Having garnered two pieces of the Song of the Hero, first from that twit Faron[1] and then from the far more kindly Eldin, Link’s next adventure takes us to time-traveling Lanayru in search of the thunder dragon of that name.
Choose the Lanayru Mining Entrance for your landing point and, following a nearby Clawshots target, speak to a Goron who laments that he is too large to enter a narrow passageway he has found. After offering our sympathetic murmurs (we know exactly how it feels, having found ourselves outgrowing our jeans and increasingly resorting to sweats), we went in search of the passageway.
First, Clawshot your way through a few targets that take you to the entrance of a cave. Nope, that’s not the narrow passageway; the Goron wouldn’t have trouble with it. But inside the cave, there’s indeed a narrow passage that even a svelte Link can’t go through without first bombing away some rocks. Accordingly, roll a bomb through the passage and, er, bomb away some rocks. Go through and press on to Lanayru Gorge.
In the distance, you’ll see the bones of – gasp! – a dragon. Oh, dear, we’ve arrived too late; the poor beast has expired, taking his part of the Song of the Hero with him. But wait! It’s Lanayru! Unlike Cher, we we know how to turn back time…
Screenshot blackout descends
It pains us to admit it, but we have few screenshots to brighten up the plain words of this section of the post. You see, it was a tense section, in which Demelza properly refrained from screaming “Screenshot, please!” or if she did not so refrain, she received a withering glare in return.
During this section, for which you must use your imagination as we have no screenshots,[2] Link follows a Timestone on a mine cart, periodically stopping to battle an enemy or take out the Whip or the Clawshots, sometimes switching between them, all the while needing to be cognizant that Timeshift stones on a mine cart wait for no man, or at least no aspiring Hylian hero. No, that’s not entirely true; periodically the mine cart would stop, waiting for Link to open a door or remove some other obstacle to its progress. But would the mine cart then pause for Link to ready himself to follow? Nope! The cart would trundle on blithely, leaving Link to his own devices and occasionally to his own demises. (In fact, in a heated battle with a Beamos, Itzal once accidentally hit the Timeshift stone, which landed us back in the past and in a sinksand.)
Eventually, we emerged from the – whatever it was – to what we thought was the end of a horrific sequence of timeshifting and mine cart chasing and sinking in sand and grappling and fighting. After all, we had emerged, so that should be the end of the trial, right?
Not so fast. The mine cart rolled off to the right, over a gaping chasm, and Link could not follow behind on the rails, but rather had to jump on platforms to the left that appeared out of thin air only as the mine cart rolled forward and created them. Naturally Link was not allowed to simply run forward on the platforms as they appeared; there were Deku Babas along the way and a Quadro Baba, never our strong suit, for good measure. Oh, and let’s not forget the rubble in the middle of the rails that had to be bombed in order for the cart to progress, and have we mentioned that this ungrateful cart never waits around for Link to deal with any enemies before it moves on? (At some point during this section, Itzal may have gritted out a threat to Demelza, something along the lines of if this isn’t over soon I’m leaving and never coming back.)
Once across the chasm, Link and the mine cart finally reach the end of the line, and a good thing, too, because Itzal had reached the end of his patience and Demelza the end of her cocktail. And this explains how we went from a screenshot of Lanayru Gorge to a screenshot of the thunder dragon.
End of screenshot blackout
Back in the past, Lanayru the dragon is alive, but he’s not feeling well;[3] indeed, one concludes that whatever is ailing him in the past results in his bleached bones in the present. It’s not that the dragon is unwilling to teach Link the third piece of the Song of the Hero – he hasn’t the strength. (We cut Lanayru some slack, though. He has a valid reason he can’t teach Link the song, unlike the aforementioned twit Faron, who simply wanted us to suffer the Tadtones before teaching us the song. In fact, we suspect Faron aspires to be a Nintendo game designer.)
All is not lost, however. Reportedly, a piece of Life Tree fruit will cure the dragon. The little worker robots had planted a sapling in hopes of helping Lanayru, but it’s not flourishing in the desert. It needs to be transplanted to a more hospitable clime, in this case, the Sealed Grounds.
Obviously, planting a tree in the present will not help a dragon in the past, so farmer Link must jump through the Gate of Time to the grounds outside the Temple of Hylia and plant the seedling in the past.
Then, feeling like the Pinball of Time, it’s back to the present for Link, where the tree is now beautifully grown and bearing a gargantuan fruit, no less. We had read that one could stop, drop, and roll into the tree to get the fruit to fall, but given the size of the tree and the fruit both, we figured we could end up with a massive headache, so we opted instead to send the Beetle out to do the harvesting.
Returning to Lanayru, Link offers the ailing dragon the Life Fruit and perhaps a cough drop and some aspirin, and Lanayru is restored to vigorous health. Grateful, he teaches Link the third piece of the Song of the Hero.
But wait, our song is not complete – remember when Levias the Great Spirit of the Skies told us to return when we’d learned three pieces of the song from the dragons?
Fly back through the Thunderhead to land on the flying spirit’s head, but be prepared to nearly slide off when Levias opens his enormous mouth to sing the fourth stanza of the Song of the Hero. He’s subsequently joined by all three of the dragons in joyful chorus in the sky.
Finally, the fat fish has sung. Itzal phones his doctor for a refill of his blood pressure prescription. Demelza stirs her cocktail, which in keeping with Link’s agricultural prowess, is a Saturn, in honor of the Roman god of the harvest.
The audience leaves the concert hall.
[1] In BOTW, Farosh is Itzal’s favorite dragon; but in Skyward Sword, he loathes the dragon of the nearly same name, Faron.
[2] We have a note from Itzal’s doctor about his blood pressure, rage quits, and sadistic game design, should you wish to read it. Okay, it’s not about sadistic game design per se, but…still. There was a lot of glaring.
[3] Perhaps he needs to borrow Itzal’s blood pressure medication.