Woodfall Temple [Quill, Cloudzy, Adad]

((Marcus' new character sheet begins here))

Loft gazed deep into his eyes, and nodded. "As serious as the Running Man in Rabbitland Rescue," he said, skipping away merrily. "I'm a fluffy bunny, hear me roar!"

---___---___---___---

Marcus

I was barely listening to Loft as he rambled on about his 'tragic past.' Keaton and I were busy. Busy looking around at the ruins, thinking of what to do. We stood a little ways away from the others, my hand on a propped up pillar, Keaton clambering around on it. It may not make much logical sense, but watching him chitter around, weaving wildly across the pillar, calmed me down. Focused me. Maybe because he was a familiar entity, a constant, in the midst of this raging storm. He was my eye, I suppose.

I shook my head, discarding all irrelevant musings. Concentrate, boy!

So far, the Temple had been disappointingly linear. There had been no mazes, no forks in the road, and no difficult choices to make. While this was unexpected, and to a certain extent unwanted, I was not unhappy with the nature of this Temple.

"A headlong rush to the prize, eh?" I mused, running my hand down the fallen stone pillar. "I'm disappointed, but it seems to suggest something about the ruler, or boss, of this Temple. He doesn't want to trap us, or get us lost, or out-think us in puzzles or mazes, or to even slow us down. This is a one-way dead-end street. Leading straight to him. He wants to fight us. Why?"

I bit my lip, chewing, my mind far away. He wants to fight us. That, coupled with the lack of attempt to out-smart us, suggests that he's focused almost completely on the physical. A warrior? Probably. He hadn't made any attempt to kill us yet; these monsters were hardly threatening, and if we were killed by them, then that would just prove we weren't worthy to face him.

I smiled slightly. This was good news for us. The boss would, most probably, not attempt to defeat them by means of a dirty trick. Most likely, he (or she, or it) would challenge them to a fair fight.

"A fight," I mused softly, Keaton dashing up my arm and settling onto my shoulder, "that I have no intention of losing."

---___---___---___---

"Spinning blades?"

"Check!"

"Poisonous swamp water?"

"Check!"

"Man-eating plants?"

"Uhm... hold on, lemme see."

"..."

"OW! Check!"

I gazed at the room in distaste, my lip pulled back in a frown. How original. The Demon was testing us, it seemed. Determining whether we were worthy of entering its abode. Or, I thought, looking at the hedge-clippers, piles of fertilizer, and weed-whackers stacked neatly against the wall, this could just be its personal garden.

Behind us stood the stone door. Thirty feet away from us rested the other one. Between us was a large pool of purple liquid.

I tsked. "Honestly. Haven't we been here before?"

"How'd you know that they were man-eating plants, Marcus?" Loft asked curiously, massaging his nose.

"Because, Loft," I said wearily, "they've been eyeing you since we walked in, and that one just smacked its lips."

He sniffed haughtily, and tossed his hair back. "Maybe they like me. What can I say? I'm a popular guy."

"Oh, they like you alright," I said, "just not in the way you're thinking of."

He grinned. "Call me num-nums."

"In your dreams," I said, without grinning. Floating on the purple liquid were stepping stones of large plants, almost like lily pads, except that they had giant lips sticking out from their tops, and teeth that protruded several inches beyond the lips. I pursed my lips slightly; I'd be interested in studying those, to find out exactly how they managed to survive off poisonous liquid. Perhaps some sort of filter? If so, a filtering mask might be modelled off of its internal systems... but I digressed.

As if the poisonous water and man-eating plants hadn't been bad enough, large guillotine blades were swinging from the ceiling between each pad, passing only an inch or two above the 'water.'

"Honestly," I said, "how does this guy get past all this on a daily basis?"

"It's maaaaaagic," Loft said, twirling his fingers. "He go poof right around those nasty traps!"

"Yeah yeah, sure," I said distractedly. I turned to my companions. "Well, what do you think?"

