The surface of their path downwards was rough and uneven, raw dirt pulled apart by the Great Deku Tree packed tightly aside to make room. Tangles of thin roots from bushes and saplings dangled in front of their faces and had to be brushed aside for the Kokiri to pass. Navi’s blue light, held stronger than usual for them to see with, paired with the cool underground, gave the tunnel an eerie, ghostly atmosphere. 

The tunnel ended against the side of one of his massive roots. It would have been a dead end, if the root hadn’t been hollowed out by the jaws of a monster, leaving behind infection that rotted so deeply the outside simply shriveled away. It had become a tunnel itself. 

Link’s stomach roiled at the side of the rot, death-slime shining wetly under Navi’s light. Next to him, Saria clapped her hands over her mouth, and he heard Mido gag. If the sight alone wasn’t enough to make them sick, the smell would certainly finish the job. 

It was almost inconceivable that something like this could be done to a spirit as powerful as the Great Deku Tree. Link might not have really believed himself it if he wasn’t looking right at it. But their guardian had been so weakened by his illness for so long that a monster really was able to carve its way under their home and do all this damage in a single night. 

“Oh,” Navi voiced her realization, “burn what must be burned. We have to stop the demon’s venom from spreading to the rest of the forest. Times like these I wish I was a fire fairy… empty your pockets, children, we need a stone.” 

They all gingerly climbed into the root and checked what they had on them. Mido produced a handful of small, gravel-like pebbles. Saria only had sticks and seeds in her pockets for her slingshot. Link dug around in the pockets of his tunic and found at the bottom something he forgot was there, a wide and flat stone he’d picked up days ago with the intention of skipping it on the pond later. Fado reached back and pulled from the dirt wall they’d passed a rock about the size of her fist. 

“Fado found flint,” Saria observed, rather obviously. 

“Okay,” Navi approved of their offerings. “Link, you remember how to make a spark?”

Link nodded, accepting the rock from Fado. He used his flat rock to chip off a more manageable chunk. With that in hand, he drew his sword and approached the most infected part of the root. It was deeply discoloured and rotted by venom seeping out from the rough grooves that looked like they were gouged out by some godly lord of all termites. Fado stood at his shoulder with her boomerang in hand, as instructed by Navi. Link’s hands shook as he hesitantly clacked the flint against the blade.

The Kokiri knew embers and sparks, single small flames that were fragile and had to be shielded from a breezy demise by small cupped hands. They had simple warming charms, used runes to make tiny campfires to cook with, and coaxed fireflies about for light at nighttime. But fire, real fire that crackled and burned and roared like in Navi’s stories of huge stone hearths and great mountains of flame, was as good as a boogeyman to the Kokiri. Fire, the natural predator of forest. No matter how chilly Link ever got in the winter, he knew fire was dangerous. 

He struck them again. On the third try, a tiny spray of sparks flew, and Fado used her boomerang to carry them to the wall of the root. 

It didn’t set ablaze, but sunk in, orange glowing rings burning outward and leaving black char in its wake. It spread fast, traveling along the veins of venom, creating red rivulets of light that led further into the dark tunnel. 

“Those embers will lead us to the monster,” Saria pointed ahead. “Come on, let’s go!” 

They broke into a run after the trail, hurrying to keep it from fizzling out of sight, and to keep their fear from catching up with them. They charged into the unknown, with only one sure thing in their immediate future: a demon monster; a battle. The child-spirits thought maybe they could face it before their imaginations could make the seeds of unease in their bellies grow into consuming vines of terror.

There was a bend coming up. Link sprinted ahead, careening around the corner-- only to skid on his heels to stop. With not enough time or warning to avoid him the others slammed one by one into his back, and Link had to brace himself and pinwheel his arms to keep from toppling into the thing that made him stop in the first place. 

Strange webbed film stretched across the tunnel blocked their path, like if the threads of a giant spiderweb had been coated in thick, gelatinous goo. Link poked the tip of his sword against it, but it bounced back and wouldn’t be cut. 

