Luminescence

Saved by a Fallen Star

It didn't take long at all for him to change his mind about this being a courageous idea.

Ten stupid points for me, he thought, Ten billion stupid points for me.

He was so dead. For at that very moment his hands had cramped up, refusing to move, and his fingers, coated with a nice skin of sweat, were slipping as each thought passed through his mind. He had reached the other end of the ledge, all right.

There was nothing but another slate wall.

Maybe, if he had been smarter he would have thought to bring his hook shot along and hooked around the weird, flat battlements of the next roof. Heck, if he had been smarter he wouldn't be out here at all. Stupid points, remember? Ten billion of them.

"Ah, Din," he breathed, beads of sweat tickling his face. "Farore, Nayru, whoever's up there, aw gods, I'm so sorry for being stupid. I try to be heroic, and this is--"

He never finished that sentence. The last centimeter of his fingertips had just run out.

All his organs rushed up to his throat, as though frantic to grab onto the ledge and not fall with the rest of him. His mouth opened for a scream, his thoughts went into a white blaze—

And then a hand like a spider, black and slender, caught him on one of his arms. For what felt like forever he hung there, fighting to remember how to breathe, staring down at the bottom of the long fall where a mental image of him lay splattered like a fallen peach. Guts spilled, brains exploded, bones broken, and very, very dead.

The black hand tugged him past the ledge and onto the tower roof. The moment his feet touched the roof tiles, before he even had a good look at his savior, he let out a long stream of curses. Profanities up and down the alphabet, sprinkled with words not even he had ever dared to utter previously.

His dark savior said not a word, watching through its large, flat, metal mask. Link only stopped when he heard it rattle. Tendrils of thick, tentacle like hair wavered about it in the barest of breezes. It crouched before him on all fours, larger than him, but not as tall as the monster Twili that had stolen Luna had been. For a long, terrifying minute, they stared each other. The hero wondered if he had just jumped from the frying pan and into the fire.

He gulped.

"Uh...thanks?"

The lanky Twili, all joints and limbs, cocked its mask to the side, but otherwise made no move to attack him. He took this as a good sign.

"Um...well...can I help you?" he said. He couldn't even be sure this creature could understand what he was saying. And why had it plucked him from his fall? Why hadn't it attacked him yet? He stood before it as defenseless as any man could be with only his pants on.

Maybe it was the supposedly missing guard set to watch over him. New sweat bubbled out all over him at this thought. But as the Twili continued to not make a move, he figured he might as well explain himself.

"I came out here to try and get Lu—that white winged girl out. She's not doing too well. It was a stupid idea to go out on the ledge, really..." he searched the cocked mask for some clue to the Twili's thoughts. "Do you think you could help me? She's hurt."

Listen to him. He sounded like a child. Besides, the Twili couldn't help him. It was corrupted, cursed to lose its will to some greater puppeteer; thoughtless and stupid.