Now that the situation with Ilia and the Hidden Village is settled, Link can get back to working with Shad and figuring out how to get to the sky dungeon. Shad’s looking at a statue in the basement of Renado’s home; there are similar statues all over Hyrule, but this one has special writing on it. “Awaken us with the word that breaks the seal.” Link gives him the book Impaz gave him, and it has the same writing as the statue. Shad tries reading from the book, but nothing happens. He decides to try the incantation he used on the other statues throughout Hyrule, and marks the spots on Link’s map should he wish to try something. As he walks away, the Dominion Rod glows to life again, and Midna says they should check out the other statues and see if they can do something with the Rod.
There are six statues throughout Hyrule: Four in the central area, one in Faron Woods, and one off in the Gerudo Desert. Each can be brought to life, and once moved off their location, Link can examine the location where the statue was to read one of the letters for the missing word in the book. Furthermore, each statue can be dragged to a nearby location to give Link access to a chest; the puzzles are fairly simple, although the one in the Gerudo Desert has to be moved into position while Link’s standing on small platforms; falling off means restarting the whole puzzle. The rewards for this are a few hundred rupees and two heart pieces.
As Link heads into Hyrule Castle Town to meet the golden wolf one last time, the postman stops him with a letter from Shad. His efforts with the statues were less fruitful, so he’s going back to the one in the village to see if he can find any more ideas. Link finds the wolf right by the twilight barrier around the castle; the final skill is a more powerful spin attack that can only be used at full health. Once the skill is taught, the warrior says that he regretted that he couldn’t pass on his skills, but now those regrets are at ease, and he bids Link a final farewell with words of encouragement.
Link returns to the village and finds Shad again. With the completed word, Shad tries the incantation again, and this causes a piece of the statue to disappear so it resembles the other six. Shad doesn’t understand what this means and wanders off to ponder the question further. Once he’s gone, Link whips out the Dominion Rod and moves the statue out of its niche. This reveals a passage to a massive, ancient, broken-down cannon. Shad comes down and says if they get it to work, they could reach the Oocca city. Midna comes out to take a look at it, and Link asks her to warp it, but Shad’s still watching. Seeing Midna scares him off, and he leaves Link to his examination.
I feel bad for Shad. There was no real reason for Link to not show him the Dominion Rod and how it can manipulate the statues; he did most of the real work for Link only to get cut out of the final stages of discovery. Sure, the City in the Sky’s going to be dangerous and Shad, by his admission, isn’t up for that, but he should have gotten to choose when he was ready to hand the rest of the discovery over to Link. (Probably about the time the dragon flew over the sky city. But he could have hung out in the shop and talked to the Oocca while Link did his thing.)
Midna warps the cannon out to Lake Hylia, where it catches the attention of the guy giving cannon flights. He offers to repair the cannon for 300 rupees, which seems like a good deal – opening the way to the next dungeon and clearing wallet space for the inevitable treasures Link’s going to find there. Once it’s fixed, Link hops in, followed again by Ooccoo and Jr., finally returning home. Ooccoo offers to show Link around, but then starts at seeing a giant dragon flying overhead. She heads to a nearby shop, and Link follows. The shop’s got all kinds of toys for Link to use (that the shopkeeper notes are useless to the Oocca). As for Ooccoo, since Link’s going to be exploring the city, she wants to come along to help find her people. Her warping is going to be a little different in this dungeon – she’ll only bring Link to the shop, not back to the surface. Together, they head into the City in the Sky.
Next: Spider-Link! Spider-Link! Friendly neighborhood Spider-Link!
