Yesss I'm so happy to post this chapter. I've been pouring all of my fear of deep, dark water into this chapter and my plans for the next. It's super cathartic to make these kids live out one of my nightmares! Writing atmospheric horror is really interesting, especially when you're scared of whatever you're writing about. I've done a painted illustration for this chapter, so check the "dungeon 4" tag via the Tumblr nav post or visit the Ao3 version of this chapter if you want to see it!

Content warning for any thalassophobes out there. Also, there's a corpse in this chapter, but nothing worse than your average ReDead. He's just chillin'.

Ron was expecting a sense of dizziness, like the mild disorientation Floormasters caused, but the transition from one place to the next was effortless. The only sign that he'd been sent somewhere else was the water abruptly becoming warmer. He opened his eyes just long enough to see where sunlight was streaming in from and swam in that direction.

'I hate saltwater,' he thought as he drove toward the surface, wishing he could rub his stinging eyes. Upon surfacing, his poor eyes were assaulted further by the blazing sun.

"Merlin, it's bright out here!" he wasted some of his breath to complain. Not only was it bright, but it was hot and muggy, too. He started treading water and squinting at his surroundings. There was an impressively tall, incredibly sheer gray cliff in front of him, at the bottom of which lay the cavernous mouth of a large cave. Hermione was bobbling in the turquoise sea a short distance away. Malfoy was…well, it didn't matter if he surfaced, did it? He could breathe just fine. "You alright there, Hermione?" he called out.

"Not for long! No endurance," she gasped. She was treading water too, but not well. Her mouth kept dipping under the surface.

Malfoy popped out of the water. "There are some ledges you can rest on in that cave over there," he reported. "Just make sure you stay near the surface, because there are jellyfish father down in the cavern. Whatever poison they're full of, it seems to work from afar."

Ron and Hermione started swimming toward the cave. Ron's body was still weighed down by cold-induced exhaustion, but he couldn't afford to give into it. He didn't trust Malfoy not to leave him to drown. He forced himself to keep going despite the ache in his arms and the residual numbness in his legs.

"Did you see Harry?" Hermione asked breathlessly.

"He's propped up against a wall in the cave. He must have made it to one of the ledges and passed out only then," Malfoy said. "Rather convenient of him. I thought we'd have to go spelunking to find whatever far-off niche he decided to wedge his foolish arse in."

If he weren't using his air to stay afloat, Ron would have breathed a sigh of relief. Thank Merlin Harry hadn't immediately passed out when he'd gone through the portal!

"Anyway, hurry up! Ruka said he went to this place to find Zora treasure, so there might be something valuable stowed somewhere around here." Malfoy dove and swam off toward the cave.

"We're not here to find treasure!" Ron shouted after him. It wasn't like the portal was going to disappear as soon as they went back through it; if Harry could go through without breaking it, Ron figured the doorway had to be stable enough to handle multiple trips. They could always come back here later, once all the Harrys were together again. In fact, he was certain that Harry, Blue, and Hermione would be raring to have another look at this place once the current crisis was over. They would want to find the nearest city and interrogate the first person they ran into. Harry would want to know where the monsters were and Blue and Hermione would demand a culture lesson or something similarly boring.

Ron's spirits lifted when he entered the shade of the cave and saw Harry sitting on a little stone platform like Malfoy had described. Then he made the mistake of looking down and nearly spent all of his air on a scream.

The water underneath him was a deep, dark blue. Almost black.

His arms flapped in a panic and he slipped under the surface before he could get his flailing under control. Shrieking, he kicked hard and swam as fast as he could to get away from the yawning pit underneath him. Any worries about his endurance were farts in the wind at this point. He just needed to get to land.

Ron scrabbled onto the stone platform and lay out flat on his back, gasping for air. He had never swam so hard in his life!

Malfoy had to add commentary, because of course. "The water was already ten meters deep outside the cave, you idiot. What does another hundred meters matter?"

"A hundred meters?" Ron rolled on his side to goggle at the Slytherin. "I'm sorry, what?" He took in the quietly horrifying sight of the deep blue hole under Malfoy. Large jellyfish floated like blue fairy lights farther down, easily visible through the clear, clean water. Ron wondered if he'd be able to see all the way to the bottom if he dared peek over the side of the ledge. "That's a hundred and ten meters of water you're swimming in?"

