Content warning for arrow wounds, blood, a mention of throwing up, and the Harrys' state of mental health.
"No, you have too many soldiers positioned to the south. Stalfoses might attack from Hyrule Field, but Bokoblins could mount a more organized assault from the western forest." Impa tapped the map with the loud leather tip of her gesturing stick. "Clear the area, start again, and remember your resources."
Avoka scowled furiously at his aunt before sweeping his arm across the table. Several of the metal figurines representing city guardsmen clattered to the stone floor.
"You've dropped something," Impa said blandly.
With a cry of frustration, Avoka thumped his fist on the table. "Okay, I might've jumped to conclusions with those strangers in town! I messed up! I get it!" he burst out. "But why do I have to do this for three hours?" Everyone in the castle with ears knew how much he'd wanted to apprentice as a knight and loathed the traditions that had kept him from doing so. Practicing military arrangements while being barred from associating with the actual military was torture for him, and Impa was well aware.
"In either of the life roles available to you, knowing how to protect the castle is a must, even if being on the front lines isn't your place," his aunt said with aggravating calm. "My sister was trained to do this, as were the other defenders of Hyrule in our family. The same goes for your father and his predecessors." They were lines she'd used so often to pacify him that they only pissed him off more now.
"Father was allowed to become a knight! He could arrange troops and be in the troops!"
"Yes, because his life role is different from yours and earning valor was expected of him. You, too, were born to do certain things, whether you like it or not. Take heart in the fact that you have a very patient aunt who is willing to put up with your kicking and screaming to expand your learning regimen. If not for me, you wouldn't have had any tactical training until you reached fifteen." She tapped the map. "Now organize them again, this time for a sustained siege on the southern wall with cannons on the enemy side."
Avoka slumped over and thumped his head down on the table. "No."
"You're going to get teenaged forehead grease on the parchment, Nephew."
"Oh, good. Then you can sell it to one of the creeps in town that obsesses over spying on my bedroom and buy two maps."
Impa dropped onto the bench on the other side of the table. "Child."
It was an invitation to explain, so Avoka took it. "I want to go talk to my friend and you're keeping me here instead, Auntie," he burbled against the thin leather under his cheek. "First you made me run through stealth exercises for ages, now you've got me stuck in here doing troop movements for another hour, and I've got two classes after this with boring old Cruthers! And on top of that, the Oni expects me to—"
"If you don't keep in the habit of addressing Queen Ambi by something resembling her proper name or title, you'll inevitably spout one of those scandalous nicknames in a formal setting," Impa chided. "Or in the hall when she addresses you as one of her daughter's guards. Don't think I missed your slip two days ago."
"—Her Horned Majesty expects me to have my embroidery assignment done by the end of the week or she'll go through my closet and infect it with her fashion sense again," Avoka finished. "So you're eating into my limited free time to prove a point that I've already conceded and preventing me from fulfilling my daily quota of socialization with my peers in so doing. That isn't healthy for me, you know; I'm weird and isolated enough as it is. The library's books on mind-healing say so."
"There are other Royal Guard trainees you could speak to and make friends with," Impa pointed out.
Avoka suppressed a wince. He'd never tell his aunt, because he wasn't the mewling suck-up that his fellow trainees took him for, but he was the punching bag of his class. He was the obvious choice: short, scrawny, clumsy (by Sheikah standards), and terrible at relating to people his age. Between his official background as an orphan from a Hylian city and his lack of natural Sheikah abilities like night-vision and blending into darkness, his questionable heritage was another weak spot in any façade he put up. He could handle it, though. Social rejection and a few punches and insults behind instructors' backs was worth the personal freedom his Royal Guard apprenticeship afforded him.
"I like being loud when I can and they're as jumpy as rabbits, Auntie. They give me the stink-eye whenever I enter a room," he said, which was part of the truth. "It's better than the looks I get when I'm in my other uniform, but either way, I doubt we'll ever be friends."
Impa sighed. "Argue a case for why you deserve to visit your commoner friend today. Go." She rapped her knuckles on the table.
"Today in town, I saw a trio of boys I suspected of being Yiga clansmen in disguise."
"Why did you suspect this?"
