Last-chapter recap: Christmas was not celebrated so much as it was experienced. The Harrys received gifts from their reluctant quest guide and went to the castle to cheer up their friends. Professor Dumbledore interrupted their brief reunion and was finagled into agreeing not to hold the Harrys back from their quest. Draco returned to his dorm and was confronted by Professor Snape, who revealed he already knew something of his secret heritage before coming to a full realization of Draco's transformation.

Content warning for the deaths of a few unfortunate random civilians and casual talk of murdering people (these two things are unrelated).


"I've done it! I've found a way to make this world mine! I'll entrench myself so deeply in these vast, helpless lands that no one and nothing will be able to interfere with my grand mission of restoration. You may be able to cut one of my limbs, Hero-pretenders, but will you be able to cut them all? I THINK NOT!"

Red snapped awake to the echo of Vaati's mad cackling still ringing in his ears. Well, that sounded ominous. He wasn't quite sure what all that was supposed to mean, though, other than "Mwahahaha, I'm eeevil, remember?" Maybe one of his cleverer brothers would have some ideas about it when they woke up.

He hopped out of the hotel bed he'd been sharing with Yellow during their stay at the inn and stretched out the tightness in his back. Whatever Hylian mattresses were usually stuffed with, it tended to be on the lumpy side. The lack of springs also took some getting used to.

Red padded to the bathroom to get ready for the day. The similarities and differences between Hyrule, his world, and medieval times was kind of funny. They had old-fashioned mattresses that were basically rectangular bags filled with whatever, and yet there was a modern American-style sink with hot and cold water coming out of the same faucet. The toilet was low to the ground and looked like a mutated brass chamber pot, but it flushed just like any other. He could hear horse hooves and carriage wheels on the street outside through the small ventilation window, and yet there were blue-white lightbulbs shining overhead. There was a difficult-to-describe feeling of history-but-different-yet-modern when it came to Hyrule.

Case in point: his toothbrush. It was shaped almost like the one he'd forgotten back at the castle, painted red and black with little lava-lines on it because he'd gotten the Death Mountain themed one, but the bristles were boar hair and the handle was wood. Plastic hadn't been invented here, which was probably for the best. Toothpaste existed in Hyrule, but lavender was the most common flavor (mint wasn't even an option) and it came in tubs of various sizes instead of tubes. Red spooned a little of the grainy, slightly spongy toothpaste onto his brush, wetted it under the sink, and got to scrubbing.

Hmm, what would he do today? Green would be spending at least half of the day in combat training, he was sure. If Avoka was there to supervise, Green would get sent back after about six hours, still able to stand and walk and be coherent. If the Sheikah was busy at the castle, then Link would gently bully Green into eating something and taking a nap when he went home for his afternoon lunch break, and they could expect their brother back at around five o'clock. Blue and Yellow would be at the library, studying up on modern Hyrule's peoples and places. Yellow was particularly enchanted by the Gerudo, whose artisans made such colorful clothes and jewelry. Blue was more interested in the Rito, who apparently had to break physics in order to fly with their wing-to-body ratio or somesuch. Blue had belted out a lot of words he must have learned from borrowing Hermione's Muggle textbooks and Red had tuned out most of them.

All of his brothers were busy preparing and being useful, and Red…well, he didn't know what to do. Green had kicked him out of training because his low pain tolerance meant that one injury led to more injuries as he became more and more clumsy. It was distracting, Green had told him. Red had kicked himself out of the library, where he'd spent so much time staring blankly at pages of Hylian text (that he could technically read, but never focus on) that he'd found himself becoming tempted to turn those pages into airplanes. Make them more interesting. So no, he didn't trust himself around all the boring books.

Hogwarts was too far away for him to fly all the way there on his own and goof off with Ron or bug Hermione into having fun; the soul-migraine would knock him out of the sky. He couldn't hang around Malfoy because Malfoy had gone back to the castle, and he couldn't bother Link because today was Wednesday and Link would be working at his family's shop. Avoka was similarly busy at Hyrule Castle.

He spat out the toothpaste, rinsed off his brush and swished water around his mouth, and then stared at himself in the mirror. Harry Potter, fierce-eyed and just a little more dangerous-looking than he'd been before. Hair long enough that he ought to tie it back or cut it at this point, falling over ears that now came to slight, rounded points for reasons none of them could explain. Shoulders wider and muscles more defined than they'd been at the start of the year, but still a lot slighter and smaller than Link's. Not too many new scars, thanks to magical healing, but plenty of memories of where they should have been. Calluses on his hands that Green had earned for him.

