4267/The Shadow Temple

The Shadow Temple
Date of Scene:	30 June 2016
Location:	Hylian Realm of the Sky <HRS>
Synopsis:	Yalai the Stave reveals a little more of Sheikah history to her friend and ally Aedan MacCarvill.
Cast of Characters:	879, 891

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Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
A short note left on Aedan MacCarvill's pillow suggests that his companion has left him for the morning. A sketched map on the bottom half of the note carries the implication that she wants him to travel there whenever he's awake, and arrows indicate the fastest, safest route to the area. No mystery there.

Once he departs aboard his Loftwing, he'll find that her path takes him to a place far beyond Farore's forests. This is territory uncharted to the Hylians, and land that even Link had not ventured to.

The further Aedan flies, the more the terrain changes below him. The rich, temperate forests of Farore slowly give way to plains of wild wheat, rippling in the wind. Rolling hills spread below, broken only by the occasional stream or rock formation. Wild horses, as yet untamed by the Hylians, graze and roam far below the sweep of his Loftwing's pinions. Some run in alarm as the Loftwing's great shadow passes over them.

He'll hear her before he sees her.

A voice drifts over the plain, unmistakably belonging to his sly companion. It swells up in commanding melody, a weird and strangely desolate melody that echoes over the plain.

He'll see her a moment later, once he's caught the strain of her voice.

From above, he might have seen the terrain changing. There are odd rock formations in these rolling hills. The closer he gets, the more he might realise that they aren't rocks at all -- they're ruins, temple ruins or buildings, it's hard to say. The ruins are expansive, suggestive more of a city than a temple, and she herself is perched inthe midst of them on the very top of a crumbled stone building. Her Loftwing is perched on the opposite corner, balanced on one foot with its head tucked under a wing.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Hnn?"
Aedan had regarded the note with bleary confusion when he had rose that morning. After a little bit of dragging his feet, he'd taken the opportunity to brew a potion specially for this little outing. Two, actually, on account of the fact that he needed some for his loftwing. Wouldn't make much sense to use a potion like /this/ one on himself only, after all. Afterwards, the knight had /packed/ his armor, dressed lightly, and whistled for his loftwing to come down to the balcony.

Then he'd doused himself /and/ the loftwing in the potion, and headed out. When the pair had appeared in the skies, they'd... been very difficult to spot, actually. It looks like the potion contained a chameleon's tail, because the pair of them blend into their surroundings very neatly.

In Aedan's case, he blends into the loftwing /itself/, though it becomes evident that it is approaching when it begins its descent, at least until it reaches the ground and begins to mirror its surroundings. Aedan dismounts, drawing a cloak from one of the saddle bags to drape over his shoulders. /It/ hadn't been doused in potion, and makes it easier to see him, though he has no doubt that Yalai can track him anyway.

The potion wasn't really for her. He didn't know where he was going, so he decided it was just as well to blend in.

The knight's skin flickers between the color of stone, and the color of surrounding plantlife. It really looks quite bizarre on something as large as the loftwing and Aedan himself, that slow changing of color to color. Especially since the texture isn't really /right/. His skin looks perfectly normal, apart from the fact that it's blending itself into the surroundings.

The minimalistic clothes he's wearing are much the same. Even his hatchets, the only weapons he bothered to bring, blend into... well, /him/.

The gigantic loftwing doesn't hang around. It wanders off to look for food, most likely, or water. Aedan approaches Yalai none-too-quietly, scratching at his head and looking 'round. "An old city of the Shadow-Folk, or somebody else?" He asks, uncertainly. It's broken down enough that he can't really tell how obvious or not it might have been before. The Forest Temple, hidden and difficult to enter, was certainly more their style in his imagining.

But there may have been a time when that was not needed.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
Once upon a time, the Shadow Folk may not have been so dependent on the need to hide and stay concealed. Their settlements and towns were on the surface, much as the Hylians' were, and they protected their Hylian cousins by way of being nearby. Perhaps they were never fully trusted, but they were less creepy in those days, before Hylia sent her people into the Realm of the Sky.

Those days are dust, to go by the state of the stoneworks. They're built well, but even mountains crumble before the relentless march of time -- pieced together without mortar, some of these are no more than piles of jagged stone.

The dark Loftwing half-opens one eye and, deeming the approaching Aedan to be non-threatening, closes it and returns to its nap.

Yalai stops mid-note, and then turns to stare fully at the shape of her companion. Which is really not much of a shape. In fact, the only thing she can see clearly; like the rest of her people, she suffers in the full bright of daylight, squinting. And frowning, too. Definitely frowning.

"Aedan?" Then, "What in the Goddesses' name were you doing to yourself?" she finally croaks.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Chameleon potion." Aedan explains, though with the extra cloak it's fairly easy to see him. He blends into /that/ as well, but it's colorful and bright probably specifically for this purpose. All white. Inside a pack it wouldn't show up at all, but worn as it is, it's plenty visible. "Apart from being damned useful at moving around without being particularly visible to anybody who isn't looking real close, it's fairly easy to gather the ingredients."

"Lizards let their tails go pretty easily if they're spooked, you see." He adds, making a vague separation gesture with his fingers, as if pulling two pieces apart. "Don't even have to kill them to get it. Just grab them by the end of the tail and they'll let it go to get free. I get ingredients, and don't have to douse myself in a whole lizard's remains."

"I'm sure /you/ agree that's preferable, too."

The rescue knight looks about in interest.

"So what's this place? Looked like rock formations from high up, but you get close down on them and it comes pretty clear that it used to be settled. Likely long since picked over by now, if the people who lived here didn't already take everything of value with them..."

"Assuming," He adds, "there was anyone in this region to pick it clean to start with. Maybe not."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
The Sheikah wrinkles her nose, and makes an effort not to ask what physical components went into the potion. Basic anatomy belonging to an actual chameleon, no doubt. What did he drink? Curly prehensile tails or weird beady eyes? Scales? Come to think of it, she hasn't studied chameleons too closely.

Besides, he's probably going to tell her. Eventually he'll realise that when she asks that question, she doesn't really want to know the answer, and it's usually rhetorical in a disbelieving sort of way.

Part of her wishes he'd taken up a less disgusting hobby, like munitions.

Actually, shed tails are less disgusting than some of the things she had immediately thought of. That's not too bad. Ground up and powdered, it might even be mostly tasteless.

Probably.

Maybe.

She clears her throat, a little awkwardly; she still looks a little uncertain, but at least she's not outright disgusted. That's an improvement, right?

"Be welcome to the Silent City," she says, reaching out to take him by the arm and steer him towards the least-dessicated of the structures. Some of them still have walls standing, or at least pieces of walls. "It was having another name, once, yes? 'Kasuto.' It is being the original city of our people, given to us by Nayru Herself. It was here we were living, at least until the Demon King was making his presence known."

Despite being somewhat absurdly shorter than him, she leads him by the forearm, all but frog-marching him towards the ruins. "It is being one of our oldest places, short of the temples I have been taking you to already. And there is being a temple beneath these ruins, too, yes?" All good cheer fades, and her expression flattens, although she doesn't quite frown. "Most who were being here were being killed, when Demise's armies were coming. They were having no warning. Who was left has long been committed to Din's earth, but... it is being a graveyard, of sorts."

"Come. Look." She ducks through a crumbled structure, pulling him along, though not harshly. "Is this looking familiar at all?" Some of the ornamentation looks a little similar to the Forest Temple, natural motifs and a gracefulness of line that isn't like Hylian architecture at all. Letting go of him, she stands back, folding her arms and tilting her head slightly, white hair settling about her. "There is being an entrance to the temple, here, in this chamber. Can you be finding it, I wonder?"