"Because they had Link's face, and it wouldn't be the first time I've seen an impostor pretend to be him. His position as the Mad Owl's apprentice makes him a point of vulnerability in her smithy's security, both because he's foolishly trusting and because his sister is often too distracted to notice any shenanigans afoot."
Impa raised an eyebrow. "You've just called your friend foolish."
"He is, which is why he has me," Avoka said matter-of-factly. Link, being pacifistic, quick to help, and friendly to a fault, was an easy mark for anyone with even mildly nefarious intent. That was why, in the almost three years Avoka had known him, the young blacksmith had been knocked out and replaced once and held hostage twice so his captors could pump his sister for information on her Bluestone experiments. Sometimes Avoka wondered if Link's sweet nature drew trouble out of the woodwork like ants to honey. He continued, "But because, in hindsight, those strangers might have been telling the truth—Yiga clansmen wouldn't get the height and hair color of a mark so obviously wrong—there must be some other strange phenomenon afoot that would cause multiple foreigners nearly identical to my friend to appear in town."
"Yes, that would be the sudden migration of all those foreigners into the middle of the city," Impa said dryly. "A force of magic that warped the area to create an entire new district, might I remind you, which I highly doubt a small handful of children your age managed to cause. Not to mention that entire unreachable castle that appeared out of nowhere." She shook her head. "While my agents have had some difficulty bypassing the language barrier to understand how those 'British' came to be here, I wouldn't discount the possibility of children that coincidentally resemble your friend just so happening to exist elsewhere in the world before being sent to Hyrule. As you admitted, they weren't perfect look-alikes."
"But Link still deserves to hear that there are suspected face-stealers going around and affecting his reputation!" Avoka argued. "They were familiar enough with this kingdom to know Hylian, unlike the other British. If they had that level of knowledge, they should have understood their duty to report to the castle and explain themselves as soon as possible! The fact that they didn't means they could be up to something."
"It doesn't often occur to a peasant that they ought to speak to a king," Impa countered. "You've projected your own worldview over what your persons-of-interest would think. This is why I keep trying to drum the importance of understanding others into your thick skull." She flicked her nephew on the forehead with the leather tip of her pointer, making him wince. "Social background has a significant influence on a mark's actions, and it's visible through a variety of cues that you clearly missed." Impa tutted at him in a way that promised remedial training sessions on top of his already heavy class load. "Regardless of where they came from, those boys were common folk. If they were afraid of a yappy pup like you, how do you think they'd fare when explaining their reason to seek an audience with the king to a Royal Guard that looks like me?" She set her face in the intimidating stony expression that Sheikah warriors wore when on duty. Avoka could almost pull it off when he had his mask pulled up, but it just looked like a pout when he practiced bare-faced in the mirror.
"W-Well, that's irrelevant to the argument," he backtracked. "It isn't a point against me visiting Link today."
Impa leaned forward on her elbows. "Ah, but it is. Instead of considering the circumstances created by recent events and spending some of that free time I cleared in your schedule to properly observe individuals you considered suspicious, you leapt upon your marks like an overeager fox and ruined any chances at a friendly information-gathering interaction. Regardless of whether you are on duty or what uniform you're wearing, never forget that a good impression and casual conversation are among the most useful tools in an agent's arsenal; even the Yiga understand this," Impa said. "Because you failed your self-imposed mission, you're being punished for your lack of patience by doing something especially demanding of careful thinking. You're not at this table because you were rude to a random gaggle of foreigners; you're here because you made a misstep that would have blown an investigation if it were a situation with real stakes." She stood up and stepped back over the bench. "You may visit Link later today if you add at least three hundred stitches to your embroidery project after your other lessons. Now, set up the knights for a cannon siege from the south."
Avoka lifted his head from the table and reluctantly resumed pushing the little metal soldiers around. "Once I'm good enough to sneak past you, I'm going to run away from the castle and go to the Lost Woods," he said sourly. "Skull Kids don't have cruel aunties and nagging oni to deal with."
A teasing smile showed at the corners of Impa's lips. "True, but they also don't have mortal friends, and what would that sweet blacksmith of yours do without his scary protector?"
Avoka disguised his blush by ducking under the table to retrieve a dropped figurine.