"I should be fighting monsters right now. Adventuring," he told his reflection. He wasn't the part of Harry that was content to spin his wheels in a safe little city, waiting for interesting things to happen. He wanted to go out and experience, and this town wasn't big enough. What about the other cities and villages in Hyrule? What about all the different places there were to see? He was trapped here, tethered by siblings who wanted to stay put like Avoka had told them to and who he couldn't get more than a few kilometers away from without a headache. The Four Sword now allowed them to move farther apart on their own and feel less of one another's pain, so why didn't his brothers want to take advantage of it?

'Because there's training to do and things to be learned,' he thought with a sigh. His brothers were busy for good, responsible reasons. He was just bored.

A knock at the door drew him out of his thoughts. Was it the owner of the inn? Green had paid for the whole week, hadn't he?

Red padded out of the bathroom on sock-clad feet. He briefly looked down to make sure he had enough clothes on—yep, his sleep-shirt covered him down to the knees—and opened the front door. "Hello? I mean, er, bonndia?"

He saw a light-skinned, pale-haired boy frowning impatiently at him. Malfoy? He blinked. No, the boy's coloring was different and he had a blue mask covering half of his scowl. That was Avoka.

"Oh, good, you're up. Get your brothers. I need to talk to all of you," the Sheikah said briskly. "You can understand me well enough, can't you?"

Red felt he could be forgiven for getting this boy and Malfoy confused. "Yes, I will get them," he said in Hylian. "Come in."

"You've improved your Hylian. Good," Avoka remarked as he stepped in. "I haven't seen you much. What have you been up to?"

"Cooking and finding things," he said. Since the area outside the city was within the range he could wander without a headache, he'd spent his boredom puttering around the clumps of forest outside of town for what he could hunt or forage. Hyrule was the perfect place for a kid who liked putting strange things in his pockets. Aunt Petunia had long trained him out of the habit, but he'd started training it back in. He'd found all kinds of edible plants, gathered stray branches to be used for firewood later, picked up Rupees hidden under rocks and in bushes, killed a few Bokoblins he'd found pawing at Castle Town's walls, hunted some pigeons, and run away from a Light World snake who couldn't speak Parseltongue and had really wanted him to back off from the bush it had been coiled under. Cooking with the unfamiliar plants he'd found and wandering through the pretty copses of trees to find more had been interesting, but not enough to keep his attention. He craved adventure. There was no substitute for that.

"You're the fighter, right? The one that enjoys combat?" Avoka asked.

Red beamed. Green had described him like that? Awesome! "Yes, I am! Why? Want me to stab things?"

"I've got a mission for you that might involve stabbing at some point," Avoka replied. "I'm sure Vaati will have enough monsters guarding whatever it is to keep you busy."

"Yes!" Red itched to put the new skills Green had been learning to use. The idea of sinking an arrow into a monster's eye made his blood roar.

Red walked back into the room, slapping his feet on the floor to make extra noise. "Wake up! We've got a mission!" he announced in English. "Avoka's here to tell us about it!"

Blue groaned and chucked his pillow at him. Red caught it and threw it back even harder. "Jerk," Blue grunted, pushing the pillow out of his face and cracking one eye open.

Green rose up next to Blue like a vampire from his coffin. Dark bags hung under his eyes. "I was going to get up around now anyway," he said with a yawn. "Don't you have work this early, though, Avoka?"

"Commander Impa ordered me to pass along this info, so technically I'm on duty right now." Indeed, the boy had his full uniform on, the creases in his jacket sleeves and the pleats in his skirt-like trousers crisply pressed. He looked much too alert and well-put-together for seven in the morning. Must have had that same posh-people magic as Malfoy.

Yellow rubbed his eyes and did his best to look awake after the near-all-nighter he and Blue had just done, studying up on Gerudo Desert and the areas around it. "Impa is sending us?" he asked. "Are we secret agents now? I'd rather not be."

"Agents, yes…kind of. Secret, not so much. More like 'unknown'," Avoka replied. "Commander Impa has told the King that she'd bring this to your attention, but she hasn't blabbed your names around."

Green let out a breath. "Oh, good."

"You know, having our names known would grease a lot of wheels as we accomplish more in Hyrule," Blue pointed out as he sat up.

"Might get us some free stuff, too," Red added.

Yellow and Green scrunched their noses. "No," Green said firmly. "No, thank you."

