Twilit Forest Temple [BP/F-dude]

Twilit Forest Temple
- Autumn, the Guardian of the Lost Woods. (2/2/5 Hylian) [Blonde Panther] Reward: +10 rupees until further notice.
- Yasmin Shahnaz, the Lovely Spy. (1/3/4 Gerudo) [Blonde Panther] Reward: +40 Rupees until further notice.
- Slink, "the Hidden." (3/1/4 Hylian) [Fcgfyv] Reward: common bow, Hookshot, -50 rupees.
BGM that goes with this thread

"Farore be damned, that girl just doesn't give up!" Yasmin Shahnaz looked over her shoulder, stumbling over a root as a direct result of her redirected attention. "Gah!" She rolled forward, using that momentum to get back to her feet, and briefly considered climbing a tree to at least get rid of the hound. She hated dogs. However, she knew the girl that was hunting her down. She'd encountered her back in the day that she and the girls had had to cross the Lost Woods in order to reach Hyrule Castle Town, and she'd hunted them then, too. She was unreal, like she was a part of the forest. Using the trees would likely not give the thief a huge advantage. And even that was provided the trees wouldn't outright eat her. She didn't put anything past this cursed forest.

"Look, it's nothing personal!" she called as she ran ahead. "I've been paid to gather some information, I didn't mean to cross your holy grounds or something!" Her only reply was an arrow whizzing so close to her head that it cut a few red hairs from her bangs. The only likely reason that it had not planted itself in the back of her neck was because she had really good reflexes and had swayed to the side at the last possible moment. Thank the Triforce she'd chosen the black, agility-improving outfit for this mission; this girl was good. "Come ON! I knew I should've sent Israaaaa~"

Autumn nocked another arrow in dismay. How many did this make? She'd never had to waste this many arrows on an intruder. She'd left the exhausted Wolfos behind her a few miles back, as it was unable to keep up with her because of its limp. Normally, she'd have nailed the red-haired intruder running out front of her hours ago, but the woman was incredibly nimble, almost more so than Autumn herself. Actually, Autumn didn't doubt that she was nimbler than her, and the only thing allowing the guardian to keep up with her was that she was disadvantaged by the Lost Woods.

Firing a desperate shot at the intruder's legs, Autumn scowled as her target lifted her leg just a little bit higher than expected, dodging the umpteenth arrow. There was just no getting this one! If only Wolfos hadn't been crippled, it would have caught her by now! Getting angrier with the second, but also afraid of what the Forest Spirits would do if they found out about this failure, she gritted her teeth and put her bow away, drawing her sword instead and slipping into the undergrowth at the side of the path. If she wasn't mistaken, this was a fork in a hidden path that would bring her in front of the intruder very quickly and with minimal effort.

It was at this point that Slink began to question his actions... and how far he had traveled. When that girl had gone through the edge of the Lost Woods faster than he could reach her, he probably should have ignored her and continued waiting for someone else to pass through. Although thinking about it now, not really anyone passed through the Lost Woods at all. Besides, the girl had reason to run through in such a hurry, and that meant that there was something valuable on the other side, or possibly in the woods.

But when the second girl started chasing the former, that's when Slink really should have questioned the whole situation. Maybe he should turn around now... Who was he kidding? There was almost never any action around here nowadays, at least none that he'd seen. So whether or not one girl trying to kill another girl ultimately had any reward didn't matter much anymore; he didn't want to miss out on the action.

Slink had been jumping from branches, vines, and trees for a very long time, and was surprised that his legs had been able to support himself the way they had. He had even gone so fast sometimes that he was now slightly ahead of the girl being chased, and neither of the two females had hinted at his presence. He reached a particularly large gap where a "trail" forked down below, and Slink had been too cocky to actually consider whether he could make the jump or not. His legs sprung off of his branch, he reached out his arms and...

His fingers made a clean miss of the branch he had been aiming for and plummeted to the ground.

"Meep!" Yasmin cried out, hitting the emergency brakes when someone hit the ground in front of her. Had the girl had accomplices? Was the forest going to attack her with a giant hound? And most importantly, why had she not brought Agnes and Hannah with her? She was at a disadvantage without them! As she whipped her daggers from her waistline and turned them so she wasn't holding them in the icepick grip, she remembered why she hadn't brought the girls. Too dangerous. Lost Woods jobs were jobs she had to do alone.