Come to think of it, some of those weeds over there are growing a little oddly, as though they've been displaced, or as though they were growing over something unnatural. Like a hatch door. There's a rusted ring, but it's just barely peeping out from the weeds. Tough to spot, but not impossible.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
Given the opportunity to explain, Aedan will always describe what goes into his potions. People's reactions are just too funny, and in the case of lizard tails, honestly... it's not like people don't eat those /anyway/. It's not a long shot from eating snake, and he considers that reasonably good meat. What's actually a hell of a lot weirder to him are /cows/. There's really not room for creatures like that on the flying landmasses, so things like chicken and goat were always a lot more common to keep for the food they could offer.

The rescue knight turns about to look at the surroundings again, as Yalai describes exactly where it is that they are. He supposes that he must be the first non-sheikah to set foot in this place in an awfully long while. Maybe the first /hylian/.

Aedan is lead by the arm into the city. He looks down at Yalai, a grin weirdly obscures by the shifting colors of his skin. "Well," he says, "it looks like it was a pretty impressive place in its time. Though... a temple beneath the ruins?"

In a city where most of the inhabitants were killed by the Demon King. Aedan makes a face, though once again it is difficult to pick out the exact feeling within it as a result of his bizarre skinshifting. Really, it may be worthwhile to ask him to clear all that up sometime.

"Hey, I can't--" He has to double over to get through the same crumbled structure that Yalai pulls him through. A sour look is cast towards her, but it's not actually because of the doubling over (which in fact proved he /could/).

The knight looks around for the entrance to the temple below, shuffling around looking for hidden switches or... /something/. Ultimately, Aedan fails his spot check within feet of the ring in the weeds, because he's looking for a brick to depress instead of something simple like a hatch in the ground. Mostly, it's because he's been thinking...

"This place is full of zombies and skeletons and ghosts at night, isn't it?" He asks, warily.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
The Sheikah leans against a broken column perhaps twice Aedan's height, folding her arms and letting her cloak fall over her. Despite the season, the ruins are cooler than one might expect summer on the grasslands to be, and the cloak proves itself a useful garment. Shadow ripples around her where it falls, as though her shape were wavering subtly.

Yalai's head tilts, watching as Aedan shuffles to and fro. Several times, he passes within feet of the hatch in the ground, and once she almost thinks he's going to trip over the iron ring that serves to lever it up out of the weeds.

After way too long spent looking for a hidden mechanism that isn't there, the Sheikah woman finally gives a despairing shake of her head, dropping her face into her hands with a disgusted sigh. He'll never truly be one of the Shadow Folk if he doesn't learn to study things more closely, will he? Then again, most days he's about as subtle as a battering ram.

"Here." She walks over, kicks a few weeds out of the way, and hooks the end of her boot into the trapdoor's iron ring. Kicking it up and open, she catches it to carefully push the wood back. The door itself looks new, and it moves as though its hinges were oiled and maintained.

A crumbling stairwell leads down into the stone itself, looking as though it were spiralling. There are sconces in the wall for torches, but only the closest one has a torch, and it isn't lit. Yalai rifles through a pouch at her belt, producing flint and tinder, striking the torch with enough spark to set it ablaze. That torch, too, can't have been here for too long.

Yalai reaches for the torch, easing it from its sconce and beckoning for Aedan to follow.

Following her may or may not be a good idea. After all, she didn't answer his question.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Somehow," Aedan remarks, looking towards the ring, "I was expecting something a little more elaborate than that."

If he'd /been/ looking for something that straightforward, Aedan probably would have seen it. His eyes are pretty sharp. In other words, he was more or less just foiled by expectations rather than an actual lack of perception. He frowns a little, examining the door. The newness of it is a little bit jarring. It must be, he decides, constructed so that it's not too easy for larger creatures to get inside.

He'll fit, but something much bigger than him wouldn't. An extra couple of inches here or there would also ruin it for him. Larger moblins simply wouldn't be able to fit their girth in the openings, much less their height.

As of yet, he hasn't seen a Sheikah big enough for this space to give problems. The smaller of them, he decides, would probably also be ideal for murdering the hell out of somebody large trying to lumber down through here. The knight draws the trapdoor shut behind them, imagining that no one would take kindly to having it lying open behind them.

Even if little enough /can/ fit down here to follow them.

"Yalai," He mutters towards her, "/is/ there something down here I need to be ready to chop up, or is all well? I would assume that much of what is here is meant to defend rather than aggressively snuff out, but I don't exactly fit the profile of a Sheikah. Especially right now."

In the dim lighting, Aedan has become much more difficult to discern. He blends in too well. Only the white cloak makes him actually reasonably visible.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
"In fairness, it is being easy to be losing it in the weeds." It's not much of a consolation, and Yalai can't help a grin. She's probably enjoying this inversion of the usual Sheikah subterfuge. Knowing them, sometimes they do things straightforwardly just because it's unexpected. Holding the torch aloft, she lets its flickering light guide them downward.

Where Aedan might have trouble seeing, it's a lot easier for the Sheikah once the trapdoor is lowered again. They live in the shadows, and it's there that they're most comfortable; this includes being able to see. Daytime sunlight is harsh to her eyes, but thi sis much more comfortable.

The echo of her footsteps is almost unnerving in the silence. Somewhere far below, water drips; a subterranean stream, maybe.

"Mm? All is well." She glances back over her shoulder at him, blood-red eye flashing in the torchlight. Gone is the playfulness. In its place is a silence and singularity of purpose that seems more like the Yalai he had first met, before she had warmed up to him. "This is being hallowed ground."

There's a short pause.

"Can you be cancelling that? Even I am having some trouble seeing you," she points out. "And there is being nothing to be hiding from, here, yes?"

She turns forward again, stepping carefully down. "...There is being something I was wanting to be showing you, down here."

The jaws of the void itself yawn below them. Blackness spreads beyond her torch. If this were anybody else, it might seem like a trap, but she's made no secret her feelings for him. If she says she has something to show him, down here, then she has something to show him, and it's probably important. Or, at least /she/ feels it's important.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"I suppose so. Wasn't even looking for a ring or trap door, though."

Aedan regards the surrounding darkness with some irritation. Really, he should just always keep some sort of night sight potion on him when dealing with situations surrounding Yalai, but... it's a real pain to get ahold of relevant ingredients. It usually requires something's actual eyes, which are to say the least unpleasant to mix and consume, much less procure. He doesn't much like having to kill things for eyes alone, either. It's creepy and bizarre even by the standards of alchemists.

Hair just won't do, either, shy of a full transformation.

He makes a small noise of acknowledgement at Yalai's answer, and the shift in her mood. She asks him to cancel his postion, which Aedan answers by withdrawing a /very/ tiny bottle of something else, and drinking it. Slowly his skin begins to return to its normal color, along with the rest of them. It's still hard to see him.

Well... not for /her/.

Aedan notes the carefulness of Yalai's steps. They're normally fairly careful, but it seems deliberate to him. He tries to follow suit, though it slows him down tremendously by comparison. He nods and murmurs, "Can't see the first thing down here, though, so you'll need to get me pretty close to whatever it is. And tell me what's around us, for that matter. Wouldn't be able to see my own hand without that torch."

"I realize you can see down here," He continues, "but why keep it /this/ dark but keep unlit torches around? Does anybody live here?" That is to say, his tone suggests, are we alone?

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
One almost wonders whether a little Sheikah blood from a willing donor would have the same effect as the eyes of a nocturnal beast. Night vision seems to be an intrinsic trait of the Shadow Folk, and something that they all share. No matter how dark or light red their eyes are, all of them seem to suffer in the light of day, and all of them see well in the dim of twilight and night.