“Use the flint again,” Navi suggested. That didn’t work either, sparks not strong enough to catch on the web. Saria piled sticks against the bottom of the web, and Link tried lighting those. The small sticks caught easily and flickering flames grew from the rapidly shriveling kindling. Fado fed the small fire a low, steady breeze, and the flames grew, licking at the gooey film and melting it.

Slowly, the web dripped away like wax, leaving muddy stains on the root beneath their feet. Once the web was gone, they stepped through the opening. What waited for them beyond the web wasn’t more tunnel like they thought, but a huge cavern chewed out into a dome-like shape. There were openings to more shadowy tunnels that branched off in every direction. This chamber wouldn’t come close to fitting inside any of the Deku Tree’s roots, which means they reached his trunk. Only some ways above them was the hollow navel where the Kokiri would hold their gymnastics contests that Link managed to win every time. 

The Kokiri fanned out in the wide space. “W-which way do we go?” Mido craned his neck to look at the ceiling. Saria wandered over to a small cluster of what from a distance looked like ore chunks, but upon closer inspection, were definitely… not. 

“What are these?” 

Navi flittered over. “Um…” her blue light reflected off the veiny red orbs. “I am… not sure.” Before they could investigate anymore, the small party’s attention was drawn to the shadow-obscured ceiling. Scraping and scratching noises came from somewhere in the darkness, and the source of the noises was moving. 

Nevermind. Sources. Two bug-like monsters skittered down the wall towards them. The Kokiri yelled and converged in the center of the chamber, their backs together. The monsters were smaller than they were expecting, but still big compared to them. They had one large, gooey eye, and a floppy pointed appendage on the tops of their round, lumpy bodies, that seemed almost too heavy for their two legs to drag forward. The monsters circled them, jumping around and croaking aggressively. Saria aimed at one with her slingshot but missed, and the Kokirir were packed too tight together for Fado to throw her boomerang, so she tried to keep them at bay with the pointed tip. Fado swung his baton around wildly and Link kept his shield up except to slash at the monsters when they were in range. 

With a shout, Link cut into the bulging eye of one. The gash spurted lumpy slime as the monster withered and died, and the others let out squeals of disgust. Mido caught the other’s leg with his baton, crumpling the flimsy appendage and causing the monster to face-plant on the ground. Yelling, he bashed it until its crunchy, pus-y body was pretty much flattened.

Their assailants defeated, the Kokiri held their breath, waiting in silence for more to arrive, but none did. After a moment, they relaxed, and Navi floated back over to the orb clusters. 

“Was that it?” Fado asked quietly. The tail end of her sentence was drowned out by Mido’s triumphant whooping. 

“Did you see that!” The blond kokiri cheered, jumping and pumping his fists in the air. “Did you see how strong I was! Ha! I just saved the day like it was nothing! That was awesome!”

“It’s not over,” Navi announced, her small voice echoing louder in the chamber, making her next words even more foreboding. “These are eggs. Eggs too big for those creatures to have laid.” 

Before anyone could respond, a bush at the edge of the chamber rustled, startling them into action. Link drew his sword with a shingg, Saria drew a pebble back in her slingshot, and Fado launched her boomerang with a shimmery-sounding gust of wind. It spins into the bush and back, the ensuing whirlwind pulling… something from the dirt. 

“Gyahh! I surrender!” The something cried; a Deku scrub, pea-shooter mouth trembling in fear. Her leaves quivered noisily. “I didn’t even wanna be here, okay! Big Boss wanted someone to watch the offspring clutches but I only signed up because my dad said it would look really good on my Deku college applications! Whatever! I’ll snitch, I don’t care! I’m being threatened! I’m under duress! Nothing I say can be held against me in a court of Deku law! You wanna kill Queen Gohma, right-- I don’t blame you, her butt is grosssssss! Just go straight down, okay, straight down and don’t take any turns unless it goes down!”