Loft spun around and around, his arms sticking out like a birdy. "Fly, my pretties, fly! Over yonder klaptraps and cliché blades! Fly!"

He raced to the edge of the water, leaning out to the nearest lily pad. "Hi Mr. Lily Pad; do you wanna play a game with me?"

Mr. Lily Pad ran a green tongue across its jaws in response.

"Ooh, you do!" Loft said, delightedly clapping his hands together. "Great!"

He took out his knife, and pointed it at Mr. Lily Pad. "We're gonna play House. I'll be the doctor, and you'll be the kitty that needs a tracheostomy."

Mr. Lily Pad squealed loudly in anticipation.

"I know, I'm excited too! Now, let's begin, shall we?"

---___---___---___---

Loft skipped over to Marcus, holding a knife oozing sap. "Marcus? How do you do a tracheostomy again?"

Marcus turned, beaming, ready to help his best buddy. "Why?"

"Wellll," Loft said, leading him over to Mr. Lily Pad, "I was playing House, and I tried to do one. Did I do it right?"

Marcus inspected the body. Mr. Lily Pad looked like he had been used for Play-Doh. Except, a lot less stretchy. "You carved it up into eight sections, stabbed straight through its mouth-" he leaned in closer to check- "five times, and drew a smiley face onto its tongue."

Loft held his hands up defensively. "I thought it would cheer him up! He was all pouty 'cause he didn't want to do House anymore. But once you start playing House, there is no stopping. There is no turning back. House is for life."

"I'm sure," Marcus said, sighing at Mr. Lily's dumb refusal to play, "but mutilating the patient is most definitely not how you perform a tracheostomy.

"On the plus side," he continued wryly, "I think you found our way across."

He looked at the confused faces of his companions, and gestured to the trapper pad. "We can use the corpses of the trappers to make our way across. Julius, you can do the honours if you wish; I doubt my autistic friend will stay focused."

As if to prove his point, the 'autistic' boy ran back towards the last door, snatching something shiny off from its surface. "IT'S A BUG!" He spun around, and lifted it over his head. "Duh duh-duh da duuuuuuh!"

Marcus shook his head, turning back towards Julius. "Anyway, Julius, if you would like to start- whoa!" He tackled Zajora, barely knocking the small child out of the way of a large ball of muck, which splat against the ground several feet behind them. Spitting the dirt out of his mouth, Marcus looked up, staring at what had attacked them.

A large plant head was sticking out of the poisonous water before them, its scaly stem retreating deep into the water. Glossy leaves protruded from behind its head, forming a kind of halo encircling its gigantic maw. It snapped at them, showing off its many large teeth.

Marcus stood, warily raising his hands in front of him, ready to shield. "Zajora, if you could...?" But, before he had finished speaking, another head burst from underneath the water's surface, screeching loudly at the four intruders. "Move!" Marcus yelled, and he swiped a hand in front of him just in time to deflect the left head's ball of purple, poisonous muck. The projectile whizzed back through the air, smacking the plant squarely across the mouth. It reeled back, then rushed at him.

Marcus felt Loft barrel into him from his right, and he fell to the ground. The plant head snapped harmlessly above him, drops of acidic water dripping from its stem. Marcus rolled to avoid getting splashed by any; he didn't want any of that stuff on him. The plant, realizing its mistake, tried to retreat, but Loft's dagger sliced through the air, cleanly severing its stem. The head dropped to the ground, flopping uselessly in the dirt. Loft raised his dagger again, but the thing let out a keening wail, shrivelling up into a small ball of dark brown compost.

"One down," Marcus said shakily, rising back to his feet, "one to go."

"Zajora, Julius, any time you two want to pitch in," Marcus yelled, rolling away from a snapping head. He and Loft were at the forefront of the attack, and Marcus knew nothing about their other two, useless comrades. Where were they? He chanced a glance behind him, but... they were nowhere in sight. Neither of them were standing on the embankment. He and Loft were alone with the monsters.

