The Legend of Zelda: Goddess of Secrecy

Boss 10 - Plaguemaker Elfewort

 ...into the central chamber. The floor sloped down, dropping almost to the basement level. The stench permeated the chamber, cutting into everything and weighing the air down. Link slowly drew his hand over his mouth and nose as his companions slowly followed him into the room.

As Link went further into the chamber, little, blue mushrooms started to glow beside him. Their divite caps bumped into one another, curling around into circles all around the room. Link made his way forward avoiding stepping into their perimeter.

Near the back of the wall was a particularly large mushroom cap. Its cap shone only faintly compared to the others around it, though the size of it allowed even its weak light to shine over a quarter of the room as Link approached. Beneath it, a large mound supported the mushroom up off the ground, but there were cracks in the ground where the fungi had damaged the floor.

"So this is the thing killing the forest?" Saruo asked, floating alongside Link. Stopping to study the plant, the skull kid grimaced. A snap cracked out of her wooden fingers. "Not for much longer."

Saruo's puppets dropped from thin air, the skull kid's snap still echoing through the dense, putrid air. They rustled behind her, but the sound ahead of them was far more foreboding.

The massive mushroom cap began to rise, free of any kind of stem. Just the cap, pulling free of the mound it hung over. At the mushroom rose, Link glanced at what had been beneath it. It looked like a large, round cradle, almost stood up on its end. Thin, wispy, white roots clung to the cradle, driving into the stone sides.

As the mushroom cap rammed into the ceiling, it began to twirl. The light around it began to glow brighter before funneling down into a stem. The light continued to spiral before six, long appendages lashed out from the core beam. Slowly, the glow began to recede again, leaving behind a pale figure wearing the mushroom cap on top of their head.

Giggling, the figure hovered above them, one of its four hands to its mouth. A pair of wings unfurled from the figure's back. For a moment, Link thought he was staring up at a Great Fairy, but the white and red dotted irises told him that this figure was not benevolent. Features on the figure were oddly bulbous in places they shouldn't have been, like on one cheek or the side of the neck and on the-

"Link!"

Drawing his attention back up to the monster's face, Link gripped the Master Sword a little tighter. White fibers curled around the strange fairy's form, draping her in a spindly dress with a hexagonal pattern. She raised her arms, reaching out and then snapping them back in a taunting feint.

As Saruo and Link took a step back, the fae woman smiled, giggling at a pitch too young for her form. She twirled her body around to face them, spores falling from her broad cap. Lifting her arms, she basked the room in a cyan glow. The rings of mushrooms began to glow brighter and brighter until it felt like distorted sunlight was reaching to combat the actual light of the sun above them.

Link shielded his eyes for a moment from the light, but as the glow began to dim a bit again and his sight adjusted, he regretted it. The fairy had vanished among the flash of light. Around him, the rings of mushroom began to shimmer with white particles of magic.

And then for a split second, Link felt the air disappear from within the ring.

Swinging his shielding wide, Link sent Saruo sailing backwards as the air cut back into reality, being with it the fae creature. Before Saruo could shout at him in anger, a long, pale arm of the monster grasped Link and started pulling him towards the ring. Pulling himself up by his core, Link swing his blade around, embedding it into the woman's arm. She released her grip on him, allowing him to scramble to his feet as she teleported into thin air again.