's own.

The only way now was forward, further into the hallway that presented itself to Idris. The air was still and quiet, though the deeper he went into the hallway, the more he started to hear something move in the distance. The quiet 'shing' of metal scraping against rock reached his pointed ears when the Hylian stopped in front of another closed door.

As soon as he lifted his hand to touch the solid stone door, it slid open, revealing a darkened corridor. The scraping sound grew louder, and in the shadows, Idris could make out something moving. And just as the other door, this one closed behind him as well when he stepped through.

It seemed the temple was determined not to let him go away easily.

The following corridor was a lot darker than any of the others Idris had seen before. He made slow progress, his surroundings only illuminated by the flickering light of his Spark spell.

Soon, he came upon the source of the sound he had heard before. The floor of the corridor ended abruptly, leaving only a black abyss. Above it were two huge, axe-like blades suspended, slowly swinging from left to right, and back, each time scraping over a small stone platform in the middle. Idris frowned. It was clear to him that he somehow had to cross the chasm without getting sliced to ribbons by the blade, though he had never been an athletic type...

There had to be another way.

The Hylian glanced around, but the corridor was deserted, completely void of anything that might help him. For a moment, Idris considered just swinging the Dominion Rod around to see if it would hit anything on the other side. It was too dark to actually see anything but the edge of the abyss.

For what seemed like hours, Idris merely stood on the edge, watching the blades swing by, almost mesmerized. He shook himself from his thoughts, standing there would get him nowhere. It seemed he simply had to jump, and pray he had his timing right.

Which is exactly what he did. He watched the blades for a moment longer, to make absolutely sure of their timing. And then, after a few small steps back, Idris ran. And jumped. For a few terrifying seconds, he felt nothing, expecting to feel the cold steel of the blades slicing his skin any moment. Instead, he felt the cold stone floor smash into his legs as he landed, sending the mage rolling further and finally coming to a painful halt.

His entire body hurt from the impact, though his shins and feet had taken the worst of the blow. The knees of his breeches were torn and bloodied, the skin underneath a mess of scrapes. Perhaps it was a good thing the archaeologist was not here, as she very likely would have come up with some remark or insult at Idris' current state.

Groaning, Idris sat up, very carefully checking his limbs for any broken bones. To his relief, he appeared to be still in one piece, with scrapes and bruises being the worst of his wounds. He would probably be sore and blue for a while, but it would heal. Gathering himself again, the mage got up and continued on his way.

At the very end of the corridor, he stopped in front of the largest door he had ever seen. Everything about it screamed that it was not just a regular large door. It was guarding something. Whatever was behind it was big, perhaps even in the literal sense of the word.

With no other way to go, Idris opened the door and entered the room behind it.

There was a strange atmosphere in the room. Idris could not put his finger on it, but something felt... off.

Though the darkness in the room obscured much from sight, it was clear that the room was massive. The Hylian's footsteps echoed, the only sounds in the otherwise eerie silence. To Idris' disappointment, the room appeared to be empty. No treasure, no monsters, though he could make out the shape of a handful of statues against the wall.

Idris walked over to inspect one of them, standing in the middle of the room made him feel vulnerable somehow. As if something was watching him. He shook the thought from his mind. It was silly. Instead, he traced a hand over the smoothly carved statue. It was huge, almost three times as big as Idris himself, depicting some kind of armored warrior, arm raised to fight. But where was its weapon? A heavily armored warrior fighting barehanded made no sense at all.

He looked up, but it was too dark to see the statue's hand properly. Idris conjured up a small flame in his hand, stretching out his arm to that the light might reach the empty hand, throwing a flickering shadow over the wall.

But the Hylian was unaware of the danger that loomed above him...

A tapping sound far above him startled Idris out of his observations.

He whipped around, moving his hand in a futile attempt at lighting the room up further. The statues were just as still as he had found them, almost eerily so. But the sound had to come from somewhere. The tapping came again, along with some dirt raining down from the ceiling. Idris craned his neck, peering at the ceiling high above him, shrouded in shadows.

There appeared to be nothing...

Until, suddenly, a large glowing eye appeared. A large glowing eye encased in an even larger body. The body of a gigantic spider, Idris realised with horror as it moved out of the darkness, clambering down the wall. Frozen in fear, the Hylian watched the monster crawl over the statues, its many legs tapping against the smooth stone as it approached, its jaws clacking in anticipation.