Then again, it might require enough blood to make it a distinctly non-trivial application. There isn't much of them to begin with, so it wouldn't take much donated blood before any of them started to feel pretty woozy.

Yalai would hardly like to encourage her lover, though, because he tends to find the oddest of ways to cook up those bizarre concoctions of his.

The Sheikah may lack his distance vision, but her ability to pick out details and movement at close range are unparalleled, and even that potion was good enough to fool her. She eyes him as he slowly reappears from his shifting colours, and seems to relax very slightly when he does. It disturbs her, not being able to see him like that. A useful tactic, but it makes her uneasy

"You will be seeing soon enough. There are being torches once we have been getting down, but hush. I will be leading you. The passage is not being direct, and one may be wandering these undercaves until they starve to death." Her muttered tone is nonetheless one that suggests she might be half-smiling, and probably perfectly serious, too.

Well, the best offense is an excellent defense, and what better defense is there than making your enemies hopelessly lost in the dark?

The stairs gradually even out into a level surface. It feels loose underfoot, as though it were made of sandstone, or a very thick layer of fine sand over solid flagstones. Yalai pads over to a wall, raising her torch--

--and a blaze of fire illuminates the chamber. A ring of torches are situated around the stonework wall, each connected by a clever wire doused in something flammable. The wire winks out, its job apparently done, but the torches stay lit.

About three hundred feet across, the chamber is distinctly round, with an arched and vaulted ceiling that spans high overhead. Pillars descend, six of them, to mark the outer edges of the chamber. The whole of it is entirely sculpted in hewn stone, which suggests that this must have been somehow important. Or, it came from somewhere else, sunk into the earth by disaster or magic. There's no telling which; it looks as though it's been here for a very long time.

The first thing that is immediately obvious is that there are bones on the ground, lying in the sand.

Some of them appear to be demonic, with fanged skulls. Some of them look more humanoid. Yalai is very careful not to step on any of them as she raises aloft her torch.

"Be welcome," she says with that same odd gravity, "to the Shadow Temple."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
Aedan issues a heavy sigh. Getting down here to start with would be a chore, but he can't help but imagine that anything that /would/ would be perfectly comfortable with the caves. Moblins tend to live in them, when they're not in big enough tribes to put together primitive dwellings. There's probably something nasty lurking in the midst of them that she's just not telling him about though, so he just cleaves close to her and follows carefully.

If it were him, he supposes, he'd install spring-loaded traps throughout the caves that can do a quick job of anything that stumbles about too clumsily. A handful of arrows in tight confines when unexpected is certainly /more/ than enough to take almost anyone unawares who isn't as keen in the darkness as the shadow folk.

Frankly, he'd be more at ease as a /dog/ down here. At least he could smell his way through.

The trick with the torches and the wires speaks to similar ingenuity in terms of making things /convenient/ if you know what you're doing down here. A keen eye settles on the wires between the torches, and Aedan sniffs at the air faintly in search of the smell of whatever they are no doubt soaked in.

A glance is cast upwards, briefly.

Then he looks about at the surroundings. The columns, the bones. The distinctly /non-human/ bones in particular. Or, at the least, non-humanoid.

"I'm noticing a /pattern/, here." He remarks, smiling a faintly. "All of your temples are lethally dangerous, and they're numerous compared to ours. We've only the one, perhaps two now that we've established on the surface, and they're by and large used relatively frivolously. I suppose it's natural that yours would be dangerous, though..."

He nods towards the bones of the demon, "Can't say we ever had things /that/ bad roaming around in the islands. Worst we had to worry about was somebody taking a plunge off the side. Or making sure the population didn't get out of hand."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
"We were knowing they would not always be used as places of contemplation and worship of the Goddesses, yes?" Yalai tilts her head, watching as Aedan studies the torches and their mechanisms.

It looks like a relatively simple trick, using some kind of chemical coating with a pinch of magic. When a torch is touched to them, the coating ignites, and the flame travels the line like a fuse... but that pinch of magic makes sure it's extinguished quickly, and that the coating is not consumed. Handy trick, that.

She reaches back, pulling her cloak around herself, for there's a cool breeze from somewhere deeper in the ruin. It flutters her white hair, and the black edges of her cloak. "There is little about us that is not dangerous, for that is what we are having to be, yes?" She's serious when she says it, where usually she might tease about it. Raising her chin, she fixes hooded red eyes on the far side of the chamber. "Those are not being problems we have been having, either."

"The sky is still being new to us," she explains, "but it is our way to be mastering new things quickly. And population..." Yalai shakes her head. There are precious few of the Sheikah around at any given time, and that's without counting in the devastation of warring against Demise's armies. The Sheikah have taken heavy losses in recent times. "We are having children rarely, we of the Shadow Folk. And as you are knowing, we are not always living long. Well, aside from the Venomer." She wrinkles her nose. "No one is knowing how old he is being."

Old as dirt, probably.

She shifts the torch to her other hand. "It is not being only a place of the Goddess. It is being a place where one can be hearing nothing from the surface," she murmurs, quietly. The slow smile she wears is a little melancholy, and a little chilling, too. "It is being deeper below here where we are wresting answers from the things we are fighting, when we must be. I will be sparing you that, for now, unless you are /wanting/ to see it."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"I suppose that follows reasonably well. It would also explain why they are more /numerous/... more boltholes to work with in the event that any have been compromised." Aedan ponders aloud. He recognizes the /chemical/ that's being used, but not the magic. His potions do involve magic, but it's not a /lot/. It's something you can do with just a handful of motes of magic, usually implemented by melting down rupees into the potions. This releases the intrinsic magic in them.

Blood is a common substitute, along with certain other things from ensouled beings.

"Hmm...? You've never had issues with people just... falling? I suppose the distances down here are short enough that catching them and counteracting the forces of the fall safely just wouldn't be plausible... and there's not nearly as many places to fall lethally." He glances up, towards the ceiling. "Honestly, it's always kind of amazed me that people managed to fall off the islands. For the ones that roam on their loftwings, it makes a little bit of sense."

"Or, y'know... kids. Not smart enough to know to stay away from the edge. But for grown adults, well, you'd be surprised how many of them go a-stumbling down."

"Or did, before most of us moved down here." Aedan adds, thoughtfully. With regards to Sheikah birthrates, he remarks, "That just makes it even stranger to me that you were the ones trapped below. I doubt you'd have population problems at all up above. I get /why/, you were better at hiding from and fighting the demons. Still..."

"Seems to me like Skyloft's the perfect place for the Shadow-Folk, and you can see everything below to boot."

Aedan MacCarvill turns about to look at Yalai properly again, a complete lack of understanding on his face. "Deeper than this? Wresting answers? Can't imagine why you'd /want/ to go deeper, if you ask me. But can't you hear airflow through the passages, at least?"

He falls still and silent for a moment, listening intently to the surroundings.

Then he continues, "If it's optional, I suppose it's up to you. Not sure I quite understand what you mean, though."

As a Rescue Knight, thoughts of intelligence-gathering by means of torture don't often cross Aedan's mind... and he just didn't parse the way she phrased it as-intended. Sometimes, he can be thick as a castle wall.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
"They were providing a place of safety to be going, yes." Yalai's agreement is almost dismissive, probably because it's an easy solution to arrive at.

A flick of her wrist produces one of her needle-shaped throwing knives, but the Sheikah only uses it to clean her nails, something she can do with her hands while she lets her companion take it all in. She's frowning as she watches him, though, torchlight reflecting in her blood-red eyes.

People just falling? Her regard goes just a little blank at the suggestion that any of the Shadow Folk would lose their balance like that. Usually not, unless they were bleeding out or otherwise in dire straits; most of them simply don't get drunk. They know better, and most dislike such a loss of control, excepting maybe Yalai. She's probably the only Sheikah Aedan has ever gotten to see roaring drunk.

