The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time

Shadow Temple

Link stood in the well he dried up. The boulder blocking the passage was now behind him, for he had played the Goddess of Time's song once more, to get back to the night the shadow escaped from the well.

The shadow... Link realized he never saw it in that horrendous place. He certainly felt the same dread... perhaps they were one in the same. Perhaps it was not stirred up until Ganondorf broke into the Sacred Realm.

Link realized that since the well was drained, it was able to slither out unopposed. He briefly felt a bit of guilt for that, for he was the one who drained it. He was also the one who took the Lens of Truth from its resting place. Perhaps this was a factor in the awakening of the shadow spirit. At the very least, he prevented anybody from using it to enter the Shadow Temple for seven years, for it did not exist. That was why Sheik said there was no way to get to Impa. But did he know it would resurface? Did Sheik cause the cave in to try and keep the shadow sealed in there when it returned?

Now that the temple could be accessed, it was time to go help Impa. Link climbed out of the well, and set out to find the entrance to the elusive Shadow Temple. The path to the graveyard originated at the eastern edge of the village, and wound between sparsely grassy knolls until it reached a quiet meadow, which was being circled by a murder of crows, cawing in the moonlight.

A caretaker's shack sat nestled in one of the surrounding escarpments, in position to keep watch over these final resting places. The plots were arranged in a modest array, all marked with large gravestones, that were engraved with the sigil of the kingdom in the corner. One grand gravestone in particular prominently read, "Royal Family Tomb," with a large engraving of that familiar bird carrying the Triforce in its talons. Below that, though, a smaller inscription read,

"The Shadow yields only to a trained eye,

And reveals what is hidden in the darkness nigh."

Below that was the sigil for the Sheikah... Of course, the eye with the tear represented the eye of truth, and Link held it in his hand.

He raised it up to his own eye. Behind the large tombstone, in the hillside just beyond it, was an opening to a cave-like chamber. A lightning crack preceded another round of rain as Link walked over to it. The cavernous room, filled with a cluster of torches, was adorned with the eye of truth on the wall in front, and a triangle with three circles on a familiar hexagonal slab in the center of the floor.

Link once again peeked through the mystical-looking glass for a hint at the entrance. It was as if his arrival was awaited. The torches all flared up simultaneously, lighting up the walls with fantastical flickers of orange. The wall with the eye slid upward, proving to be a door... to a dark passage... into the Shadow Temple. Link wondered where Impa could be in there. If the insurrectionist leader was held deep in the temple, then she was probably there too.

The first area was a rectangular room divided into two subparts, surrounded by shelves upon shelves of catacombs. The front boasted a statue of a demonic condor perched atop a six-sided pilaster, its expansive wings spread wide, plus a set of horns matching its sharp beak. This was surrounded by six lit candles, each shining through the eye sockets of an ornamental skull, illuminating the dank stone of the subterranean chamber. On the other side of the second part of the room, there was a door through the mouth of another statue... the same widemouthed demon from the bottom of the well. However, the path was missing, leaving behind a taunting chasm with no bottom in sight.

Link checked the view through the Lens of Truth, hoping for an invisible bridge... or something of the sort. There wasn't... but scanning to his left, an invisible passage revealed itself. Intrigued, Link approached, and then entered the passage, which split into two tunnels of more catacombs.