Link turned around and faced the windmill. That windmill may have been the one thing that remained unchanged, its massive sails drifting in the breeze, inexorably spinning around and around in the same fashion. He entered the structure. Inside was the same machinery chugging away, but this time, the sloshing of water was audible below him.
He looked to the right side. Sure enough, a short bald man in bare feet was there, crouching over something he was intently focused on. It looked like he was tinkering with something... a box with a crank.
Link approached him. The man giggled as he made a few accordion-like notes toot out with the wheeze of an air bladder. "Go around! Go around and around and around! What fun! I'm so happy!"
"Excuse me," Link said to the man.
Startled, the man jumped, sending out dissident tones from his tin whistles and tines. "Oh, hello! Don't mind me... I'm just a music man who loves to go around and around! I'm trying to come up with a musical theme inspired by this windmill...going around and around and around!"
"A musical theme, you say," Link said to the man, who was a cheery bloke this time around, making what he was about to do difficult to carry out. "I have a song... on my ocarina... would you like to hear it?"
"Kid, I take inspiration from anywhere I can... let's hear it!"
Link sluggishly cupped his lips around the light blue mouthpiece, and played the song that brings storms. D F d, D F d.
"Yes, yes it fits... go around, go around..." he sang gaily to the melody.
Then, like clockwork, the wind outside started howling into the windows high above, and they brought with them a heavy rain, which began as suddenly as it did seven years later.
"Go around, go around... What? It's going way to fast!"
He was correct. The massive wheel platform, which occupied most of the space in the tower, spun swiftly, almost violently. The sloshing grew louder and louder, as presumably, the water level in the chamber below rose higher and higher. That is, until the noise stopped altogether, at which point water started to seep up from the rim around the perimeter of the spinning wheel.
"What have you done!?" The bald, bearded man was now back to the way Link had met him, as he scrambled to pick up the pieces of his future crank organ, before the puddle of water could reach them. Link ran out without saying anything, not even an apology, which he was tempted to give.
Despite the sheets of rain, Link could still see the well. There was no more glimmer, for there was, at this point, not a lot of direct light to hit it. Upon a closer inspection down at the well, Link could see nothing but darkness down the shaft. He looked to Navi, as if he had pulled off something genius.
He climbed in, beginning to shuffle down the same wooden rungs. It was noticeably more difficult in his boy body, especially with the compromised wet grip. But he made it down, splashing into a puddle that had already formed from the downpour depositing into the well. The dim amount of daylight he had this time around revealed no boulder... just a small tunnel, that was not yet blocked. Link recalled the sheer terror he experienced from the monster that escaped from there. He really had no idea what could be on the other side of the hole. But he took the courage he had, and squeezed on through the tight passage.
Inside, the dank and musty air hit Link's nostrils, reminding him of past ventures. Only this time, there was a stench that was almost unbearable. The tunnel opened up to a chamber filled with this air. It was pitch black... until a set of torches lining the walls were suddenly set ablaze.
"I can hear the spirits whispering in this room..." said Navi.
"Spirits..." Link retorted. The torches had indeed just mysteriously lit themselves.
"'Look for the eye of truth...' That's what they are saying!"
"The eye that could see the truth..." Link repeated the words of Sheik. It was indeed down there.
The torches revealed a squared U-shaped tunnel that was about ten feet tall, and lined with cobblestone, with a trench of water down the middle. Just ahead, a rusted door beckoned, waiting to be opened. Link turned the corroded knob, and creaked the heavy door open.
In the next room, a filthy cell closed off by iron bars flanked Link on either side. Straight ahead, a set of timber poles tied together stood as an 'X' in the middle of the chamber. A steel chain hung down from each tip, and at the ends of these chains were steel rings, glimmering in the dim torch light, wide enough to encircle one's wrist...
"What is this?" Link asked. Though he thought he knew the answer from a stain of red beneath the contraption.
Before Navi could give him an answer, they were interrupted by a loud thump, seeming to come from the next room. Sure enough, another steel door welcomed entry into that room.
On the other side of the door, a set of six caskets were laid out by rows of three in the center of the chamber. But to Link's right, something genuinely gave him a thorough start. The thump had seemed to come from the lid of one of the caskets falling to the ground, and beside it, a figure Link had seen before stood, looming.
"...from the market..." Link whispered, gazing into the gaping holes of its mask's eye sockets, which held an expression of empty solitude.
"That's a Redead!" Navi warned. "...a dead body reanimated by dark magic that will attack the living... Its gaze will paralyze you."
Navi was right; it was so fascinatingly horrifying, that Link didn't even react to Navi's words of caution until it stumbled close to him.