The speechless Kokiri all just stared at her, blinking slowly. The scrub stared back at them, squinting her yellow eyes, and the silence dragged on just slightly too long to not become awkward. 

“Don’t look at me like that!” The scrub squirmed in embarrassment. “Ugh! Whatever! This dank tree air is making my leaves all wilty anyways, I’m out of here! Have fun getting eaten, I guess!” And with that, she dove back down, disappearing into the dirt. The Kokiri looked at the spot where she just was, then each other, then turned to Navi-- if their fairy guide decided they should follow the loose-lipped Deku scrub’s instructions, then they would. 

“Well…” Navi turned to peer into one of the tunnels. “Down we go, then.”

They entered the tunnel and burned up more venom veins as they travelled downwards, orange light contrasting with Navi’s blue. The rotten smell got stronger the deeper they went, until they reached the threshold of the monster’s nest-- Queen Gohma’s nest. 

There, they realized there was no outrunning their fear. All they could do was face it.

Their arena before them was another hollowed out cavern, even larger than the one they passed through. There were whole pillars made of those egg clusters, and even more scattered over the floor. Everything was brushed by mysteriously moving, lightly glowing pale mist. Their view of the ceiling was blocked by criss-crossing roots, all rotted and withered, covered by an enormous white web. Beyond that was a pulsing red glow; the cause of which the small party couldn’t even begin to imagine. 

Link took a deep breath, ignoring the foulness of the air, rolled his shoulders, and drew his sword and shield. He took a step forward, then another. Navi hovered close to his shoulder, and the other Kokiri trailed behind him, only not quite huddled behind him and his shield. Under Link’s foot, something crunched, and when he lifted it, white and red bits of shell littered the ground, and a swarm of tiny baby bug monsters scattered in streams away from them into the mist, their gummy exoskeletons colourless and clear enough to see their guts inside. 

“Yuck,” Saria hissed behind him, and Link could feel the force of her shudder.  

“Hold on,” Navi whispered in his ear. “Look over there.” 

A silvery dancing line shimmered up ahead, glinting in and out of sight. It descended from the web up above. The Kokiri held their breath, not daring to move as they watched the web bounce with the movements of something travelling across it, something big, blocked from view by the pillars of eggs. 

Queen Gohma.

The web, the eggs… they were expecting something spider-y. And as the monster crawled into view, it was spider-y, but under no terms could she be described as a spider. She balanced on two thick legs on either side of her body, which had a separate abdomen but her head and thorax were one, and like the adolescents they fought earlier, she had but one giant eye. Protruding from her back were two clawed raptorial legs like a mantis had, long and reaching, and her mandibles too were pointed and sharp like a termite’s. Her abdomen was also a jarring sight-- it was long and floppy, it looked wrong like something inside her had been turned inside out, only that was just… how it looked.

Behind Link, someone gagged, the noise blending with someone else’s squeak of fear. Gohma stopped, and the Kokiri froze. “Prepare yourselves, children,” Navi said. “This is it.” 

Link thought he heard her voice waver sightly, but told himself he just imagined it. He tightened his hold on his sword, tensed the arm his shield was on. Gohma hadn’t noticed them yet. She twitched and let out a deep croak that echoed throughout the nest. Link didn’t feel ready for this. It took almost everything he had not to let his hands or knees shake. But, he realized, it didn’t matter if he was ready or not, because he wasn’t doing this for himself. 

He charged into the nest. 

Finally sensing the intruders, Queen Gohma jumped down from the ceiling with a boom. She faced them and raised her claws, letting loose a shrill screech. Venom and monstrous fluid sprayed from her jaws, and the others scattered to avoid it. Link jumped aside, the spew eating away at the ground next to his feet. 

“Aim for her eye!” Navi called out. “That’s her weak point-- come on, you can do it!” 

