Akane huffed. "So now that we're done wasting time with Kuno's stupidity and his pets, let's hurry up and help my mother!"
Ukyo raised a finger slightly. "That's technically what we were doing before we had to stop to power nap or drop dead on our feet."
"Why did you call him Kuno, anyway?" Link asked.
Akane shrugged. "He used to be the son of Hyrule's Chancellor, he was an arrogant racist pin head even then."
"What happened to his father?"
"The bastard PROUDLY declared how he killed him! Claimed he had avenged the king and saved Hyrule and would continue to serve and protect it under it's new king as his general Onox."
Ukyo stared. "His father was the king's killer?"
"I don't know," Akane answered. "His father was a laid back old man with his head in the clouds. And I haven't trusted a single thing that came out of Onox's mouth since that day. And it doesn't matter! I doubt Bongo-Bongo is playing cards while we're just sitting here!"
"But we're standing."
"LINK!" Ukyo shouted.
"What?"
Navi thought for a moment, "Link... try the Ocarina again..."
Link look at Navi floating in front of him. "But it doesn't work, remember? We tried to warp directly to the Shadow Temple after we returned from the past, and it didn't work."
"I still think you didn't memorize it right," Tatl grumbled.
"Or maybe it was that evil general who was keeping the Ocarina from working," Navi countered.
Tatl flew next to her. "That makes no sense!"
"You have a better explanation?"
"Yeah! Link has no memory and screwed up the song!"
"HEY!" Link said, channeling his fairy.
"If they could have stopped us from using the Ocarina before then why wouldn't they have done so sooner? It would make killing us a whole lot easier!"
"It could have been a curse that Gannondorf linked to that big monster of Onox's," Navi said.
"Then... then why didn't he keep it locked safe and sound in a basement? And if it was too good a killing machine to keep under wraps why not link such a nasty little advantage to a pet bat or to that witch or..."
"Cause deep inside, Onox is Kuno and Kuno is an arrogant idiot," Akane injected.
"Try the Ocarina again, Link," Navi spoke calmly.
The Hero of Time nodded, brought the Ocarina to his lips and began to calmly blow, spilling forth the haunting melody of Nocturne of Shadow.
"HOLD ONTO HIM, YOU IDIOTS!" Tatl shouted as the yellow fairy grabbed hold of the Hero of Time as he warped away, the rest of the party barely managing to grab him in time.
Impa had been prepared for the illusions of the Shadow Temple. After all, she was this temple's true guardian. And as such had been prepared for it's numerous booby traps designed to add any grave robbers to it's massive morgue. And of course there were the natural 'annoyances' that came with any massive underground structure in Hyrule, man-made or not, vermin and aberrations that neither knew nor cared that technically this was no cave they dwelled in.
However, she hadn't counted on Ganondorf having somehow snuck in minions of his that were already dead and thus did not awaken the temple's defenses. Impa had let herself become distracted, she had no idea when these things had entered. Or perhaps... a chill ran down her spine when she realized something... 'Did maybe Bongo-Bongo itself make these monsters from the temple's vast supplies of dead bodies?'
Impa had effortlessly bypassed or cut through Stalfos soldiers, but she made the mistake of taking her eyes off the skull bubbles. One struck her in the back, and her katana instantly flew back into its sheath and couldn't be drawn. Impa didn't waste time trying to draw the now useless weapon, using the sheath itself to defend herself. Her throwing needles were next to useless for things that had no vital spots. Then came that ear piercing scream.
Her muscles frozen in place, Impa heard a voice that belonged to no natural spirit that dwelled in this place.
"The drums, the beating of the drums, all that remains is the hate, and the beating of the drums!" Then she felt the giant, invisible hands grab her.
It was raining, which caused the mud of the graveyard to splattered all over their nice boots as they stepped off the emblem slab in front of the rather unextraordinary entrance to the underground before them. Behind them was a wooden fence. "Coming in!" Tatl said, hiding inside Ukyo's bow as Navi did the same with Link's hat.
Link took a look. "This is the Shadow Temple? I was expecting something... bigger."
