Chapter 5: The Great Lizard Chapter 6: The Realm of Music
Dodongo’s Cavern is boring gameplay, but the description actually isn’t as bad as some I did.
“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.
They walked slowly through the hot cave, but were inspired to dash by some Beamos.
“Stupid things!” cried Navi as an azure beam shot past her wings.
“Hey,” said Naeri.
“What is it, Naeri?” asked Rana affectionately.
“This wall right here looks like the wall that we blew up in the antechamber.”
“You’re right! Link?”
Link ran with a bomb flower’s fruit past a Beamos to plant it beside the door. It blew in. Rana giggled, and ran back and forth past the Beamos with more bombs, planting them all down the wall, and several more doorways appeared. One simply led to an alcove with a map of the cavern in it. Rana also tried setting a bomb by the Beamos. Its head exploded.
“Okay, map memorized,” said the fairies together. Link could make no sense out of the carving in the alcove, but Navi projected a cleaned up colour-coded version into his mind. He nodded.
The room beyond the first door was filled with Bomb flowers.
“Wow,” Rana said in a low voice. “Look at this.”
A giant flight of stairs that didn’t reach the ground dominated the room. Bomb flowers grew randomly around the base. Another grew in a crack in the corner.
“Imagine what would happen if that went off,” Navi said. Rana laughed. Link grinned, and picked up the one in the corner. He set it in the very middle. Rana took the bracelet and put one by a cracked wall, which exploded, revealing a door.
The bombs went off. There was a tremendous rumble, knocking both kids to the ground. The stairs began sinking into the ground.
Rana cried out and grabbed hold of Link. She was afraid the roof would fall in, and regretted their rash experiment. She ducked through the doorway.
The rumbling stopped. Rana’s door closed again, and Link heard her scream.
“Rana?” he called through the heavy door.
“I can’t get out! There’re bars over the door!” She was panicky. She screamed again. “There’s a statue chasing me! Help! HELP!” Strange roars rumbled through the door, and Rana’s panicked shouts.
“Don’t panic!” Link called. “Don’t panic!”
Something thudded against the door and groaned. Then an explosion went off. The roaring grew in intensity, and then stopped. Rana came out, bruised and tired.
“Boy, am I glad I had this,” she said, holding out the bracelet to him. “Here’s what I got.” She handed him a compass. “Don’t know what good that will do.”
Then she saw the flight of stairs, easily reachable.
“Wow!” she cried, all her weariness gone. “Let’s climb up!”
“No.” Link made her sit down and rest. He found a heart in some weeds nearby, and gave it to her.
“Thanks.”
When Rana had her breath back, they climbed slowly up the giant staircase. At the top of the stairs there was a wooden ramp leading higher. It curled around the room on both sides and led to a door.
In the next round room, there was a thick pillar in the middle of the room with four horned statues around the pillar. Some Keese bats were flying through the air, flaming.
“Don’t touch those!” Rana whispered. Bars slammed down behind them. Link walked around the perimeter of the room.
“There’s a ladder on this side of the pillar,” he said.
“Also, there’s a switch on top of the pillar!” said Navi.
“Don’t touch the statues!” Rana hissed anxiously.
“I have to touch this one,” Link grunted, setting his shoulder against it. It grated against the floor, but it didn’t do anything. Rana ran around the pillar to see.
“That’s different than the other one,” she said grudgingly. “But I’m not touching any more to see if they’re different.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Link returned as he climbed up the ladder, hit the switch, and jumped off over the head of a statue. The door opened, so Rana hurried through.
“Well, I hope we don’t run into any more,” she said. “I’ll handle anything else: flamethrowers, spikes, falling rocks, giant explosions, eruptions, heights…”
Link came up beside her and found out why she trailed off.
They were standing three-quarters of the way up the side of the main chamber on a ledge without anything to keep them from falling off. A rickety bridge stretched from their side to the other. There were no rails.
Rana said nothing, but gulped. Naeri hovered next to her ear, but Link caught nothing but the word ‘chicken’ in a loving voice. Rana’s face set, and she ran across the bridge.
“Look out!” cried Naeri, shocked. Rana slowed down and fell…
She caught hold of the further edge of the gap and pulled herself up. Link hopped across and raced to catch up.
Rana grinned at Naeri. “I am too not a chicken.”
“I’m sorry I said that,” Naeri apologized. “You almost fell.”
“I would have stopped you,” Link said, looking down into the next room. There were square pillars and narrow corridors. He jumped down and rolled. Rana followed more cautiously.
A spiky thing shot past in front of him and he jumped back.
“Let’s get to the other side of the room,” said Navi. “There’s a door there.”
Link looked at the spiky robot thing, moving back and forth in a mindless path. They ran past it easily, but fast. Against the wall was a ladder and a block. Link climbed up.
“Don’t come up,” he warned Rana. “There’s no room on this ledge, but there’s a blocked door. We should try to get onto that thing behind you.” The thing was a block of rock with a bomb flower on it. Rana pushed the block over and pulled herself up onto the rock.
“Can you throw the bomb over here?” asked Link.
“No, because you have the bracelet.” He threw it over. She picked the bomb and tossed it to him, but he dropped it.
“It’s too heavy!” It fell on the ground below. “It burnt me!”
“Don’t be silly,” said Navi. The bomb went off and blew up the block underneath.
“We’d better get this right, otherwise we’ll never get through. OK, move to one side and I’ll try again.”
She picked another bomb and tried to throw it, but accidentally jumped off. She grabbed the edge and climbed back up. The bomb went off.
“Try holding on to it until the last second,” suggested Link. Rana shot him a look that said ‘are you crazy?’