"That's how deep sinkholes like this generally are. I've come across them at sea before," Malfoy said with a shrug. "The Black Lake goes even deeper than that, you know." He watched Hermione doggy-paddle past him with amusement. "Don't Muggles make a regular hobby out of swimming? You should be better at this, Granger."

Hermione spat out water. "Can't bring books in the pool," she panted. When she reached the stone platform, Ron pulled her up as Malfoy gave her a boost from below. She collapsed with much coughing and wheezing. "I've never…swam so far," she gasped. "I hate…swimming." She pushed thick clumps of her long hair out of her face. "So tiring."

"Well, you're going to have to find the energy to make your way back to the portal, because it's not like I can do it for you," Malfoy said. "While you three sit there looking like half-drowned Kneazles, I'll be off hunting for treasure. Ciao." He gave a flippant wave and then dove into the terrifying pit.

Ron sat up and watched the Slytherin undulate farther and farther into the deep blue depths until he became a silhouette backlit by the glow of jellyfish.

"The greed's gone to his head," he declared. "He's as barking as Salazar Slytherin was."

Hermione used the wall to help her sit up. "Wouldn't you want to explore if you didn't have to worry about air down there?" she asked breathlessly.

"No. Why would I want to swim around some jellyfish-ridden dark cave? No treasure's worth that."

"Well, I would. I think the Harrys would, too." She pointed her wand at Harry. "Rennervate."

The first thing Harry did upon waking up was clutch his head and fall over in the fetal position. "Ohgodithurtssomuch," he babbled. His eyes squeezed shut and he furiously massaged the back of his skull. "It feels like I got whacked by a troll," he moaned. "What happened?"

"You split yourself across two sides of the Veil," Ron explained. "I don't think the sword liked that."

Harry's eyes popped open at the sound of Ron's voice. "You're here?" he asked incredulously. "But how?"

"Neville said Red and Yellow were being talked at by Hermione, who said they left to find you, and when we ran into Malfoy on the way out of the castle, he said Red, Yellow, and you were probably messing with Ruka's landing site," Ron said. "You didn't make yourself easy to find, mate. If your head didn't already hurt, I'd slap you upside it."

"I didn't want to bother anyone with my dumb idea until I'd tested it first," Harry admitted. "I was like eighty percent sure the Moon Pearl wouldn't work."

"Well, that 'dumb' idea sure came through, Hero," his voice said from the cave entrance. "Thanks for that."

Ron, Harry, and Hermione sat bolt upright and whipped around to face the mouth of the cavern. Shadow Harry stood atop the water, looking pleased as punch. The last time Ron had seen a smile like that on Harry's face was the first year he'd gotten a Weasley sweater.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" he demanded, taking aim with his wand.

Shadow Harry's grin became manic. "That little stick isn't going to do anything, kid. I'm in Hyrule now. You thought I was powerful in your miserable shadow-world? That was me at my worst. This is where I shine." He summoned a large globe of shimmering air over his head. Ron edged away from it in recognition; it looked like the spell yellow-robed Wizzrobes used to call up flaming Keese. Blue, crackling jellyfish began popping into existence within the sphere.

"I need you all to move a little faster on this whole 'figuring out how to get to the temple' thing, since at the rate you're going, all of Scotland is going to wind up underwater," Shadow Harry explained. "And here I thought the boss's population-clearing plan was too much of a long-shot." He rolled his eyes. "Maybe this is going to hurt my reputation a bit, but I don't like mass-murder all that much. You can't make the people suffer for your enjoyment and their character development if they're all dead, you see." He turned and tossed the globe out of the cave. With an airy poof, it popped and sent jellyfish raining everywhere. They bobbed along the surface of the waves, buzzing on and off in a rippling sequence.

"You didn't throw it at us?" Harry asked. "Why?"

Shadow Harry gave them all a half-lidded look of exasperation. "I just said I prefer torture to murder and you're asking me why I didn't kill you?"

"Well, why'd you put all the jellyfish over there, then?"

