The door Ghirahim had been trying to carve through led to a flight of leaf-strewn stairs, in turn leading back outside. The gentle sound of water flowing over what sounded like a low drop came to me even before I got back outside in what seemed, after the gloom of the temple, to be ridiculously bright sunlight.
Except it wasn't completely outside. This part of the temple had remained perfectly intact. A broad stone way with the water flowing on either side, massive pillars holding up a stone canopy. Beyond, simply rock. Tool marks said this was not a natural place, but had been carved out.
The water flowed down from a raised lake up ahead which was truly outside, and the stone path I was on led to steps heading up to that same area. And up there, separated from me by just a little bit of water and a string of large stepping stones, was a statue of Hylia. Far smaller than the one on Skyloft, but recognisable all the same.
Off to one side there was also a Goddess Cube rocking slightly in the water, and since I didn't feel like getting wet again I just sent a Skyward Strike for it as I passed. It too soared skyward, and I'd find out where it was from Fi when I next headed up there.
Up close there was also another hovering Loftwing, like the one I'd seen inside the statue of the Goddess. This time, I didn't need prompting to activate it. For a time nothing happened, and I wondered if I'd missed something, then at last Fi showed up, standing apparently on the surface of the water – which rippled under her.
"Master, I have been given a message written in the language of the gods of old. Allow me to translate for you."
"Be my guest, Fi – it's not as if I could interpret it otherwise."
Fi let that go without comment, and to my surprise started skating over the surface of the lake, dancing as she started singing back the message to me. I'm not a dance or song critic, so I'll just give you what the message said.
"From the edge of time I guide you, the one chosen to carry out the goddess's mission. The spirit maiden who descended from the clouds must travel to two sacred places to purify her body. You stand in one of those places, the Skyview Spring, the other known as the Earth Spring, hidden away deep within the scorched earth of Eldin. The spirit maiden, ever mindful of the heavy task entrusted to her, has already set out for this second sacred place. Take now the sacred stone that it may guide you also to this place."
As the message drew to its close, a point of even brighter light flared in front of Hylia's face, flashing into a stone tablet – again, like the one in the statue of the Goddess. Only this one showed a different map, and had a small ruby set in place.
I glanced to Fi, who saw my quizzical look and raised me a questioning one. Then she appeared to understand, nodded, and vanished. Unlike future Heroes, I didn't get an instant warp back to the entrance of the Temple, so I was obliged to head back in, find the nearest Bird Statue and use it to transport there instead.
Once out the front I spotted Link sat on the steps, at first busily engrossed in something, but whatever it was vanished when he noticed me, getting up to walk alongside me.
"What'd you think of the place?" he asked.
"What d'ya mean? It's a Temple, it's got monsters in, a few puzzles..."
"Yeah, and I made it. Well, not made it as such," he corrected quickly. "More... guided things into turning out the way they did. Except for that Demon, that wasn't in the plan. I had a different dungeon Boss in mind, but when he showed up I sorta had to put her on ice. Not really sure if there's going to be a suitable place for you to face her, might have to wait for a future Hero to come along. Nice tactics with the Demon though, I was sorta concerned you wouldn't be able to handle him, but I guess there wasn't really any need to be worried."
I gave Link a few moments to see if he had anything else to say after that, then finally said, "The map was a nice touch. I assume you were responsible for it. Shows a lot of useful details. I didn't enjoy getting wet though."
"Oh, don't worry about that where you're going!" Link laughed. "You'll be missing the cold water in no time! Anyway, gotta go make sure that's all ready for you – no last minute things this time!"
And he disappeared abruptly. One moment he was there, the next he wasn't.
Naturally my next stop was Skyloft, and with it the statue of the Goddess so I could reach the Eldin region. The second tablet fit into the upper right section of the recess, sliding perfectly into place above the first. Nothing appeared to happen, but I knew the moment we left, if not before, Fi would inform me of a new beacon that would guide us that way.
She did so as soon as I left the statue.
Rather than immediately make preparations and head back to the surface, I decided to stick around up here for a bit – if there was something that was on a schedule, Link would come to poke me for it. Let him worry about it – it was his job, after all.
Immediately outside the walled courtyard before the statue was one of Skyloft's residents – I knew them all by now, having spent that much time preparing here. Wryna was calling out over the island for Kukiel, her daughter.
