Weeding [Terrel/Willow/Closed]

Finally, the scenery around him was showing visible change. The air grew more humid and was filled with the stench of rotting vegetation. Mud squelched beneath his boots with every step, and clung to the leather, forcing him to expend a little bit of stamina just to pull his feet out of the muck. Muttering an oath underneath his breath, Rua Dragonheart scanned the surrounding area in hopes of finding a dry path to traverse. He wasn't hopeful--the area was rapidly going from forest to swamp, and he was certain that he'd be finding water soon.

He kept his free hand gripped around the hilt of the sword strapped to his back, and his shield held lightly in front of him. The deeper he went into the region, the more frequent he encountered Deku Scrubs driven mad by the alien call emanating from the heart of the swamp.

It was rare that he encountered a Deku creature that didn't immediately attack him, and so when he had returned to the forest, searching for signs of the encroachment of Ganon's scattered forces, he felt on edge when a korok scrambled out of some shrubbery, pleading to him in a squeaky voice for help. It had been difficult for him to calm the creature down--he was not a charismatic and soothing person--but once he did, he could tell that whatever was happening in the swamp could only be the work of Ganon. It was the only clue he had.

So long as he could get there. Just how large was this swamp, anyway?

This swamp was far, far too large. Terrel didn't really know where she was and certainly didn't know where she was going, but one bad song and she ended up mired in this god-forsaken basin of filth. There was definitely something seriously wrong about this place, though. She'd seen swamps before, south of Darunia, and this was different. Of course, she really had no idea where she was on a map, but these trees almost looked like they belonged in a forest, except they were all twisted and contorted. It was as if some wizard had had some ghoulish dream and then planted it in the middle of the woods. Usually Terrel was fond of the trees, but not these ones.

And then there was the smell. Rancid, overgrown, and spoiled all wrapped up into one delicious package sent expressly to your nose. She'd seen some Deku around here, though she'd avoided them mostly thus far, but she didn't remember them living in such foul, unholy places. The whole thing was really beginning to get on her nerves. She'd been tramping around in this hot, muggy place for what must have been hours now, and no matter which way she turned it always somehow managed to be getting worse. It was if the place were drawing her to the center of this diseased blight and there was nothing she could do about it. If only she could remember that bloody song!

Terrel dropped her boot on a large arachnid that scuttled out from a rock in front of her, grimacing in distaste as the purple fluid leaked covered the bottom of her foot. Nasty creatures here as well. Whatever bred them was just as messed up as whatever dreamed up the rest of this nightmare, and that was perhaps the most offsetting thing of all. There were strange plants and even strange creatures, but this place was simply unnatural. Most of all, though, she felt like something was wrong with the Deku here.

So far she'd avoided them, but something was decidedly odd about them as well. The only thing she recognized here, really, and they seemed the most warped and twisted, as if they were quite thoroughly... mad. They seemed relatively oblivious and more than a little bit ravenous, if you could describe a small wooded creature that way. Even though she was hardly the quietest creature in the forest, avoiding them hadn't been too hard, though it was only a matter of time before something found her here. Then there was no telling what might happen.

Was the air wavering? It looked like it was wavering. The horizon above the twisted foliage seemed to be swimming, the air warping at a leisurely pace, like a heat mirage. It was barely discernible, visible only where the sky met the canopy in the distance. Rua squinted as he viewed it, then closed them tight and shook his head. As if the sickly sweet scent of the swamp was bad enough, now it's playing visual tricks on him. Was it a product of magic? It had to be. He'd been in the forest often enough and knew that this swamp hadn't been around before. Others would've mentioned it, those lucky few who had contact with the Kokiri surely would've known about it. But in the caves, there'd been no mention of it that he ever heard of.

Mayhap that's what I get for not sticking around often enough, he thought as he brought part of his cloak up to obscure his mouth and nose--the stench of the deathly swamp was getting nauseating. Was this place going to be full of some damnable poison like the region Mepple so aggravatingly traveled to? He prayed that he wasn't stepping into another mess like that.

The path before him suddenly widened out as he turned past a knobby tree that was slanted over the path. Once again his eyes unwittingly traveled up until it saw that blasted wavering in the air, but they soon followed the horizon until it found the tower that was bursting up from the treeline. The air seemed to warp around it as well, but it became clearer as he gaze at the top of the building.

