Volume III Title 2: Majora's Mask

In the land of Hyrule, there echoes a legend.

Shortly after Links return, he decided indeed to look for Navi. Once he was ready, with a good shield of his size (the Heros Shield), he went to Princess Zelda, to say good bye. Willing to help her friend, she gave him the Ocarina of Time (which he was still to receive, having returned to before first meeting her) and taught him the Song of Time once more.

Link accepted the Ocarina, knowing this would make sure no one could open the door of time, and departed from Hyrule in search of his lost friend. But deep in the lost woods, two fairies scared his horse making him fall. A stranger wearing a mysterious mask walked up to the unconscious Link and took the Ocarina from him.

Once the young hero came to his senses, without as much as an explanation, the unusual fellow stole the pony young Link was riding his beloved Epona and escaped through a doorway into a warped dimension. Link of course quickly followed, but when he reached him the nefarious Skull Kid cursed him turning Link in a Deku Scrub.

One of the two faeries, Tatl, stood in Links way, but this parted her from Tael, her brother. Therefore in order to find him she decided to help Link in his new journey and soon the hero found himself trapped in a strange, yet oddly familiar world full of familiar faces. A land called Termina. But while there were similarities, one thing was clearly different: In the sky above loomed a gigantic moon, slowly falling down onto this world...

In three more days, this world will end. So spoke some of those living there. Even as they waited, time passed mercilessly.

One of the first encounters Link had was with a mysterious mask salesman,

he told Link that a Skull Kid had stolen the Majoras Mask from him; a mask, used by an ancient civilization to perform hexing rituals, a mask that he had long searched long and that could be very dangerous for its evil power was to be shunned.

Since he had been following Link, he told the hero that there was a way to undo the curse, but first of all, he had to recover his ocarina.

At the midnight of the third day, the door of the clock tower opened and Link could finally reach the Skull Kid on its top. Unluckily Link could not handle such a situation: due to the power of the mask the moon was just about to crash, but he managed to retrieve his ocarina and played the Song of Time.

The Goddess of Time sent him back to his first moment in Termina... but without losing the items he had obtained (like his ocarina). Playing the song again Link would have been able to repeat the process, giving him all the time he needed.

With the ocarina, the mask salesman taught him the Song of Healing that could break evil curses or heal troubled spirits turning the evil in masks; and with the Deku Mask that resulted Link could turn in a Deku Scrub anytime (which would prove necessary as well as the other morphing masks he would find).

Back to when they found the Skull Kid, Tael said these words: Swamp. Mountain. Ocean. Canyon. Hurry... The four who are there... Bring them here!

So the two headed for the swamps, and thanks to the help of some monkeys could enter the WoodFall Temple.

There they fought the incarnation of an evil mask, Odolwa, which kept imprisoned the spirit of one of the four giants. The four giants used to live where clock town was built, together with the people of all the races; but then, on the day of The Carnival of Time that celebrates the harvest, they took a decision: to guard the people while sleeping. Their friend a Skull Kid thought they were angry at him and took an obnoxious attitude, starting to play pranks on the people. These in return summoned the giants who made the Skull Kid escape to the land of Hyrule. The awakened giant taught the Oath of Order to Link, the song that could summon the four of them.

On the way Link also rescued the Princess of the Deku Royal Family which allowed him to obtain a mask from their butler. Helping other people Link would obtain more masks in his quest which would prove useful for its final outcome.

He then headed for the mountains, where the Goron were freezing for the cold wind that came from the SnowHead Temple. He could help the ghost of a Goron warrior, turning his pain in the Goron mask which changed him in a Goron.

In the temple, Link fought the mask Goht, helping the Gorons from whom he won gold dust that could be used to reforge and improve the Kokiri Sword.

He headed then to Romani ranch where, helping two sisters that looked like Malon at different ages, he could get his horse Epona back.

Next he ventured to the ocean, where he could not save a dying Zora guitarist called Mikau. All he could do, was ease his pain turning it in the Zora mask, another mask that would change its owners shape.

Thanks to it, he could get back the eggs of a Zora singer called Lulu from the Gerudo pirates and gain access to the Great Bay Temple where the evil mask Gyorg lurked.

The battle there won, he went to the Ikana Canyon. Ikana was an ancient kingdom whose inhabitants and enemies still haunted the place in the form of undeads; some of them Link could befriend, which allowed him to enter the Stone Tower Temple, where he battled TwinMold.

Once he had awakened the four, he went to the top of Clock Tower and played the Oath of Order. The four giants came and stopped the moon... but Majoras Mask got rid of the Skull Kid and went into the moon adding its power so that the giants couldnt hold it for long.

Link followed the dreaded mask, and found himself in a meadow with a tree... around the tree, the evil masks he had collected where playing with childrens bodies in the likeness of the Mask Salesman. Similarly Majoras Mask was sitting under the tree.

The Mask that wished to consume the world spoke to ask Link if he would play; the hero replied with a bold yes, but the mask told him he only had weak masks. Those words signed its demise: Link declined, and went back in time to collect more masks then he came back and spoke with the other kids, they asked him to play hide and seek, if he was to be a Mask Salesman and for some masks, he played along and gave those he had collected to them. Once he had satisfied the four he was left with no masks, so to allow Link to be "it", play the bad guy, Majora's Mask gave him the mask of the "Oni-Kami" (Ogre Deity), the Fierce Deity Mask that allowed the Hero of Time to change into Oni Link.

Using his new powers, Link didn't play along this time and attacked Majora instead of running. After some hits, the mask grew limbs and Link found himself facing Majoras Incarnation. Eventually it got even stronger turning in Majoras Wrath but in the end Link defeated the dreaded mask, making it lose its evil power; the moon disintegrated in a rainbow of light and everybody cheered, for the end of the world had been averted.

The mask salesman could keep the Majoras Mask now devoid of its dangerous power, Link the fairies and the giants (before going back to their slumber) forgave the Skull Kid (who noted how Link had the same scent as that kid who taught him that song in the woods) for he had been possessed by the Masks power and the Hero of Time (after playing in Mikaus place during the carnival) could get back to his own world and resume his search for the friend with whom he had parted. Someday though, he would return to this land; he had promised that to his new friends there (in particular, to aid a certain farmgirl).