"To make it so that you'd drown trying to get back to your depressing home dimension if you don't find the artifact in here," Shadow Harry said, smirking. "The boss is resting up after snatching up storms from across this place, sending them to your world, and pumping the clouds full of magic, so I'm a cat without a collar as long as I don't think too hard or say one of the words he's listening for. I popped into this cave just after the Hero opened the portal, dragged him out of the water, and had a look-see around the caverns. I thought I remembered this place; a race of Zoras built a whole kingdom here, once upon a time."

He peered down into the deep pool in front of him. "Huh, looks like your aquatic friend is Zora enough that he doesn't mix well with electricity." He cocked one hand back and threw it into the water. It transformed into a large, smoky claw and went down, down, down…until it reeled in, bearing Malfoy's limp body. Shadow Harry reached over and dropped the boy on the stone platform. "If you can get past all my lovely little living lamps, there's something down there that will let all of you go back home and get into the last dungeon maintaining the spell on the castle," Shadow Harry said. "Oh, and I hid the last gem anchoring my little curse in that dungeon, too, so I'm letting you break that as well! Aren't I the best?" He clapped his hands, looking pleased with himself.

Ron had no idea what he was talking about. Glancing at his friends, he mouthed, "What curse?" Harry and Hermione were equally confused, going by their puzzled frowns.

Shadow Harry danced across the water and stopped in the middle of the pit to point at them. "Between the four of you, I figure at least one will be able to find that artifact. Take too long and the Hero will die from being split too far apart, so you'd better get moving." He wagged his finger.

Harry, already pale from the migraine, lost more of the color in his face. "I'll die?" he said faintly.

"If the Four Sword weren't half-broken, you could just summon up your other selves and solve the problem. However, ripping stuff from the Light—er, from Hyrule to Scotland takes a certain something out of the magic. Hylian magic in general doesn't work right in your world, actually. Conjured monsters are dumber and weaker, transferred artifacts have to be partially re-enchanted, I don't gain any power from the anguish of the citizenry, et cetera. I was real confused about it for a while, let me tell you. All the temple artifacts were broken for seemingly no reason, so I had to keep fixing them up without the boss noticing. The Lens of Truth wouldn't work again until I turned it into sunglasses." A Malfoy-ish sneer of distaste crossed his face. "If you could see magic, you'd know that the Four Sword looks like it was stuck together with string and a prayer. The only reason it has any functionality is because it's using your wizard-magic to make up for the damage, thus the mixed-up colors you split into and the patchy connections between your copies. You're lucky you didn't die from passing through the portal! If the boss hadn't already broken the space around here, you wouldn't have been able to maintain your connection."

"You've been the one seeding the temples with spell scrolls and magical tools?" Hermione said with excitement. "So you've been helping us!"

He shook his head. "I've been helping myself. I can't be your friend's enemy if he's not worth fighting, after all. Those artifacts were already in the dungeons anyway; the boss leaves all the fine-tuning and cleaning up to me, so he never sorts through the unwanted junk scattered around."

"You're an evil spirit that believes in fighting fair?" Harry asked incredulously.

The evil spirit raised an eyebrow. "I'm your shadow, kid. Does a shadow reach up and snatch your heart out while you're sleeping?" he asked. "No, it matches you. In this case, I'm just making sure you can match me, since you're so pitiful compared to my usual rivals. It's no fun to slaughter a defenseless child, after all. Much better for them to put up a fight first."

"I was gonna ask how a bloke who blew up a school could claim he plays fair, but there it is," Ron muttered. "Couldn't even pretend for a minute." For all that he shared Harry's face, this thing was definitely a monster.

Shadow Harry's features twisted in a fanged snarl. He stomped his foot, sending up a wave of water that crashed against the walls of the cave and nearly washed Malfoy back out to sea. "I wasn't any happier about that than you were! Do you think I like the orders my boss has been throwing around lately?" the spirit snapped. His robes started rippling agitatedly around him as he began to pace. "He's keeping me locked down this time around because he doesn't want me ruining any potential locations for his construction project. I should be out causing earthquakes and turning people into shadows, and yet I'm constantly stuck arranging monster patrols and haunting dungeons because he doesn't want me touching anything!" Shadow Harry raved. "When he does give me interesting commands, they're interesting for the wrong reasons because your dimension's nasty magic has gone to his head. He had me under orders to kill everyone in your school and he called it a 'privilege', can you believe it? If he'd told me to kidnap all the teachers and leave you children to run amok, that would have been one thing, but mass-murder is no fun." He crossed his arms with a scowl. "I bet he just didn't want to risk damaging his precious future castle by killing all of you himself, so he foisted that duty off on me. Ugh, he's so obsessed with this stupid project of his!"