"Joy." He didn't know what had happened, but Loft yanking him out of harm's way again told him that that wasn't too important at the moment. "Time to end this," he said, and ducked behind the outstretched head. He waved his hand around its stem, forming a crystal-blue barrier around it. As the head quickly drew back, it collided with the reflective surface. It was instantly sent flying back, causing the stem to shudder and stretch painfully with the effort of keeping the head attached to the under-water base.

"Now, Loft!" Loft's knives sliced through the air again, cleanly severing the cord, and the head shrivelled on the ground like the one before it, dead.

"Good job," Marcus said wearily, "now let's go find Zajora and Julius. They shouldn't have gone too far, little cow-"

"Up!" Loft said happily, pointing towards the ceiling.

"Up?" Marcus asked, his voice trailing off as he realized what Loft had meant. "Oh. Up."

The room's roof was not, as they had assumed, uniformly composed of rock. Large, man-sized holes dotted its surface, and a large tentacle was dragging the forms of two humanoids, one large and one small, struggling as they disappeared into the depths of one of the holes.

"Bye!" Loft said, waving merrily. "See you later!" He skipped back over towards the dead lily pad plant from earlier. "Can we cross now?"

Marcus trailed behind him slowly. "As strange as it is to say it, yes. We can't follow them up there, after all, and there aren't any other paths behind us. All we can do is go forward and hope we meet up. They're both experienced fighters. They'll be fine. I'm more worried about the possibility of them killing each other than anything else, honestly."

[[This feels so random, but you two aren't posting, and I won't god-mod your characters, so I'm getting them out of the way via a poorly-contrived plot device.]]

Marcus and Loft stood in front of the door, having successfully navigated across the series of lily pads. Marcus had sustained a rather nasty bite from one of the carnivorous plants, a reminder of when he had reached forward and blocked it from taking Loft's head off. Thankfully, his arm hadn't been severed from his body, and he had managed to heal himself up nicely.

Remembering how nice it was to be able to heal nearly all injuries, Marcus pushed open the door. On the other side was a lobby space, with three different elaborate doors set into the far wall. All three were inlaid with gold, rubies, and diamonds, and each was adorned with intricately carved diagrams of the great jungle god. None of these doors had a handle or a lock. They were simply slabs of ornate stone, framed by impenetrable arches of marble.

Marcus frowned, and looked around the room. There must be something here to explain what this room was about. The room was almost completely bare, the only other object in it being a small stone table in the right-hand corner.

They headed over to it, wondering what mysteries it contained...

Marcus drew closer to the table, leaning over it. There wasn't anything on it, just an angled podium and a quill holder. He pursed his lips, disappointed.

"Pretty pictures," Loft said from behind him.

Marcus turned and walked back towards the golden doors, examining the pictures. The door to the far left was covered in representations of a giant warrior-god torturing its prisoners. Looking up and down the door, Marcus was happy that he was a trained Healer. Anyone else would have spilled their guts at the graphic depictions.

"Pretty!" Loft said. Well, except for him. But he was crazy, so he didn't count. Marcus snorted, remembering his little sob story from before. Loft was just as autistic as the Goddess Nayru. That wasn't to say that he didn't have other problems, but still.

Marcus moved on to the middle door. This door only had one picture, but it covered the whole of its surface. It showed the warrior-god sitting on a great throne, lording over a mass of cowering Deku. The warrior was clutching a great sword, and it held its masked head held high above the Dekus' quivering figures.

The final door featured a series of pictures, obviously meant to be read from left to right. The artistry showed a series of formal-looking Deku leading a cowering slump of a plant to an altar. The prisoner was held over the fiery altar, and his brain was sent sizzling onto its burning surface.

Marcus shivered. "So, we have to decide which door to go through."

He pointed at each door in turn. "Torture. Throne. Sacrifice."

They looked at each other. "Throne room."

Loft walked towards the great golden door, searching for a handle. He ran his fingers across its surface, reaching up as high as he could go and bending down all the way to the floor. There wasn't anything to grip, nothing they could use to prise the door open. It was as if the door was just a big golden slab, just sitting there in the rock, framed by an unbreakable chunk of marble.