Gohma swiped at him with her claws and Link rolled out of the way, feeling his racing heart climbing up his throat. Navi’s encouragement echoed in his ears, you can do it, you can do it. Crouched behind a tall egg cluster, Saria peeked out and aimed her slingshot at the monster. Her first shot hit Gohma’s shoulder, bouncing off the uneven armoured exoskeleton. The second hit its mark, the sharp pebble skipping across Gohma’s giant eye and leaving a red scratch behind. 

The monster Queen reared back with a shriek before collapsing. “She’s stunned,” Navi exclaimed, “Now, Link!” 

Shouting, Link lunged at Gohma sword-first, attacking her eye with everything he had. She thrashed against every slash-- Link could only get a few hits in before Gohma staggered upright, slinking away towards the wall. 

“Come on!” Mido yelled from his hiding spot. “Queen Gohma, more like coward Gohma!” 

“That’s not helpful, Mido!” Navi called back. 

Gohma crawled up the wall back to her web. Saria emerged from her cover, side-stepping towards Link as she fired more pellets up at the monster crawling in circles on the ceiling. Gohma shook herself off with another cry, shaking the web. From overhead dropped more of those smaller offspring, chasing Fado and Mido from their cover as well. Fado smacked them away with her boomerang, and Mido threw handfuls of gravel from his pockets in their eyes and fended them off with his baton. Link stuck to Saria’s side, defending her from the Goh-minis while she tried to aim for the queen.

“I can’t get a clear shot!” Saria yelled. Fado ran up next to them. 

“I want to try something,” she said. She wound her boomerang back with both hands and threw it high. It spun through the air with a buffeting gale that battered the monster while the boomerang sliced through the strings of the web. Gohma fell with a loud wet crunch, the ground under their feet shaking from the force of impact. 

The monster writhed, hurt from the fall, but Link couldn’t get around her flailing legs and swinging abdomen to attack again. She twisted upright, chittering and curling in on herself, and began to jerk around. In an explosion of armour, sinew and goo, her torso cracked, more gnarled legs bursting out from inside. They squelched as they unfurled. Roaring, Queen Gohma rose to her full height. On her back, her clawed appendages flopped about, broken from the fall. Snapping her mandibles, she charged them blindly, and the Kokiri dove away from her path. 

“It’s all you, Link!” Navi shouted. The others scrambled back to the edges of the nest, but Link stood his ground. Queen Gohma’s legs alone were easily twice his height, and he jumped and twisted to dodge her powerful stomps. Her main two legs were invulnerable to his blade, but the new ones weren’t hardened yet, still fleshy. He slashed at the joints as he ran a wide circle around her. With each attack Gohma stumbled. One by one, her legs crumpled, and she tripped forward in a splayed heap, her injured eye finally in reach again. 

Link felt more than heard the battle cry erupting from his own chest as he drove his sword into Queen Gohma’s pupil, burying the blade as deep as it would go. Gohma jerked and shrieked, and Link felt one of her sharp mandibles catch on the hem of his tunic and tear it. He gritted his teeth and pushed even harder. The monster gave one final gurgle and fell silent and still. 

Slain, she was no more than a heap of broken shell and oozing pus. 

Breathing hard, Link stepped back and pulled the sword out of the dripping, dead eye. He took another step backwards, and another, half-tripping on his own heels until Saria appeared behind him, steadying him with an arm around his shoulders. 

After the noise and chaos of the fight, the silence that followed was almost more overwhelming. Link’s arms felt too heavy, and the tip of the sword dragged on the ground. “You did it, Link,” Saria whispered, her hands squeezing his shoulders. “You did it.” She sounded as shaken as she did relieved. Fado and Mido, too, were pale and tense. 

“Is it-- it’s over now, right?” Mido asked Navi, a desperate tinge to his voice. “It has to be over now.” 

Navi hovered, turning slowly as she looked around the room. “It’s over,” she said. “All we need now is one last spark.”