"What project?" Hermione asked. "Do you know what he's planning?"

Shadow Harry raised his hands out to the sides and gave a shrug. "Well, I'm not exactly in-the-loop here because the boss never tells me anything, but what would you do if you were a wannabe god with the power to teleport your favorite locations from one world to another?"

Suddenly Vaati's habit of hiding his magical anchors in transplanted ancient buildings took on a much scarier light. Ron hadn't really stopped to think about it before, but the amount of power Vaati was throwing around was far beyond any of the Dark wizards he had ever heard of, and he'd grown up with scary bedtime stories of quite a few. With that ridiculous level of magic, Vaati really could make himself a god. He could turn the world into his own customized kingdom, reducing Hyrule into a jumble of rejected puzzle pieces in the process. Worse, because he could pull places (if not also people) through time as well as space, there was a chance Vaati might damage the very rules of reality. Ron didn't have to understand much about the flow of time to know that messing with it was a very bad thing.

"Oh god," Hermione said softly, putting a hand over her mouth.

"Your friend has a teeny-tiny chance of beating him if he can ever become strong enough to get past me." Shadow Harry pinched his fingers together to show the size of that chance. "I'll be keeping an eye on you, Hero." He gave Harry a cheeky wink.

Harry looked stricken.

"Now that you're all a little more up to speed, it's time to get moving." Shadow Harry rummaged through his pockets and then cast his hand out toward the ledge. Ron shielded his face as they were all pelted with a handful of blue pebbles. "Here, use these to hunt down the spell scroll I turned the original one into. They'll vanish if you try to leave the cave with them, so you'll have to put in some legwork to find the real deal," he said. "First, beat the maze so you can get back home; second, solve the boss's latest puzzle-box before your country drowns; and third—this advice is specifically for you, Hero—fix that magically mangled eyesore of a sword before it shatters and kills you. If you're dying on my watch, it's only going to be because I've fatally stabbed you in a duel, you hear? Now, while you're all having fun with that, I'm going to wreak as much havoc as I can in this world before the boss wakes up and puts a leash on me." Cackling, he fell into the water like a drop of ink and swirled away into nothing.

For a while, there was only the sound of rippling water lapping against the walls of the cave.

"Suddenly, I'm not sure I want to beat Vaati," Harry said. He looked even more pale and sickly than before. "It sounds like Shadow Harry's going to kill me first."

"Well, he did say he's giving you a fighting chance against him. I'm assuming that means he's not going to assassinate you out of nowhere," Ron said. After that conversation, his impression of the creepy shape-shifter had slid from "invincible ancient evil" to "more powerful Peeves". Both were bad, but one was a level of badness that left him a little less terrified his friend might be doomed to die. "And if those legends in the beastie-book are right, then he'll go to sleep for a while if you manage to beat him. Then he'll be some other bloke's problem in a few hundred years." He picked up one of the rocks the shadow had thrown and rolled it over in his palm. It was a clip-on earring with a fish-shaped pendant carved out of vivid blue stone. "What do these do?" he asked. "Shadow Harry said to use them, but what are they for?"

Harry snapped an earring on and flicked the pendant to make it swing. "I'm not feeling any different."

"If the permanent version of these is meant to help us get back home, I'm assuming they have an effect that lets us stay underwater for longer," Hermione hypothesized. She clipped on two earrings, only to have one vanish. "So we only need one. Interesting."

"We should probably wake up Malfoy," Harry said, poking the unconscious Slytherin in the cheek. "He must have shocked himself pretty hard."

"Oh, right! Er, Rennervate," Hermione said, prodding Malfoy in the chest with her wand. It had no effect. She clapped a hand to her forehead. "Stupid! I forgot about his magical immunity." She gave Malfoy a hard shake by the shoulders instead.

Malfoy's eyes fluttered open. "Owww," he whined. "I ran into a jellyfish behind me." He sat up and pressed a hand to his back with a wince. "What on earth is that poison? It's visible. I've never seen anything like it."