“Are you completely nuts?” she asked, holding her third bomb over her head.
“It’s flashing red! Throw it!” Link cried.
Too early. The bomb bounced off the door and went off on the ground.
“Try again,” said Navi.
Rana held this one too long, and was burned with a cry of pain.
“I don’t like this game,” she complained, sucking her hands. “Can’t you get over here?”
“No, I can’t. Just one more time!” Link pleaded. “Don’t give up, yet!”
“All right,” Rana sighed. “I think there’s a better way, but I can’t think of it.”
She threw the bomb. The door exploded.
“OW!” yelled Link. “See, it worked!” Rana jumped across and grabbed the ledge with her strong fingers.
“Are you okay?” she asked worriedly.
“He’s fine!” squeaked Navi at the same time Link nodded.
There was a chamber with fire burning all through it. Through the flame, Link saw a golden eye switch. He shot a Deku seed at the eye, but the hard nut incinerated on the way.
Rana handed him a pebble.
He hit the eye and all the flame died. They bounded over the gaps quickly.
The next room had bars in it, too. It had small, hexagonal islands in a sea of red-hot lava. Two big lizards, with shoulder pads and knives, bounced around, looking for intruders. One of them came to attack Link.
“The other one’s afraid! I’ll go and get him,” Rana called in a sing-song voice. She jumped from island to island until she could fight the lizard.
Link didn’t have time to see if she was all right. He bent low under his Hylian shield, and the Lizdalfos couldn’t hit him. He stabbed it in the belly twice and killed it.
He looked around to see how Rana was doing… she was fencing with it. She killed hers, too. Link applauded. Then he went around the room to see more. There was a narrow bridge leading to a big rock floating in space… Link walked across…
“What are you doing?” Rana asked. “You’re going to fall!”
“No, I’m not,” Link replied calmly. He turned around and saw the view. “Oh, Rana, you’ve got to come and see this.”
“O-okay,” Rana stuttered, walking across the bridge carefully. “What happens if this breaks?”
“It won’t break because it’s stone. But, if it did, then we’re dead,” Link said cheerfully. Rana reached him.
“Wow!” she sighed. There was a huge cascading waterfall of magma pouring over the edge of a cliff. The narrow bridge was through air, and the big rock was stretching up from a chamber below, where more islands and lizards abounded. The lava left via small holes that made their way to the main room to die in the dust.
Admiring the view, Link walked back across and to the next room. Rana hurriedly followed after.
The next room was almost exactly like the one before the last one, only Link had to hit two eyes before the fires would go away.
Then they were back in the room with the pillars and passages, where Rana had thrown bombs at a door until it blew up thanks to Link’s genius. They were on a ledge on one side of it, facing another ledge on another side. Link jumped across to the wide platform.
“Hey!” Navi yelled to attract his attention.
“Yes, Navi?”
“There’s a chest up here! A big one!” Link jumped to grab the edge; Rana gave him a boost up. He opened it.
“What is it?”
“It’s a bomb bag,” Link said incredulously. “How does that happen?”
“You’re so lucky!” Rana gasped.
Link hopped back down with a funny look on his face. “What I’m thinking is how are we going to get bombs in here when they’re all used up? Without them exploding, of course.”
“I think it will work. I think you can buy them, too, if we can’t find any.”
“I’ll trust you. Let’s get going.”
As they ran through a dark tunnel, Link tripped over a switch in the floor. There was a thunk, and the sound of something mechanical working. They hurried ahead, and found themselves in the main room again. A pillar of rock sat next to the edge of the cliff, and as they looked at it, it descended. Waiting a bit, it rose again to their level.
“I think we turned on an elevator,” Rana guessed. “What does this block say?”
“When the Dondongo sees red, a new way will open?” Link read. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That’s obscure,” Navi murmered. “I would guess that it has something to do with this huge skull, not a live Dodongo.”
“Huh.”
Being completely stumped, the Kokiri wandered all over the dungeon, wondering what on earth could that riddle mean.
“The skull’s blue,” Rana pointed out.
“You are not painting it, silly butterfly.”
“But, that could mean something.”
“And again, it might not. I’m tired. Let’s sit down where we can see it and take a rest.” They flopped down in the front entrance to the main chamber.
“Maybe we could… hit it with Deku nuts?”
“Maybe we could hit it with Deku seeds, that way I wouldn’t have to get up,” Link suggested lazily.
“Maybe we could hit it with your head,” Navi teased him.
“Maybe we have to find a bright red light!” Rana exclaimed. Link snorted.
“Where are you going to find that?”
“I dunno, maybe shove a live Dodongo into its eyes and then let it explode?”
“That’s it!” Link jumped up.
“I was joking,” Rana pointed out.
“No, about the explosion!” He headed to the elevator. “Are you coming?”
“Okay,” Rana sighed, shoving herself up and brushing herself off.
Link ran along the second rickety bridge as Rana reached the second floor. He jumped deliberately off the bridge at the first gap, making the bridge sway. Rana watched as he dropped a bomb down first one eye socket and then another. She shivered, thinking of dead things and skeletons.
The bombs went off as Link jumped to the platform on the first floor. Rana jumped off the second floor and landed on her face, but at least she got to see the eyes light up red and the ponderous jaw open, forming a bridge.
In the back of the throat, there was a door. Link looked at Rana, confusion in his eyes. She shrugged, so he opened the door. In the next chamber, there was a funny dark patch on the floor and some more bomb flowers.
“That reminds me,” said Link. “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 salute with the face that she said looked like ‘resigned to fate’, sat on the edge of the hole and dropped in. He rolled and stood up, coughing dust. Rana plopped down behind him. They spoke in whispers.
“This is a big room,” said Rana.