"Need a hand?" I offered, inadvertently startling her.
"Knuckles! I though – we all thought-"
"Yeah, I've come back for a bit. I've still got things to do out there, but I'm back here for a while."
"Perhaps you can help while you're here then?" she asked. I didn't get a chance to answer before she launched into her tale, talking quite rapidly. "It's Kukiel! She's gone missing! I've been looking everywhere for her, but I can't find her at all, not anywhere! I've even asked everyone, and a few people said she'd been spotted with a stranger with a scary face, and someone else said she'd been carried off by a monster! A monster Knuckles! Oh, what if she's been kidnapped?"
"Don't go working yourself up. She can't have gone far, not without someone on a Loftwing, and I'll look for her. She's probably just playing a game of hide and seek, and got carried away."
"But with a monster?" Wryna asked. I coughed meaningfully. "Well, of course, not all monsters are bad..." she said quickly, though with that hint of doubt. "At least if it is a monster, I know you'll give it a fright!"
"Exactly what I'll do. Don't give up on looking for her. I'll help while I'm here, and if I can't find her before I have to go, I'll keep looking every time I'm back. She's probably fine, Wryna."
That kinda set her off on another long stream of worries and what-ifs. Comforting people isn't something I'm good at, alright? Eventually I did manage to calm her down to the point where I could let her be, largely because Jakamar turned up to take care of her.
I had every intentions of helping out, but I also needed to make a few preparations for my next trip to the surface, and that meant the first port of call was the bazaar. During my absence enough metal had been obtained to forge an iron shield, picked up for only a round hundred rupees. Normally that would have been considered a lot, but as many noticed – Heroing pays off nicely.
From the rounds of the bazaar and others around town (Except for Groose, who was still avoiding me) I got a variety of conflicting views. Some scoffed at the idea of monsters even with me staring them in the face. I know, I don't like being called that, but when you see it from their side you can't blame them for thinking of me like that.
Others believed the 'monster' story, and one even suggested the monster was undead, because little Kukiel had been playing in the graveyard at the time. Since none of the graves were disturbed however, I put that one down to over-active imagination.
It was said several times there was an old man who was often found at the Lumpy Pumpkin had often gone on about hidden monsters in Skyloft, but was mostly thought of as a bit loony, so no one really paid him any attention.
Once I'd exhausted the possibilities of what the people here had to say though, I decided it might not be a bad idea to go check up on him and see what he had to say about the matter, making that place my next stop.
Fi informed me along the way that the Goddess Cube I'd struck behind Skyview Temple was in the same place, so I circled the island from above to search for it and found it hidden on the roof. I wasn't expecting much from it, and got a fair surprise when I found it contained a Golden rupee. These things are really rare – they're worth a whole three-hundred rupees. Little wonder it had been hidden!
The old man inside was dozing – snoring, actually – at a table, and in order to persuade him to wake up and talk to me I ended up having to buy him a drink. At least this kind of drink didn't get people drunk.
Once he'd woken up a bit, I broached the question to him. "I hear you know something about a monster on Skyloft – besides me, I mean."
"Oh, you want to know about the Skyloft Monster, eh? Shouldn't even call it a monster, it's a Demon I tell ya! But no one can say for sure, because no one's seen it and lived to tell the tale!"
"No one?" I asked. He looked guilty for a moment.
"Well... I saw it, but I escaped by the seat of my pants and catlike reflexes, I tell ya! It was in the graveyard, in the middle of the night," he told me in that theatrical voice people always use for ghost stories. "There's a great big tree there, and when I walked past that night, the Demon hit the gravestone closest to that tree, and the stone lit up! Then it pushed it, and the door to the storage shed, normally locked and stuck fast, opened up all by itself, I tell ya! Then it went in and..." he frowned just slightly, "And closed the door behind it, which was unexpectedly polite for a Demon, but it's still a Demon! If you've any sense, you'll steer clear of the graveyard in the dead of night!"
I humoured him, bought him a second drink and left him telling yet more tales to anyone else who wanted to listen, which interestingly included Stritch.
Steer clear of the graveyard? If I had any sense, which I did, I'd go have a good look at this. It might not be the monster responsible for Kukiel's disappearance, but it was definitely worth looking into.