When the figure that had fallen from the trees didn't immediately attack her, she calmed down slightly, although the crazy archer was still on her mind. She looked over the figure, recognizing it as human, but male. Definitely not the girl hunting her, so she was still - behind her?

When the intruder looked up, she stared at the tip of the sword Autumn had raised at her. As expected, the hidden path she had walked had taken her to a point not far from the Gerudo's front, and the rogue falling from the treetops had proven helpful in that the distraction had given the blonde time to walk up to the two and ready her blade. The rogue was likely from the fortress deeper in the woods. How he had gotten this far, Autumn would never know; she had learned a short while ago that the thieves were familiar with the hidden paths as was she, although she liked to think to a lesser degree.

"Get up," she said to the rogue. "Are you with her?" she still stared down the intruder, ready to leap forward over the rogue and cut the woman down if she tried anything.

Holy Sacred Realm, Yasmin thought, she can talk?

"Damn," Slink mumbled aloud. Unsurprisingly, he was pretty sure that he injured one or both of his legs to a minor degree, and his back hurt like the Dark World. He was on one knee in front of two women, both who looked like they would kill him if he moved anything beside his mouth. Damn, he repeated to himself. Because of him, at least two people wouldn't be leaving as far as he could see.

He decided to meet the rogue-ish woman's commands, although he struggled at little to keep himself standing for the first few seconds. "I don't know who either of you are, and it'd be really nice if I could go back to my business." As far as terrible persuasive lines goes, I just stole first place, he thought to himself. He did, however, tell himself to not put his hands on his head, because he would not submit to either of them, nor did he want to keep his hands away from the knife at his belt.

"Yeah," Yasmin said, "He'd like to go back to his business and truthfully dearie, so would I, so if you could just- shutting up." Even Yasmin wasn't ballsy enough to test her luck with the murderous blonde. Note to self in case we get out of this, she thought, never take a job in the Lost Woods ever again.

"No one is going anywhere until I have my answers." Autumn did not sheath her sword, and while she spoke, she subtly scanned the area. Not so much for the rogue's companions, but to get a general idea on where they were. She hated to admit it, but she wasn't familiar with this particular layout... She'd seen the female intruder from the path she had walked, but that didn't mean she knew where it actually led. Great. The Forest Spirits were going to have a big laugh over the Guardian of the Lost Woods getting lost in her own area of jurisdiction. "I want names. And I want to know what brings you to forbidden grounds."

"Names? I can give you names. Ismaire Asim, Maria Trueblood, Ellen DeGeneric- okay, okay, it's Yasmin. Yasmin Shahnaz." Pffft. This girl had no sense of humor. But if Yasmin hadn't been mistaken, then her attention was divided. If she just... YES! "SEE YA!" she shouted, turning to a side and running away when she saw the archer taking her eyes off of her again. It was a small opening, but to Yasmin Shahnaz, that was enough. She didn't have her bow ready anyway! Laughing loudly, Yasmin ran down a path towards a huge tree. There was a cavernous entrance in it- worst-case scenario it would lead to a dead end, in which case the Gerudo was sure she would be screwed. But BEST-case scenario, and much more LIKELY in these woods, it would lead to some hidden place, possibly with a looooot of treasure for her trouble~

"Hey!" Autumn called, "Wait! Don't go running off- you could be running into your death- why am I even trying?" Instead, she pointed her sword at the rogue. "Turn around. After her. Slowly."

"Ya know she'll get away from us before I can catch her..." He didn't want to hear her response to the statement, however, and did as he was told. Geez, being held captive was the last thing he could hope for, and being used to hunt another girl wasn't exactly his bottle of milk. He walked with his hands up, without many more options of retreat before him. He was completely vulnerable to the woman stabbing him in the back where he was, but the only other option would be to throw his knife at her in a desperate attempt to escape. But he wouldn't choose to do that, for he wouldn't know when a situation would arise and he needs his knife to save himself.

Eventually, both of them reached the tree, and they both knew that Yasmin had either escaped far in the tree or had hidden herself well.

As she drove the man closer to the enormous tree, a general sense of unease crept up on Autumn more and more. At a few points, she knew she heard something behind her- she knew better than to turn around, though, for the man would likely seize the opportunity to run away, possibly getting himself killed by something far less forgiving than her. The more time she spent in this part of the woods, the surer she became that none of the three, not even herself, had been supposed to find it.

