Inside the statue, Link fights the dungeon miniboss, a Stalmaster – a Stalfos with four arms. At first it only uses two swords, but halfway through the fight, it goes full Grievous, usually leaving Link only one safe direction to attack from, and sometimes blocking all four directions but leaving itself open to being poked. After it’s defeated, Link can claim the dungeon item, the Whip. It’s used throughout the dungeon to pull switches, swing from hooks, and in one case, steal a key from a Bokoblin. The watery areas of the dungeon have lilypads; some have plants growing on one side. These can be flipped by jumping (from high enough up) on the flat side or using the whip on the plant side. A new enemy in the area are fiery birds called Furnixes [1]; they have a ringed tail Link can grab with the whip to bring them down, then Lethal Attack them.
Eventually, one of the switches Link pulls lowers the statue into the ground. Link heads back in and comes out the bottom exit into a new area that’s the highlight of the game thus far. The underground caves are dark and have pits of purple cursed water – and zombie Bokoblins. The serene temple suddenly turned into that one part of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. After passing through a series of puzzles, Link comes to a pit piled with bones with a light shining from overhead and a rope descending from above. He climbs the rope, and as he does a bunch of zombie Bokoblins come out of the bones and start climbing after him, trying to drag him back down.
After the climb, Link emerges back in the room with the statue on a platform where he can raise it back up, with a tablet telling him to return to the caves for a key. The key – the boss key – is in another bone pit directly under the statue, and once Link has it, a bunch of zombie Bokoblins pop out and the statue descends to crush everyone. Link gets out of the way and enters the base of the statue. There are fountains inside to take him to the top, where the boss lock is; when the key is inserted, Link is able to reach the top of the statue and raise it to the ceiling of the temple, where he enters the door to find the sacred flame.
Ghirahim’s waiting for him, although he’s too busy to talk much. He’d almost be understated in this scene, if not for the fact that he’s posing dramatically on top of a statue. After just a few lines, he teleports out and animates the statue into an ancient automaton, Koloktos. Koloktos has two circular knives. If Link gets too close it’ll slash at him, and if he’s too far away it’ll throw the knives at him. The trick is to stay in the Goldilocks zone and make Koloktos try to smash him with one or two of its other four arms, then use the whip to tear the arm off. Once all four arms are gone, Link can attack the gem heart until Koloktos reforms. After a couple cycles of this, Koloktos stops messing around, grows legs, cages in its heart, and pulls out six swords. It sometimes summons zombie Bokoblins. The other attack is the big one: it tries to hit Link with three of them at once, and when it misses, Link can rip off an arm, take the sword, fully dismember Koloktos, bust the cage, and pound the heart. It’s an awesome boss fight, an evolved version of the first Iron Knuckle fight from Ocarina of Time (there are even pillars that can be smashed to reveal hearts).
There’s a little altar with a crest Link can Skyward Strike to light Farore’s Flame, bright and green. Fi pops out and absorbs some of the flame into her, then goes bouncing around the room, landing at Link’s feet in a big fireball. Little fireballs fly out of the big one to Link, and he absorbs them into the sword. Farore’s Flame changes the blade, making it longer and sharper so it does twice as much damage. (If I ever have to cut bamboo again and do badly, I won’t have to listen to the guy prattle on about what a dinky little sword I have.) After Link puts away his sword, he’s surprised to see the Triforce symbol appear on the back of his hand. Two of the triangles are dark, but the bottom-right one glows golden.
The game’s cover art depicts Link holding the Master Sword, which would ordinarily not have been weird because Link getting the Master Sword has been a big part of every single-player console game since A Link to the Past except Majora’s Mask. But here, Fi is tied to the Goddess Sword, so Link getting a different sword might have been awkward. Now I would guess that once it’s absorbed all three Sacred Flames, the Goddess Sword will become the Master Sword.
Next: Two-for-one deal!
[1] I cannot take that name seriously. It sounds like “phoenix” in an exaggerated rural accent; the enemy is supposed to bring phoenixes to mind, but still…
