Key Quest: Air and Fire by Judy Colella (first color ebook reader TXT) 📕

The path had curved to the left, bringing him now to yet another metal-clad door. Who in the world had built these places? And why? He had a feeling he’d asked himself this before, but still had no answers.

Metal bars slammed down behind him when he entered, and once again he was in a room of rocky areas divided by streams of lava. And like the last chamber of this kind, two knife-bearing lizards were there, one of them immediately charging at him from another of the rock “islands.”

I’m too tired for this, he thought desperately. Using the same tactics that had gotten him through the previous battle, he ducked, straightened, slashed. This time, he managed to kill the lizard almost immediately.

That kind of good fortune didn’t seem to apply to the second one, and by the time he’d defeated it, he was bloody and about to lose consciousness.

“Link, no! Look! Please!”

He was on one knee, breathing hard and clutching a deep wound in his left shoulder. “I can’t…” Assuming she’d found more of those clay pots with fruit in them, he shook his head, knowing he’d never have the strength to get to them.

“Drink the rest of the milk, then!”

Ah. He could do that. No point in speaking as he pulled the bottle from his satchel, gripping it carefully because his hand was slick with his own blood. He had to use his teeth to remove the top, his left arm completely useless.

Link drank the rest of the milk, and while the wound stopped bleeding and he was able to get back to his feet, he still didn’t feel all that great. At least he could get to the pots now.

By the time he left the chamber, he was thinking he might have the strength needed to get through the entire ordeal after all – unless there was a whole lot left for him to do. At the very least, he reasoned, he’d have enough energy to make his way back outside and down to the village to sleep. He could always come back the next day, now that he was more familiar with the layout of the cavern.

The thought cheered him somewhat, and he headed down the path in front of him. This let out onto an area almost identical to the first – platforms, a fire, an eye switch…he bit his lower lip, scowling. What was the purpose of all this nonsense? To slow him down? Well, if that was it, it was working.

With a sigh of resignation, he took aim and…thwack! The eye closed. Not that it really mattered, because when the flame died down, he saw for the first time that another platform of fire was right behind it. What the heck! How was he –

“Link, over here!”

Her voice had come from somewhere on his left, so he turned. Yup. Another eye switch, this time set into an alcove. He shot at it, hit it, and the second set of flames went out. He jumped, and not a moment too soon. The moment his feet hit the next platform, the one behind him burst into flames again. He made the next jump and headed into the passage on the other side.

To his utter amazement, this brought him back into the room with the sliding blades, but now he was on the other end of it, the part he’d glimpsed earlier but ignored because it was too high up to reach. And there, on a slightly higher ledge, was another chest. A big one.

Forgetting his weariness, he clambered up and hoisted the lid. “Huh. What’s this? Not another bag of deku seeds…too heavy…” He sat with his back against the front of the chest and put the leathery bag between his legs, untied the string at its neck, and peered inside. “Weird. Looks like bomb flowers, only – no, not…ha! Would you look at that!” He pulled one out and realized it had to be a real bomb.

“Link!”

“Navi! If you tell me this is a bomb, I’m going to bite you.”

Shimmering silence followed this statement, a silence that stretched into a very long minute. And then – “Oh, Link! You’re so funny!” She began to giggle, her light strobing between blue and white with fairy-hysterics.

Link honestly didn’t know what to think about that. When she returned to her normal pale blue, he put the bomb away and stood. “I don’t suppose you know how I set them off?”

“Pull on the string near the top, Link. Hee-hee-hee-hee!”

Why she would think that was funny, too, was beyond him. Ah, well. “Thank you, Navi.” He noticed that the passage continued, so he hopped down from the ledge and went in.

Just before it ended back at the main cavern, he encountered another pyramid switch. There didn’t seem to be too many other things that needed to be opened that he could recall, but of course he stepped on it.

The ground began to shake, the loudest sound coming from right outside the opening. He turned and went to the edge, looked over and down, and saw that one of the smaller islands he’d been using to jump to the middle had begun to rise even higher. It kept going until it was level with this upper area, and stopped. A metal plate had been embedded in a stone beside him, and he glanced at it, thinking it might have something to do with all this.

“Can you read it, Link?”

“Not too well. Something about red…”

“It says, ‘Giant Dead Dodongo – when it sees red, a new way to go will be open.’ Wonder what that means, Link?”