His fingers danced across the golden surface, and they found a small crevice hewn into the center of the door. A small, circular indent, deep enough to fit a fingernail, with a tiny hole directly at its bottom. He frowned, looking at it. What was this supposed to be, a Deku keyhole? They didn't bring any Deku nuts or anything, what were they supposed to do?

"I guess we could always go back to the village," Loft said slowly, "and ask for a key or something."

Marcus stepped forward, examining the tiny hole. "A key won't go in here," he said. He put his finger in the crevice, rubbing it on the hole. He took his finger back out, rubbing it and his forefinger together. "Sticky," he commented, "like dried sap."

"Like an offering of plant blood," Loft said.

"Exactly."

"But," Loft frowned, "we don't have any Deku sap! Well," he drew his dagger, "not yet, anyway. There's a village not too far from here, though, we could just-"

"Loft!" Marcus said sharply, cutting him off. "The door requires fresh sap, not several days old dried sap."

"Kidnap one?" Loft suggested.

"Mm," Marcus said, "that'd take too long, and there's no guarantee that we could regain access into the Temple." He groaned. "How are we supposed to do this? If we need a sacrifice of sap to gain entry, and we don't have any sap, then what do we do?"

Loft looked up at the carving of the Jungle Warrior and grinned. "Easy. We just ask the big guy."

Marcus frowned at Loft. "What?"

"Well," Loft said, "remember Wizzie? You said that he wanted to fight us, that he wasn't going to just kill us. If Mr. Tattoos up there," he waved at the Jungle Warrior, "hasn't killed us yet, then it probably wants to fight us. So, we just have to ask."

Marcus made a strangled sound in his throat, but Loft ignored him. The boy reached up, and knocked three times on the great golden door. "Hello? Angry Mr. Jungle God man? We'd like to kill you now!"

The door shuddered, and began to sink into the rock. Marcus yelped and stood back, but Loft stepped confidently over the threshold into the black tunnel connecting the two rooms. Marcus frowned, but followed.

Through the tunnel they went, walking until they reached a great room lit by flickering torches. The walls were covered in dull green vines, snaking their way across the carved stone walls. There were no statues, surprisingly enough, just a big open area before the throne. The throne itself was made out of a curious combination of gold and wood, but it was a kind of wood that Marcus had never seen before. Shiny and dark, despite the Temple's age it appeared as if it had been freshly cut. The throne did not have any bindings or knots, it was as if the wood had merely grown in that shape, and had only needed to be separated from the roots.

Marcus barely noticed the door thudding back into place behind him; he was too busy staring at what was sitting atop the throne. It was coloured green, like the vines snaking around the room. Dark stripes burned across his body, reminiscent of the purplish poison of the swamp water. A great mask obscured its natural facial features, if indeed it had any. A massive sword, easily as long as Marcus himself, rested across its lap, and the being stroked it idly, as a stuffy aristocrat would his favorite cat. Except this wasn't a stuffy aristocrat, this was a demon, a feral warrior with a sadistic gleam in both eyes as it stared down at them.

The being's name rose easily to Marcus' lips as he stared at it, feeling its aura fill the room with its might. "Odolwa; Jungle Warrior."

The warrior stood from his throne, hefting its great poison-green sword in its hand. In the other, it held a similarly coloured green shield, and the warrior began to walk towards them. Its footsteps were loud, and the floor shuddered slightly as it walked slowly towards the two intruders. It was easily ten feet tall, not quite a giant, but certainly not a normal warrior either. Its sword was at least as long as Marcus' body, and Marcus was sure that one hit from that would be enough to slice him into two halves.

The warrior slashed with his sword, spinning and slicing the air before it. The sword was being spun unbelievably fast, and Marcus swallowed anxiously. "Loft, don't get too close," he warned. "That sword will slice you to pieces if you get within its range."

Loft stared at Marcus, and held up his dagger and throwing knife. "That makes it kinda hard to hit, dont'cha think?"