Only when the spider was right in front of him, all of its eyes focused on the tiny mage, Idris managed to move. And just in time. The monster lashed out with one of its legs, the Hylian only barely dodging it by jumping out of the way and scrambling away from it. He ran for cover to the next statue, only to see it smashed by another leg right in front of him, covering him in a layer of dust. Spluttering, Idris tried to brush the dust from his eyes, stumbling around as he tried to stay out of reach of the spider. At this rate, he was going to get killed, and fast. He would have given everything in the world for Terra to be with him, as she no doubt would have had a plan. Unless Terra had already run into this creature...

But Idris had no time to waste on thinking up even more worst-case scenarios. He rushed across the room, the spider hot on his heels, and clambered up one of the statues, scraping his hands and knees on the rough surface. When he perched on the statue's head, he felt something tremble at his side. Looking down, he noticed the domnion rod softly glowing. Did these statues...? Why had he not thought of that!

In the meantime, the spider had reached the foot of the statue, the large eye on its body staring at Idris, and narrowing, slowly lighting up... Until a laser beam shot out from it, blasting the wall right where the Hylian's head had been. Idris had pressed himself flat against the statues' head, and he was certain he could smell burnt hair.

Without waiting for the spider's next move, Idris swung the rod, the small orb of light disappearing into the statue, which promptly sprang to life. The monster beneath him had noticed the now-moving statue, and it seemed to back off. Was it scared of statues?

Then, it dawned on Idris.

The statues never had held weapons. Instead, the raised arm was its weapon. As he swung the rod down, so did the statue swing its arm, cracking the ground beneath and driving the spider even further backwards. With a frustrated hiss, the creature turned around and climbed back up the walls, all the while keeping its eye trained on Idris and the statue.

"I'm not going to let you get away..." Idris growled, charging his hands with glowing, crackling magic. "Take this!"

He launched a vicious thunderbolt at the spider, hitting it right in its giant eye. The screech it emitted immediately after being hit was ear-shattering. But the hit had been effective. The spider lost its grip and fell to the floor, and Idris saw his chance to strike with the statue.

He slammed into the spider, small cracks appearing in its stonelike body, until it rolled aside and hissed at him, but keeping well out of reach of the statue.

But Idris had found its weak spot. All he had to do now was make sure he hit it hard and often.

Even though Idris now knew what to do, it was by no means easy.

The spider had climbed up the wall again, clinging to the ceiling as countless eggs fell from its body. As soon as they hit the floor they split open, revealing smaller spiders. It was a good thing Idris was not arachnophobic. But even though he might not be horribly afraid of them, the sight of the horde of the tiny thing skittering towards him filled him with digust. They swarmed the statue, nimbly climbing it, and Idris was having trouble kicking them away, swatting at them with the dominion rod. But there were simply too many, and they crept everywhere. Over the Hylian's legs, his arms, one even managed to climb up into his neck, sinking sharp little fangs into exposed skin.

Idris yelped, grabbed the pesky creature and threw it away, but in doing so he lost his balance, feet slipping off the statue's head. He tumbled down, only barely managing to prevent himself from smacking against the floor with a quick feather fall spell.

The horde of spiders were following him, but this time, the mage was prepared. He focused on a point of the floor between himself and the horde, concentrating on his magic. The floor started to glow, and right as the spiders passed over it, a pillar of flame erupted from it, incinerating almost all of them. The ones that escaped the inferno bravely skittered on to Idris. But he quickly squashed them as well, anger fuelling his power. He was fed up with this temple and its tricks, and all it had thrown at him. He wanted it to be over, right now.

But the monstrously large spider had other ideas. Having seen Idris squash all its children made it growl angrily, firing another laser. The Hylian dove aside, slightly too late as the laser scorched away his sleeve and blistered his skin. He hissed in pain, but kept focusing his attention on his opponent. He would look at his wounds later. As long as the spider remained on the ceiling, it would be an easy target. And it did not seem to have learned from the prior blow yet.

Idris made his way to the side of the room, staying well away from the center of the floor, before starting to cast another thunder spell. Again, the spider crashed down after getting hit in the eye. The mage wasted no time in taking control of another statue, wildly smashing into the downed spider, the floor shaking and trembling with each hit. The spider struggled and thrashed wildly with its legs, trying to roll over so it could get away. But one of the legs got caught underneath the arm hammering down on it, snapping it off with a loud crack.

