"Fighting-wise? Sure. Might be good to take turns taking the lead, then, so we don't trip each other up."

"Well, team fighting when you don't know what your buddies can do doesn't usually go well at all and I'm not totally reckless so I more meant showing off some moves while we're still relatively safe up here."

"I guess? Some stuff's easier against opponents, though."

"Hey, I do remember knight school, sort of. They taught us that teamwork and knowledge is a big deal for fighting. Alright!"

She starts showing off. She's stronger and tougher and has better stamina than baseline. She has a few magic weapons that have fire, ice, or lightning effects. She has a bunch of different themed outfits, many with their own magic effect (she settles on the one that boosts climbing). The slate can do a lot of neat things, including creating throwable force bombs, briefly time-stopping objects or enemies, making ice, and moving metal things around. She'll revive able to stand and fight once every twelve hours and can create mighty upwinds to fly into the air with her glider three times before starting a six-hour recharge.

"...I don't want to use my magic arrows or potions unless I have to 'cause I don't think I can get more here but they're neat. And I guess the last thing is, it doesn't usually work out of combat, but if I dodge a blow just right or fire arrows in midair I speed way up for a few moments. And I can reflect projectiles off a shield if I do it just right too but that's really tricky. I think those last two are a hero thing not any kind of artifact?"

"Huh. We just have artifacts."

And he shows off: he can make himself lighter, so he doesn't fall as fast and so he's able to pull off his cool parkour fighting, and he has a pouch that creates ammunition - the exploding knives in this case - and armor that repairs itself and grants him immunity to fire, and he can create about two dozen clones, and when his clones are destroyed or spun back in he's healed, and he has a fan that controls wind (very little, but it's enough to knock lighter monsters around and give most fliers a hard time), and an artifact that gives him short bursts of strength but exhausts him, and boots that let him stick to things, and a message earring (only talks to other message earrings) and a disguise earring, which is mostly useful for like makeup effects but can be used to camouflage if he pays attention to what he's doing with it.

"The clone thing is awesome. I have to say, this is weird as all get out. No use standing still, though." She swaps to a lightning-themed spear. "You said you have to get to the center and grab the thingy? Lead the way, I'll keep up and help keep them clear."

"Yeah. Thanks."

He starts making his way through the quasi-maze - he's avoiding fights where he can, taking advantage of his acrobatics to keep away from those monsters stuck on the ground, but there's still plenty of things that can get to him.

She stabs things and throws force bombs and stabs things and time freezes monsters and runs and jumps and climbs after him and stabs things.

And they get to the middle of the maze - an enormous tree, hollowed out. The light inside is golden, and there's a circlet of gold and green leaves on a pedestal.

"I'm going to need to see if it'll accept me," Nereus says. "Can you watch my back while I commune with it? Might take a bit."

"Commune? Eh, sure, guard duty, explain later."

"Right."

And he turns to the circlet, apparently meditating on it.

A few monsters try to interrupt this.

She doesn't know these ones' attack patterns by heart, but she is pretty good at killing monsters.

They are very killable!

Nereus comes out of his trance, shortly, plucking the circlet from its place and putting it on his head.

The monsters all seem to immediately become pacified, slinking away.

"The treasure likes you? That how it works?"

"Basically! It's - more a thing about fit than like, I don't think they're intelligent in the way people and animals are. And the central artifact is the keystone of the entire pocket dimension."

"Cool. Uh, killing monsters is familiar ground but I don't know what to do next. I can't go looking for shrines, this isn't Hyrule."

"We can see if any of my artifacts work for you? And get you introduced to, like, towns and all that, maybe find the goddess of this world so she can help you out?"

"Sure. Goddess Hylia can still hear me if I use a figurine. Maybe they can talk to each other and fix stuff."

"That'd be really great! Our gods are pretty powerful locally - they do a lot of good, here."

"That's nice! Hylia does stuff, just, there's also Ganon. And I'm not really clear on how gods fight each other or what they can do, I just help the best I can."

"Yeah. I haven't ever heard of ours fighting each other..."

"Everyone says the Dark God Ganon is evil and thrives on hatred and malice. And, I mean, that's kind of the thing you say about your enemies, but Hylia grants adventurers strength and keeps the land fertile and tries really hard to make sure nobody gets sick and there's food to forage in the wild - and Ganon makes black goo that eats everything it touches, and monsters who are just barely smart enough to make a spiked club and kill people with it but not do art or tell stories or anything, and took over the army of Guardians to burn all of Hyrule a hundred years ago."

"Yeah. The living world sometimes had problems like that. The afterlife's nice, though. There's the Library, which is - basically an infinite place of creation and learning and knowledge? If you want a little section of world you can shape however you like, or if you want every book ever published, or if you want to stare at art or immerse yourself in memories of historical events people've shared, you go there. Then there's the Autumn, which's - peaceful and plentiful and nice, and it's a really good place for kids who died early to grow up, and no one there can get injured if they don't want to be, and there's a lot of - kind of friendly spirits? And here's the Battle. People can hurt you but if you die you respawn at a graveyard or at your body with all your stuff, and you can just decide to die at any time if you're trapped somewhere or just don't want to bother walking back to town, and magic's based around artifacts. It's pretty much a massive war game?"

"Possibly there're others but those are the three I've been to."

"Sounds nice."

"...Even if nobody needs the help I can see some knights wanting to keep fighting. Maybe even me. Others would want to go home, though. I don't really want to risk dying though. Nearly did that once already and it was a disaster."

"Yeah. Hopefully we'll find the local goddess fast - I can also put the word out that I'm looking."