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Link first sees it in the woods.
He's standing on a tall rock to get a view over the tops of the pine trees, scanning the jagged angles of Upland Zorana, feeling rather safe and unbothered this far off the lizalfos-beaten path.
But then he realizes... that there are no animals in the brush around him. A stillness that prickles in the back of Link's skull. The eerie quiet of nature in distress.
A shriek bursts upwards from the ground, and Link genuinely startles. He has never heard that sound before. His sharp eyes dart low, and all he can see is red.
Blips of sickly yellow are suddenly weaving through the air directly towards him. It is so unnerving, that Link takes two large steps backwards, and promptly topples off his rock perch. He is scrambling to brandish his strongest weapon and wrack his brain for strategy against an entirely unknown enemy... when it stops.
Birdsong kicks up sweetly. Squirrels peek out from between leaves and skitter down to pick at the loam. A fox chirps in the tall grass.
Link is utterly confused.
Very cautiously, like a creeping vine, he peers around his former rock perch and... sees... items? A handful of oblong shapes glittering an odd, pink-red aura in the sunlight. Still on the highest of alerts, Link decides to move in. Slowly. He's been smashed into by those fucking chest-mimic octorocks before; he knows that treasure will be used to bait him.
But no. These... Dark Clumps are weird (and pulsating in a way that Link wrinkles his nose at) yet, harmless. Potentially even a boon, as he reads what the Purah Pad has to say about them in its inventory notes.
Whatever had screamed at him, is decidedly gone.
And has now made him incredibly paranoid.
New foes aren't that rare. Most of them look tougher than they turn out to be. With the exception of Gleeoks and the Flux Constructs (and maybe the walking trees), nothing short of a temple scourge like Colgera has even been all that intimidating.
What he just experienced is the most unsettling threat that Link has encountered since staring down that mummified evil below Hyrule Castle.
He is extremely careful on the rest of his journey towards Zora's Domain.
-- + --
The second time Link sees it... well.
At least he's wearing the Sheikah stealth armor and is approximately four-Sidon's high off the ground, plastered against the bark of a giant skytree root on his way towards a Shrine sitting atop a platform.
What startles Link this time is that he hadn't even noticed it until the very second he lept onto the root. Had only glanced a flash of oily red sliding down the hill. Thought it a common gloom stain and climbed up... but then looked down.
This creature is awful. It's a group of five moving puddles of gloom, each sprouting a twisted, undulating "hand". And in the palm of each clawed stalk, is a diseased-looking yellow eyeball, wide and unblinking. The puddles lurch and shift across the ground in an uneven bundle, Hands turning this way and that -- looking for something. Their hissed, warbling coos are downright chilling and make chicken-skin sweep across both of Link's arms and halfway up his neck.
But the thing doesn't see him. Just, slugs around on the grass. Link vaguely registers that it won't (or can't?) seem to crawl over a tall cube-shaped stone.
Really, without him hearing the defining wail from the forest encounter, the only thing tipping Link off that this is what that had been, are those goddess-damned eyes. No other monster has those eyes. They pierce straight into the prey-level of Link's brain, and it hasn't even locked onto him like the previous one had.
Link suddenly just knows, right then, without proof or question... that the something this nightmare is looking for, is him.
-- + --
A part of Link is flat-out pissed off at him for not engaging this new enemy. He's not some novice with a stick, he's the fucking Hero of Hyrule! Link used to hunt Lynels for sport! If he can face and destroy Calamity Ganon, then he can face and destroy anything. This dinky little gloom spawn cannot possibly be that challenging.
Another part of Link says Gloom Spawn with capital letters -- and while completely understanding of Link's aversion to this particular foe, it points out an important reality: if Link never fights one by choice, then he'll be entirely unprepared when he's forced to fight one by duty. Not that there's any evidence saying that he will be forced to fight one. It would just... be far smarter (and safer, really, in the long run) to at least get a fraction of a beat on how this monster operates during combat.
Link listens to both of these voices. While specifically continuing to bail out of any situation involving a Gloom Spawn. If the goddess-damned things would just stop ambushing him out of fucking nowhere, he would absolutely turn and fight.