Ron saw a chance to show off his ability to understand his father's ramblings and took it. "Shadow Harry said it's el-ec-tricity," he pronounced carefully, pleased to know something the tutored rich kid didn't. "Like lightning, except Muggles can use it to power things. If you don't keep it inside of rubber-covered wires, it turns back into lightning and shocks you."

Malfoy frowned at him and turned his attention to Hermione. "Is that true?"

"He wasn't wrong," Hermione said. Ron puffed his chest out with pride. He knew some science things! "If those jellyfish can generate raw electricity, that means they're charging up the water around them. Do you know anything else?"

"They blink on and off in ten-second intervals," Malfoy said. "They move silently and it's so dark that they're essentially invisible when they aren't lit up, so it's easy to run into one by accident." He sent a venomous glare toward the water. "That's how I found myself…indisposed. How did I wind up back here, anyway?"

"Shadow Harry dredged you out," Ron said. "He showed up to block the way back to the portal, threw some jewelry at us, and left. We have to find that Zora treasure now or Harry's gonna die, so goody for you."

Malfoy looked back at Hermione.

"No, he isn't exaggerating," she said. "According to Shadow Harry, the Four Sword is much more broken than it looks and it isn't working correctly."

"Well, then." Malfoy pushed his water-mussed hair back with a swipe of his hand. "What are we still on land for?"

Harry was the first to drop into the sinkhole, despite Hermione's insistence that he rest and not aggravate his separation migraine. As his head crossed the surface of the water, a glowing blue globe enclosed it. He gave them a grin and a thumbs-up before swimming farther down. Malfoy dove after him.

"Ohhh, I don't like this," Ron said, staring into the fathomless depths of the sinkhole. Was it really just one hundred meters? It looked like a tunnel to the other side of the world from where he was standing.

"That's your instincts talking. I'm sure we'll get used to it once we spend enough time underwater," Hermione said. She sat down on the edge of the platform and then scooted into the water, letting her weight carry her downward.

Ron closed his eyes, breathed out, and did a cannonball into the water. He did a count to ten in his head and then opened his eyes. Now that he was inside the pit, he found himself enveloped in darkness, only interrupted by the light of blue jellyfish and the magical globe around his head. The sunlight trickling into the opening caught on the upper edges of things, but did nothing to brighten the water. Anything hidden under the edges of the opening stayed in shadow. He took a shaky experimental breath. It felt just as natural as breathing air.

"Lumos," he said as soon as he felt confident enough to speak. The word echoed weirdly around his head, but his wand glowed with soft golden light. He frowned at it. The spell wasn't as strong as it should have been. He repeated it a few times, bringing it up to full brightness.

With the added illumination, jellyfish seemed to pop into existence around him. He yelped and swam away when he felt one brush against his back. Just in time, too, because it lit up not two seconds later. He almost ran into another in trying to escape the first, carried too far forward by his momentum. Ron wind-milled his arms to point his legs toward the sky and kicked hard.

Electricity tingled across his skin and made his scalp prickle as he wove painstakingly through the living hazards littering the vertical tunnel. He found it more unpleasant than catching a shock from one of his father's inventions. Rather than a brief, painful surprise, this was a sustained whisper of death creeping up his spine. He swore it was making his heart burn in his chest and his fingers twitch around his wand.

To his dismay, the water dimmed quickly as he descended. The sunlight streaming in through the mouth of the sea cave was at a sharp angle, meaning that by the time he'd reached thirty meters, his wand and the jellyfish were his only sources of visibility.

Ron looked up for reassurance, hoping the light above would calm him down, only to feel a thrill of terror when he realized how distant it was. He snapped his gaze down straight ahead, knowing that looking down would make his trembling even worse. His stomach ached from how hard he was clenching it. He didn't know where Harry, Hermione, and Malfoy had gone; at some point, they'd either disappeared into the jellyfish-dotted distance or gone down a side exit. There was no one and nothing around that would help lower his anxiety. Ron kept a sharp eye out for any caves; the first side passage he saw, he was taking it. He wanted to get the hell out of this sinkhole.

As he evaded a pair of bobbing jellyfish, his Lumos revealed an open void in the cylindrical tunnel wall. He paused to tread water in front of it. As dark as it already was in the sinkhole, there was absolutely zero light in that cave. The shadows beyond the opening were impenetrable; anything could be hiding in there. Did he dare enter?