Red shrugged. "Well, I tried." He wasn't too concerned with earning fame here. Being recognized and appreciated had its uses, but the feeling of being treated as the Special Golden Boy everywhere grated after awhile. He could take it or leave it as long as it didn't get in the way of him adventuring.

Green looked at Avoka. "So, what mission do you have for us?"

The Sheikah walked over to their tiny dining table, produced a map from his sleeve, and slapped the parchment down. "It's time for a local geography lesson, foreigners," he declared. "Gather 'round."

The Harrys clustered by the table, and Avoka started pointing at various spots on the field of green-dotted beige that took up most of the map spread between them. "These are the locations of several major ancient structures that have disappeared from the desert, according to aerial photos taken by Kaepora Bluesmith—the mad scientist who lives in a flying house, if you recall," he said. "Points of interest for your quest, but not what I was sent to talk to you about. Just keep them in mind for after you've solved the more pressing issue."

Avoka's finger slid over to another area of beige. "This is what you need to focus on. Din River, or rather, the fact that it's not here. That major river is the water source that fills the aquifers and oases of Gerudo Desert through underground channels. Those green fields and gardens that feed the tribes out there won't stay green for long once all the wells and pumps run dry. Even worse, the train lines have been stolen, too, so there's no such thing as shipping snow down from the mountains to serve as drinking water. Not unless it's by wagon. Vaati did something more extreme this time and took the tracks instead of sending monsters to destroy the stations. Why he spent the extra magic to do that here in particular, we still don't know. There hasn't been any communication in or out."

Red rubbed his chin, his brows furrowed in thought. "Why take a river? Water power?" he asked. Vaati already had two kinds of crazy-strong magic. What would he need a river for?

"The river isn't going to flow unless he hooks it up to a continuous water supply, dummy," Blue said. "It's a channel, not a source."

"What did Vaati really steal?" Green asked. "I don't know about those missing old buildings, but taking the river has to have been an accident. He can't control the range of his magic, so he picks up things unintentionally every time he transports something big."

"He took the biggest human-run quarry in Hyrule—the Desert Fortune, usually located here in the Golden Cliffs." Avoka pointed to a vague shadowy spot in the flat-topped mountains to the east of the desert. "This is where the Gerudo get most of their building materials, Bluestone, and the gemstones they don't import from Death Mountain."

"He took a jewel mine?" Blue asked, puzzled. "Why not a bank? Or a treasure trove? A quarry is a rather roundabout way to get to riches."

"Because a bank is mainly full of Rupees, which make for ugly decorative jewels—too opaque, with no fire whatsoever—and treasure troves in Hyrule tend to be heavily defended by death traps and ancient protective magic designed specifically to keep creeps like Vaati from finding and raiding them. He might be able to infect a place with his magic, but he'd have a hard time shaking it down for its riches," Avoka explained. "If Vaati wants sparkle, it's easiest for him to snatch up a whole block of enriched stone in the form of, say, an easily-accessed open-air mine, and figure out the details later. No traps or curses to deal with, just the ire of all the workers he kidnapped."

The Harrys groaned. "Of course he took people again," Green sighed.

"He's kicked up a terrific sandstorm, too, so Kaepora couldn't see a damned thing within a day of the quarry disappearing. We're lucky she was already in the area and managed to get what pictures she did. The air above that whole corner of the country is so choked up with dust that it's all gone beige."

"So that's why," Red mused. From Link's house, right in the middle of Central Hyrule, one could distantly make out a brown haze in the sky to the southwest.

"It's the volcano ash all over again," Yellow said glumly.

"The sandstorm is more of a windstorm in the quarry area, so you won't have to worry about getting your skin scraped off just yet," Avoka told them. "If you're going to trek into the desert while the winds are still raging, though, you'll want to stop by a Gerudo clothier for the right outfits first. Those wizard robes of yours might block the sand, but you'll roast to death in that dark wool."

"We have the Lenses of Truth, at least," Red said, switching one set of magical glasses for the other. The artifacts' magic had a good chance of being able to cut just as cleanly through sandstorm haze as they could through dense rain. He tested the closeness of the spectacles' fit. Not perfectly pressed to his skin, but good enough that a little extra cloth wrapped around the edges would keep wind-blown sand out.

"You've got the lenses of…The Lens of Truth?!" Avoka exclaimed.

Red looked at him, meaning to point out that there were two lenses in the glasses, thus the name change, but did a double-take instead.