"That must be what he was talking about," Rua muttered to himself, frowning at the sight. Supposedly that was the origin of the troubles affecting the forest. He narrowed his eyes, concentrating his senses, and soon, he heard it.

A keening warble on the air. Reedy and faint, almost like his ears were ringing, but it didn't drum inside his head. He could tell that the call came from that tower in the distance. Certainly it'd become clearer, more distinct, as he made his approach. He began walking forward, but soon stopped as a thought came to him. If the alien screech was driving the Scrubs into madness, would it do the same to other creatures? Would he run into wolfos that had gone rabid, or toadpoli like the ones they'd found in their last trip to the forest?

And if those creatures could be driven mad, what would it do to him?

Rua shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thoughts. Whatever might happen, it was too late now. He'd already come this far, and this was his only chance on making a breakthrough for his own goal. He should consider himself lucky that he was alone for a change, without having to worry about the safety of Ayls or Mepple. Steeling his resolve once more, he pushed forward towards the Skyreach Temple.

Terrel squeezed between a pair of trees rather uncomfortably, having found it was the driest and least obscured path forward. The bark rubbed up against her skin, irritating it, but even worse it didn't feel quite as coarse as she thought it should've. It was almost slimy, like the very air around her, and that made her skin crawl quite successfully. For the last several minutes now, too, a growing headache continued to emerge behind her skull, which did no wonders for her mood. Water was sparse already, but it didn't really feel like dehydration. It felt like there was something she couldn't really hear properly, like it was too high or too low for her ears to pick up.

She did enough shouting and hanging around noisy bars and pubs that her hearing wasn't too great anyway, but this was getting quite successfully annoying. Maybe the creatures of the forest could hear it and that was what drove them to be so bloody distorted around these parts. She, for one, was pretty happy she couldn't hear it, if it was a noise indeed.

But her happiness didn't go too far, in this case. For a little while now she'd realized that she was getting closer to some sort of landmark that stretched into the hazy sky, and Terrel had a feeling that even if she were to change directions, she'd still end up in the same spot in the end. Typically speaking, she found her gut's compass was pretty accurate in the woods, and that told her she was headed to the way out, as odd as it might seem.

The thing was getting really close now, though.

Already it towered to the point where she had to crane her neck to see the top of it, and the thing made her right nervous to be around. At the same time her gut was telling her she had to go forward, it was also sending another signal that said she stood a good chance of being skinned alive in a place like that. While Terrel was not, by nature, an explicit coward, she'd never seen anything like this before, and a great sense of unease rested on her shoulders. The fact that she might stumble into the base of this tower at any moment didn't help her anxiety, either.

It was, of course, right at this time that something collided into her back, taking the woman completely by surprise.

Before she could think better of it, Terrel let forth a scream, part in pain and part in fear, and she collided into the damp, loamy ground an instant later. What little reflexes she had acquired kicked in for self-defense, and the woman rolled over from her stomach to stare at her attacker. Large orange eyes locked onto her own, and the woman had only a moment to roll over again as another hard Deku Nut came hurtling toward her, striking the ground where she had been just a moment ago.

Struggling to her feet, Terrel slipped again on the mushy ground and a Deku Nut struck her in the shoulder, spinning her off her feet as she released another pained cry. It was like having rocks thrown at you, except they felt a lot more malicious and dangerous coming from this demented creature. Heart beating, the woman mustered her speed to try and survive against the nasty thing, making it to her feet finally and pulling out her crossbow. Fumbling with the mechanism while trying to dodge those horrible projectiles wasn't exactly easy work, but a few moments later and a shaft went whistling through the air, striking the monster in its oversized head and sending it straight into the ground.

With a groan, Terrel relaxed a bit, seeing that the creature had been successfully killed. It wasn't until a couple of moments later, though, that she bothered to turn around and realize where she actually stood. Straight up and traveling higher than anything she'd ever seen in the woods before stood the tower she'd been walking toward, and the woman groaned even louder at the sight of it. Normally she'd have guessed it'd be far less safe inside the thing, but her loud yells and screams while getting peppered by that creature was a bright red flag to anything that felt like finding her. Head throbbing, the woman felt like she was going to be sick.