"Not every temple in Hyrule has been big oversized entrance pointing to where it is so just anyone can wander in and get themselves killed," Akane said.
"Ah," Link said, turning his head as he realized: "We're in the graveyard?"
"Don't go turning into Navi, Link," Tatl tattled.
"HEY!"
"This cliff overlooks the entrance to the Royal Crypt." Akane said. "I think my ancestors thought it would make a rather good distraction so people would be more interested in the bones of kings of Hyrule past rather than the House of the Dead."
"Hey! Listen! House of the dead. Sound familiar? 'One in a deep forest... one on a high mountain... one under a vast lake... one within the house of the dead... one inside a goddess of the sand...' That cryptic message Sheik gave us about where to find the sages."
"One more to go after we save Impa."
"My mother ... "Akane was split between concern for her mother's safety and of course the natural idolization that almost any child had for their parent. She finally chose to say nothing.
"INTRUDERS! HYLIANS! FAIRIES!"
"YOU MAY NOT ENTER!"
Two Poes rose from the graveyard below and passed through the wooden fence to face the heroes. Ukyo and Link instantly drew their weapons. they didn't notice these poes looked slightly different from the rest of the ghosts they had seen. Besides the oblivious difference of carrying conductor batons and having mustaches, both their clothes carried the emblem of the Triforce.
"SHARP! FLAT! WAIT! IT'S ME!" Akane frantically waved her arms as Link and Ukyo in turn attacked the two Poes without question.
"Huh? Akane?" The one wearing a hat with the moon symbol looked in her direction.
The one wearing a hat with the sun symbol continued: "What are you doing here? Don't you know it's dangerous-AAAGH!"
Ukyo and Link ruthlessly chopped their way through the spirits' ghostly forms.
"Stop, you bakas!" Akane shouted, but it was too late, the lanterns fell to the ground and shattered as the ghostly forms dissolved.
Akane ran in front of them. "I said stop, bakas!"
"Huh?" Link asked. "But Akane! Those were Poes! Ghost and..."
"These were... are... whatever... the royal composers of Hyrule's royal family!"
"Eh?" Ukyo sweatdropped, suddenly looking and feeling very stupid.
"They're GOOD GUYS! They figured out a song that could control time with the ocarina and Ganondorf murdered them when they refused to give it to him!"
The floating faces composed of odd colored flame now flanking Akane said: "And it was a none too pleasant death I assure you. Was it, Flat?" asked the one who had been wearing the sun mark.
"Not very much at all, Sharp," said the other one who had been wearing the moon symbol.
Link stuttered: "I, uh, sorry for killing you, again I mean, I mean having you be dead again and..."
"We'll remanifest soon enough, don't worry! So you better scram before..."
"I said wait! Sharp! Flat! This is Link and Ukyo."
"HEY!"
"And Navi and Tatl. We're here to help my mother against the shadow beast that escaped the bottom of the well, you guys must have seen it."
"Not really, it's invisible, remember?" Tatl said.
"Maybe fellow ghosts can see it?" Navi suggested.
"Was it ever alive?"
"Well it can't technically be dead if it was never alive."
Sharp groaned, "PLEASE! Enough with the semantics. And yes, we felt the shadow beast escape."
"Guys, look, this here is the Hero of Time appointed by the Sages and this Ukyo, Child of Fate appointed by... something or other." Ukyo's face burned. "And their job is to liberate all of Hyrule's temples from Ganondorf's control."
"Screw over the guy who killed us and brought ruin to the family we served? Sounds good to me!" Sharp said.
"If you insist on going in there, may I suggest you learn our song," Flat added.
"More music..." Tatl groaned.
Everyone ignored her.
"What does your song do?" Navi asked.
"It turns night into day," Sharp declared.
"The rising sun will eventually set, a newborn's life will fade. From sun to moon, moon to sun... give peaceful rest to the living dead."
"This is an interesting poem," Navi said.
"...besides extra nap time, I'm not sure how useful that is," Tatl quipped.
"Oh oh but it is useful!" Flat said. "We discovered, as a side effect, I'd rather not say HOW we found out, that it also causes ReDead to freeze in place, and I'm pretty sure you will run into some down there."