Like their harsh voices and rude attitudes, the two versions of Malfoy on either side of the dimensional Veil apparently shared something else: illusions. Avoka was not, in fact, silver-haired and red-eyed. His hair was a dull gray-blond instead, like yellowish ash. His eyes were magenta, and wide-open in shock and fear.

Red vanished the glasses immediately, letting his vision go blurry. If this version of Malfoy had a secret he wanted to keep, Red would let him keep it. He'd only butted into Malfoy's business because Malfoy had asked him to. "Yes, Lenses of Truth," he said casually. His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat as he put his more ordinary Hylian specs back on. "You know, magic glasses." Damn, he wished he didn't suck quite so hard at Hylian right now. "The first lens broke because…dimension things. Shadow Harry made them work again. They're good glasses."

Avoka was still pale. Red could see the fight to look calm in the one hand white-knuckling the meeting table and the creasing around his eyes. "The magic-drain isn't a problem?" he asked, sounding just a couple of notes shrill.

"There's a magic-drain?" Red asked in honest surprise. At one point, he'd been wearing the enchanted spectacles all the time. Had he wound up crashing into bed a little harder than usual? Maybe, now that he thought about it.

His dumb question broke the spell of fright locking the Sheikah in place. "Goddesses, you Dark World mages are ridiculous," Avoka muttered. Louder, he said, "Yes, there's a magic-drain. Certain Hylian items of power are fueled by the user's magic. Magic Rods—especially unspecialized ones like yours—more powerful enchanted armors, and sight-augmenting artifacts like the Lens of Truth are the main ones." He rolled his eyes. "They're things that most people have to use strategically and sparingly." After stowing the map on the table up his sleeve (how, Red wasn't sure), he took out a dark blue stone rectangle covered in pulsing turquoise runes from somewhere else in his uniform. "This Guidance Stone has a copy of the map with the missing structures marked. I know you've got at least one Navi Slate between you. Where is it?"

Green conjured his Navi Slate, making the Sheikah yelp in surprise, and held it out. "You didn't see me do that before, when the magic sinkhole opened up?" he asked.

"I was distracted by sensing part of the world cave in!" Avoka defended, snatching it out of his hand. "Conjuring a hundred enchantments' worth of technology out of nowhere—utterly mad," he grumbled, plugging the rectangle into the port at the bottom of the magical computer. He poked at the screen a bit, then set it down on the table. "Once that's done downloading, familiarize yourself with it a little before you start gearing up for the trip. In the meantime, you, c'mere." He pointed at Red and then jerked his thumb toward the door.

"Why?" Blue asked. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"We're gonna talk about stabbing things," Red lied cheerfully in English, "because I'm the violent one and he's good with knives."

Blue made a face. "Ew. Well go on, then."

Red followed Avoka out into the hall, then a little ways down so his brothers would have a harder time of eavesdropping. "So. The four of you can see through illusions," Avoka said stiffly.

"Yes," Red said. He paused to translate sentences into Hylian in his head. "It's okay. Malfoy is like you. He has a 'picture' on." He waved his hand in front of his face. "You can't see his 'picture' because of Light World eyes. Other people don't see his Zora stuff."

Avoka gasped. "Wait, really? He's got an illusion on, too?" He crossed his arms and frowned thoughtfully. "I never would have thought we had that, of all things, in common. What does he look like with it on?"

"Yellow-white hair, very light skin, eyes gray-yellow. They used to be gray only," Red said. "The picture is getting bad."

"So that's why I've seen him wearing make-up that didn't match his complexion at all. It must have looked right with the fading illusion on," Avoka mused. "He hasn't looked into buying a replacement enchantment? If all he needs is a color-change, it couldn't be more than a few hundred Rupees."

Red laughed. Rich kids thought alike across worlds, it seemed. "'A few hundred Rupees'," he repeated in a mimic of Malfoy's posh drawl. It combined horribly with his already bad Hylian. "That's a lot of money."

"I-I know that!" The tips of Avoka's pointed ears turned pink. "Still, you can tell him it's an option and let me know if he wants some potential contacts. Most illusionists are Sheikah, but there are a few Flying Zora craftsmen who have their own way of weaving those spells. My illusion was cast onto Bluestone, since it's the standard method these days. He can get something enchanted the old-fashioned way, though, if he's willing to pay a couple hundred Rupees more for something that doesn't glow and won't need a recharge in a few decades." He tapped on the ear-cuff he always had on. It was a slim stala band with two stone tabs that stuck out in front of his ear, each of which had a tiny chip of bright turquoise Bluestone in it. The boy was always wearing the accessory, but Red hadn't taken much notice of it before.

