Twilit Forest Temple [BP/F-dude]

Now that Autumn looked around the room, she saw it too. Almost everywhere, large blue buds and even larger red-and-black striped buds were clearly visible, some sleeping, some in hiding, and some smacking their lips. Normally she'd have no issues with killing them- for all their capabilities to take good, big bites out of Hylians and swallow a Korok or a Kikwi whole, they weren't very resilient. However, right now, they were the intruders in their territory. Not to mention that in order to cut one, she'd have to get within range of numerous others.

The man walked over the wall's surface, but neither of the women had that capability. Fortunately Yasmin had something else at her disposal, as she had demonstrated less than a minute before. Running towards the edge of the platform, sh allowed herself to slip off it, planting the sole of her foot against the platform. There was a solid wooden panel that served as perfect ground for a take-off, and Yasmin poured most of her strength into that one foot, launching herself high enough that her ponytail brushed the ceiling as she frontflipped and landed near Slink. Wall Kick worked on flat surfaces, but actual walls just gave her that much more leverage. They were also slightly more tiring.

Meanwhile, Autumn had realized something. The platform that Yasmin and the man were standing on, was lower than the one she was on right now. Not by much, but just enough to be significant. Climbing onto the fence to give herself a little more height, she unfurled a large, rolled-up leaf that she had carried on her waist. Holding it in two hands, she leapt off the fence, using the leaf as a parachute to greatly slow her descent so she could land on the other platform. Once there, she rolled it up and put it back away, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

Very impressive feats indeed. Slink felt a slight need to give a light clap towards their achievements, but now was not exactly the time for such a thing. By the time Autumn had reached the platform, Slink was already opening the door to the next room and ushered the team inside.

This next room looked really awkward to anyone who entered the way the party did; moss covered the walls and parts of the ceiling all over the room. They stood on a wooden platform that formed a staircase around the walls and inward in the room. The wood itself had its fair share of cracks and moss, and a lot of it looked very unstable. Multiple places in the staircase had various sized holes in the wood; while some only required a person to step over them, others would require someone to leap across. The bottom was dimly lit, since the only torches in the room were at the top where the party had entered, and it faintly visible. Looking around, Slink also noticed the ceiling very far above their current position, but the Skulltulas waiting at the top were barely visible and made their distinguishable scratching noise.

Slink began to sweat, and it started to feel hotter all of a sudden. Odd, because it should actually feel humid, moist, or even cold down wherever they were. "Well..." Slink addressed to the ladies, wiping some sweat off of his forehead. "What do you think we do?" Slink reached into his pocket and pulled out his bandana, which he proceeded to wrap around his forehead.

Yasmin liked to act it sometimes, but she wasn't actually stupid. Falling down there would not be a good idea by any stretch of the imagination. She swung her torch out front of her a few times in hopes of getting a better view of things- places like these tended to have flammable stuff in random places, and an extra torch could not hurt. "We don't go down there," she said, only half-joking. "I've got a serious bad feeling about that." Pointing her torch to the skulltula-infested ceiling, she continued. "Does either of you have any range or anything? There's a bucketton of them up there. We can't go ahead either, not unless something takes them out."

Sighing, Autumn pulled her bow once more and conjured up a strong wind around one arrow, which she then fired square into the middle of the spider group. A good amount of them became dislodged by the sudden gale, falling down and making splashing noises. "Water," Autumn said as she notched more, mundane, arrows to pick off the stragglers. "This room is flooded." In the Lost Woods, that cold just as easily mean nothing as it could mean that there was going to be some large, amphibian monster lurking below there, waiting to kill them.

While Autumn killed spiders, Yasmin looked at Slink. "You okay buddy?" she asked, seeing him sweat. "You don't look so well."

"Ya, ye I'm fie." Slink slurred. He heard the splashing sound from the Skulltulas and looked down below him to see what there was. The whole room began to spin, and the water they landed in looked so cool and refreshing. He could almost touch it... it was so hot in the room that it might help him feel better. "I jush nee shome wader, thash all." Slink mumbled, reaching toward the water. Unfortunately, in actuality the water was tens of feet below him, and before he could realize what was happening he had flopped over the railing and into the pool of water.

The force of the impact from hitting the water was so strong that Slink was knocked unconscious, while his potion that was given to him sunk to the bottom with his dagger separated from his body doing a similar action.