As she was speaking, the island began to move again, this time going up even higher.

“You’re asking me?” He looked up at it.

The cave continued to echo from this upward movement even after the island had stopped again, and before the sounds died away completely, it began to descend. When it reached Link, it stopped once more.

While watching all this, the boy got an idea. Apparently, that huge head was this “Giant Dead Dodongo” – it seemed they turned to stone, or something like it, when they died. He’d e cHe Hnoticed that the eye sockets were huge but vacant, and remembered the gaps in the rope bridge spanning the wide space over the thing’s head. Which naturally begged the question, where was the rest of this Dodongo? No matter. What did matter was that the rope bridge was now directly to his right. In his haste to get away from the fire-keese the first time he’d come out into the cavern on this level, he’d completely missed the fact that there was a passage to the left.

He went to the bridge and began crossing it, more slowly this time. When he got to the first gap he stared down through it, and as he’d suspected, the Dodongo’s left eye was right below him. With a smile, he took out a bomb, pulled the little rope switch near its top, and let it drop straight down.

The explosion was much louder than that produced by a bomb flower; dust and flame shot out of the eye socket, and then it flared red as something inside ignited.

“I was right! Ha!” He jumped over the gap and went to the next one, dropped another bomb into the right eye socket, and grinned with satisfaction at the result. This time, however, something else happened.

More rumbling, more shaking…he couldn’t be sure from this vantage point, but he thought he could see something moving under the thing’s snout.

“It isn’t very far to jump down, Link. That would be quicker than going back and waiting for the island.”

“True enough.” Calculating the distance, he sat on the edge of the bridge, swiveled around, and slid off so now he was dangling by his hands. Here goes…He let go.

With a slide and a hop and a thud, he made it all the way down, landing safely on the center island. Right behind the statue. “Uh-oh.”

The head began to swivel; he turned and to his great relief, saw his conjecture had been correct. The Dodongo’s mouth was wide open, displaying sharp teeth. The lower jaw made a kind of ramp up which the boy ran, barely avoiding the deadly ray of light from the statue. At the top of the ramp was a metal-clad door.

How long has this thing been dead, anyway? Sheesh! He went forward, it opened, and without a backward glance, he went through. It was only after he was inside and being attacked by two more fire-keese that he remembered he’d wanted to leave the cavern altogether to get some sleep.

Dang.

Fire-keese dispatched. Another ledge to climb, some kind of hole in the middle of the floor, a barred door, and a higher ledge. Link sat against one of the walls that had no openings in it, put his head back, and closed his eyes.

“It isn’t safe to do that, Link!”

“Uh-huh.”

“What if something attacks you?”

“You’ll wake me….” and he was asleep.

How long he slept it was impossible to tell. The place looked exactly the same when he opened his eyes again. But this time, instead of feeling refreshed, Link felt drained. His injuries hadn’t been completely healed by the partial dose of milk, and the small heart fruits had only given him enough energy to get to where he was at the moment.

Staring dully at the fairy, who was flitting aimlessly from one side of the chamber to the other, he tried to come up with a solution. Something told him he wasn’t far from the end of this challenge, and he knew he’d never have the strength or energy to see it through if something didn’t…

Of course! Malon! Her gift! He reached into the larger sachel at his side and withdrew the ripe fruit he’d found in the storage tower. Compared with the smaller heart fruits, this one was almost too big to eat in one sitting, but he needed its moisture as well as its sustenance and healing power.

The small fruits were slightly bitter, but not unpleasant. This one, on the other hand, was like honey, the juice bathing his tongue and throat with a soothing, thick sweetness that began its restorative work even before being fully swallowed. He ate the rest eagerly, and when he was done, wiped his mouth with the back of one arm and stood.

“I wondered when you’d remember about that fruit, Link. You also have another one, don’t forget.”

“Yes, I do.” He was smiling, feeling full and pain-free, more awake than he’d been even after a long night’s rest at the ranch. “Let’s go!” Turning, he went to the opening on his left, hoisted himself up, and started down its length.

After a gentle left curve, the corridor opened into an area that was wider than it was long. Directly in front of Link was a constructed wall of wooden beams; overhead, three more of the nasty fire-keese. They flew at him as soon as he appeared, and he attributed his ability to quickly eliminate the threat to the wonderful fruit he’d just eaten.

He hopped down into the space and ran around the wall to where