Chapter Nineteen: The Source of All Evil

Link awoke early the next morning. He was able to open the door of the hut and go outside without waking Navi. He looked around the empty village disappointedly. He had half expected Ganondorf, Astralose, and their minions to have arrived during the night. As he walked around from hut to hut, his disappointment became even more evident. Where could they be? he asked himself. He plopped down onto the ground, a hundred feet from the hut he had spent the night in. Ignoring the feather-light grass as it tickled his exposed calves, he tried to answer this question.

Where else could they be if they aren't here? There aren't any other buildings in this forest, except for the Lost Temple. But they wouldn't be in the Lost Temple. Or would they? Maybe they are. Maybe Astralose has a hideout there. It's worth looking into. Link stood up, brushed the dew off of his tunic and left to wake up Navi. It was decided. He would search the Lost Temple. If they were not there, then he would do whatever it took to find them, even if it meant exploring the entire Forest of Gormoth.

Navi was never the most pleasant fairy when she had to wake up early—she would usually become very moody for at least the first three hours of the day—but that morning seemed to be an exception. When Link told her that they should check the Lost Temple, she became suddenly ecstatic. "Really?! I agree! We should really go there! I honestly believe that Ganondorf is there!"

Something about the way she was bobbing up and down in midair gleefully as she said this was off-putting to Link. "On second thought, I think you should stay here Navi. I don't think you're completely free of the charms of the Temple. I think it would be a mistake for you to go back there."

"What?! No! I need to go Link! I mean, you need me! To help you!"

"I'll manage without you for the day. There probably won't be anything there anyway."

"I'm going Link! And you can't stop me!"

"Navi, do you hear yourself? Please, only something bad will happen if you come. Promise me that you'll stay here." Navi paused in mid-flight silently. "Please Navi."

"Oh, all right," she sighed. "But you're sure you won't need my help?" she asked hopefully.

"No. Just stay here. You can watch the village too to make sure that no enemies are sneaking around here at night."

"Fine. Be careful."

"I always am. And don't follow me."

"I won't! You would think you would trust me by now! Honestly. After all we've been through."

Link chuckled. "Bye Navi," he said as he turned to leave.

"Of all the indignities…" she muttered as he mounted Epona, entered the trees a few feet away, and disappeared.

On foot, it was a lengthy journey from Astralose's village to the Lost Temple, but with Epona it was only a few hours. That was why Link was able to make it to the decrepit temple before noon. Link dismounted Epona at the largest hole in the Temple's crumbling walls. It was the very same one he had entered with Astralose nearly two weeks earlier. He stepped through this gap and entered the darkness within the ancient structure.

He was surprised to see that the rabid child and the Skull Kids that had been present during his first visit to the Lost Temple were no longer there. He did not understand how they could have possibly managed to escape the mysterious charms of that building on their own. Suddenly though, something happened that drove the missing inhabitants out of his mind completely. There were a series of grunts and shouts echoing through the chamber that Link was in. He could not tell where they were coming from though. The room was very small, so it was impossible for any creatures to be hiding within it.

Looking around, he finally identified where the noise was originating from. In the corner of the room, there was a small hole that was even darker than the dimness that Link currently found himself in. He approached the crack cautiously and looked down within it. There was an orange, unchanging pinprick of light that appeared to be hundreds of feet below him. As he stood on the verge of the fissure, he heard another roar, followed by even more shouts. He knew he had to get down there somehow to find the source of this noise, but there was no way to climb down through the hole. There must be a stairway to take me down there.

Silently, he backed away from the aperture and left the room through a nearby hallway. The hallway continued for a hundred feet without altering its course. At the end of it, there was another small room. Link crossed the room quietly and entered another, larger chamber on its far side. He was surprised at the emptiness of the rooms, considering how many had been occupied the last time he had been there. In this room, Link was delighted to find a staircase going downwards.

The stair opened up from a narrow gap in the middle of the room and then curled into the ground. It was hewn out of the earth that surrounded it and as he descended it, Link noticed the steps transition first from the limestone used to build the temple to the soil that lay beneath it. Eventually the steps transitioned into smoothly sculpted lava rock. Not long after this, the staircase ended. Before the Hero of Time there lay a long passageway; it was also hewn out of the basalt that dominated that level in the world's crust.

As he hurried down the hallway, he noticed his surroundings growing gradually lighter with a soft, reddish glow. By the time the passage ended, the glow had brightened to a nearly blinding radiance. At the end of the passageway was the most startling thing Link had seen since Ganondorf's revival in the Temple of Time. He was standing on a balcony overlooking a chamber that he could not even see all the way across because of its sheer size. Down the center of the room ran a river of molten lava, sizzling and occasionally swelling, sending flaming magma onto the ground—which was entirely basalt—around it. However, this was not what was so startling to the hero.

Filling the room entirely, as far as his eyes could see, was a fearsome army of enemies. Moblins and Bokoblins were the main enemies present. But there were also hundreds of tremendously violent Dark Nuts, evil Wizrobes, Garo Ninjas, and other enemies that even Link's well-versed eyes had never seen before. And in the heart of this dreadful collection of adversaries—on a massive platform—were the evil Gerudo King Ganondorf and his father Astralose.