"Payback to those ghouls? All righty then! Compose away!"
"Uh... we would. But we seem to have lost our ectoplasmic bodies."
Link and Ukyo both groaned.
"But luckily we kept a copy written down in the Royal Crypt."
"The Royal Crypt?" Tatl asked.
"The Royal Crypt."
"The Royal CRYPT?"
"Yes, the Royal Crypt."
"Perfect..." the yellow fairy groaned.
After climbing over the wooden fence and falling the short distance to the graveyard below...
"Just push the grave to the side and you'll see the opening," explained the ghosts. And Link did so without a second thought.
"Looks more like a pit to me," Tatl said.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Link said as he jumped in.
Navi stared. "Sometimes I feel like he's being manipulated by some extra dimensional entity for yucks."
"I get that feeling too." Tatl added.
"Away we go." Ukyo followed, thinking: 'If we fall to our deaths, Hyrule's hopes and dreams were all destroyed because we took advice from two dead guys.'
Five minutes later...
"I think I just figured out how they found out their song can freeze Redeads," Navi observed.
"WHAT THE FRICKING IS WITH YOU AND THE FRICKING OBVIOUS?!?!" Tatl swore in front of the horde of Redeads.
Link sighed and drew his sword. This wasn't going to be fun.
Later, as the party climbed out of the royal hole in the ground, with their music prize now memorized, Akane said: "If my mother got killed because we wasted time going after your jingle, I'm going to kill you... again!"
"Don't worry!" one of the dead composers replied. "Now that you have the Sun Song, any Redead you come across are easy pickings! And yes, you will come across them in there."
"Okay, Link, beam us up!" Navi said. "You know what to do."
Link only nodded and began to play once again the Nocturne of Shadow, this time the heroes remembered to hold onto Link as he played the song.
"This is the Shadow Temple?" Navi asked.
"No this is still just the entrance..." Akane walked to the the giant stone slab engraved with the symbol of the Sheikah. No lock, no hinge, no handle, no obvious way for it to open. "Mom must have closed it on her way in."
"She could have at least left the door open for us," Tatl quipped.
"Shut up," Akane said simply.
"So how ARE we supposed to get in?" Navi asked, fluttering around. "I don't see any switches or blocks or anything, just these cave walls, this weirdo platform, this twilighty design on it and a bunch of unlit torches."
'Unlit torches? That sounds familiar somehow.' An idea flickered in Link's head. "Ukyo! Use Din's Fire while standing on that weird stone slab."
"Huh? Why?"
"All these torches. There's way more here than needed. And they are all fixed in place so no one can move them. Maybe there's something to it."
"Alright," Ukyo nodded.
Ukyo stood on top of the circular stone slab surrounded by the unlit torches.
"Din's FIRE!" She rammed her fist into the ground and the sphere of flame came out from it. The ground and her friends were not even suffering scorch marks as the circle of torches all lit at once. The stone slab with the Sheikah emblem slowly rose, revealing a passageway behind it.
Tatl for once was speechless. Ukyo filled in for her: "But how did your mother get in? Does she know Din's Fire?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"She never told me how to enter on my own. First, I was too young to be here by myself and then, well, Ganondorf changed our priorities for us."
Tatl finally recovered and said: "That was very, very useful. Seriously, Ukyo, we need to meet up with the Great Faries and get your spell list expanded."
Ukyo put a fist on her hips, looking at her fairy. "So, because I'm a girl that means I'm the one who has to learn magic? That's sexist. Why not Link?"
Tatl retorted: "You're the one who climbed to the top of Death Mountain... and how'd you learn that word anyway?!"
"The Know-It-All-Brothers," Ukyo answered plainly.
"Of course..." Tatl sighed.
"Well, we wouldn't have been able to progress without that spell, Ukyo, so it might be better we go and visit them after we defeat the shadow beast," Link said. "We don't know when the rest will come in handy."
"Point," Ukyo conceded.
"Come on!" Akane gestured. "The house of shadows and death awaits us."
