ALL NOVEL Chapter 9: Skyview Temple (1/2)
Dust, cobwebs and overgrown roots, certainly the sight Vexalia was expecting in an old abandoned temple, "Anything to note Fi?" She asked the sword spirit since it seemed to know basically everything, "I detect a that a large amount of monsters made this temple their home." She informed, much to Vexalia's annoyance.
"A shield, how could I have forgotten to get one?" She wondered outloud as she headed down the stairs of the entrance, doing a loop arond the center twice until she reached a door to a room with an eye on the wall, "What's that?" She questioned Fi, confused as high hell by the eye, "That is a mechanism to keep people outside of the rest of the temple, the monsters must have taken another route." She explained.
Not having a clue at how to solve this mechanism, Vexalia pulled out her sword and stretched to try and reach the eye, but it was too far away, but that did let her notice that it was following the tip of the sword, so she smirked playfully spinning the sword in a circle to jokingly try to get it nauseous, ad unexpectedly it worked, causing the gate blocking the door to open.
Going through the door, Vexalia stumbled onto a rock bridge that forked into three paths, the one in front locked, leaving the right and left, Vexalia chose the right, finding a room with a broken bridge and a chest locked behind a gate on the other side, "That must be something useful." She deduced, running to the end of the bridge, but got blocked by a giant spider dropping from the ceiling, "EEEK!!" She exclaimed in slight fear, stepping away from the arachnid.
The surprise made Vexalia pull the dragon mask over her face and make noise to hopefully scare the spider away, which surprisingly worked, causing it to jump down the bridge and fall in the layer of water below, which made it slip and immobilized it.
Vexalia took the chance to jump down and stab the spider in the middle of the eyes, making it burst in smoke, "Good!" She excliamed, quickly climbing up the other side to stay away from anywhere that spider was, but was met by another spider which surprised her enough to make swing her sword in such a way that sliced the head from the body, making this one smokeify too.
Now spider free, the hero sighed in relief, noicing that the gate blocking the chest was guarded by the same mechanism as the door from earlier, but two eyes this time, so by positioning herself well, Vexalia used the same strategy as before and made the eyes nauseous and the gate opened, revealing the chest with a small key inside.
Key in hand, it was easy to deduce that it opened the locked door in the previous room, so climbing up the broken part of the bridge, Vexalia entered and saw a large dome with a hole on it, and a crystal which clearly opened the gated door below it, "Any more obvious puzzles ahead?" She asked Fi, "You wish." The spirit responded with surprising sass in her voice.
After hitting the crystal with the slingshot, the door below ungated allowing acces to the dome, which was surprisingly empty, except for a pile of bones, armor and swords, "That's it?" Vexalia questioned, turning to get out, but the gate fell closed again, "What!?" She exclaimed before getting caught by the noise of the bones moving.
Looking at the pile, they reassembled into a skeleton that held the swords it was laying with, and at this Vexalia put on the dragon mask for more intimidation and it seemed to wrk as the skeleton started focusing more on defense, "Mistress, this is a stalfos, a skeletal warrior that's very adept at parrying strikes." Fi explained, making Vexalia change her stance to one you'd see on a rapier user.
The change of the stance proved successful as it made weaving through the swords a lot easier, allowing Vexalia to get a few good strikes in before some spiders joined in, much to her fear, "Oh fuck no!" She exclaimed as she started charging each strike to keep her distance from the spiders, which actually proved to be a better strategy than the stance change since the Skyward Strikes did a lot more damage than the regular ones.
A few well-placed slices later and the Stalfos fell while the spiders that were still alive ran away, "Maybe I'm underestimating how powerful this is..." Vexalia pondered as she looked at the sword, but then remembered that she was virtually stuck in the dome, "That's a problem." She realized, looking around to find an alternative route, but this led her to see something seeping out of the Stalfos's bones, taking he shape of an aura sphere.
Remembering that this is basically how she found the sword, Vexalia touched the aura sphere and once again got transported to the Goddess, who looked like a smug little kid at this time, "Why are you making that face?" Vexalia questioned in confusion.
"Cause you being afraid of spiders is funny, oh flesh morphing affront to nature." She pointed out before laughing, "Ah ah..." Vexalia fake laughed, waiting for the Goddess to stop laughing, only to be slapped and woken back up in the dome, with new knowledge now in her mind.
Using this knowlede, Vexalia lifted her palm, morphing her flesh around until she created a huge scarab, which she started piloting and was even looking through it's eyes, guiding it to the crystal by passing through the hole and hitting it, opening the gate once more, and the scarab flew back to her, seeping back into her skin and back to being part of her.
A moment of realization later, and Vexalia started screaming outloud to get the shock that this just happened out of her system and she felt a lot lighter.