He set his jaw. Harry needed him. No matter how terrifying this place was, he had to power through. Besides, it couldn't be any worse than the main sinkhole.

Ron held out his wand and swam into the cave. The water was colder here, and darker than his brain knew how to handle. He literally couldn't see a single thing without his wand in front of him; instead, his eyes would make up ghosts that smeared across his (lack of) vision. He pressed one hand against the ceiling to set his feet on the ground and was startled to see the side of the tunnel light up in neon colors. Yanking his extremities back, he watched the hand-shaped patch of pink and turquoise plant life fade into darkness.

He breathed a relieved sigh. 'It's just plants,' he reassured himself. Plants weren't scary. He held out his wand and squinted down the tunnel. The side corridor was a little bigger around than he was tall, textured with rough, fern-like leaves. Ron squared his shoulders, kept one hand pressed against the ceiling to stay grounded, and walked down the tunnel. The luminous flora lit up like a rainbow around him. While the light was strange, it added to the visibility and eased his fear somewhat. Even if they were just plants, knowing something else was alive down here bolstered his confidence a little.

Despite the sides of the tunnel being fairly uniform, it traveled in a rather chaotic fashion. He was forced to go back to swimming before long as it meandered up and down in hills too steep to climb. It was incredibly disorienting and soon he was having trouble telling which way was up, let alone what direction he was traveling in. He had no idea whether he'd gone shallower or deeper, either—not that it mattered this far down. Side-corridors branched off of the tunnel every now and then, most of them aimed up. Peering up into a couple of them, Ron spied the heart-stoppingly distant twinkle of sunlight far above. Shuddering, he resolved to keep following the wandering path before turning back and exploring any of its branches.

Then the tunnel dropped straight down. It hadn't done that before; there had always been some kind of slope that kept it continuing forward. This was a total shift in axis; down was forward now.

The vertical corridor was narrower than the one he stood at the edge of, its walls smoother and bare of plants. It looked like a carved-out, polished well.

Ron stared down into the void, then looked over his shoulder at the slightly more familiar void behind him. Back or forward? It was a simple choice.

Biting his lip, Ron swam out over the seemingly infinite drop and descended. He didn't point his head down, too afraid to risk having to reorient himself in a tunnel somewhat narrower than his height. What if he messed up his turn and knocked his head against the wall or something? Or what if he had his body pointed down, something attacked him, and he couldn't turn around and get away in time?

He whimpered into the lonely air bubble around his head. Why was this so deeply terrifying? Last year he'd gone into the Forbidden Forest in the dark, following a trail of giant spiders. That should have been ten times scarier than navigating some boring old dark underwater caves! At least there weren't spiders in here.

Why were his instincts screaming so loudly at him to leave? It was just cold, dark, and wet—that was it. Nothing had happened! He slid one hand down the wall to brace himself against something solid, just in case it was the feeling of free-floating in space that his brain was revolting against.

He shook his head, blinking, as he kept sinking into the increasingly chilled water. The endless blackness, which his wand could weakly penetrate only a meter into at most, was making him see things. He could have sworn it was getting even darker somehow; hadn't his wand been more effective earlier?

His head felt funny. Was it suddenly harder to breathe, too? Why did his chest feel so tight? It didn't seem like the air bubble around his head was shrinking or anything, which was usually the first sign that a magical breathing apparatus was running out. Something weird was going on. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to ward off the dizziness, and kept on going. Nothing bad had happened yet, and feeling a little weird wasn't enough reason to give up.

The vaguest smudge of something entered the corner of his vision and he jerked a few kicks upward, pressing his body against the wall. Was that a rock? A fish? There was something down there, where the cold was radiating from, or maybe there wasn't. But if there was, it could be anything from a small ledge to a giant squid. He couldn't bring himself to continue until he knew what he'd seen.

His real problem was his wand's growing uselessness. The darkness down here was thick; there was no other way to describe it. His wand's light was being swallowed by the water—or maybe absorbed was a better word. As underpowered as his Illumination Charm had been when he'd first dropped into the water, the spell was barely a memory now. And when had it turned lavender-gray? The light should have been gold.