"Joy..." Tatl spoke flatly.
"This place doesn't look so bad," Ukyo said as they went through the perfectly mundane gray stone passage devoid of features. Then they turned the corner.
"You just had to jinx it, didn't you?" Tatl said.
On the other side of a lengthy pit was a wall painted morbidly with a large, almost grinning skull.
"This is peachy," Ukyo said.
Akane didn't so much as blink one red eye as she took a running start, then ran across the wall of the narrow passage, then landed safely on the other side. She looked back at the others. "What did you expect? My tribe did build this place, and I am a ninja after all."
"Don't worry, Ukyo, I've got this one covered," Link said with a smile as he pulled out the hookshot and took aim at other side. "Take a hold."
Ukyo instantly understood and took her childhood friend by the waist. "Got a grip?" he asked her.
"Don't worry, I do."
"All right then!"
Link fired the hookshot, which instantly imbedded itself in the stone and upon retracting pulled Link and Ukyo along for the ride.
"A dead end?" Navi fluttered about.
"I doubt it," Akane said.
"The shadow will yield only to one with the eye of truth, handed down in Kakariko Village."
Everyone looked around.
"Who said...?" Ukyo looked around for whoever had just spoken.
"Don't look at me," Link said.
"So you all heard that too?"
Everyone nodded.
"I feel a chill up my spine," Navi quivered.
"Ukyo, use the lens," Link said. "I get the feeling that thing has another job here besides letting us see the monster."
Ukyo brought up the lens of truth. "This wall is a lie. And, whao..."
"Something nasty on the other side?" Tatl asked.
"Not really, but... better just see it for yourselves." Ukyo just walked straight through the wall with the rest of the party right behind her.
"Mom! Can you hear me? It's Akane!" The Shiekah shouted out, not caring if the enemy was as likely to hear her as her mother. Only the silence answered back.
'Please be okay.' she thought.
"This place is like the bottom of the well deluxe!" Tatl exclaimed.
Link just sighed, pretending not to feel the feeling of revolution he had at the idea of going through an oversized version of that place.
"Bongo has rotted this place the same way it rotted its holding cell," Akane said.
"And you would know how?" Tatl asked.
"Well... I don't wanna think the Shadow Temple would normally be this creepy!"
"No offense, darling, but your tribe owns the patent on creepy."
Akane frowned darkly at the little yellow ball of light. But Tatl's description wasn't all that inaccurate really.
Walking out of the illusionary iron door, the heroes had found themselves in a large, rectangular chamber... three of the walls had more and more of the skull doors, all of them exactly identical. On the far end there was no floor but a vast, deep, empty abyss leading downwards into darkness. Across the impassable gulf was a gate in the mouth of an inhuman stone creature that had its tongue sticking out long but not not remotely long enough to reach across the chasm.
"Five to one the skeleton statue thingie comes to life and tries to eat us," Tatl said flatly.
"That's silly," Navi said.
"You're silly!" Tatl snapped back.
"Do you always have to be so snarky?"
"I'm just honest."
"This place isn't," Okyo said.
Link looked at the gate across the abyss. There was nothing for his hookshot to connect to, even if it reached that far, of course... He noticed a sign on the edge of the chasm, but was distracted by his teammates who were more interested in the main object in the room. A squat large pillar with the figure of a raven perched on top, its beak pointing out parallel to a stone slab that was connected to the pillar. But this wasn't the end either: Surrounding the pillar, like the numbers on a clock, were thick, tall obsidian pillars, all of them topped with a skull. They reminded Akane of blackened match sticks. Ukyo wondered how long it had been since Impa had come through here, since all the torches were lit.
"Make my beak face the Skull of Truth. The alternative is a descent into the darkness."
Everyone shuddered and looked around. "Nobody said anything?" Akane asked.
Everyone shook their heads.
"Who said that? Hello!"
"I get the very very strong feeling you're not going to get an answer, Navi," Link said.
"Skull of truth, eh... well, it's pretty obvious what they want," Ukyo said as she held up the eye, not really explaining or knowing who 'they' were. "Yep, all the skulls here are lies except... that one! Link if you'd please." She gestured at the stone slab.
