Chapter 4: To the Mountain Bonus Chapter: Dodongo’s Cavern Chapter 6: The Realm of Music
Chapter 5: The Great Lizard
In the morning, they ran back through the tunnel in the Lost Woods, studiously ignoring Mido who was studiously ignoring them.
Back in Goron City, and down long flights of stairs, they came to the bottom of the city. Link looked around and saw a closed door with the Triforce surrounded by strange, Goronish symbols. He knocked, and wrung his hand.
“Stone door,” he explained. No one opened the door, so Link pulled out his Ocarina and played Zelda’s Lullaby on it.
All the Gorons nearby stopped what they were doing and looked at the children. They stared even more when the door opened and they ran inside.
A strong, old Goron with a white beard stood in a barely furnished chamber with a statue in the back of it. When he saw Link and Rana, he looked as shocked as an impervious Goran face can get.
“What the heck? Who are you?! When I heard the song of the Royal Family, I expected some messenger had arrived, but… You? You’re just kids!” Rana looked indignant, but Link stood calmly. However, as soon as he opened his mouth, the Goron shook his head and continued. “Has Darunia, the big boss of the Gorons, really lost so much status to be treated like this by his Sworn Brother, the King? Yes, that’s it! That makes me REALLY angry! Go away now!”
“But… but…” began Rana.
“Relax, Rana,” said Link.
“I’ll tell you what my problem is, since you came all this way… Ancient evil creatures have infested the Dodongo’s Cavern, so we can’t eat because of the rock shortage! We’ve had a poor harvest of Bomb Flowers! Still – this is a Goron problem! We don’t need any help from strangers! Especially not kids!”
“Will you please listen to us? We want to help! I think we know what the problem behind all that is!”
The Goron began to shoo them out. “It’s Ganondorf!” squeaked Navi. “We have to stop him! We need your help too!”
“Sorry, kids, too grumpy to listen properly. It’s for your own good. Get out!”
Rana ducked a swat from a heavy stone-like hand. “I know something that helps me…” She whispered to Link, who nodded and got out his Ocarina. He dodged as well, and began to play Saria’s Song.
Darunia stopped trying to flap at them and listened to the song, relaxing with creaking noises, his mouth eventually curling into a smile. Link played on, embellishing and jazzing the simple tune, and the Goron leader broke into a wild, gyrating dance. Rana sidestepped again, clapping in time and smiling.
Eventually he stopped and waved at Link. “Wow, boy, that’s a great tune. I think I’ve heard it before…”
“It’s called Saria’s Song. Saria’s the name of our friend. You can hear her song from somewhere in the Lost Woods.”
“Hey, there’s a passage through the hills to that place! But we never use it. Too damp. Now! What have you come to tell me?”
“I need the Spiritual Stone of Fire – for Princess Zelda,” said Link.
“Well… I suppose. But I’m not going to give it to you too easily! If you really want it, could you go and fix up Dodongo’s Cavern? Then you can prove yourself a man!” He looked significantly at Link. “That will make it better for everyone.”
“Sure!” chirped Rana. “But, how do we get in there?”
“Wait, I was coming to that! I’m going to give your boyfriend a present. Here you are, lad.” He shuffled through a pile of dust and strange oddments. Then he turned to Link and gave him a small – for a Goron – golden bracelet with a Goron pawprint on it.
“This will give you some extra strength. It should come in handy! Now, the entrance Dodongo’s Cavern is halfway between Goron City and the little Hyrulean village in the hills – that Kakariko place. It’s sealed up, so try and get someone to open it for you with a bomb flower or something.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Darunia!” squeaked the fairies.
“We won’t disappoint you!” cried the children. Then they turned and ran, up the stairs, and out of Goron City.
Link and Rana ran down the Mountain Path, searching for the cave they had to enter. Link’s attention was caught by the canyon wall.
“Look, Rana,” he said. “There’s a sign here.”
Navi read it. “It says… Dodongo’s Cavern?”
“But… there’s no entrance anymore!” said Rana. “At least, I don’t see one… can you?”
“I don’t know if…” Link trailed off. Rana looked at him, his brow furrowed in thought. Suddenly he sprang up the path.
“Link? Wait, where are you going?”
“I just thought of something! That’s the entrance, all right, but it’s been covered up! Let’s try and get someone to bring a bomb, like he said.”
He found a Goron, and after explaining, the Goron brought a bomb to the cliff top above the sealed cave. The thing began hissing like a kettle and the Goron hastily dropped it over the edge of the cliff.
The children cried their thanks to the friendly Goron and ran down to see what had happened.
When they reached the odd looking cliff, Link saw with delight that the entrance had been blown open. Rana sat down, panting.
“Are you tired?” asked Naeri. Rana nodded. Link immediately sat down too.
“There’s sure to be hard fighting ahead,” he said, “so we’d all better rest.”
Rana grinned. “I’m looking forward to the puzzles.”
After a moment, she got up and gave him a hand up. “Let’s go!”
The cave was warm and musty. Rana trotted through the entrance and froze.
“There’s the boss, I think,” she whispered. Link came to stand beside her. He saw a vast cavern with fresh lava flows running through it to expire in heaps of dust. Across from him was a huge skull, rather wolf-like in appearance. The height of the great cavern was held up by pillars of rock that seemed like ribs. Link brightened as he looked around. This was adventure; this was what he had been born for.
Rana, on the other hand, seemed a bit freaked for being in a cave with a giant skull in it.
“That’s not the boss, silly kitten,” Link said tolerantly. “That’s just decoration.”
“Oh,” she said doubtfully.