'I need a brighter light spell,' Ron thought, mentally rummaging through the small collection of charms he knew. It was made more difficult by the floaty feeling encroaching on his brain. This Hylian water was eating his magic, making his most heavily reinforced Illumination Charms fade quickly. Therefore, he needed to come up with something that would overpower the water. There was one spell Harry had told him offhand one time. Lumos Max…Maximum? No, Maxima.

"Lumos Maxima!" he incanted with forced confidence. His wand spat a few sparks in protest—this water just did not want to cooperate with his magic—but obediently flared to blinding. Ron's heart leapt into his chest; the water was purple. That was why his Illumination Charm had changed color. The tint was dark, too—it turned Ron's skin lilac in the short distance from his eyes to his hand. Ron moved his wand overhead and blinked the spots out of his eyes, then looked down. What was making the water that color?

At the bottom of the well lay a pool of bubbling purple. Above that lay a…a face. An eyeless human face with the tatters of a mask around its open mouth, staring up at him.

Ron almost dropped his wand in his scramble to get away. He stuck it between his teeth and worked his arms and legs for all they were worth, ignoring the light still searing his eyes. In his blindness, he crashed into the ceiling before pushing off into the previous tunnel. A sustained screech ran through his mind as he struggled through the seemingly endless twists and turns. Sharp rocks and hard-edged plants cut his hands as he pulled himself along by any purchase he could find. He needed to see something other than that face. Another person. He was going to go crazy if he didn't see someone else soon, to remind him he wasn't alone in this death-pit.

Oh, Merlin. A death-pit. Someone had died down here. In the second temple, there had been bones everywhere, but there hadn't been faces. There was a world of difference between walking across a floor of ancient bones and seeing a face like his in the depths of a watery grave, forever staring upward in drowning terror. Between the fact that he was clearly in a place no human was meant to go and the knowledge that the corpse he'd come across might have belonged to someone who'd died doing what he was currently doing, this was infinitely worse than the temple of death.

Ron emerged from the side-tunnel in a ball of frantically flapping limbs. 'Up! UP!' his brain screamed at him, and he obeyed despite the burning ache consuming his exhausted body. He swam straight toward the distant sunlight, barely bothering to dodge the jellyfish. Their electricity bit at his skin, but he didn't care. He needed the sun. He needed life.

Ron broke the surface of the water, screaming, and struck out for the tiny ledge above the cave. He clawed at the sand with bloodied hands and dragged himself up. Then, with his body back in the wonderful grip of gravity, he curled up in a ball and cried.

Item Get: Zora Earring (temporary copy). Designed by an Abyssal Zora craftsman, it allows its wearer to stay underwater indefinitely and protects against the temperatures (somewhat) and pressure shifts of deep-diving. The user is rendered mute by their air supply bubble and their mobility and senses aren't improved upon in any way.

Notes:

-So now you know why Harry isn't in the traditional Four Sword colors; his own mentality affected how his magic figuratively duct-taped the blade's enchantment back together. His wizardly constitution makes him its true wielder in this era. Link, while not entirely without magic himself, wouldn't have survived the backlash.

-I want to make it clear that this version of Shadow Link isn't good, by any means, but he is fair. As far as he's concerned, fighting Harry as he is now would be like an Olympic tennis player seriously challenging a toddler to a match. He also isn't a liar; the Four Sword is in a worse state than the Master Sword initially was in Wind Waker. The Force Gems the Harrys have been collecting have been temporary patches, but they've done nothing to actually repair the wonky magic.

-The curse Shadow Harry was talking about is the one keeping Sirius stuck as an unusually intelligent Actual Dog. Yes, that's what the House Crystals are connected to.

-The purple stuff is a nasty Yiga poison enchanted to keep it from dissipating or losing effectiveness. It's designed to suffocate Zoras through their gills, but it can also absorb through human skin if given enough time. The poison has been pooling around the bottoms of the caverns for centuries, keeping the Abyssal Zoras that once lived there from ever returning. Unfortunately for the Yiga Clan, it also made it difficult to pillage the treasures left in the caves; they went overkill on the poison, unintentionally making it strong enough to paralyze and suffocate their own divers no matter what breathing enchantments they used. I couldn't find a natural way to wedge this detail into the chapter, so here it is in the endnotes :P

-Fun fact: If the water in a place is cold enough, corpses won't float up! That's why Lake Superior doesn't give up her dead.