With 50 skulltulas killed, Link returns to the skulltula house in Kakariko Village, where the last of the kids is freed of the curse and awards him a heart piece. The father is happy that all the kids are saved, but is resigned to remaining a skulltula himself. The egg Link got from the cucco lady has now hatched, and the cucco can be used to wake up Talon, who’s happy to hear that he can go back to the ranch. The cucco’s happy it got to wake Talon up, so Link returns it to the cucco lady, who gives him a blue cucco that belonged to her brother. Her brother’s hanging out in the Lost Woods, and takes the cucco and gives Link a mushroom that needs to be delivered to the village within three minutes. It’s a fairly easy task, especially with Epona on call to make riding over Hyrule Field faster. The mushroom’s recipient takes it and makes a potion, but by time Link returns to the forest, the guy’s gone. The Kokiri girl who’s there instead says that he’ll probably become a stalfos, and demands the potion that was created with the forest mushroom. In return, she gives him the saw the guy left behind. Checking around the various places in Hyrule, Link discovers that the saw belongs to the head carpenter, who’s now repairing the broken bridge into Gerudo Valley; Link can jump across the gap on Epona. The head carpenter takes the saw and gives Link a broken sword made by a goron. I’ll see him later, so let’s put this aside for now.
Back at the ranch, Talon’s determined to turn over a new leaf now that he’s running things again. Link takes the opportunity to visit Malon again and run her obstacle course. It’s tough, but Malon’s encouraging, and when Link finally gets his time down she gives him his reward. Well, she doesn’t give it to him directly, because it’s a cow and what’s Link going to do carrying a cow around, but she has it delivered to his old house in the forest.
With Epona and the bow, there’s one more thing Link can do now. When he rides over certain spots in Hyrule Field, big poes come out of hiding and try to run away. Two arrows can defeat a big poe, but if they make it to a wall or get far enough away, they escape. The big challenge here is getting the poes to pop out of the ground headed in a direction that gives Link enough time to run them down; the other part is learning how to shoot from horseback, especially if Epona’s going in one direction and the poe another. Each defeated big poe can be bottled and sold to the guy at the ghost shop for 50 rupees, and if Link catches all ten he gets a fourth bottle as well. Which would have been useful before starting ghost hunting, but whatever.
Return to Death Mountain
Now it’s time to head up Death Mountain to see what the deal is up there. The magic bean Link planted outside Dodongo’s Cavern is now an elevator flower that will let Link grab a heart piece, and inside the cavern there’s a skulltula that Link can get by summoning the scarecrow. There’s another skulltula on the platform suspended over the middle of Goron City. Goron City is nearly abandoned: there’s a giant goron in a cave that sells Link a giant’s knife for 200 rupees, and a successor to the Hot Rodder Goron. When Link stops the rolling goron, he turns out to be Darunia’s son, whom Darunia named after Link. Goron Link tells Hylian Link that Ganon kidnapped most of the other gorons and took them to the Fire Temple on Death Mountain as a sacrifice to the dragon Volvagia and gives him a goron tunic, which will let him resist the heat in Death Mountain Crater.
There’s a secret passage to Death Mountain Crater through Darunia’s room in Goron City, and Link meets Sheik again. Sheik talks about the bond of friendship and teaches Link another teleporting song, the Bolero of Fire. Every time Sheik teaches Link a song, there’s a cool little cutscene where the two play an extended version of the song together. Sheik ninjaports out, and Link notices another magic bean patch near where the Bolero of Fire would dump him. Planting a bean as an adult is not productive, so Link teleports to the Temple of Time, uses the Master Sword to go back to being a kid, teleports back and uses a bug to lure a skulltula out of the hole before planting a bean.
Before going back to Adult Link, there’s a couple more things we can do. There’s a skulltula Link can get now in Hyrule Castle, in a hidden pit near the secret entrance to the courtyard. Also, in Zora’s River, there’s a group of frogs on a log. They reward Link for playing the Song of Storms with a heart piece, and the five melodies he knew before growing up each earn a purple rupee and make one of the frogs grow big. Once they’ve all grown, they invite Link to play the ocarina to accompany them catching flies; the sequence is long and unforgiving, but awards another heart piece once completed. And now it’s time to take up the Master Sword again and head back to Death Mountain.
Next: And it burns, burns, burns.