Marcus glanced around the room, looking for something they could use. "There has to be a weak point. We just have to wait until we see it."

His eyes lighted upon the sides of the room. Before, he hadn't noticed, since he had been doing merely a cursory glance along the walls, but now that he was looking closer, he noticed a series of deep blue spheres along the crack between wall and floor. He glanced uneasily at the slowly approaching warrior, then ran to them. Kneeling on the floor, he noted the leaves protruding from the blue spheres. Were these... bomb flowers? But, why here? What was their purpose? There was a loud clang as the warrior's sword smashed into the ground, and Marcus shook that aside. It wasn't important right now.

Bombs. That was something they could use against Odolwa. But, if he remembered his lessons correctly, bomb flowers only stayed ignited for approximately five seconds, depending on the strain. He looked at the Warrior, gauging the distance between them. Five seconds would be more than enough time. He reached down, and ripped one out of the ground. Deprived of the nutrients granted by its roots, and activated by an automatic safety mechanism, the bomb began to hiss loudly. Five seconds to detonation. Marcus ran to the warrior, and threw it at its legs as hard as he could.

The bomb impacted with the warrior's legs, and exploded with loud bang! The warrior staggered, falling to its knees, and Loft dashed in to slash at its eyes. He had travelled enough to know where to aim his strikes.

The warrior screamed, slamming Loft back with its shield, and Loft skipped out of range of its sword. "Marcus, bomb go boom again?"

Marcus dashed back to the bomb, but Odolwa wasn't having it. The warrior began to dance, cackling and shrieking, and a cloud of black moths descended from the ceiling to attack Marcus. Marcus cussed, smacking them away with his hands, but they continued to flit around his head, biting and scratching his face. Marcus plucked out another bomb; moths were drawn to heat and light, perhaps he could distract them with this. He threw the over-heating bomb to the side, not even bothering to aim it at Odolwa again. Thankfully, it worked. The moths were drawn inexorably towards the hissing blue ball, which promptly exploded, sending cooked bug guts splattering all over the floor.

Marcus reached down with a slightly trembling hand, and plucked another bomb flower. Odolwa, seeing him advance, pointed his sword at him. Orange fire coursed down the blade, concentrating on its tip, and Marcus was keenly aware of the bomb in his hands and the multitude of bombs behind him. If the warrior shot fire at him...

Thankfully, it never got to that point. Loft, taking advantage of the jungle god's distraction, dashed close and buried his dagger into the thing's ankle. The warrior screamed, hopping back and forth around the floor, screaming in outrage. Loft managed to rip out his dagger and stagger back, doing his best to keep away from the jumping jungle warrior.

"Marcus!" He yelled, after diving under the thing's swinging blade. "Hurry up!"

"On my way," Marcus replied, and plucked out another bomb. He hesitated, studying the thing's movements. He would have to aim his strike at the right point, timed at exactly the right moment, else the bomb would simply explode against the empty floor. Every jump seemed to travel around seven feet, and the warrior tended to take a whole second to arrive at his destination.

Marcus dashed forward as the warrior leaped in his general direction, and threw the bomb. It impacted on the warrior's thigh, and Odolwa collapsed again. "Loft," Marcus cried, "try and incapacitate it! The wrists, go for the wrists!"

Loft was, unfortunately, on the wrong side to slice into the warrior's sword hand, but his dagger dug deeply into its shield hand, and Odolwa was forced to drop its shield. Marcus cheered, but Odolwa was far from finished. It stood, skipping back a dozen feet away from Loft. It brought both of its hands onto its sword, and flames again coursed quickly down its blade. With Loft too far away to distract it, Marcus decided that it was safest to put as much distance between himself and the bombs.

Instead of multiple fire blasts, however, Odolwa shot a ring of fire around them both, and exacted its strange control upon the fire to constrict the ring. Loft and Marcus were forced into the same approximate space, stumbling back to keep away from the constantly tightening ring of fire. Marcus felt something hard against his back; he and Loft were now pressed together, with almost no room for movement.