"Hold." As she reached the tree, she grabbed the man's shoulders to stop him from going in while she looked around. In the time they had spent here, the sky had turned orange with twilight, and fireflies had started flitting about the trees and the bushes. A small number of them had converged around the entrance to the insides of the great tree, so there was no telling if Yasmin had gone inside. Autumn looked around quickly, but her sixth sense didn't warn her of anything directly approaching.

The guardian sighed in frustration. She had been busy expelling an intruder, as her duties demanded, but in a place like this, where evil spirits were likely to jump out at any given moment... this was the last place to kill intruders. It looked like her guardianship had just flipped to its other face.

"Allow me to explain," she said to the man. "My name is Autumn, and I have the vague idea that we were not meant to reach this place. My task here and now is to ensure that you and... Yasmin, was it, don't die in this tree." She lowered her sword. "If you can show more awareness of your situation than she did, I will not put you at swordpoint again. But understand that you need me. While unfamiliar with this exact place, I have more knowledge of these woods in general than I imagine anyone else does."

Great, she won't kill us here so that she can kill us somewhere else. Slink was a little confused, because he was familiar with more of the forest than almost everyone, in or out of the Lost Woods. But if what this woman was saying happened to be true, then no one really knew where the party was at the moment... and he had no choice but to play along with her until the very end.

"Look, miss Autum," he said. "If I help you get Yasmin, you gotta let me go after that. I'm not like her; the Lost Woods are my home." Despite these words, he wasn't exactly in the best position to bargain, but it certainly beat just walking into his own death. But he did keep his arms raised in the air, to show that she could trust him.

"...there we go." Yasmin got back to her feet, ripping off the long ends of the cloth she had used to bandage her arm, and looked up. Welp. No points for guessing who wasn't going back up there anytime soon. As she'd ran into the tree's void, she'd immediately made a what, thirty feet drop? She had wanted to turn mid-fall, but as she had done so, her left upper arm had scraped past the most massive thorns Yasmin had ever had the displeasure of scratching herself on. The cuts were deep, although not fatal, and would need proper tending to once she got home.

She looked around, little use though it was. The hallway she'd dropped into was dark, with only a few torches sporadically littered here and there to prevent her from walking into a wall. Said walls more resembled those of a cliff than those of a hallway, and were overgrown with vines and probably teeming with bugs. Ick. Bugs.

"Who or what you are is not my concern," Autumn said as she entered the tree alongside Slink. "If you die here, it'll affect the Woods. At least, I think this is one of those places. Still, if you aren't with the woman as you say, then I have no reason to harm you." Unless, of course, he was going to attack her. She pulled to an abrupt halt when she found herself at the edge of a cliff. At the bottom, she saw the occassional speck of flame, indicating there was something down there.

Slink noticed the hole and stopped before her. This would be a piece of cake. "I'll wait for you at the bottom," he told Autumn with a wink. Walking to the bottom along the side of the pit, he felt pretty confident in himself until about five or ten feet from the edge, he tripped and proceeded to fall the remaining distance. Almost cursing, he let out a few loud grunts and stood up. His arm hurt badly again, since he used it to brace the impact of the drop. He looked up at Autumn at the top of the pit and gave her a thumbs up. He realized that although she strongly believed that she wasn't allowed to kill him in a place like this, following as she said should potentially keep him mostly unharmed.

The man simply walked down the walls into whatever lay below, but Autumn had access to no such magic. Instead, she turned to the entryway of the door and started tugging on the vines that hung from the ceiling. The one she had grabbed seemed fairly sturdy, so she lowered her Hawkeye over her eyes, took her bow, and aimed up, using her zoomed-in vision to locate where the vine was connected to the ceiling. With two arrows, she snapped it.

She'd made her choice well, as the vine she had shot had not been tangled into the others and fell to the ground in a heap once gravity got a hold of it. Shoving her Hawkeye back to her forehead, Autumn picked up the vine and threw it around a pillar that stood conveniently close to the edge, fastening it with a simple knot and throwing the length down. She then used the vine to climb down to where the man was. "I need your name," she said as she reached him, letting herself fall the last few feet. "I'm getting a faint sense of outright hostility, and might have to call out to you quickly."