Eventually the spider got its body to roll over, now severely cracked and even starting to fall apart in a few places, limping along as it had lost a few legs to the statue.

The blisters on Idris' arm hurt, and his body was starting to ache, but he was so close.

Scratching angrily at the walls, the spider tried to climb back up, but it could not keep a strong enough hold with the legs it had left, stumbling back down the wall. This only seemed to enrage it more, as it let out a loud shriek, before aiming its eye at Idris. The rest of its body slowly followed, and the monster started crawling towards him, the Hylian dwarfed by its clacking maws and gigantic, stony body. It was just what Idris needed.

He spun around on his heel, starting to run across the floor to another statue, as the crack's in the last one's hand did not seem to be staying just cracks much longer. He ran, pain searing through his limbs and air burning in his lungs, the spider hot on his heels, even gaining on him.

And then he fell.

Idris' foot caught on a block of rubble, loosened by the statues ramming into the floor, and was sent sprawling across the floor. He struggled to get up, only to see the shadow of the spider creeping up on him. But the statue was not far anymore, perhaps it was just close enough...

In a last, desperate attempt, he launched another orb from the dominion rod. The Hylian could heard giant fangs clicking behind him, the uneven tapping of its legs as it closed in on him. And then the statue sprang to life. Almost instinctively, Idris swung his arm down with every last shred of power he could muster, praying to all goddesses that he was not right underneath the statue's arm.

What followed was a deafening noise of stone slamming into stone, shattering upon impact and filling the room with dust, spraying small shards of stone eveywhere.

The first thing Idris could see when the dust settled down were the remains of the giant spider. The last blow of the arm had completely shattered its body.

For a moment, all was still. But then something moved between the rubble. It was the spider's eye. Except it was no longer an eye, not completely. The eye formed the rounded body of a much smaller spider, only slightly bigger than the ones it had dropped before, when it was still in its huge stone body. It twisted and turned, and located Idris on the floor. Although instead of rushing towards him, as the mage had expected, it quickly dashed in the opposite way, frantically trying to get away from him.

Idris sat up slowly, brushing some of the dust from his clothes. After the gigantic monster, this spider seemed incredibly unintimidating, and more afraid of the Hylian than the Hylian was of the spider. He would almost say he felt sorry for it, had it not been giving him a hard time before, and had he not been locked inside the temple. Idris rose to his feet, slightly unsteady and exhausted from fighting. He watched the tiny spider dash across the floor, trying to find a place to hide. Almost bored, the mage raised his non-damaged hand, keeping his blistered arm close to his body.

Without any other sort of reaction, he released a wild thunderbolt, striking the spider right in the middle of its back, in the large eye. The thunder flashed wildly, sending sparks flying everywhere, and when it faded away, nothing was left of the spider.

Once again, silence returned to the chamber, leaving Idris alone in its center.

Behind him, he heard the sound of a door opening, and when he looked back he saw that the only entrance and exit of the room was no longer blocked. Although it showed a completely different hallway than the one he had been in before. In fact, it was the hallway in which he had first entered the temple with Terra. But there was no sight of the archaeologist.

The Hylian started moving towards the exit, pain flaring through his limbs with every step. He grit his teeth and forced himself to keep moving, clutching the dominion rod tightly in his hand. He would rest and tend to his wounds as soon as he found himself back in safe territory. For now, all that mattered was getting out of the temple.

He approached the door with a growing sense of dread. Idris wasn't quite sure what to expect to see behind it. When he had entered, the door had taken him into the far past when the temple was still whole, but who could say he would get back in the correct time? What if he was still stuck in the past when he went outside, or in the far future?

But, he noticed once he stepped outside, all was well. Terra's rubbings were still lying on the ground, in the exact spot where she had left them. They still looked new, far too new for any time to have passed. Relief filled Idris as he took a deep breath of fresh air. He made it out alive. Though he also felt it gnaw at him that Terra had vanished. Even here outside there was no trace of her, save for the rubbings she had made before they went into the temple. She was fine, she had to be, he told himself. She was made of stern stuff, perhaps she had even found her father. No doubt he would run into her again, though maybe Idris dreaded that even more than the many terrible things that could've happpened to her.

For now, he would busy himself with finding his way back to civilization.