"Wish we still had Zajora," Marcus said, "could really use that Roc's Cape right about now!"

"Marcus," Loft said, "healing time!" He grabbed Marcus' arm, and began to pull him towards the fire.

"What?" Marcus yelled, digging his heels into the ground to keep from the tall orange flames. "Are you mad?"

"Heal now, yell later!" Loft yanked him towards the fire, and the heat sent drops of sweat falling from Marcus' face. Healing magic began to flow between them, and Loft sent them both tumbling into the fire.

Now, they may have been in a constant state of healing, but that didn't mean that the fire didn't hurt. The nerves on Marcus' skin screamed as they were burnt to crisps, then restored by the sparks of healing power which flowed around them. They staggered out of the flames, and quickly rolled on the floor to extinguish their clothes. Once they had patted out the last of the flames, they looked up to glare at the laughing visage of Odolwa. The jungle god was dancing, laughing at their humiliation. It wasn't an insane dance; it was the sort of dance that seemed to always prelude a painful, sacrificial death.

"Next time," Marcus said grimly, "we dodge the fire. Better yet, we stop it from ever shooting at us."

"Run!" Loft cried, seeing the warrior begin to dance again. "It's summoning more bugs!"

"I've got them," Marcus said, running back to the bomb flowers. "You just be ready to strike."

His feet pounded against the stone floor, and he could hear the shrieking of giant moths, at least three times the size of the earlier bugs, drawing ever nearer. Their wings flapped as he slid across the ground, ripping a bomb flower from its roots and hurling the hissing explosive as far away from him as he could. The black moths proved just as stupid as ever, changing their course and flapping their four dark wings to bring them closer to the blue ball. They huddled around it, obscuring its hissing surface from view, and Marcus turned just in time to avoid getting a face-full of cooked moth guts.

He turned to rip another bomb flower from the wall, but a yell rom Loft sent him scurrying away from them.

"More fire!" Loft screamed as Odolwa leveled his blade, pointing it at Marcus. One, two, three bolts of white-hot fire burst from the sword, flying directly towards the boy. He managed to dodge two of them, and they exploded against the bombs ten feet behind him. He staggered from the shockwave of the plants' explosion, and only barely managed to thrust his hand forward in time. A shimmering blue crystal of light spun around his hand, shattering against the bolt of fire and sending it hurtling back towards Odolwa.

Odolwa raised its left arm in defense, but its shield lay discarded on the ground, useless. The bolt of fire slammed into Odolwa's chest, and he staggered back, stunned, a large sizzling burn mark seared into its multicoloured chest.

Loft seized his chance, sprinting foward and cutting the jungle warrior's hamstrings with his dagger. He danced between the legs, cutting and slicing as the demon roared in anger and pain, swatting at him with its still-bleeding hand. Its sword came up, but before it could rend Loft's head from his shoulders something exploded against its right knee-cap. Marcus had ripped out another bomb flower and hurled it into the demon's leg, and Odolwa collapsed to its knees, in pain and incapacitated. Loft's throwing knife whizzed through the air and buried itself into Odolwa's right wrist, and the sword clattered to the ground, leaving Odolwa defenseless.

Loft leaped forward, his dagger held high, and sunk its tip into the Jungle God's left eye. The demon roared, but Loft clung on, giggling maniacally as he twisted the dagger in still further. Odolwa's blood-soaked hands came up, trying to tear Loft off, but Marcus kicked its ruined hamstrings and it spasmed, collapsing into the ground. Loft hopped off just before it crashed into the ground, and stood.

It was over. Odolwa was dead. His giant body lay still against the stone floor, his dark blood soaking the surrounding stones. Marcus was breathing heavily, leaning on his knees, while Loft knelt down beside the fallen god. He carefully began to carve into Odolwa's head, for what purpose, Marcus never found out. Odolwa's body began to crumble, its extremities turning to dust and carried away by an inexplicable gust of wind. Soon, all that remained of the great warrior was bits of dust, spiralling up into the dark ceiling.