He reached for the Master Sword, only to find his old Kokiri blade. But it was enough to give the reanimated corpse a good slash to the chest. The ghoul stumbled back a step, spilling a rust-colored fluid from its abdomen.
But it wasn't enough. Link's back tensed as its cold, filthy skin pressed onto it, its bony knees clamping on Link's sides as if he were a horse. Its lanky arms enveloped Link's head like a snake around its prey, while its unkempt fingernails dug into his face. Its rugged feet scraped Link's legs, which were buckling under the weight of the partially decayed body bearing on Link's shoulders.
Link, horrified by this incident, dropped his weapon. As the fiend's grasp grew tighter around his throat, Link could do nothing but wriggle and stumble about with the sack of decayed flesh on his back. The petrifying smell of unchecked rot, which seeped through the holes of the wooden mask, started to fade, for Link's ability to breathe grew short.
Finally, he crashed into the damp stone of the wall behind him, smashing the Redead, and causing it to release its grasp. In the couple of seconds in which the body lay on the ground, Link grabbed his small sword, and stabbed it in the throat, making it groan in a low, skin-crawling tone. Link stared at the wooden burial mask on its face. This mask, the casket... this person was laid to rest down there... but why?
Now that Link could focus on what lay in front of him, he saw a door chained up with a padlock beyond the six caskets. Link thought... It didn't necessarily make sense, but what if the key was in one of these caskets? He checked the one that was already open... Nothing was in there. He didn't want to check the rest. Never mind desecrating these resting places, if there was enough dark magic to create one Redead, then why not more?
Link prepared himself, knowing what would happen if he was not quick to the draw. He was startled by a Keese that fluttered out of the next one back. In the one behind that... was nothing. Link moved to the front of the other row of three. In this one, a skeleton lay, with no hands and no skull. In the one behind, a skull sat atop a pair of hands. Link paused out of curiosity. With no Death Mask on this skull, did it mean the skull was beheaded? Did it belong to the headless handless skeleton in the one before?
"One more, Link," nudged Navi.
Turning his eyes to this last one, his guard still up, he removed the heavy lid... to find a silvery key right in the middle of the casket. He nabbed it, unlocked the padlock on the door, and took down the chains. This steel door could now be opened, which Link did, hoping he knew what was locked up on the other side.
He was disappointed to find a small hallway on the other side, which shortly led to a dead end. At the end of this tiny hallway was a gargoyle of what appeared to be some sort of demon glaring back at him. Its wicked smile spread the width of its sinister face, and there were two hands adjacent on each side, its fingers hanging limp from the two wrists.
"This wall..." Navi said, "it says something here..." She flew over to the gargoyle. "'Danger below'... That's what it says."
Wondering what was meant by that, Link started to walk over to the gargoyle. On his second step, his foot inexplicably passed right through the stone floor. His balance was lost, and soon, his whole body fell through the floor that was clearly there.
"Daaah!" he shrieked in his childish voice as he fell down a dark shaft. Down he went, until he splashed into a cold, scummy pool of water. He rose to the surface, gasping for the dank, stale air.
"Are you alright, Link!?" Navi came floating down behind him.
'Danger below'... it was not wrong. Link was completely fine with the pool there to catch him. "I'm okay," he replied.
In the dark, Link found the edge of the pool, pulled himself out, and shook off some of the water. Once his eyes had adjusted to this dreaded darkness, he noticed a faint green light from behind the corner of a passage. This passage was carrying a stream of the water away from the surface of the deep pool. Link followed the eerie green light, until it led him to where the water was flowing.
The chills this place gave Link seemed to escalate with each sight he came across. The water streamed into some sort of swampy pool, which was glowing with the creepy green light. The pool was audibly sizzling... with a putrid bile-colored foam steaming on the surface. This pool was also littered with what appeared to be tree stumps surrounded by their sprouts.
In the ominous glow of green, Link could see other snaking passages leading to this chamber, with streams of their own water running into the wretched swamp.
Directly ahead of Link, a wall of hewn stone stood beyond the swamp, and running up it was a ladder, that disappeared into the darkness above. Link determined this was the way to go next, but the only way to get there was to hop from stump to stump. Carefully, he stepped onto the closest one there was, then the next one, carefully weaving between the tree sprouts. At the third one, he could see the bottom of this nasty pool of yellowy water, through a hole in the foamy scum on the surface. In the green glow of the water, he could start to see what was probably the most horrific sight in his life.
Sprawled across the bottom of this swamp were leathery brown corpses, like the Redead that had just violated him, and the tree sprouts were not tree sprouts... They were hands.