She tilts her head very faintly, folding her arms and turning to watch as he studies the chamber.

"No. But we are being lighter on our feet than you Hylians, yes? And we are knowing better our balance at all times. Even when I am being most drunk--" Here she pauses to leer at him, "--it is still being difficult for me to be truly losing my balance. You Hylians -- other Hylians, not you -- are simply not being perceptive, yes? Or careful."

After a moment she takes to pacing, flipping the knife into the air and catching it with frightening precision, a simple and mindless exercise that it looks like she's done a thousand times before. White hair drifts behind her as she stalks from one side of the chamber to the other, though never quite out of earshot.

"Actually, we were not trapped," she states, pausing in her toss-and-catch to point the knife directly at Aedan. "We were choosing to remain behind, when the Goddess raised Skyloft. We were choosing to remain and fight, for it was wiser for us to be taking the battle to its source. It is better for us to be acting quickly and decisively, yes? But we will be losing battles of attrition."

She only shakes her head at mention of population problems. "We will be having problems wherever we are going; it is simply being part of who we are, yes? There will never be as many of us as there are of you Hylians. That is simply being how Nayru was intending us to be, I am thinking."

When Aedan pauses to listen, even the air itself seems to still; stifling, for a brief instant, an echo of what this place is at times used for. The Sheikah is watching him as he does; with an intensity that may make even his skin crawl. Her singularity of purpose, at times, and her intensity, coupled with the exotic lines of her face, can sometimes make her and her people seem truly alien.

After a few seconds of study, she turns away.

"Some part of me was hoping to be sparing you this, but it would be wrong of me not to be telling you what we are being." Her eyes linger on the Rescue Knight. She flips her blade in hand until she's holding it by the pommel end, its pointed tip gleaming. "We are not being above wresting answers from our foes at the point of a knife," Yalai murmurs. "It is being the only way, sometimes."

"The worst is below. I do not think you will be wanting to venture deeper."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Happens more often than you think." Aedan remarks, at Yalai's incredulous look. He gestures around towards the edges of the chambers, "Imagine that every wall just drops off the face of the earth. It's a real problem with children, the elderly, and the drunk. I mean, you've seen it up there, and you know about how well-balanced the average hylian is. Personally, I think more of those edges should have walls around them."

"But a part of it is just bad flyers," He continues, "not everybody can handle going here and there without an accident. Over a lifetime, something's bound to happen. Kind of weird that it happens often enough we could make /careers/ out of dealing with it..."

"And don't separate me too much from other hylians. Not that /I've/ ever fallen. But I can imagine it happening, eventually. My loftwing is trained to deal with such things without outside intervention, though, and I have other solutions for dealing with that." Featherfall potions, mostly.

A Rescue Knight's best friend.

Aedan waves a hand at Yalai's insistence that they weren't trapped, "I know, I know. I know it was deliberate. Seems to me the sky islands are more made for /you/ than for us, to me."

"And I don't mean that you'd have less problems. I mean that it's the perfect size. Hylians breed like rabbits, we bump up against the sides of our containers too readily. I don't expect you to tell me how many Sheikah there are, but I imagine the skies would be much less cramped for you than for us, is all I was saying."

Idly, the knight wonders what statement the goddesses were making by making the hylians like this, as opposed to the Sheikah and their eternally dismal numbers. What's the point? Doesn't it make it harder to keep them around for whatever purpose? Or, he wonders, was it to prevent the Sheikah from being numerous enough to seize control, as many Hylians fear they might?

This, he chooses not to air openly. Not that he actually feels that way, it's just an awkward line of thinking. Why do the Goddesses do /anything/?

"... Eegh. No, I'd just as soon not see whatever it is you're doing to those things. How many of them are even intelligent enough to give an /answer/?" Aedan asks, making a rather sour face. It's not as sharp a reaction as Yalai might have been expecting, but it's definitely clear that he Doesn't Want To Know Much More.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
For the life of her, the Sheikah cannot fathom why so many people would fall from the very islands that they live upon. Wouldn't a people born and raised in the sky be more mindful of things like falling? Gravity is a ruling force in their lives, after all, and the only thing keeping their islands aloft was the direct intervention of a goddess. It still affects them, and they'll still fall if they step over the edge.

Most of the Sheikah haven't been dealing with Loftwings for that long, but even they seem to have better acumen in the realm of flight than some of the average Hylians around them.

It's kind of scary, honestly.

"Why?" She seems genuinely puzzled when he tells her not to separate him from his fellow Hylians too much. Those red eyes are almost alien when they fall on him. "You are not being like them. You are more being... if not like us, than more like us than others. I cannot be imagining you doing something so careless as falling, yes? But, as you are wishing, then."

She leans against the wall, and her outline seems to waver as she does. Sometimes it's hard to say whether the Sheikah do that consciously, or whether hiding is just so hard-wired into their nature that it simply happens whenever they have the opportunity.

"Perhaps," Yalai murmurs. "But we are being more accustomed to the surface realm than you Hylians are, I am thinking."

To the matter of how many Sheikah, she seems to consider the question in grave seriousness for a moment or two. Her eyes hood in thought, running a few brief tallies in her head, and considering recent news.

"Two hundred fifty," she finally states. "Perhaps three hundred, at best, but we have been suffering heavy losses against the remainder of the Demon King's armies, yes? I would be saying... perhaps closer to one hundred fifty. Two hundred, at best. No more than that."

"Perhaps it would have been. But we were being better suited to be defending ourselves on the surface. You are forgetting why that is so. You were being elevated, because you were having no way to be defending yourselves against the enemy host, yes?" Blood-red eyes narrow, thoughtfully. "If she was not finding a safe place for your people, Her Grace would have been mourning your people. The losses, in the earliest days, were being most catastrophic."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
Her eyes raise to Aedan, slowly; perhaps she senses something of what he's thinking, but if she does, she refrains from commenting. A fleeting smile flickers across her face, somewhere between understanding and melancholy. "More than you would be thinking, but it is being an animal cunning, a malicious intelligence, that they are having. But that is not meaning that they cannot be communicating." She yanks her cloak closer around her. "You are probably wondering why I am even telling you all of this."

"You have chosen to be alliyng yourself with my people, Aedan," she murmurs, "and it would be wrong of me not to be showing you all of what that would be entailing, yes? I could not be letting you be going in blind." Her eyes turn away from him. "Perhaps we are being monsters, but if that is being so, it is because it is being the only way we can be fighting against the very monsters that are hunting both our peoples. I am being one of the more gentle of my people, I am thinking. Liat, Kherem, Hakim... Ikram, Akht and even my mother Yasira... we are being hard people, living hard lives, and doing hard things to be surviving." She sighs, waving a hand in a dismissive gesture. "Well, we are not asking for our roles, but we are making the best of what we are having."

Her gaze turns back to Aedan, almost wary. "In any case... I was not wanting you to be going forward with blindness, yes? Besides, this /is/ being an important place for my people, and not being because of what is beneath it. The Silent City is one of the first places that was being truly ours." Her gaze skitters away from him, resting somewhere in shadowed stone. "It is being a place of reverence, as a grave should be."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Well, most likely it'll happen /eventually/. Might be when I'm old as the hills, but there you are. Or it would've been," Aedan looks up into the ceiling, "if not for the fact that I only even go up there anymore when it's time to go home, and my home's well away from the edge. I s'pose I could fall out of my own bloody window, but I doubt I'd fit through it well at all. It's more your size." He looks Yalai up and down.