As it stands though, the creatures keep appearing in places where he also does not have any good ground to stand on. They're usually somewhere flat; away from things that he could fall back to and observe from, let alone attempt an attack. And in all due technicality, this thing really isn't just one monster -- it's five of them, and being outnumbered is something Link already tries not to walk into.
He's maxed-blessed the stealth armors for a reason, dammit.
Thankfully, by the time Link figures out a way into Korok Forest and witnesses the state of the Great Deku Tree, he's at least started to feel that gut-deep apprehension lessen. He has four Sage Avatars by his side, they've fought Phantom Ganon in the Sanctum of Hyrule Castle, and Link has still yet to be snared by a Hand -- though there have been a few very close calls. Times when he had panicked so hard that he forgot he can teleport. Or the one instance where he'd been rushed at in the rain and kept fucking slipping back down the cliffside (what he wouldn't give to just buy the goddess-damned Froggy set but nooo, make him run around following rumors he already knows are horseshit).
(Though Penn is pretty cool.)
Overall, Link has been incredibly lucky. And he's beginning to recognize the signs of an impending Gloom Spawn approach. Normally in isolated stretches of wilderness, near thin but clustered trees; in broad daylight when his guard is most likely to be down. Noticing the warnings at least gives him a bit of bracing. Before the stark silence is shredded by the screeching.
He hates how quiet they are otherwise. He loves that they'll disappear if he can evade one for long enough. Their loot is invaluable for elixers, and make tramping around the Depths far less deadly.
So, as mentioned: Link is getting a feel for these fetid bastard monster puddles -- and then he plummets into the heart of the Great Deku Tree.
Whereupon Link then shortly exits the Great Deku Tree by warping to Musanokir Shrine. Sits down hard in the dull shadows of Korok Forest. And stares at the silver grains of sand between his knees as if somehow they will have his answers.
Because time is apparently up.
-- + --
Following their victory in the Sanctum, before the assembled company disperses, Riju makes Sidon aware of something.
"Did you really not know that we can see through our Avatars?"
"W-Well, I-- Well, no! How did you know? Does Link know that we can--?"
"Yes Link knows, you fuss. And, well, it just... seemed obvious, to me, and when I tried to do so, it worked. We must be able to sense when Link has summoned our power for a reason, right? What good would it be if the Sages couldn't check in on him with our eyes?"
"That... ...hm. I suppose that I had simply not considered it in that manner. Would you have any advice for...?"
"I mean, probably not, since we know our experiences with our Bonds are all different. But for me, it's very similar to what I did in order to appear at the Sanctum, only... less intentional? Taking the place of my Avatar was a decision to honor my Bond, where simply looking was just a thought to it."
"Hm... I do believe that your description is helpful. I will endeavor to try!"
"Mmhm, well, I wish you success. ...Yes, Buliara, we are leaving. Well met, King Sidon."
"And to you, Miss Riju."
-- + --
Link returns to the Deku Tree Chasm.
There are two, flat, mushroom-shaped knots protruding out of the moss-covered wood near the bottom of the plunge. They're stacked, vertically, one right above the other. The lowest knot is just high enough to be safe.
The Sage Avatars appear next to him on the upper knot once he lands, and Link considers dismissing them. Though helpful in combat, they can at times block too much of his view. And he is going to need a clear shot of the ground at all times.
He supposes it doesn't matter -- all the other Avatars aside from Tulin's will disappear soon anyway.
"I'm insane," Link mutters. For the millionth time. This hour alone.
He's going to jump.
Draw his bow in the air. Fuse a bomb flower to the arrow. Fire into the center of the Hands -- once.
He should have just enough time to perform the maneuver, whip out his paraglider, and pull back to land on the lower knot. Then he will Ascend to where he started. And repeat.
"I am completely fucking insane."
Even more completely fucking insane when he sees that at this moment, he's got six arrows, and ten bombs.
Link 100% ought to go find more of each before pulling this stunt. But he won't. Because frankly, he's seething with too much impatient, angry honor to do anything except kill this goddess-damned demon filth right fucking now.
"I shouldn't have run to begin with."
Sweat lines a clammy streak down his temple to his jaw.
Hyrule cannot afford its Hero to be a fucking coward.
-- + --
The last Hand shrivels away, and as Link touches the floor... something worse is left behind.
Link had decided to remove the Avatars from the equation after his first volley on the Hands. He does not remember to summon them now. His focus cannot be spared.