"HEY!" Yasmin's cry next to her broke Autumn's concentration, sending an arrow veering way off course and embed itself into the ceiling next to one of the last few remaining spiders. When the guardian turned around, she saw the Gerudo leaping off the edge into the water, while the man was nowhere to be seen.

"You idiot! Why do men always insist on drinking the water?!" Yasmin leapt down after him, seizing him by the arm and spanning her muscles. Despite her slight build, the Gerudo had immense amounts of muscle mass thanks to the training she had undergone in the fortress. Her arms were nothing next to her legs, but she managed to draw Slink out of the water and used her strong legs to push them to the shore- there was a single torch sitting on dry land, that allowed her to see. She threw her baggage onto the land first, before pulling herself up as well.

"Bloody IDIOT," she repeated as she pulled his bandana from his head to feel his forehead. "Didn't you HEAR the crazy girl? If you die here, only bad times are to be had!" She sought his pockets for the antidote she'd given him, as she recognized his symptoms as those of Skulltula poisoning. When she didn't find it, she lost it. "Ohh, SOMEONE'S paying for that! Extracting Skulltula poison and creating the antidote isn't cheap or easy, you know!"

"I have some left." Yasmin jolted when Autumn showed up next to her, having found a safer way down, and held out her own vial. She grabbed it, pried Slink's jaw open, and poured the stuff in. Yasmin was still muttering about the cost of the antidote and about men being wasteful idiots as they waited for their companion to regain consciousness.

Slink's mind was completely blank with no perception on what was going on around him. "...some left." Was what he heard before waking up, followed by the realization that he had almost no air left. He gagged and a good amount of water flew out of his throat, landing right back on his head. He raised the upper part of his body from the ground and shook his head, trying to regain his bearings. He must've drowned somehow... Turning to look back at the women, he realized that they both must've saved him. "Thank you." He said.

A low muffled sound came from the water, and Slink drew his attention to it. Some blood rose from the water to the surface, and Slink had no idea what caused it. After checking himself for any wounds, he asked "Should the water be bleeding like that?"

"Hold." Autumn grabbed Slink's head, as well as Yasmin's torch, and positioned the latter such that its light shone into the man's eyes. When she pulled it away, his pupil became slightly bigger and as she moved closer, it became slightly smaller. Good, that meant that most of his systems had to be fully functional. When she helped him get up, she paid particular attention to the way he stood and spoke, both results being satisfactory. "It seems the poison's been washed from him entirely," she said to Yasmin. "That was some very powerful antidote, if so little of it could purge the effects this late."

"Of COURSE it was good!" Yasmin said, still angry, "It was MINE, and it was EXPENSIVE!" Still, the Gerudo perked when Slink spoke about the water bleeding. "Water tends to not bleed. Are you hallucina- whoa!" she jumped back. Slink had not been kidding OR hallucinating. There WAS blood bubbling on the surface of the water, and it was nowhere near where Autumn had plunged the spiders into it. "Er, blondie?" she said, "You think you could, eh..."

Autumn didn't even hear her. Knowing of the many dangers that lurked in the Lost Woods, she had pulled out her bow and aimed an arrow at where the red water had started bubbling more ferociously. She stared at it intently, fully focused on it, and ready to release the arrow the moment anything would come out of the water.

Slink, finally putting the pieces together, reached for his knife to— What? He felt around his belt and everywhere, but his knife was gone! If he had actually fallen into the water, then... He needed to get it back. "Don't shoot, I need to go in!" Ignoring anything said to him, he dived into the water to get the knife back.

The water was really dark, and he could barely see anything on the way down. When he assumed he was at the bottom, he felt something brush past his leg, then on the same leg felt something slightly push against it before the feeling left. A number of seconds later, he heard a faint, muffled, and distorted sound of metal hitting something that would be heard in water, and there it was. He could barely see the blade, but it was visible near the vial of what looked a lot like Autumn's antidote. Well, it seems as though she wasn't lying earlier... And given how mad she was about wasting it, he might as well haul this up. He reached down and grabbed both of the items before he heard a low grumbling sound. That was the signal that he needed to go back up. He started to ascend through the water, but he could tell that he was running out of air quickly. Barely reaching the surface with seconds to spare, his arms rose sharply before his head did, and he took a deep breath upon doing so.