"Huh, neat," Red remarked. "So, good talk? I have to do stuff for the mission."

Avoka lunged forward and grabbed his shoulder. "I still have a few questions," he said urgently. "Like, why does Malfoy wear an illusion? And you won't tell anyone about this, will you?"

"Why would I tell people?" Gray-blond hair and purplish eyes might have meant something to the people of this world, but they were no more unusual to him than Avoka's glamoured coloring. Going around saying "this bloke I know is really a somewhat different set of colors" would just be mean and weird. He didn't even see any reason to tell his brothers. "Malfoy wears an, er," he paused to remember the word Avoka had used, "an illusion because he's Zora. He has...bad? Bad parents and friends." He had no idea what the Hylian word for "racist" was. "Green can explain with big words. Or Link. Green told Link how the bad works."

Avoka glanced over his shoulder at the door of the Harrys' room. "Hmm, maybe I should."

"Then let's go." Red started walking back. "You need your magic rectangle, too."

"It's a Guidance Stone, not a—hey, you're not going to ask about what you saw?"

Red paused and looked over his shoulder. "Do you want me to?"

"I guess I…don't know?" The Sheikah shuffled his feet. "I s-still haven't shown Link, and you're a lot l-like him, and you found out by accident, so technically I didn't have to say anything, which makes it k-kind of less scary?"

Red raised an eyebrow. Babbling was definitely an Avoka-only trait. It was kind of cute, he thought. The fierce, knife-wielding ninja-in-training with a habit of rambling when he was nervous. This guy and calm, carefully-spoken Link balanced each other well. "Do you want to tell me?" Red asked slowly.

Avoka hugged himself, looking around. Then he scurried over and leaned forward to speak in Red's ear. "I'm only half-Sheikah, but I can't going around looking like that for…reasons. Classified ones. Don't tell anyone."

Red nodded. "Okay." He found it a little funny that he was someone that both versions of Malfoy felt alright confiding to. "Want to talk to Green and Blue about the bad in the Dark World now?"

"Yeah, I'd like to learn more about where you're from. Commander Impa doesn't expect me back for a little while, so I have some time."

They walked back to the hotel room, where Red and Yellow busied themselves with figuring out what they'd buy that day as Blue and Green tag-teamed traumatizing Avoka with explanations of all the dumb prejudices that had apparently not caught on quite as thoroughly in the Light World. Red wished that Hyrule had popcorn so he could better enjoy the show.


Shadow Harry was roused awake from his uneasy slumber by another wave of uncomfortably muted negative emotion washing in from the Dark World. He sat up from the shadow he'd been napping in—the shade underneath a hanging planter in an elderly Gerudo's house. Around him, the sandstone walls hissed ominously and wooden shutters rattled loud enough to wake the dead. The city had been consumed by a vicious sandstorm for the last several days, after his boss had realized that the workers he'd brought over weren't intimidated enough to work for him.

"Wherrre is yourrrr KIIING?" the furious winds clawing at the door demanded. "Wheeere have youuu hidden hiiiim?" Vaati was determined to find the lone male of the Gerudo in order to press his unwilling slaves into compliance. Since Ganfei actually seemed like a decent guy whose subjects cared for him, Vaati probably had the right idea by trying to take him hostage. At this point, it was just a matter of wearing down the townsfolk hard enough for them to break and reveal their royal family's secret bunker.

Shadow Harry shuddered as a breeze squeezed through the small pressure-easing vents in the wall above him, dropping a handful of sand through his shadowy head. As much as he enjoyed feeling the fear of the citizens in this besieged city, he hated the inescapable sand. Each individual grain had its own shadow and its ever-shifting nature meant that it was constantly trying to carry away tiny pieces of him when he wasn't in his solid form. Sure, he could just pull himself back together, but the feeling of being involuntarily dissolved was unpleasant.

Judging by her snores, the house's occupant was asleep, so he drew himself up and solidified. Well, as much as he could in his current shape. He scowled at his hazy, swirling robes. Because Harry Potter was something of a shadow himself, the spirit's bond with the Lorulean-descended child was a tad broken. The boy didn't really need a darker reflection because he was more aware of his darkness than the warriors Shadow Harry usually rivaled, which clouded the mirror. The spirit was currently a vague thought rather than a clear idea, and thus an easy target for the pesky sand to carry off in his imperfect wizard form.