"Why me?"
"You're our pack mule."
"I thought I was the guy with the enchanted sword saddled with saving the world."
"That too."
Link sighed as he began to push the slab, slowly spinning the stone pillar around. He almost wished for the days a short time ago when the forest was his world, however, did he really not want to see everything he had seen? Everyone he had met? All he had... "LINK, STOP!" Ukyo shouted. "That's the spot!"
"Huh? Okay."
"Geeze, we had enough philosophy in the well, let's not repeat that here," Tatl said.
"Shut up," Akane said darkly. No one objected.
There was a large clicking sound as Link let go of the pillar's 'rudder'. It was the gate in the inhuman statue's mouth across the impossible gap that opened.
Akane nodded in approval. "Typical Shiekah misdirection. NONE of the doors were the right one. Makes sense, really, why give a grave robber a percentage chance of getting it right when you can give them a zero percent chance and add to the corpses."
Navi floated next to the giant bird beak and said: "I get the feeling we're going to be seeing a lot of these raven statues here."
"I wonder what their point is," Link said.
"I think ravens are supposed to be the embodiment of the guardian spirits of this place, or something." Akane shrugged.
"Or something?" Ukyo asked.
"I didn't pay attention to everything Mom taught me."
Tatl flew towards the now opened gate leading further onwards and downwards. "Did she say how to cross here? We can fly, but you giant lot wouldn't be so lucky."
"Only one who has sacred feet can cross the valley of the dead."
Everyone looked around again.
"No, no, no, that was me this time!" Link waved his hand. "This sign next to the gap, it says: 'Only one who has sacred feet can cross the valley of the dead.' "
"Hmmm... I wonder how sacred my feet are?" Navi said, looking at her toes.
"These messages never mean precisely what you think they mean." Akane sighed.
"I've noticed," Link said.
"Maybe there's an invisible path," Navi suggested.
Ukyo nodded and brought up the eye again, "Dang. Sorry guys. No invisible path." She turned around, still holding up the eye for a moment, when she spotted something. "Your ancestors were a very shrewd lot, Akane."
Ukyo walked past the party without a word and put her hand through another of the skull doors.
"Maybe this is the real entrance at last?" Link asked.
"Or at least where we can get our feet made sacred," Navi suggested.
The heroes walked through the fake skull door, and found behind it a perfectly mundane iron door with handle and hinges.
The heroes opened it and walked through without fanfare.
"Dead end?"
"Not buying it."
"Me neither."
"Ditto."
On the other end of the short stone hallway was a ugly brown rough cut stone wall. Ukyo brought up the eye, nodded to the others, and began to march through it.
"One who gathers the Eye of Truth will be able to see what is hidden in the darkness."
"Guys, I swear it, the eyes of the skull here were glowing for a second!" Navi shuddered.
No one protested her claim.
On the other side were more of the skull walls, all looking exactly the same. The heroes waited for a moment for some horror to jump out and attack them, but there was nothing.
"This place is starting to creep me out," Navi said.
"Starting?" Link asked.
Ukyo looked around at the morbid scenery. "No exits... eye time, I guess... Geeze, it's like the deeper we get in the place, the more nasty it looks."
Akane shrugged. "This is the house of the dead, what did you expect? The deeper we get, the more we're intruders in THEIR domain."
"What a cheerful thought..."
"Here's an exit," Ukyo said as she walked to what was apparently another illusionary wall.
Link meanwhile knelt down and look at the base of the walls where he read some names that were written there: "Flay Allster. Meer Campbell. Euphemia li Britannia. Sir Terra. Sir Aqua. Sir Ventus."
"Shadow Temple... Here, Hyrule's bloody history of greed and hatred is gathered..." Said the voice from nowhere and everywhere.
Everyone stiffened at that. Then they all looked at Akane.
Akane said nothing for several seconds, then she continued to say nothing, not being able to find the words. Finally she spoke up: "This is the Shadow Temple... That voice isn't lying. This isn't just the sacred holy ground for the shadow folk. Or our final resting place. It's also a memorial for every person... Hylian, Gerudo, Zora, Shiekah, or Goron... who died during Hyrule's wars... until about seventeen years ago, this place constantly had new additions."