A loud, echoing rumble from the volcano roused the Harrys from the nap they'd fallen into after their busy morning. Blue awoke to the rabbit-ified conveyor belt he'd curled up on rattling under him. He reluctantly pushed himself up from its snuggly confines and watched the room vibrate. The inactive machines produced an ominous metallic growl as their internal components buzzed, while the stala floor sang a low, pure note. The rumbling faded after around a minute, though the metallic ringing hung around for a while longer.
Yellow and Green sat up from the big, flat console they'd transfigured into a bunny-eared bed with twin yawns. "I love rabbits," Green said sleepily, rubbing his eyes.
Red rolled off of his pile of sand and banished the stubbornly clinging dirt with a few Scouring Charms. "I guess that's our cue to get going, huh?" he remarked.
"Ugh, I guess," Blue groaned. He wasn't too sore, thanks to his soft bed and the Red Potions they'd been downing on their way up the mountain, but a sense of mental exhaustion pulled heavily at him. Over the course of half a day, he'd explored the main street of a new city, un-brainwashed the draconic avatar of a volcano, traversed a superheated obstacle course, fought some metal air-cannon snakes, watched Green take an arrow to the chest, done a hell of a lot of running, watched Green get eaten, and helped Green defeat a giant sand worm. He felt tired down to his soul and he doubted it was even late in the afternoon yet. As such, his mental filter was a little coarser than usual.
"Not that I endorse human sacrifice, but it sure was nice that the temples back home kept us energized," Blue mused aloud. "I have to wonder whether that's just a Dark World thing or the Hylians over here were dabbling in their own Dark Arts, too."
Yellow frowned. "Human sacrifice isn't convenient—it's evil!" he said sternly. "It's bad enough they did it in ancient Lorule. I sure hope they weren't building people's lives into the temples here, too."
"I…probably meant to say that differently," Blue admitted before yawning. "I'm not tired, but I'm so tired."
After they'd all gotten up and cast Untransfiguration Spells to return their napping locations to normal, they ambled over to a suspicious spot on the wall. While munching on some of the food they'd been setting aside from their meals leading up to this trip, Green had looked over at the slightly darker stone and decided to test it with his sword. According to him, the awful clang it produced meant there was a potential opening there.
Green shook out his arms and conjured their new Dragon Hammer. As his brother wound up, Blue pressed his hands tight over his ears. Following some experimentation that had definitely contributed to them needing a nap, they'd learned that the tool didn't always activate its rocket when swung—only when you really meant it. Blue supposed that made its wielder less likely to accidentally snap their spine or lose an arm with an ill-considered swing.
When Green stepped forward and threw all his weight into a mighty strike, the hammer's head quickly became a streak of bluish light. The section of hollow stone split apart with a thunderous, heart-stopping crack that made Blue jump and look up fearfully at the ceiling. It stayed solid. Blue breathed a relieved sigh.
A set of factory doors labeled in faded white paint showed through the broken stone. Blue mentally sounded out the unfamiliar word and puzzled through a translation. '"Hiibaikart". Hee-bye-cart? Hiiben is "to lift", so, er…"lifting car"?' He perked up. "Ooh, it's a lift! I wonder how this one works," he said excitedly. "A pulley system? Hydraulics? Pure magic?"
Red rolled his eyes, while Green sized up the doors with a grim set to his jaw. "So long as it doesn't drop us to our deaths, I don't care," Green said as he held up his Navi Slate to the access reader. "Please let us in," he muttered. The reader blinked white and the doors opened. "Oh, good. Either they let visitors on here or the security on the card readers went wonky after the place was shut down."
Blue poked his head into the lift. It was utilitarian and built large enough to accommodate multiple Gorons, but otherwise indistinguishable from an ordinary elevator back in England. To his surprise the walls were paneled in stala rather than iron, which was an unexpectedly expensive choice. Maybe it had been done for greater durability in the event of a collapse? Bright blue-white panels gave it a comfortably well-lit and functional appearance, but the button panel was unfortunately lacking. As far as he could tell (because the buttons were labeled "1K", "0K", and "1A"), it had been designed to only travel between the ground floor, first mining floor, and first basement. It was a way to make progress, but far from a shortcut.