He shape-shifted into the adult version of a previous Four Sword bearer and stood on his toes to peer through a blue-tinted window. The world outside was an almost uniform field of dark visual fuzz. It was just dust, sand, and shadow for as far as the eye could see—all of one meter ahead.

Shadow Harry blew out a breath and ruffled his hair. His boss was past the scouting stage and was now working on building his utopia, so a lot of things were rolling forward. The quarry had presumably been taken so Vaati would have workers to build him a palace and jewels to decorate said palace with. Personally, Shadow would have just stolen the whole Gerudo city, thrown the residents back into Hyrule, and repurposed the place, but he didn't have the same flair for personalization as his boss. Vaati had also snatched up little snippets of other parts of the kingdom that the current bearers of the Four Sword were unlikely to miss due to their unfamiliarity with the country—train stations and sections of the Spirit tracks here, some ancient buildings and hidden cave systems there—to slow them down. Other potential hiding spots, those big and complex enough that Vaati didn't want to strain himself pulling and holding them across worlds, were busily being spliced into even more confusing labyrinths and used as practice material for his new and bizarre Dark World magic. While Vaati had no idea where the descendants of the Sacred Maidens might have hidden their family heirlooms, he could add difficulty to the Heroes' scavenger hunt by throwing dozens of wrenches into the works without the boys even being aware of it. It was a smart plan and pretty fun, so Shadow Harry was fine with it.

What he was less fine with was how Vaati was staking his claim on the Dark World and gathering up the magic to run all these ridiculously power-sucking spells of his. Shadow Harry had little doubt that Vaati was now taking advantage of the Heroes' predicament in the Light World to reestablish his magic-siphoning spell anchors in the Dark World. The spirit had been ordered to stay in the Light World and was being kept track of even without one of his eyes under possession, so sneaking away from his post without sufficient justification would earn him a harsh punishment, but Shadow Harry knew that something about those anchors had to be off. The only evidence of interdimensional effect he'd ever detected from the first set, crafted the old-fashioned way with malicious magic the shadow knew well, was the natural weak spot by Outset Isle that Vaati had kept pulling things through until it was ripe for a stable portal. These new anchors…whatever the Wind Mage had done to modify them was doing far less negligible damage on this side. The separation between worlds was thinning in this region; he could feel the anguish of the displaced Gerudo quarry workers even without a portal nearby.

Not only that, but there was a strange spot near the stolen quarry that felt like…apathy. There was no taint of death, nor tingle of lingering evil magic there, and yet he sensed destruction. It was as though everything in that area of the Golden Cliffs had simply shrugged and ceased caring about existence. The ground there was a uniform shade of purplish gray with no signs of native life to interrupt the blank slate. No sprouts of scrubby grass, squat baobab trees, nor coyotes on the hunt for rabbits, just crumbly-looking dirt. Around the area of those darkened cliffs there was a subtle sucking sensation, as though the air itself were attempting to grasp him. Some part of Shadow Harry—perhaps a survival instinct he'd been unaware of—was certain that giving into those gentle winds would have meant his permanent end, despite his relative immortality as a continually resurrected spirit.

The strange area had draped itself across the only footpath into the desert, so he'd spent some time observing that trail to see what the grayness was doing to the living things within it. A small Gerudo trading caravan had soon approached from the south, as he'd expected, and then ventured in after some trepidation. About two minutes into traversing the mystery zone, the humans had begun shrieking, sending out such waves of agony that Shadow Harry had been shocked to sense it. The color had leached out of them, the horses pulling their carts, and finally the carts themselves. Everything had gone still…and then the whole caravan had crumbled. Bodies, vehicles, and supplies had become one with the slowly spreading field of quiet annihilation, as if nothing had interrupted the grayness to begin with. To his senses, the light of those travelers' existence had been ripped away—stolen, not simply released to the world beyond in the manner of a natural death. The Shadow of Hyrule had found himself so unsettled by the sight that he'd fled back into Oasis City to take refuge in a pocket of shadow among people who were suffering properly. None of that…whatever he'd just witnessed. That just hadn't been right.

He'd briefly returned to the site earlier to fling around some of his Giant Bombs and create rock falls on either side of the gray area—a barricade that would keep more unwitting travelers from turning to dust. The destruction would eventually spread past the boulders, but for now, the pass was securely impassable. If the blockades messed up trading or whatever, he didn't care. He just didn't want more Light World souls vanishing from his grasp like that. Death was one thing, for it led to reincarnation, but life force getting sucked into nowhere (or worse, destroyed permanently) was another.