Something clattered to the floor. Loft picked it up, and blew off bits of Odolwa-dust. "It's his face," he said gleefully, "Odolwa's face!"

So it was. Carved out of wood, and painted with some strange substance that Marcus didn't recognize, the mask was grimacing angrily as its hollowed eyes glared furiously up at them. "But, why?" Marcus asked. "Why its face?" He looked around the room, and saw that even the shield and sword had dissolved into nothing.

"Dunno," Loft said, putting the mask on his face. "How do I look?" Loft's blue eyes shone from inside the jungle god's face, and Marcus snatched it off.

"Be careful," he warned, "we don't know if any of the demon's life energy is still-"

Loft gagged, and took the mask back. "Spoilsport," he pouted, but relucantly placed it carefully in his bag. "Are we done here?"

Marcus nodded, looking around at the empty room. "Yes, I think so." They began to walk towards the door, and Marcus looked side-ways at Loft curiously. "Were those rupees that I saw in your bag just now?"

Loft laughed nervously, tugging the bag until it was out of Marcus' sight. "What? Rupees? Naw, those weren't rupees."

"What were they then?" Marcus asked, grinning. "Come on, let me see."

"They were, um, random shiny things. Definitely not rupees. Completely useless and unimportant. Not worth caring about; not even worth talking about."

"They looked like rupees," Marcus said, passing through the now-opened golden door and into the tunnel.

"Rupee shaped random shiny things," Loft clarified, "that were blue and yellow. And looked like rupees."

"Mm-hm." Marcus said, and sneakily reached around Loft into the bag. He pulled out two rupees, blue and yellow, and tucked them into an inside pocket of his robes.

"Put them back!" Loft cried, blinking as they stepped back into the light of the lobby.

Marcus grimaced; never thieve from a thief. "Put what back?" He said, grinning slyly. "The random useless unimportant shiny stuff? That we shouldn't talk about?" He opened the door into the lily pad room and stepped through.

Loft opened his mouth to argue. Then he closed it. He stomped on, jumping angrily from lily pad to lily pad.

"That's what I thought," Marcus called after him, making his slower, safer way across. He hopped onto safe ground, and looked inquiringly at Loft. "Hey, Loft, I just realized. What'll we do about Zajora and Julius?"

Loft waved a hand dismissively. "They can take care of themselves. 'Sides, they abandoned us."

"What?" Marcus asked incredulously, ducking under another carnivorous plant and watching as Loft severed its head from its stem. "They didn't abandon us, they were pulled up into the roof!"

"Same thing," Loft snorted. He yanked open the door, and they passed into the Wizzrobe tunnel. They jogged through it, not speaking, and after passing through the Deku Baba room they arrived at the pool of poisonous water. Marcus wasn't sure how they were going to pass it; they had needed Zajora's help earlier, and now there didn't seem to be a way that they could cross without being vaporized.

"Marcus," Loft said, "what's with the water?"

Marcus frowned, looking down at it. There did seem to be something different about it. The water had darkened from a sickly purple to an ordinary looking muddy brown. Marcus stepped to the edge of the water, picked up another beetle, and dipped its squirming head gingerly into the water. He drew it back out, and grinned.

"It's not caustic anymore," he noted. He poked his boot into the water, and drew it back. The boot was wet, but unharmed. He grinned at Loft.

"Fancy a swim?"

((I had to re-read the thread to remember all the rooms. Holy frack I bounced all over the place in this thread Mental note to self, think through a plot point before writing it.))

I'm gonna go ahead and declare this thread complete. It's been a while since I looked at it, and everything seeeeeems done. If the grader points out that, no, the main plot point's gone undone, then I'll add another post, but right now, I can't think of anything left to do.

Unless my memory's really spotty, I believe that both my characters acquired 15 rupees as a result of this thread. I don't know what the you'll want to do about Julius and Zajora, O Esteemed Moderator, but my character's are (hopefully) done with this thread.

Heeeere moderator!