"Oh good," Yasmin said as the other two showed up. "Are we gonna be buddy-buddy now?" She pulled out her daggers, twirling them around in her hands and finally stopping them in an icepick grip. "Good! You guys can walk out front and catch all the bugs. I'll stay behind and kill anything that creeps up on us." If the man hadn't yet been killed by the crazy lass, then Yas figured she'd be fine, too. Besides, people usually thought twice about attacking her at close range while she had her daggers out.

Slink had a sick feeling of what would play out in the future; he wasn't stupid. He knew that they would travel through wherever they were going in a line, and Slink would end up at the front because there was tension between Yasmin and Autumn. As much as Autumn would want to lead to keep everyone from dying, she didn't want either Slink or Yasmin to escape, and Yasmin seemed really insistent of being anywhere but the front. And Yasmin might ultimately end up in the middle, so that Autumn could keep an eye on all of them. But that was just his theory, but it seemed like it would work.

"I'll get a torch to lead the way" Slink announced to the girls. He wanted to be out of the way of whatever was going to happen to them, and he might as well be productive. He walked to the nearest torch, and looked around for a stick of some sort to use. Nothing useful was lying around except for a Deku Stick randomly lying on the ground about a foot long. Slink picked it up and lit one end. The tip of the stick became engulfed, and the fire quickly at up the rest of the stick. He almost didn't have time to drop it, after which it continued to burn on the ground for a few more seconds and flickered out. The power of science was not his friend.

Autumn got no response, and she didn't press, instead drawing her sword. In this dim light, there was no way to see any enemies approaching before it would be too late, so her bow was of little use. "Forget about the lighting," she said, "We have other things to worry about." With those words, she pointed her sword forwards to something further down the hallway.

The light produced by the fire of the torches reflected off of something. Upon closer inspection (although she stayed far away), Yasmin saw the same thing Autumn had- it was the carapace of a large spider, which was idly scuttling around the halls. "See?!" Yasmin said, "I TOLD YOU there'd be bugs!"

"Keep it down!" Autumn hissed, gesturing towards the redhead in frustration, "Skulltulas have good hearing!"

"I am NOT going near ANY bugs-" Yasmin interrupted herself with a loud scream when the Skulltula stopped scuttling and turned towards the trio. "Oh, Farore's tits!" the Gerudo cried, "Why does it always have to be spiders?!"

Autumn sighed, feeling a faint breeze near her hand that confirmed winds were swirling around her softly, pastel green-glowing sword. "Fine, stay back then. I'll handle it. Just don't go running off on your own again."

Being the closest to the Skulltula, Slink felt obligated to help fight, regardless of whether Autumn wanted to do it herself or not. The hallway was big enough for two people to fit side-by-side, so it might be easier to do that. Slink jogged toward the spider and yelled back "Come on, Autumn, let's do this!" He pulled out his sword and when he reached the spider, he strafed in front of it waiting for it to make a move.

The Skulltula redirected its attention towards the man, as he was closer and therefor easier prey to catch. However, as it separated the large pincers on its front that Autumn assumed served to chop prey into little pieces so it would fit into its mouth, it was sent flying upwards and backwards, landing on its back and almost immediately turning over, but still staggering. Autumn got to her feet, the winds around her sword dying down as they had done their work.

She had leapt towards the arachnid, sliding under it and landing her sword in its soft underbelly, and indeed, both the Guardian and the ground underneath where the spider stood now showed traces of Skulltula blood. Autumn winced -it stung in her eyes- but persevered. "The underside," she said to the man, "Its back is far too solid for our swords to breach. If we can get one more good hit to the underside in, it'll be done."

Meanwhile behind them, Yasmin started rummaging through the scarce belongings in the small pack on her waist. She was sure she had that stuff somewhere in here...

"Hey, I told you the forest is my home. I got this," Slink directed at Autumn, adding a wink. He readied his sword and an impromptu plan, and hoped that it would work. He charged the short distance at the Skulltula, and did what surprised himself a little, despite the fact that he planned it. He lowed his center of gravity until he was sliding on his back, hoping to get leverage on the the foe's underside. He aimed his sword up, and his sword had gone through its neck so quickly that he didn't even see it. Slink only knew that the kill had been confirmed when the body and all of its weight collapsed on itself, trapping all of Slink's body save his head and sword arm. His surprise both for his tactic working and the Skulltula falling on him made him cry out a weak "Urk," but no one seemed to have heard it.