As to the reasoning behind the Goddess's actions, he shrugs loosely. "Might be, but a few hundred wouldn't have made much difference for the worse, I think. But then there'd have been no mysterious young lady and old woman waiting to guide Hylia and the Hero, I s'pose, which is the whole point. Really wouldn't know about that, seeing as how I wasn't there."

"Doesn't matter," he waves it off, "what happened, happened. Presumably it happened for a good reason, and I sure didn't have to live through most of it. Let me tell you, being a Rescue Knight is rough stuff but it's rough stuff in limited doses, or it was 'til we moved down here. It's hard to catch a falling person, but not nearly so hard as it is to come wrangle with demons while clearing a wood."

"An' you don't need to be explaining /why/ you're showing me things about the Shadow-Folk," He looks amused at the idea, "everybody thinks you're bleeding faeries or demons or what-have-you, and it isn't like /we/ never thought of ways to beat answers out of somebody. 'Course, there's limits, eventually somebody'll tell you anything to get you to leave 'em alone or let 'em die."

"... Anyway. It's not for me, but it's not /unimaginable/. It's ugly, but what can you do." He glances into the darkness at the edges of his vision though, and adds, "... I don't want to have more than I need to do to with the hands-on torturing though. Bad enough hatcheting something open, I've got no stomach for specializing in causing pain. Point is, I don't think it makes you monsters."

"You know, though..." He smiles rather nastily at Yalai, "there's some pretty nasty things you could do with selective applications of potions. Bet the Venomer is all about that, eh?"

"Enough about that, though." Aedan shuffles over closer to Yalai. "I appreciate being taken to places like this, and it isn't like all of /our/ history is pretty, even if a lot of it disappeared with the exodus into the sky."

"Do the Shadow-Folk want to rebuild above, or... just keep everything that's still in use below ground?" He asks, uncertainly. It sounds like they kind of consider it a graveyard, and he isn't certain how they would perceive trying to rebuild it. Or, indeed, if they would rebuild in the open these days. It's kind of odd even imagining a Shadow City at all, much less one that's not hidden.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
"Or when you are drinking too much wine and stumbling closer to the edge than is being safe," Yalai teases, but there's not as much playfulness in her tone as there might usually be. She sounds just a little subdued, as though reluctant to break the silence of this place; part graveyard, part prison and interrogation grounds. "But I am having a hard time seeing you do that. You are being a careful person by nature, yes?"

"And by the time you are drinking so much wine, you are inside," she adds, pointedly. "With me." By that point, she's usually just as drunk as he is.

She can only shrug at the mention of why the Sheikah are so few in number, and why that seems to be a constant limiting factor. Even someone as closely intertwined with her people's culture and history can find no evident reason for it; not even a hint of conjecture as to why. The most ugly theories might involve the Sheikah growing too numerous and seizing power, as Aedan had considered. Even a single rogue Sheikah is a highly dangerous prospect, and perhaps one reason why the business in Eldin Volcano had seemed to be so rough on Yalai and the rest of her people.

To think of a significant number of them turning to the side of the enemy as one -- the results would be catastrophic, and they would do terrible damage before eventually being quelled.

She only shrugs, a brief rise and fall of one shoulder. "That is being one aspect of the Venomer's training, yes? So are antidotes, and the uses of certain potions for healing. He is having many useful applications of his work. But he, like most of us, is also knowing how best to be coaxing answers from our enemies, too. And he has been having much longer than any of us to be practising." Yalai shows her teeth, but it's hard to tell what she means by the grin.

Tilting her head, the Sheikah looks up at him when he approaches, frowning thoughtfully. Torchlight highlights the blood-red of her eyes; glints off the white-gold of the slim chain in her right ear. She seems to consider his question seriously.

"Here? Specifically? It is being left as it is. Nothing will be built above, at least as far as I am knowing." She looks up, as though she could see through the hundreds of feet of stone that separate them from the surface. "That which is lying below is still in use. We are not being alone, here, although I am imagining that anyone who is being at work here is being far below, and is not knowing that we are being here."

Folding her arms, Yalai closes the distance to him, leaning on him with a sigh as she glances to the far shadows.

"No. We will not be rebuilding anything. If we are," she adds, thoughtfully, "it will not be here, I am thinking. In Faron's woods, perhaps, yes? Or even in the deserts of Lanayru. But not in this place. This is being hallowed ground." She shakes her head, white hair drifting about her shoulders. "We will be using what lies beneath, here, but we will not be restoring it to what it was once being, before the great battle."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"The most careful, of course, what with tossing random body parts from animals into magical potions that I've made with money, and then drinking them." Aedan jokes without reservation. It's actually not true, he doesn't brew potions that aren't fairly well-established as safe. The great pioneers of potioneering had a very difficult task on their hands, and doing it without a few accidents resulting was simply impossible. It isn't as /volatile/, of course, as great bloody fireballs.

But there was a very real risk of turning one's self into a frog for a relatively long time. Or permanently.

"And to begin with," he adds, squinting over at Yalai, "I make a habit of /not/ getting quite that drunk. Firstly because I don't want to fall off, and secondly because it makes doing anything else with the night nearly impossible."

Aedan seems to have missed the graveness of the possibility of a rogue Sheikah. It was an alarming prospect of course, but more for the immediate reasons that were obvious than the subtle ones which were not. Like as not, a man like Aedan isn't much one for subtlety, even if his potions eventually give him a modicum of it when he needs it.

"Can't imagine he needs to inflict that much pain," He contemplates openly, regarding the Venomer, "it's a lot easier to use chemicals to get people blitzed out of their mind. A lot of anesthetics will make you very dreamy and prone to talking without really knowing it. You often don't remember what happened afterwards. That's the idea, of course."

"Amputations aren't something you /want/ people to remember." He adds, plainly.

"And yes, I know, you've got a strong bite." Aedan remarks, at Yalai's dazzling -- perhaps, some would argue, wicked -- grin.

Aedan curls his arm around Yalai when she moves to lean against him, nodding his understanding of what she described and explained. "I suppose," he says, "the surface is too much like a graveyard for it to feel right replacing any of it. Still... if you're going to rebuild something, you might ought to just build among the hylians."

"A facade resembling our architecture with your own style underneath. Nobody's mad enough to think you'd mix too openly with us, so it's the perfect place to hide in plain sight while being close at hand." He advises, entirely seriously.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
The Sheikah eyes her companion sidelong when he jokes about the relative safety of an alchemist testing their own potions. It's true that there's a relative buffer of safety with most of what he creates, but that doesn't mean that things don't turn out strangely. The first time she'd been presented with her signature transformation potions, he hadn't precisely told her what she would be transforming /into/.

Occasionally she still gets her revenge in, mostly by chugging one of those things just before dawn and shoving a cold, wet nose into the side of his neck. Sweet, sweet vengeance. Worth even the occasional pillow thrown at her by a half-awake Aedan.

In response to his protests about not drinking too much, she just eyes him some more, and then leers, showing her teeth. "Oh? I suppose you are having a point. Difficult to be enjoying other things when you are being too drunk to be moving, yes?" Also, the incidents of going ass over teakettle over the edge of Skyloft are a little more likely when a Loftwing rider is plastered out of their wits.

She, thankfully, knows what point at which to stop drinking. The Sheikah are smaller than their Hylian cousins; most of them have much less muscle mass, and that means that most of them are also really terrible at holding their liquor. Yalai herself is no exception at all.

Folding her arms, she frowns at the rest of the temple, as though she were personally displeased with the way the flickering shadows lie. Or, maybe she's just grumpy as she thinks over the possibility of a faction of rogue Shadow Folk. It's a dangerous thought. More than that, it's a frightening thought. She's never even considered the possibility of having to turn on her own people. Loyalty and cohesiveness have always been cornerstones of the Sheikah. Historically, they've been too busy fighting external foes to worry about internal ones.