Link's breaths became very short, as for the first time on his journey, he started to really panic. He swiftly moved between the platforms now, focusing on his balance, making extra sure he didn't fall into the acidic brine with the heap of rotting cadavers. He was shaking as he reached the ladder, trying to grab ahold of it. Once he scrambled up into the darkness, he looked down. The swarm of Redeads he was anticipating was not there. The pond, though still sizzling, was calm.
Trying to relax his pulse, Link kept climbing until he reached where the ladder led. A ledge of the same hewn stone was waiting for him. He sat there, catching his short breaths. Before him was one more steel door... no chains or padlock. He stared at it, not knowing what else could possibly spook him worse than what he had just experienced.
When Link did open that door to the next room, the blood drained from his face, perhaps more than it ever had. The most uneasy feeling welled inside him as he beheld the sight before him. The walls and ceiling of the room were lined... plastered... with individual skulls... affixed like decorations. The floor, meanwhile, was littered with bones... arms, legs, phalanges, collar bones, and ribs. The loud crunch of the bones beneath his feet when he crossed over was nauseating. And the smell... so pungent, Link gagged upon his first whiff. All he wanted to do was run far away from this place.
But he couldn't, not now, for a chest lay in the back of this horrid room. The eye of truth was in there, Link knew it. He ran for it, bones crunching at his feet. But when he reached the center of the room, a host of hands, similar to the ones in the swamp, emerged from the bones, surrounding Link. As these pale skinny hands swayed five feet above him, Link froze, calculating his next move. He darted for the gap between two of them, towards the chest.
But the closest of the long, lanky arms bent down, and he felt the grasp of five bony fingers grab the top of his head. He was pinned, facing the chest he so desperately needed to open. From behind, the rumbling of bones was audible for a good five seconds, suggesting the sickening prospect that something was burrowed beneath. The hand prevented him from turning around to see what it was. Link could only imagine what it could possibly be.
What felt like a sack of potatoes struck Link in the back, knocking him to the ground, or rather, to the pile of bones. But he was free. He turned over onto his back, terrified at what he would see.
Towering over him was a disturbing creature, whose blobby mass, colored pale with streaks of maroon, was slithering sluggishly over to Link like a snail. Sprouting from its rolls of fat were a pair of disproportionately short arms, with pointed stubs instead of hands. Its neck seemed to fold on top of itself as its head slouched down beneath its unnaturally hunched back. Its eyes were black as the dead of night. Its nose was nothing more than a pair of slimy nostrils. Its lipless mouth exposed big pink gums with long yellow teeth, as its mouth opened wider and wider... its jaw seeming to dislocate from itself as it turned its head sideways.
Link rolled out of the way of its teeth chomping closed.
"That's a Dead Hand..." Navi said to him, "watch out for its hands and aim for its head!"
Link grabbed his little sword and went to work on the monster. Before it could fully open its jaw again, it toppled forward like a chopped down tree. After it shivered a couple of times, it finally was still, before its jiggly body turned to a jelly-like consistency, and oozed back down into the pile of bones like it was melting. Meanwhile, the hands guarding the chest had absolved, and the treasure inside awaited.
Inside, there was an object much like a magnifying glass, with a bulbous purple handle, and an eye-shaped lens in a frame ornamented with three pointed studs on top of it. Link noticed this object matched the very symbol for the Sheikah: the eye with the single tear, the tear acting as the handle. The lens itself even had a pupil like that of an eye...
"Is this the 'eye of truth'?" Link asked, though he was sure it was.
"Looks more like a lens..." Navi retorted, "I wonder if it lets you... see things better?"
Link turned it around and put it up to his eye. The eye put a strange filter of color on everything Link looked at. Everything in the room was the same... except for another door right in front of him. He didn't remember seeing another door. Sure enough, when he took the lens away, the door was not there, just the same pattern of skulls like there was throughout the rest of the chamber. Link put the lens back up to his eye, and reached for the invisible knob. It was indeed there. He felt it. He opened it. He went through it.
"This lens lets you see the truth..." Link knew he had found the Sheikah artifact Sheik described to him... one he would need to enter the Shadow Temple. "'The eye of truth'..."
"The Lens of Truth," Navi suggested.
The door led to a long, narrow, unlit passage. Link used the moist stone of the walls to guide him along it. It led all the way back to an invisible door in the entrance to this sinister place.
"I've had enough of this place. Let's get out of here!" Navi said to him.
She read Link's mind. The horrid things that lay at the bottom of this well could never be unseen, but he could now leave them behind. Besides, he had a mission to get back to... even if it did take place seven years in the future.