Dungeon Chapter 55 - Falling With Style

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 ...and seconds later, Link's boots hit the grate bridge up and over from the fighting arena. He skidded to a halt, arms out to slow himself from rolling off the other side of the walkway. The Roc's Feather snapped back and forth for a moment before it went still once more, and Link carefully stowed it once more. As he listened to the Ritos taking off behind him, Link pulled out his clawshot and hung it on his belt. If he did overshoot on one of these jumps, he'd have a little help trying to recover from the fall before it would be up to Shade.

As the two Rito landed, Zelda hopped off Sagi's back with a hop. The two were breathing hard, wings dripping and soaked from the rain, and only more collecting on their feathers. Taking Link's hand, she pulled him towards the door. "I know new toys are fun, but there's a storm out there and some of us need to get out of the weather to dry off."

Letting her tug him along, Link followed Zelda back into cover. They walked into the Wind Tower, lightning just starting to crackle overhead as the storm spotted them. A much smaller burst of lightning snapped in the busted out section of wall above them. With the new feather, Link didn't doubt he could jump through that. Whether they needed to or not remained to be seen, but he figured he could. "Why do you think this is the only switch that storm really tried to guard? The other three had wizzrobes, sure, but this one has an actual trap."

The thought escaped him before Link had time to reason through it himself, but now that it was up in the air, his companions all turned to him before falling into thought. Zelda offered, "Maybe there's something else up there worth protecting. Like a key to that door."

"Is it really that simple? Taka or I could have gotten through there as soon as we turned on the mist machine," Sagi replied. "Don't you think if it was that important, they would have guarded it better?"

"Then it's a trap," Link offered. "Maybe the key is up there, but there's some kind of booby trap set up that when we take it out of the chest, it'll set something off to try and stop us."

"Or it's just a trap and there's no reward," Sagi answered, folding his wings. "Don't you think it's possible that the monsters would have destroyed the key all together? Why would they leave some way for us to even be able to get to them? These are demons, not creatures, they don't have needs. They could just stay in there indefinitely. So are we even confident there's key somewhere in here?"

Taka set a wing on Sagi's shoulder. "Normally, I think you'd be right, but right now, I don't know that we can apply normal logic to this problem solving. I think the princess had it when she said it's the Goddesses leaving us some way to solve the problems in here."

Turning to Link, Zelda asked, "Well, what does it hurt to just go look for now? I mean, don't get hit by that lightning, but if nothing else, we'll have an idea of what's up there. Doesn't require us pulling any switches." She paused, thinking for a moment. "If it's a trap with monsters though..."

"If there's an ambush waiting for me, I'll just drop back down," Link answered, then looking up at the crackling in the ceiling. "If it's more wizzrobes, they'll follow me and we can deal with them together down here."

He couldn't deny that this leap of faith had him a little on edge. There was no telling what might be waiting for him past the lightning bolt. Still, there was no where else they could go. They had already explored the rest of the towers, and found nothing. They needed to locate this key if they wanted to get anywhere. No amount of relocating the grate bridges would solve the locked door at the end of this temple until they could find a way to open that door.

With two steps and a hop, Link launched himself upwards as the bolt began to disappear again. He was sailing through the space where the lightning had been, careening up into the third story as he heard the crackling begin again beneath him. Before the bolt could flash through again, Link aimed his clawshot at the floorboards above him. The claw latched on and dragged Link up into safety from the electricity. He swung on the chain before dropping onto what remained of the stairs. "I'm through!"

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