The man finished the spider, and Autumn sheathed her blade, walking over to him to push the beast's corpse off of him. "Well done," she said, "Now at least I know I can count on you when it comes to these things... Skulltulas rarely travel alone."

"Great!" Yasmin said as she walked closer to the two. "That's all nice and good, but if you continue being that reckless you'll be the one dying." She held up two test tubes containing an unclear, green liquid. "Skulltula blood is stupidly poisonous, you geniuses. Here- it's a generally powerful antidote that should help counteract the poison." When Autumn took the tubes and handed one to the man, she saw Yasmin running over to the spider with an empty vial, scopping up some of its blood.

"I'm set," she said. "Also what's more, while you two were playing spider wrangler I got this." Only now did Autumn notice that in her free hand, the redhead was holding a thick Deku Stick, the top wrapped in what looked to be soaked cloth to slow down the burning. It was lit, burning happily with a green flame, indicating the Gerudo had used chemicals to soak the cloth. "Shall we go on?"

Slink was as fond of not dying as the next guy, but in all truth he didn't trust either Autumn or Yasmin too much, each in their own way. While he believed that Yasmin's intentions were good, he didn't trust her enough to believe that whatever was in the tube would be an antidote for the poison. While she rushed over to the spider's body, Slink slipped the test tube into his pocket, and decided to wait until it was obvious that he was poisoned. Besides, he didn't eat any of the blood, and he didn't have any cuts on himself as far as he knew. Although his clothes were stained pretty badly with Skulltula blood.

"I think we're set to go," Slink stated. Leading the way, while staying within the glow of Yasmin's torch, they followed the tunnel in a mostly straight path until eventually reaching an opening. On the level they stood on, the ground was not finished, and was really rough and mainly consisted of dirt. From their tunnel, a path lead to a set of wooden stairs that ascended to a raised platform in the middle of the room. From the raised platform, the sides were all fenced off except for the side opposite of them, which contained the parts of a rickety bridge that wanted to keep existing. On the opposite side of the room was another similarly raised platform with a stone slab resembling a door against the wall. It appears as though a bridge connected the two platforms, but that is no longer the case. The room, especially the platforms, were well lit by torches placed evenly around the room.

"Umm..." Slink mumbled aloud. He wasn't too fond of being the guy who was the first to explore, especially if they had been accosted by a Skulltula earlier. "Ladies first?"

Unlike the man, Autumn had less inhibitions about taking the antidote and ingesting it. Skulltula poison was just as potent when absorbed through the skin as when it was injected- it just worked a lot more slowly. She chugged half the contents of the test tube down in one gulp, saving the rest in case she would need it again later. She then followed behind the two intruders, until they reached the two platforms connected by what had once been a bridge. With the four torches on top of the wooden platform, Autumn walked forward out of the reach of Yasmin's torch.

"Something feels funny," she said. "It's different from usual. Do the two of you sense it?"

"Not me," Yas said. "Little old me's a Gerudo, not a Hylian. I don't have you fancy sixth sense. But one of the senses that I DO have..." she leapt forward, using her Wall Kick against the ground to vault over Autumn and land behind her, bringing one of her daggers down to sever the head of a carnivorous plant from the stem and ramming the other one through its upper mandible, "is telling me that this entire room is infested with Deku Babas and Baba Serpents. Heads up, sweetie."

Reward change (open) Reward change (close)

- Slink: common bow, Hookshot, -50r

After watching Yasmin do a great looking jump over Autumn while killing a Deku Baba in the process, Slink was very impressed and terrified of what he came to see as a new situation. It would probably be safer to leave the room as fast as possible, despite the fact that Deku Babas cannot move freely. The gap between the two platforms was too great for a normal person to jump across, or that's what it seemed to look like to Slink. "I'm getting out of here, you guys comin' or what?" Slink jumped town to the area between the two platforms, and saw a Deku Baba rise not too far in front of him; however, the creature was just close enough for a horizontal slash of Slink's sword to kill it.

With only one exit in the room, Slink chose to walk on the wall to the platform. With luck at his side, Slink got close enough to the rim while the closest Baba Serpent was too far away to reach him. He jumped off of the wall and landed on the other side of the fence, leaving himself on the platform with the door. Slink would've been very surprised if the girls had not managed to find their own way across.