His ties to the blessed lands of Hyrule screamed that something was terribly wrong about all of this, yet he had no way of discerning anything more specific than that. He hated being so out-of-the-loop! Sure, he was just a lackey to any dark mage holding his leash, but he was a high-level lackey, dammit. Even Ganondorf, foul-tempered and taciturn as he'd been, had told him stuff. Vaati had used to as well; he knew that Shadow Harry was most effective when he knew how to present the biggest hindrance to his rivals. Since his Dark-World-influenced mood shift, though, the Wind Mage had decided to make things more difficult for his most powerful minion. Shadow Harry didn't have nearly enough information to work with. What did the Heroes have to do in order to succeed? Collect the power crystals of the Sacred Maidens, yes, but what about the rest? What was causing the gray area and what would the Harrys have to do in order to stop it? How could he lay a tripwire in a hallway he was forbidden from entering?

And then there were the less pleasant questions that came to him—the ones he wouldn't have had to think about if Vaati weren't acting strange and wielding more power than he'd ever possessed before. Was it a good idea to lay a tripwire at all with regards to that dimensional anomaly? Vaati was messing with the very fabric of existence. Just how serious and time-sensitive was this? Even if he weren't designed to create problems rather than solve them, Shadow Harry still had zero frame of reference to work off of in order to figure this out. He hadn't been called upon to face every single Hero of Hyrule; if any of his mortal counterparts had faced something like the destructive apathy creeping centimeter by centimeter across the Golden Cliffs, he hadn't been awake to see it. This was new, and he was out of his depth.

He pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. 'I'm going to have to be helpful again, aren't I?' he despaired. There was a chance that the spreading blankness was not, in fact, a thing he should put stumbling blocks in front of beyond the boulders keeping unwary mortals away from it.

Chewing on his lower lip, he conjured the crystal of curse magic he'd pulled from that professor at the Harrys' school. Couldn't he still cause some small problems? Make the Heroes trip up a little? He'd experimented enough with this solidified chunk of foreign magic to figure out how to separate and manipulate the different elements of the curse—the trigger for the transformation, what forms were tied to the transformation, whether the contagion was actually infectious and what creatures it could affect, and so on. It had taken a lot of work to figure those things out! Didn't he deserve to put some horrible shape-shifting beasties out into the world? Hadn't his hard work earned him the privilege of bringing Wolfoses into the modern era? He liked to think so.


Two identical nasal voices echoed through the cavern.

"Ugh, I'm so bored!"

"There's nothing to do in here."

"I wanna go out."

"But Daddy said no and Mother always listens to him."

"I bet we could freeze-burn the exit hatch open."

"Yeah! Although it's not exactly quiet and sneaky…"

Korva sighed, sat up on her bed, and looked over at her elder sisters. She was six and they were more than twice her age, but it seemed like she was getting something they didn't. Namely, that the yelling wind wanted their dad, and since they were connected to their dad, it might want them, too. The wind was everywhere, dotted with funny-looking Keese that acted like its eyes. Somehow, Koume and Kotake were completely unfazed by the fact that the sandstorm outside was fierce enough to take your skin off even without all the yelling it was doing. Korva was the one with wind-magic here, and there was no way she'd ever want to go out in that kind of weather. Her sisters would have no way to block the sand at all, yet here they were, making plans.

"You could die, you know," she called over to the tiered beds her sisters were lounging on. "The sandstorm is really bad and the thing living in it might be looking for all of us."

Koume sneered. "We're not stupid, twerp. We'd cover up, of course."

"It's not like the wind-thing would know who we are if we're just a couple of cloaked figures in the storm," Kotake said. "As far as it knows, we're nothing special."

"It'd be wrong, of course," Koume said with a smirk, wisps of flame rising from her hair.

"Why do you want to go out, anyway? Is the sand and wind so exciting?" Korva asked. There were plenty of things to do in the family bunker. Their father was well-prepared for her sisters' short attention spans and destructive tendencies. There were all kinds of board games, make-up and clothing for them to play dress-up with, and a training room supplied with various objects for them to break with their ice and fire magic. Every member of the family had a fully kitted-out Sheikah Slate with all the games and functions and plenty of books downloaded, too. Korva was perfectly happy with just her Sheikah Slate. She'd been reading action comics about Hyrule's past Heroes and Champions during the several days they'd all been cooped up. There sure had been a lot of those guys.