The scream rang loud and clear in the air, a sharp contrast the steadily rising drone emanating from the tower. The shriek had caused Rua to come to a halt for the briefest of moments, then he cursed and broke out into a dead run. There was no mistaking the scream of a human woman. Worse, the direction of the scream seemed to have come from the same as the tower. What in hell was a woman doing out this far in the forest?

Probably for a reason as insane as your own, fool! he berated himself as he ran deeper into the swamp, towards the tower. Water splashed where his boot slammed into puddles and streams, and he ignored what water managed to soak into his pants. He found his sword in hand, having barely realized when he had drawn it from its sheathe.

Rua wasn't the fastest of runners, nor was it easy when carrying a sword and a shield in hand, especially in the muggy heat of the swamp, but all things considered, he made good time. Within minutes he'd arrived close to the tower, stepping out on a short ledge. As he caught his breath from the run, he soon found who and what caused the scream from earlier.

A woman with skin darker than his own, pretty but not beautiful, with brown hair to her shoulders and eyes that matched. Her garb was surprisingly practical, if unusual for a woman to wear, and she was armed--quiver strapped to her hip, and a crossbow in her arms. The nearby corpse of a Mad Scrub with a bolt sticking out of its head gave Rua all he needed to know on whether she could use it.

He frowned at the sight, and while he lowered his sword, he kept his shield close to his chest. "Hey!" he called out to her, trying to catch her attention.

After she'd killed the Deku the woman had moved away from it a bit, wondering if the madness might be contagious. If anything was going to drive her mad, though, it was probably going to be a combination of the throbbing in her head, shoulder, and back now, not to mention the air you could wear hanging across her skin like a thick blanket.

All in all, the encounter had shaken Terrel up quite a bit, and the most she'd done to recollect herself so far was to load another bolt into the crossbow and pace a bit, in the off-chance madness made friends and she could expect more of those nasty creatures. In the immediate minute or two that followed, however, the swamp seemed as quiet as ever, and she wondered what the rest of the inhabitants of this god-awful place thought about this looming tower she stood beneath.

Something struck her ears, though, and Terrel realized that, apparently, she wasn't the only idiot in the swamp with a knack of shouting for no particular reason. Immediately the woman turned to face it, leveling the crossbow out of instinct alone before she realized what she was aiming at.

It was a man, Hylian, tall and looking like he might have actually wanted to come to this stupid place, though why he felt the need to be shouting was beyond her. If he was announcing himself, though, she doubted he intended on taking advantage of her in the immediate tense, so she lowered her weapon and grimaced yet again. With a glance in either direction, she took a quick pace to him until she figured they'd be able to hear each other easily without shouting.

"Keep it down, would you? Don't need two of us bloody screaming 'round these parts," the woman responded to him, not particularly pleased with her lot in life at the moment.

"Not sure you have much room to talk, screaming like you were," was Rua's retort. He lowered his shield at the same time the woman below lowered her crossbow, and he stepped down from the ledge to meet her on equal footing. He kept his sword in hand and his shield ready, just in case--there was no telling if the woman was a bandit or a thief or something, though he doubted it. While he'd met female criminals before, they were rare in this half of Hyrule--they had too much of a common enemy to really take to preying on one another. Better safe than sorry, though.

He glanced over at the corpse of the Mad Scrub, and nodded to it so that she could see it. "Did that thing get the jump on you?" he asked, figuring it was what made her scream before. It certainly look like she had--her blouse and trousers looked as if she had landed in the dirt.

Terrel raised her crossbow at the new Deku, this time without the intention of lowering it. She didn't much trust the sticks who could walk and talk in the woods, and this one seemed all too fond of talking. With a sneer mixed with a grimace, the woman spoke back to the creature, "Not another step, Scrub. You use a lot of bloody words, but that doesn't change the fact that every last one of your kind here seems damn near insane. Maybe you're a stranger here and maybe you're not, but I don't burying you here one way or the other." The woman's voice was strained and more than a bit discomforted. She could feel the heat touching her face and her hands beginning to grow sweaty on her crossbow's handle, her finger not far from the trigger.