"I thought this was a prison for evil spirits." Tatl said.
"Yes and no. Those who die in violence aren't always peaceful in death, those who are simply move on. My mother said some sages just wanted to send the Shadow Temple straight to the underworld."
"Well... it's not like it changes anything," Ukyo said haltingly, shaking her head to get her own head on straight.
"Yeah, Hyrule's only going to become that again if we let Ganondorf try to conquer the world now that he has Hyrule, let's go!" Navi said dramatically.
"Yeah!" Link nodded.
The heroes stepped through the illusion wall and the next iron door.
"The hands..." Akane whispered.
"Sweet Farore! It's all skulls and bones!" For once, no one complained about Navi speaking the obvious of what was sticking out of the walls, floors, and ceiling.
But that wasn't what got everyones' attention... it was the snake-like arms that were wavering high in the air, with pale corpse hands on the end, fingers more claws than nails, all blotched with blood. There were more than last time.
"You know... what is... how did... is it really..." Navi began stuttered.
Akane drew her kodachi. Ukyo her oversized spatula. And Link the blade of evil's bane.
"Don't you even dare thinking about doing it solo this time," Link said to Akane.
"So who wants to be bait to lure the thing out?" Tatl asked.
"No one!" Ukyo said, bringing up the eye. "Cause I'm not playing this thing's stupid game! I see you!" She took out a bomb and threw it at a very particular part of the ground. A second later, a second later the explosion sent the thing bursting out of the ground with a horrid groan as green blood spitted from it's giant jaws... the thing they had expected but had all hoped not to see again.
"Dead Hand! Beware it's infinite hands! Aim for the head!" Navi shouted on instinct.
The slug-like, ostrich-necked, skull-faced thing was exactly as Akane remembered it. Except this time... she wouldn't face it alone.
"GET HIM!"
The heroes tore into the undead thing without mercy. Navi and Tatl provided interference, keeping the rest of the heroes from being grabbed by the thing's signature hands. With no less than three experienced heroes cutting into it from all directions, the undead horror did not even get a chance to escape background... it was over in less than three minutes.
"AND THIS TIME STAY DEAD! DEAD!" Akane snapped, kicking the thing in the side as it once again degraded back into graveyard soil and bones.
That was when the treasure chest materialized out of thin air.
Ukyo automatically brought up the eye, "No sign of any surprise, the chest is real."
"Okay!" Link said, opening the large, unremarkable chest. Link pulled out and held above his head a pair of Hylian boots with golden stubs and little metal wings at the ankles.
"It's the hover boots!" Navi said, flying about. "With those you can walk on air or water for a few seconds! You also become lighter when wearing them so you don't have to worry about quicksand or setting off pressure plate boobytraps when walking around!"
"Da-da-da-dunnn..." Tatl added for good measure.
"I get the feeling I just figured what sacred feet means!" Link said with a grin.
"There is one tiny draw back, there's no traction, but don't worry! Be brave and trust in the boots!"
"You're not selling them, Navi!" Tatl said.
"Excuse me for pep-talking."
"Come off it, you two," Link said with a smile. "We just got what we needed to get past the valley of the dead with our 'sacred feet' so let's get to it!" he grinned.
A minute later, the heroes were back at the first room with the false doors. Akane impressed everyone again with just how far a Sheikah could jump for the second time. Meanwhile, Link put on the Hover Boots. He did indeed feel a whole lot lighter. He took one step into the empty space and found that for a few precious seconds he was defying gravity, and ran across the Valley of the Dead without becoming a resident... and then he reached the tongue of the gate.
Beyond the gate, the path cut right through bizarre colored stone, and descended deeper into darkness.
Then Ukyo said it: "Uh, Link... how do I get across?"
Navi sighed. "I'm getting the impression that these temples and treasures weren't designed with large adventuring parties in mind."
Author's Note:
This episode was written by Alex Warlorn and proofread by me, Shritistrang.