"No," she murmurs, in response to the Venomer, snapped out of her musings. She glances back, studying Aedan for a moment. "He is being willing if that is proving necessary, though. Akht the Venomer is having more than one method to be discovering his secrets, yes? If he is needing to be inflicting pain, than he is inflicting pain. If he is needing a gentler touch, than he is using a gentler touch, and having his victim be telling all they know... of their own accord."

Singing like a little surface world songbird, more like.

She shrugs, though, waving one hand in an almost dismissive gesture. "Of course, he is knowing how to be mending hurts, too, yes? He is not being a healer, but he is knowing some of the tricks of their trade, and Loremaster Ikram is often being in need of his help. It is being like many other of our people. No one of us are truly being self-sufficient, yes?"

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
"We are all needing to be cooperating to be achieving our goals, whatever they are being." Her sudden smile is thin as the needle-like blades in her bandolier. "And yes, we are wanting them to be remembering, sometimes. We will be sending them back, if there are being too many for us to be dealing with. And when we are, they are remembering us. And they are fearing us."

Strong bite? She shows her teeth again, once more the wicked grin of a predatory thing rather than a sweet smile.

The Sheikah relaxes when she's pulled against his side, though, sagging against him a little. The first time they'd met, she'd been a little uncertain around this giant of a man, head and shoulders above the heartiest Sheikah. His openness had been off-putting, and his habit of dealing with things so directly had galled her evasive Sheikah sensibilities. Curiosity had won over, though, and now she wouldn't trade her familiarity with him for the world.

Folding her arms, and tucking his own cloak around her with it, she seems to mull that suggestion over with due seriousness, idly watching the empty shadows at the furthest corners of the chamber.

"That is being a possibility," she finally concedes, though a little reluctantly. It might be a little too obvious for her tastes, even if his strategy might have merit. The Sheikah are slow to trust, besides. "Are you sure my people will be wanting to be doing that? Perhaps /I/ am sharing a bed with you, but that is not being the way of we of the Shadow Folk, you know." She pokes him in the forearm with a forefinger, along with a wry little half-smile. "No one else would be thinking it, but /they/ would not be thinking it, either. And I am not thinking your people would be overly fond of an idea like that, either, yes?"

It'd been enough of a free-for-all when the Sheikah had first come to Skyloft. There had only been a few, but it had been enough to cause alarm to spread among them, like ripples from the rock tossed in a pond. "Even now they are not trusting us, not fully. It has been time, time enough to be trusting, but forcing the two together that closely..." She clicks her tongue, an uncertain sound. "I am not knowing if that would be wise. Too much, too soon, yes?"

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Well, there's that, but an excess of alcohol in one's system also-- nevermind, don't worry about it." Aedan waves the subject off, adding afterwards, "You have pretty much the right idea, anyway." If he has a particular objection to Yalai's method of gaining her revenge, he's not expressed it beyond the obvious knee-jerk reaction one has when they wake up to something cold waking them up by contact.

Truthfully, he's more likely to address the matter by explaining the contents of those potions in detail, which he does anyway.

He has sometimes considered giving her potions that would turn her into things /other/ than a fox, but it's inconvenient. Letting somebody simply turn into whatever their 'spirit animal' would be requires less ingredients.

It sometimes isn't very useful, though.

A big dog or a fox beats turning into a snail.

"I would imagine that doing it that way works better on foes that are more-or-less people," He observes, plainly, "If it were a Hylian they'd be /expecting/ gruesome treatment, so the better you treated them the more they would think they're getting some kind of special treatment. Not that that doesn't seem like it would be true, but still..."

"Seems a lot less trouble than doing things the bloody way."

Internally, Aedan can think of quite a few ways to extract answers from people by feeding them potions. The idea of a 'truth potion' is one thing, but turning somebody into a goldfish for a while certainly has an impression, even if it's in water.

"Send them back, huh? The sort of survivor who tells the tale of no survivors, and gets funny looks. Most people don't think enough to wonder about that, though..."

Hence, the legends.

With regards to the flaws in his plan, Aedan shrugs. "People don't get used to things if they don't try them, and we've had an arbitrarily large period of time to not be used to co-existence with other intelligent... /people/. You could be entirely unintimidating and the hylians wouldn't want to spend much time with you. Like those leaf people. They creep people out, you know?"

"Fearsome reputation aside, you're not such a far cry from the rest of us that adaptation can't happen. Don't know what your people think about that, though." He eyes Yalai. "Didn't think the wariness was a two-way street. I suppose the funny looks would get old pretty fast, though..."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
"I am not needing to be knowing this," Yalai says, at about the same time Aedan starts to explain the particulars of what alcohol poisoning does to a body. Fortunately, he listens to sense and stops talking about it; she doesn't need to know. More importantly, she doesn't want to know.

She considers his next point, folding her arms and leaning on the bigger Rescue Knight. "It is working better on the smarter ones," she agrees. "The stupider ones are having nothing to be telling us that we cannot be observing from afar. They are often communicating to us through their behaviour whether reinforcements are close, or whether they are marching, or whether they are intending to be attacking something, yes?"

...In other words, with the dumb-as-rocks brand of demons, it's easier to just watch them as one watches a herd of particularly dumb, dangerous, and territorial animals.

"We are adapting," she says simply. "If it is being more efficient to be bloodying them, then we are bloodying them. If it is being easier to be negotiating, then we are negotiating." One narrow shoulder rolls in a shrug. "It is, as is, yes?" It seems like a strange way to say 'it is what it is,' but the Sheikah are not known for having particularly sensible grammar. Curiously, Yalai seems to be much more savvy with it than she lets on; a front, perhaps?

She nods simply when he questions sending them back. "Sending them back," she agrees. "Except they are telling tales of we of the Shadow Folk, not lone survivors. And I hope they are being quick about it..." Something dark creeps into her tones. "And that those listeners are taking to heart the nightmare stories we are spreading, of the not-Hylians who are striking from the shadows, and mutilating the best of their warriors, yes?"

That darkness fades, and she seems mild once more. "Perhaps. But it is not being my decision to be making, either. I will be speaking to Loremaster Ikram, and seeing what she is having to be saying about it. Perhaps we will try something. Perhaps we will not." She shrugs. "I cannot be making any promises of it, either way, yes?"

Yalai flashes her teeth again in that sharp-edged grin. "Perhaps. Or perhaps they are seeing the looks I am giving you, yes?" The forced humor fades, though, and she pulls away from him, though not without clasping his hand briefly in passing. "Let us be going home. I am ready to be leaving this place of ghosts and shadows behind me for today."

"I want wine," she murmurs, a little dully, "and I want /you/, and I want you to help me be forgetting, at least for a little while, how bleak is being the future of my people; or how bleak the prospect of this endless war against Demise's remainder is being." She snorts, lifting one of the torches from the sconce and waiting for him to follow. Thankfully, Yalai is considerate enough to wait for him; she knows how poorly he sees in these dark reaches.

About as well as she sees in full sunlight, probably, squinting blearily as she so often does.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"You know..." Aedan looks towards the distant bones, his expression thoughtful, "... Why do you suppose there are dumb demons to begin with? They're all around specifically to serve a purpose by an evil god so... what's the point in making them stupid? Even pawns are more useful if they've got a brain in their skull. Or do you suppose it can be helped at all?" An odd line of questioning... to which nobody /really/ has the answer. Why make animals, when you could just make more people? It is a mystery. Except for the food thing.

Looking at Yalai again he asks, "Well what exactly-- I'm sorry, what?" He pauses for a moment, giving Yalai an opportunity to repeat what she said. Not long enough, though. He asks, "Did you just say, 'It is, as is'?"