She didn't really know what to do, having now raised her crossbow in haste and threatened this creature. Was she making a mistake or was she doing the right thing? These things always seemed to be on her shoulders before she realized what she'd stepped into. In her frustration, she found herself talking to the other Hylian whom she felt there was no choice but to trust now. "I've never met one that talked like this one and certainly not so much. I," she said, stumbling on the word, "I've half a mind to just finish this before it starts."

Was the creature insane like the rest of them? Well he certainly seemed strange, and that didn't bode well with the woman, least of all in this place. She didn't know where she was, she didn't know why everything here was so distorted, and she certainly didn't know what to do. Maybe this man would have some idea if they could trust the Deku.

Rua's sword came up at the ready the instant the Scrub waddled its way out of the water. His expression was weary over the rim of his shield, kept firmly on the creature's snout. The thing was talking, he noticed, but the creature looked to be a mess--what clothing it wore was soaked and stained with mud and grime. Squawking rapidly to the point where he could barely understand its squeaking voice certainly didn't help his impression of the creature, but part of him reminded him that he'd never come across a Mad Scrub that talked.

"It might not have gone mad yet," Rua responded to the woman, which a quick glance to the side showed she was just as alarmed by its presence as he was. He returned his gaze to the Scrub. It wasn't attacking, at least. "You. You're not... losing it, are you?"

Terrel watched the Deku for a good long moment before finally letting out a sigh and frowning. Slowly, the woman lowered her weapon again. She found herself believing the Deku's words, for better or worse, which meant there was no point wasting time like this. Maybe he was strange and perhaps even mad, but he didn't seem malicious. Not to them, anyway. There was no telling if in a fight that Hylian man would even stick around, and she didn't much fancy herself a true warrior or any of that nonsense. The unarmed Deku had given her enough trouble before she'd finally finished that thing, and the bruises were just starting to set in now.

"Don't bother," she said at last, slinging the crossbow over her back and sticking her thumbs in her trousers. "I trust you're not going to try and spike us with that bow, but I'd like to at least know why you're here. I can't hear whatever you can, coming from that tower, but if I could then I figured I'd be as far away from it as I could. You say you want to destroy this tower? What are you, some sort of bloody hero? Thought Ganon killed all of them already."

Rua glanced aside at the woman, surprised at her admission that she couldn't hear the cries coming from the tower. Surely she should hear that droning that was echoing down from above, shouldn't she? It no longer felt like it was coming from within his head, this close to the tower. He shook his head of the thought and refocused back on the Scrub. Well, if it was willing to talk and has lived here, maybe it'd know if something else had been amiss. "I don't know why she came this way, but I have my own reasons for coming here," he told the Scrub. "Some of Ganon's forces have been spotted inside the forest. They might have something to do with what's going on here."

The woman grimaced at the question directed toward her, not much wanting to admit that she had no clue why she was there and despite her best efforts she couldn't seem to get out. She was about to respond but the man took the question for her, though Terrel noticed he avoided it pretty well himself. Her words died in her mouth, reduced to a mutter, and instead she simply shifted feet, crossing her arms and looking away until he stopped speaking. This seemed like the last place in the world to trust a random stranger you encountered, but despite that it seemed inevitable anyway.

Instead of dwelling on the subject no one really wanted to talk about, she switched over, "Look, maybe it's just me but I get the feeling we're not going to have much a choice on this one. Whatever this thing is, it's interfering." The woman paused, her sun-darkened face catching a hint of scarlet as heated a bit, "I don't even know where the hell this place is. I landed here by mistake; this thing must have broken my song."

Rua blinked, and looked over at the woman again, this expression puzzled. A song? What does a song have to do with anything? "How in the world did you get here with a song?"

In a moment's passing, Terrel found she felt extremely uncomfortable all of a sudden. Instead of backtracking or, heaven forbid, explaining herself, the woman decided to take up the aggression before another moment could pass. Pointing a threatening finger at him, she all but growled, "Listen, bud, that's none of your bloody business and I'll see a bolt between your eyes before that changes, you understand?" She snapped her mouth shut a moment later, as if realizing her own outburst a second too late. If her temper wasn't running so hot, she might have had time to be embarrassed for herself.

She tried to think of something diplomatic to say, but nothing came to mind. Instead, the woman merely groaned for the hundredth time, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes, as if searching for patience.