-- + --
Which is unfortunate, because this entire time, after having caught just a short glimpse of Link's pale and stricken face, Sidon has been very close to actually losing his mind.
-- + --
"Alright then. Out with it. What did I do now."
"Link, please, I would simply like have a word with you in private."
"I didn't break that vase, I told you, I swore off vase breaking, I haven't broken a vase in--"
"Link will you please just tell me what it was that had you so clearly frightened the other day."
"... ...You... you saw that, huh."
"Yes. I did. And I have been losing sleep over the very notion that something in this realm exists to have made you look the way you did. Please, my friend. What is it that I was not there to see?"
"... ...It's... It's called a... a Gloom Spawn. Doesn't show up in the Compendium but Oliff, knight at the gates to Hyrule Castle, he confirmed the name for me. A monster that's just, five spots of gloom that stick together and they can... move. And each one has this... unnatural trunk growing out of it? Like some kind of misshapen arm, joints like an insect leg. The arm-things have a hand, and the Hands they have these... these fucking eyes, Sidon. Every Hand has this fucking eye so there's five of them and they are looking for me. They don't attack anything else but me. It can't climb but it has this cry that... that brings on this localized Blood Moon, or something. Everything goes red and gloom-inflicted wounds won't heal. And if you kill off all of the Hands, then it... it unleashes one of the Phantom copies of Ganondorf, the ones we fought? One of those. I don't know maybe not all of them do that I've only ever fought one Gloom Spawn and it's... that's what I was looking at. When you saw me. The Great Deku Tree had been infected by one in the Depths. And usually a Gloom Spawn will fuck off if it realizes it can't grab me, but this one didn't. It wouldn't leave. So I had to kill it. And since I've been avoiding these shitty nightmares like an actual plague, I had no real idea how to kill it. Just had to rely on being insane, like I do most of the time, anyway."
"... ...Have you... been... been grabbed by...?"
"...Wh-- No, no I've been too much of a coward for any of them to actually--"
"Excuse me, my most treasured friend, but I shall have to insist that you never refer to my hero as a coward in my presence ever again."
"...Sidon..."
"...This world would not exist without you, Link. The Calamity would have devoured everything. There is precisely zero cowardice in your entire person. You are courage on legs, my friend. But courage is not synonymous with taking uncalculated risks. And it certainly does not mean an absence of fear. It is doing what you feel you must, when you must, and you did that. It is tactical to not engage an enemy that you do not know if you can defeat in that moment. I am proud of you. ...--! Oh gracious, Link forgive me, I did not intend to make you cry--"
"Sh--shut up, I'm-- It's good. S'a good-- good cry. You... ...nhh. Thank-- Thank you. Sidon. Sorry for-- mngh, sorry for calling your-- your hero a coward. M'heh."
"...Mm. Well. You are forgiven. ...Come now, let us get my hero some lunch."
-- + --
He's spelunking not too far off from a Tower, the Shrine detector beeping like mad, when a Gloom Spawn seeps up out of the rocks near his feet. Link swears and sprints to vault fast up the cave wall. The monster shrieks at him in rage, whipping its Hands around to snatch at his ankles -- but they just miss.
Link boulders to an earthen shelf that overlooks the small, bowl-shaped room where the Gloom Spawn has trapped itself. He stands up tall. And turns to glare right back at it.
The Purah Pad gives the Demon King's Bow a power rating of 60 at Link's current level of vitality.
He has 191 arrows in his arsenal thanks to a repeat visit to the Wind Temple.
Bargainer Statues have done him a great service by offering bomb flowers for the Poe souls Link collects.
And Phantom Ganon melts under the holy blue glow of the Master Sword.
Link fuses the Master Sword with a Gloom Spear that gets left behind. Its reach is now easily tripled. The fuse won't hold up for multiple skirmishes, but that's really not the point.
Symbolically cannibalizing the Demon King's own weapon, using Rauru's hand to do so no less, is extremely fucking satisfying.
The Hero of Hyrule pockets the Dark Clumps that the Phantom had dropped. Adjusts his loadout back to "I'm adventuring" instead of "time to destroy". And resumes his exploration of the cave system for the Shrine -- and wherever the Bubbulfrog is hiding.