At the entrance to the Shadow Temple are a bunch of torches. Link can light them all by standing in the middle and casting Din’s fire. He enters the Shadow Temple, only there’s not a whole lot there. A message on a wall, or possibly a disembodied voice, mentions the eye of truth in Kakariko Village. That sounds like the thing the one guy was talking about, so Link heads back to the village to check out the well. In the present, the bottom of the well is blocked off, so it’s time for Link to go back to the past to become the ocarina kid who annoyed the organ guy in the windmill, play the Song of Storms, and drain the well.
The Bottom of the Well is a mini-dungeon that can be quick and easy. There are a lot of false walls that can be tricky to find, and false floors that are sometimes too easy to find, but if all Link wants is the eye of truth and knows where to go, it’s a short run and a tough fight against a thing that should not exist, then out. I’m not even sure how to begin to describe Dead Hand, the miniboss. It’s some kind of undead abomination that burrows underground and slithers when it surfaces and controls a bunch of disembodied hands that poke up from the ground and grab Link. I didn’t really understand this fight, just kind of hacked my way through it and lost a bunch of health in the process. The reward for beating it is satisfaction that there’s one less of these things in the world. Oh, and the Lens of Truth, which will let Link see through illusions and invisibility.
Exploring the rest of the well isn’t strictly necessary, but there are three skulltulas hidden throughout, and some chests if you care to get them. Otherwise, Link's ready to go back to the Spirit Temple. I’ll save the temple for the next post, and fill the rest of this one with musings/questions about sages.
- Impa being a sage kills the theory of the sages being named for the Zelda II towns. It wasn’t a bad guess, even with the Mido red herring, and there might still be a Nabooru or Kasuto in the Desert Temple. I can only guess that the ones that are missing were earlier sages, perhaps from the group that included Rauru.
- What exactly does becoming a sage mean? Ruto seems to indicate that becoming a sage means she can’t marry Link, and Saria apparently can’t go back to the forest. Darunia, before becoming a sage, was last seen going after Volvagia on his own. He doesn’t seem the type to retreat from that battle, especially with the fate of his people in the balance. And yet he’s not in the room when Link makes his own charge; it’s not a stretch to think he died fighting Volvagia and being a sage is some kind of afterlife.
- Are these sages supposed to be the wise men from the backstory of A Link to the Past? They clearly seem inspired by that group, but there are some glaring differences. First of all, there were seven wise men, but only six sages, although given that the maidens of A Link to the Past were descended from the wise men, there might be a sage among the Hyrule royal bloodline, which would likely be Zelda. Speaking of the maidens, not only would their existence mean being a sage isn’t an afterlife [1], but they all looked human, and while a Kokiri girl could pass as human, there are no gorons or zoras among them.
[1] Darunia has a son, but Ruto almost certainly doesn’t have children. I’m less sure about Impa, but given that she was said to be the last of the Sheikah (before Sheik showed up), probably not.