It's not exactly a /teasing/ tone he's using, but Aedan is definitely entertained by the way she said that. It's just so... /odd/, and he can't tell if it's how a Sheikah would say it or if it's completely deliberate. It isn't the first time he's had a funny reaction to the way she speaks, although it doesn't happen... /that/ often.

"Well, /they're/ the lone survivors, you see." He explains, gesturing to a raised finger with the opposite hand. "But I understand. Kind of strange to imagine any of them going screaming into the dark about nightmares, but I... suppose...." Aedan looks into the darkness, "... this place could /probably/ do it."

With regards to the Loremaster, he says, "She'll /probably/ think it's stupid until the exact moment it would be immediately useful. Goddesses only know what that'll be, but she doesn't seem like a quick one to move on anything. Metaphorically speaking, that is. She's plenty quick enough otherwise."

The Rescue Knight frowns a little as he trails after Yalai, moving up next to her again and nudging her with an elbow. He says, "We'll skip the wine, I don't think it'll do too much good just now. But the rest I can do. Not... not here, though."

That last remark is made on the knife's edge between humor and seriousness. No, Aedan wouldn't /actually/ expect her to want to stay here, particularly since she just invited him to leave. And given the context of the exchange, it's probably obvious between the two of them that it's a joke.

But, out of context, it wouldn't be hard to imagine the faux-nervousness as quite real.

"Frankly," he says as they ascend, "I think flying is a hell of a lot better for the spirits than spirits in situations like these."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
When Aedan looks toward the bones, the Sheikah's red eyes follow. She considers the yellowed fragments as much as she does his words. "Nayru has not been seeing fit to be giving me that knowledge," Yalai points out, "or any other of we of the Shadow Folk. If I were knowing that..." One narrow shoulder rises and falls; the needle-like throwing knives in their bandolier whisper and clink softly.

"Perhaps they are being more useful to Demise if they are not being capable of much more than following direction." She taps the side of her head with a forefinger, illustratively. "Thinking minions, those are not being useful, not when you are not wanting your orders questioned, yes?"

"...It is better for them to be thinking not at all of the orders being given to them." Especially when those orders are at cross-purposes to things like 'staying alive,' but she doesn't say that part.

When Aedan questions her on her wording, the Sheikah only shows her teeth. She's messing with him, somehow. Either it's something that got hopelessly lost in translation, or she's pulling his leg somehow, making him think she's even more abysmal with Hylian grammar than she really is. (She is in fact quite good; better than any of her people, and better than she ordinarily lets on.)

Whether it's because of Sheikah grammar playing havoc or because she's deliberately messing with him, though, she doesn't clarify. She never really does.

It's more fun that way.

The grin drops and she watches his raised finger with all the rapt attention of a cat stalking a bug, blood-red eyes utterly focused. Eventually, she smiles as he looks into the darkness. It is not a very nice expression, and it says all she needs to say more eloquently than words -- it's not the place that gives them the heebie-jeebies so much as the sorts of pain the Shadow Folk can inflict on their captives.

"Loremaster Ikram is being more accepting of things than you are giving her credit for." Yalai glances over her shoulder, even as she makes her way up the twisting stairwell. "When we were first debating among ourselves to be letting Hylians work among us, when I was volunteering myself to be working with you, before I was meeting you, it was she who was being most accepting, and most vocally accepting, of this."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
Yalai herself might have been most vocal, but this was well before she met Aedan, and well before she had fought and nearly died beside him -- she had been apathetic towards the idea, back then; accepting of it as her duty, but not particularly enthusiastic about it.

Now, though, she's glad she hadn't fought it at the time.

"Be giving her some credit."

She pauses at the top, replacing her torch into the empty sconce from which she'd taken it. Torchlit shadows flicker around her as she waits for him to catch up. "Not here," she agrees as he nudges her in the side with an elbow; and the short, simple statement carries a subtle sort of gravity to it. The more directly Yalai speaks, the more seriously she tends to mean things -- when she doesn't phrase things in bizarre Sheikah grammatical form, it usually means she's taking something with deadly seriousness. That, or she wants to be understood with deadly seriousness.

Something twitches across her face that might be the hint of a smile, but it doesn't quite resolve itself, as though she takes his joking meaning and has no witty riposte to it. The Shadow Temple would jangle the nerves of even the most stout-hearted hero.

Unlike the shining Temple of Hylia, or some of the more natural temples built by Sheikah hands, the Shadow Temple is not a very heroic place. Desperate times call for desperate measures, though, and the Shadow Folk are very much desperate.

"Oh?" She arches a brow as she picks her way over to her Loftwing, glancing back at him. Swinging herself astride the dozing bird, whose slightly reddish eyes snap open at Yalai's approach, the Sheikah peers over the bird's shoulder. "And what are you meaning by that?" She's not teasing him; she seems genuinely confused -- another piece of language lost in translation, perhaps.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Why's that? Usually the elders of any given group are the less tractable, and it's /really/ hard to get a read on her. Not that that's different for -most- of you." Aedan wonders aloud, concerning Ikram's inclination to accept workign with the hylians. It's not something he'd expect of her based on demeanor alone, but it is often incredibly difficult to actually read the Shadow-Folk as you would another Hylian. Certainly, they have cues, but they're good at hiding them, and forthcomingness is not a trait that they typically possess unless they are actively interested in it.

Yalai, he can follow.

Her brother, well, he'd been able to follow him as well. Some of the others that he'd met as well, to a degree, but not so much as those two. Aedan wonders, idly, if perhaps it has something to do with relatively even experience levels. The older ones are more practiced at hiding their inner selves. Or, to begin with, are rather funny in the head. Then of course there are those that think a little more bluntly to /begin/ with...

Like the Beast. Not a hard man to deal with, if he's right in front of you.

Noticing that the dismal atmosphere is clinging to Yalai rather fiercely, he remarks, "You don't have to bring me to places like this if they bother you that much, you know. I suppose the gravity of it is a little lost on me, but I'd rather be a little bit ignorant or just get told a little about it than bring your mood crashing down like this."

"-- Uh?" He looks confused at Yalai's lack of comprehension. Before he answers, the Rescue Knight gives a sharp whistle. The sound of his loftwing approaching is plenty audible even in the distance. It didn't hang around in the immediate area, evidently. Probably fishing.

"Well, it's just pretty exhilarating, I suppose, is what I mean. You get a pretty good high off of it, because of how it... /works/." He gestures strangely with a hand, as if to imitate a flying bird, "You go flying about, you see, and your body responds to the sensation and the possibility of falling rather sharply no matter how used to it you get. So it registers as kind of exciting no matter what."

"Don't need wine to get a good feeling, is what I mean." He concludes, more simply.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
"Because she is knowing the knife-edge on which we walk," Yalai replies seriously, leaning over the charcoal neck of her Loftwing. "And she is knowing that it is being the most pragmatic thing, rather than the most comfortable thing, that is going to be helping us to be surviving, yes?"

Smart lady, in other words. She recognises the value of putting aside creature comforts and comfortable mental states in favour of the tough choices and the necessary sacrifices to survive -- not just for her, but for all of her people, too.

Maybe a little of that is rubbing off on Yalai.

"I am fine." Yalai shakes her head, white hair drifting; one hand rises to clear it from her face, the other sinking into the thick feathers around her Loftwing's neck. The Loftwing, unconcerned, swivels its head around to fix Aedan with one reddish eye. "I will be better once we are in the air. This place is having this effect on even the most impassive of us, yes?" She flicks a hand, gesturing to the Shadow Temple almost dismissively. They might seem like cold-blooded killers, but the Sheikah are not so much as that. Even they struggle with some of the things circumstance has forced them into doing.

