- "Show your Courage, Wisdom and Power. The road to the past shall then open."
- — Message displayed upon entering the guardian statue in the past.
The Moonlit Grotto is the third dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. It is found on Crescent Island in the present. Its layout is shaped like a crescent moon. It is similar to the Eagle's Tower in that Link must break through the floors to find new rooms. The item is the Seed Shooter. The mini-boss is Subterror, a mole-like monster. The main boss is the Poe-like Shadow Hag.
Background[]
It is unknown exactly how the guardian statue that forms Moonlit Grotto was made. As the Tokay see it as a guardian, it is unlikely that they made it. However, Moonlit Grotto was not always Moonlit Grotto.
In the time of Queen Ambi, the guardian statue was a secret passageway, which allowed the bravest, the strongest, and the wisest safe passage through the Sea of No Return. On the other side of the path, the Ancient Tomb lay.
However, sometime in the four hundred years that Link skipped while travelling through time, the guardian statue changed inside drastically, becoming the Moonlit Grotto. How, or why this happened, is unknown.
Dungeon[]
The Moonlit Grotto is named for the shape its two floors take: crescent moons. It has brown floors and walls and green doors, with green tiles on the floor in some important areas, such as around crystals, around the chest the Boss Key is in, and in the boss's room. Very few pots are found in the dungeon; strangely, there are green plants all throughout the structure, some serving as hiding places for Spiny Beetles.