"We want to leave because we're bored, duh. I'm sure we could find something more exciting to do out there," Koume said. "Maybe we'll find some Yiga I can light on fire."

"Last time they tried a raid, I froze an agent's head solid," Kotake bragged. "Even if I didn't manage to freeze his brain, he definitely must have suffocated to death."

Koume rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know. You won't shut up about it."

"It's impressive, okay? It's not like you've managed to kill anyone in one shot before."

"Have too! I lit a Yiga's whole body on fire in one go!"

"That's not an instant kill!"

"Is too!"

Korva reached into the cubby carved into the wall next to her bed and took out a set of enchanted purple earmuffs. Sliding them on, she continued watching her sisters silently bicker. Koume climbed down from the upper bunk to have a slap-fight with Kotake.

Good, they'd managed to knock themselves out of sync. When the twins were bouncing ideas back and forth, they were almost unstoppable. If they got one another mad and started arguing, they couldn't focus well enough to cause trouble to anyone but themselves. She could be sure that they wouldn't break out…yet. Korva would still have to tell the guards to keep an eye out for an assault on the bunker door. Koume and Kotake would come up with a plan to escape for certain if they wanted to leave that badly, and there was no telling what her big sisters might get up to if they set themselves loose without any kind of supervision. They'd just been boasting about murder, after all.

Korva didn't have to be as old as her sisters to know that hurting and killing others was bad. Koume and Kotake didn't seem to care about that, though. They'd hurt a lot of servants around the castle before Mother had started letting them go out with war parties to defend camps and villages from Yiga attacks. No amount of punishment or scolding had made them stop picking on their nannies and teachers and the pretty sparrows and herons that stopped to rest in the garden behind the palace. Only pointing the violence in a new direction had worked. Her sisters were "different" that way, as Mother put it. Korva was glad the twins cared just enough about family that they didn't use her for target practice, too.

With the room now magically quiet, she settled in with a comic series about the Hero of Winds—her favorite so far. The Hylian had had magic like hers, even if he'd needed to use a special baton to do it. Most people thought wind-powers were weak and stupid, her sisters included, so it was nice to see someone use them to save the world.

She glanced over at Koume and Kotake. Their fight had become hair-pulling and scrabbling on the floor, but they weren't flinging around magic yet, so it wasn't serious. If she started having to duck, she'd go and get Dad. Her sisters thought he was dopey and lame, but they listened to him. He was one of the few people they kind of liked, even though he didn't have magic. Daddy was the one who bought them pretty clothes and threw parties for them if they behaved and only hurt the bad people, after all.

A bolt of ice flew over her head and froze against the wall above her. A ball of fire followed, causing melted water to splash onto Korva's head. She shuddered at the sudden spray, then sighed. Time to fetch Dad before Koume set her bed on fire again. Hopefully her sisters wouldn't manage to organize themselves and come up with an evil plan while she wasn't there to keep an eye on them.


Notes:

-Hyrule doesn't have oil. At all. The Light World was created differently from the Dark World, so circumstances never lined up for the formation of it. Their chemical science is also at a very medieval level, if not even more primitive. As a result, they have no petrol/gas, no plastics, no synthetic fabrics, no synthetic dyes, etc. Instead, magic is used to give natural materials a lot of the properties we use synthetics and refined chemicals for.

-Hylian toothpaste coming in tubs instead of tubes is derived from a strange Twitter thread by user dreampai1 in which, for some reason, they claimed Croatian toothpaste came in tubs (it doesn't).

-Gerudo Desert in this era is greener some spots than it is in BOTW, thanks to underground irrigation lines. Still very hot, still very dry and full of sand, but more like an ancient Egyptian city along the Nile than a society in the middle of the great wastes.

-Link knows that Avoka wears an illusion charm because he can hear the song of it, but he's never asked to see under it. The same goes for Avoka's cloth mask. He's never seen Avoka's "true" face, but it doesn't bother him because if his friend is most at ease wearing masks, who is Link to refuse him that comfort?

-I'm going to post art of the Gerudo Royal Family later, since this chapter is more of a teaser than a full introduction. In this era, Koume and Kotake are two scarily capable, violence-loving thirteen-year-olds whose shared moral compass is guided pretty much entirely by their loving parents. Their younger sibling, Korva, is a quietly responsible vei who can often be found lurking in the background to keep an eye on her dangerously impulsive sisters.

Next month: back to the castle to meet with friends and learn a few new tricks from a couple of resident Useful Adults.