In the mazes of the cavern, they found fire traps, fierce lizards of all sizes, Keese bats trailing fire, and many stairs that were much too big for the Kokiri’s short child-sized legs. Link found a small bag specially designed for holding bombs
After a day of puzzle solving, they found a door in the back of the throat of the giant skull. Link looked at Rana, confusion in his eyes. She shrugged, so he opened the door. In the next chamber, there was a fractured stone in the floor and some more bomb flowers. It looked like the stone was like a trap door lid, but it was much too heavy for the children working together.
“That reminds me,” said Link, looking at the flowers. “You can keep the bracelet. I have these bombs. They’re much lighter.”
“So bomb away,” Rana said cheerfully. Link smiled.
He set the bomb on the strange patch in the floor and backed away with his Kokiri shield at the ready.
Then he peered down through the hole his bomb had made.
“I think it’s okay,” he said dubiously. “Why don’t you fly down there, Navi?”
“Just jump, already!” cried Navi impatiently. Link sighed, gave Rana a sardonic salute with the face that she said looked like ‘resigned to fate’, sat on the edge of the hole and dropped in. He rolled far below and stood up, coughing dust. Rana plopped down behind him. They spoke in whispers.
“This is a big room,” said Rana, staring around and the tall walls and the small puddle of lava in the centre of it.
“It’s terribly hot,” said Navi.
“I feel scared,” admitted Naeri, huddling close to Rana.
“Sh! I heard something!” Link hushed them, thinking he heard breathing. A grunt startled them.
Link cautiously turned his head, hoping the creature didn’t match the voice in size. His fears were confirmed.
A giant Dodongo had been breathing on their backs. Link turned right around and gaped. Rana screamed. Link wondered with a small part of his mind whether she would do that with every monster weighing more than 1000 kilograms. The lizard was easily three times their height.
“Okay, what to do, what to do,” Navi chunnered to herself, flying backwards hurriedly.
“I think we need to run,” Link said, jumping out of the way as the lizard came stomping towards him.
“Er, it’s slow and heavy. How can we use that to our advantage?” Rana asked. “Can we put it in the lava? Without getting cooked?”
“We could blow it up, maybe,” Navi said without enthusiasm. “I don’t think Deku nuts will work against that thing… Look out, Link!”
The lizard had curled up into a ball and rolled smoothly – and quickly – towards the boy, who ran out of the way and balanced on the edge of the molten pool. He burned his hand as he struggled to keep up in the wind of the Dodongo’s passing.
“We’ll try everything,” he said, following it around the chamber as fast as he could go. The live bowling ball hit a wall with its head and unfolded, turning to face Link, who flung an assortment of objects at it, especially after it opened its mouth invitingly and inhaled strongly.
The rock and the Deku nut did nothing, and he had to duck as flame blew from its jaws violently, almost searing his other, outflung arm. Rana dropped the bomb she had been lugging over, tossing it into the lava as she tried to get out of the way of the Dodongo, rolling towards them again. The magma spurted up like a small sluggish geyser where the bomb had landed.
Link waited for the Dodongo to uncurl again, but it wasn’t co-operating with his plans and rolled around the chamber several times, tiring him greatly while he chased it.
This time, he shot a Deku seed at it – using them had worked against smaller Dodongos, but this one had a thicker tongue than they did, he supposed. Rana threw a bomb, and instead of breathing fire at them, the Dodongo gulped it down. A few moments later, there was a rumble and the Dodongo collapsed for a few seconds before staggering to its feet again.
Rana smiled at Link and waited for it to open its mouth again.
There is not much more to say about the battle; the Dodongo eventually had enough bombs and rolled into the magma, where it sank. They never saw it again, but they did find a tunnel that led them to Goron City. Rana had burned her arm as well.
They tried to find Darunia, but he wasn’t in his room. As they exited…
Thud! A Goron landed in front of them like a falling boulder and stood up. It was Darunia. He patted Link on the back, making the boy fall on his face, and thumped his chest, grinning his face off.
“Thanks, Link! You got rid of all the monsters! That’s quite an achievement! I had an idea. In addition to giving you the Goron’s Ruby, how’s about you and I become Sworn Brothers?”
“Eh?” Link picked himself up and dusted himself off, startled and confused.
“There’s no formality or anything. We’re just brothers now. Okay?” Darunia did some magic thing and the Goron’s Ruby appeared in the air over Link’s head. The young hero reached up and took it.
“Sure! Sounds fine to me.”
“Well, there are some of my people who do want to thank you in a more substantial way…” Link looked around behind Darunia and saw a crowd of Gorons waddling towards them. They gave cries of “Brother!” and “Group hug!”
Link panicked. A Goron hug would crush him to pieces. With a startled wail, he fled, Rana right behind him.
“You might want to go visit the Great Fairy on top of Death Mountain!” Darunia called after them happily.
Late the next morning the two children came out of their respective houses in Kokiri Forest. They had run instinctively to the Lost Woods, but then Link wanted to go back and find the Great Fairy. Sneaking past the celebrating Gorons – who were mostly in the Cavern, eating the staple of their diet, rocks – they found the path that climbed further up the steep slope of Death Mountain.
Up right beside the top of the cone, there were several caves. One, inside, was tiled with white marble, with glittering dark walls and a torch-lit pool at the back. At first, no one was there, but after Link played the princess’s song, a tall slender woman with her red hair in three tails burst out of the pool, laughing. She healed their burns and gave them the power to use the magic spell Din’s Fire.
After that, they returned to the forest and slept late.
Chapter 4: To the Mountain Bonus Chapter: Dodongo’s Cavern Chapter 6: The Realm of Music