They do not enjoy /actually/ playing the part of every Hylian's worst nightmare of a bogeyman wielding bloodied blades in the dead of night. It takes a certain kind of emotional deadness that none of them truly possess.

Settling more comfortably between her bird's wings, Yalai leans forward, as though expectantly. "Mm. I do. And we are being less used to it than you Hylians are. Be remembering; Loftwings arestill being new to us." The feeling of being one half of a pair, though, that sensation is very much there for the current generation of Sheikah. All of them have found a feathered partner, although theirs are just a little bit different from the Hylians', and no one seems to know where they came from, aside from wild theories consisting mostly of 'from the Goddess Herself.'

It's not so new that they haven't figured out ways to wield their weapons aloft, though, or make new strategies. They've even begun teaching aerial combat to their Skyloftian allies, although few Sheikah have volunteered themselves to teach. They're a fairly taciturn lot.

"Yes? Is that so?" She leans over the neck of her bird, leering openly, showing white teeth. "I can be thinking of other things that are giving a good feeling, too, yes? Let us be back home, so I can be showing them to you, yes?"

Now that's more like the devil-may-care Yalai he knows and loves. Or maybe knows and dreads. But who's counting, eh?

Gathering itself, the Loftwing makes a mighty leap from the flagstones, wings thrashing madly for a few seconds to lift itself; raising great clouds of dust and kicking loose debris. After a bit of a struggle, for Loftwings are large and heavy birds, it finds its place in the air, banking in a circle as Yalai waits for Aedan and his very large bird to take off. It must be even worse for them, she reflects; he's exceptionally tall and therefore exceptionally heavy as Hylians go, and so is his Loftwing, to bear that much weight.

It must be difficult for such a big Loftwing to take off from flat ground, actually, and never mind when it's carrying Aedan in his full armour and carrying a full complement of Rescue Knight equipment. It must be a lot easier and more energy-efficient to mount over a sky island, where Aedan can just drop off a diving plank and catch his Loftwing in midair. Gravity does all the work, then; the Loftwing can plummet straight down and then correct its flight gradually, instead of straining against gravity and weight both.

All that to say, Yalai is glad her bird is small and she herself is relatively light; and that she tends to fly excessively lightly.

"I will be waiting for you, this time," she calls, letting her bird circle instead of taking off right away. "Be taking your time."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"I s'pose that makes enough sense." Aedan responds, ponderously. He can't help but wonder what might have happened if things hadn't been timed precisely as they were. How on their last legs /are/ the Sheikah, really? Would they have lasted without contact for another five years? Ten? The obvious answer to /him/ seems to be yes, but the fact of the matter is that Yalai is awfully grim about it.

Appearing invincible doesn't make you so.

The Rescue Knight nods in answer to Yalai's insistence that she's alright. He's seen vulnerability from her before, but vulnerability concerning gruesome things like the Shadow Temple is a great deal different from what he's used to. A glance is cast back, towards the hidden trap door and the narrow staircase beneath. Maybe, he thinks, it's because she actually had to go down into what is beneath the surface.

The option to decline was given to him, but truthfully, Aedan would probably have been sick if he'd been required to look deeper into what was going on there. It's one thing to see blood and bile on the battlefield, but it's another entirely for it to be inflicted on a restrained opponent for the purpose of extracting answers.

"Hmm...? I'd think that would make it /more/ fun for you, then." He looks up towards Yalai again, grinning broadly. "You get used to it, the adrenaline isn't quite as good. The first few times are always the most frightening, but they also feel the best in the aftermath. I think you probably know what I mean."

Aedan just blinks back at her, and snorts in amusement. "Well," he says, "I've got no objections to that."

It takes a while for Aedan's loftwing to arrive, and as Yalai has been observing, it takes a good bit for them to get some decent lift and get into the air from a complete standstill on the ground. It actually probably would be easier for him to find a high spot and jump off, even down here.

He calls out to her as they ascend: "Sorry for the wait! We can't all be ninety pounds when dripping wet!"

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
Chances are the Shadow Folk have been on their last legs for decades, and they'd be prepared to hang in there for a long time yet. It seems that they fight hardest when they're on the brink of eradication, or when their Hylian charges face the most threat. They can appear invincible, but that indeed doesn't make them so. They are, if anything, just as vulnerable as their Hylian cousins.

It's a side of his companion Aedan has seen often enough; a side he would not see in any other Sheikah. They seem to trust him, though, and he seems to be as close as anybody can be to them who aren't of their own people.

When you risk your life on a daily basis for a people, even a people as secretive as the Shadow Folk, they're inclined to show some openness.

Meanwhile, the Sheikah rolls one shoulder in a shrug when Aedan verbally pokes at her about flying. "Maybe. And maybe we are being more used to adrenaline, hmm? With as busy and dangerous as our lives are being. But I am liking the sky." She shows her teeth and laughs; a swift animal laugh of pure pleasure. "And it is liking me! Onward, my beauty!" she calls, giving her Loftwing a slap on the neck; obediently, it climbs for the sun.

While Aedan goes about the troublesome task of catching up to his much smaller and therefore much lighter companion, Yalai amuses herself with aerial acrobatics, practising manoeuvres astride her Loftwing. The Sheikah were quick to settle on the practical applications of Loftwings in combat, aside from their wonderful ability to bear riders swiftly over great distances. They trained their birds to be warriors as much as they themselves were, even if it wasn't so long ago.

Aedan's quip is met with a leer, where Yalai has circled high above her companion... but she can still hear him.

That is to say, she casually does things like climbing high above Aedan, throwing herself from the saddle in a particular way, and letting her Loftwing spin beneath her and catch her. Or, she manages to clamber over the bird in flight, clinging to the thick plumage and the harness around its neck, one dagger drawn as though to fight, white hair flying. If something ever managed to latch onto her bird, she'd be pretty handy at filling the offender full of knife holes.

After a time she finally settles herself back over the Loftwing's shoulders, sheathing the knife and settling into bank in lazy circles around Aedan's struggling Loftwing.

Thus will the Sheikah caper back to their home, windtossed and considerably more cheerful than within the somber Shadow Temple... and true to her word, she'll do exactly what she'd threatened to do.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"It's a different kind of adrenaline," Aedan replies, grinning right back at Yalai. "Not something you can ever really get used to, and honestly, can you really tell me that it ever gets /old/ fighting for your life? Flying's the same way, even if it does dull a little bit over time. The first few times, as I said, are always the most intense. But, doing some incredibly dumb nonsense..."

He directs his loftwing into a brief, sharp dive, and then comes back up a few moments later /without/ managing to go crashing down into the ground like an idiot.

"... Always has a lot of bite to it." He concludes, smiling toothily over at her. It's not the acrobatics /she/ just pulled off (or continues to), they're simply too heavy for that. But it offers the same kick, as far as the Rescue Knight is concerned. On the other hand...

"One day," he asides to Yalai as she veers close enough to talk, through another round of her whirling about and playing with knives, "we're going to have to pick a /horse/ or a /cow/ up off of the surface with a loftwing, and you're going to be very glad that /my/ loftwing is around for it."

"But all of /those/ things," Aedan gestures with a hand, in great loops this way and that, "he'll never do. Mm. Remind me to put together a secure rigging for him before we go on another outing, by the way. I'd meant to after we had to play medic for a while, but it slipped my mind."

Aedan casts a playfully accusatory look towards Yalai, as if to suggest that it was /this/ little fox that had distracted him from his task. It's not serious at all, though.

And so, bantering back and forth while complaining about Yalai's infinitely superior capacity to fly circles around /any/thing, the Rescue Knight soars off back home alongside his companion.