They piled into the lift and Green hit the "1A" button. "I'm assuming that stands for 'basement'," he said with a shrug. "Does 'anden-kai' start with an 'a', for you?" His brothers nodded.
The elevator descended smoothly. There wasn't even the faintest hum of machinery as it slid down, which Blue would have expected to be particularly loud in an industrial lift. "It's magic," he decided. During one of his chats with Zelda, which had drifted onto the topic of infrastructure, she'd talked about how moving parts in Hylian buildings had been animated by magic because it was easier and safer to enchant a block of stone than install a steam engine and hydraulics to do the same, especially since they'd liked some of their lifts to move sideways.
The lift came to a gentle stop and let them out into a room that, like the one they'd taken a nap in, had functional temperature shielding. Another thing it had was plenty of Bokoblins.
Conveyor belts galore zig-zagged the room in chaotic, sometimes interlaced layers. Some were rolling and some lay still; the difference was made obvious by the thick layer of sand still covering the nonfunctional machinery. Around a dozen Bokoblins were posted around the large room on random layers of the mess of conveyors, their crystalline red eyes trained on the massive sand pit covering the floor.
As Blue studied the room, some of the belts moved—not only like conveyors, but like stairs. The magical staircases at Hogwarts had been stuck in place since Vaati had clawed at the castle's magic, but that was their enchantment right there! The wandering belts even moved at random to different landings within reach rather than following the same pattern! Hylian animation charms were consistent; wizardly ones were less predictable.
"Magic experiment. Shadow Harry called Vaati's new dragon a magic experiment," he muttered to himself. "But experimenting with what magic?" It had been made apparent that the Wind Mage's control over time and space was clumsy at best, and so far the only other magic he'd been using had been his wind-powers and Hylian monster-conjuring. He had a ton of pure, unadulterated wizard magic on hand, though, thanks to him sucking the life out of Hogwarts's grounds, and he'd been observing their spellcasting through Shadow Harry for months now. It was only logical that he'd want to find a way to practice finer control over his new abilities.
"No wonder this place looks so weird! Vaati was using charms to re-size things!" Blue exclaimed. "All those misshapen shelves were probably his first attempts!"
The nearest Bokoblin cocked an ear in the direction of his shout and then squinted suspiciously at the open elevator doors. Blue buttoned his lip and pressed against the sides of the lift along with the others.
"What do you mean?" Green whispered next to him. "Are you saying that Vaati's trying to be a wizard?"
"Well, he has a bunch of our world's magic now, doesn't he?" Blue whispered back. "When he had his tantrum and got impatient, he tore enough magic out from under the castle to kill everything around it—even the dirt, somehow. He's stolen more than enough to throw at experiments like this." He gestured in the direction of the moving conveyors beyond the wall.
"How would that help him, though? I mean, he's already super powerful." Green peered around the corner to check whether the lookout monster was still suspicious.
"Wizard magic is as quick as saying a word and flicking a wand, but most Hylian magic is all in the preparation. If you want to turn a rock into a rabbit, it isn't just one little incantation. You'd have to enchant a staff specializing in transformation spells on natural materials—which involves a lot of really tricky singing to overcome the blessings on the land—then come up with a whole song for the spell itself, then translate that song into a gesture somehow. Or you could enchant an instrument and call upon your composed song-spells with summarized tunes, but I don't know how you'd even begin to turn a flute or a trumpet into a wand—"
Green, now studying the monster-filled room beyond, snapped his fingers impatiently for Blue to speed it up.
"Wizard magic has its limitations, particularly when it comes to crafting stable, layered enchantments and conjuring intelligent living things, but it has way more options for animation, shaping, transformation, and other object manipulation," Blue summarized. "For someone who wants to play God, the branch of Charms alone would be a massive toy box. If Vaati ever figures out Transfiguration, we're screwed."
Yellow looked stricken. "D-Do you think we were showing Vaati t-transfiguration when we were turning rocks into rabbits earlier?" he whispered fearfully. "I don't want him to turn us into rabbits!"
"He doesn't care enough about us to turn us into rabbits, Yellow. We're just the spiders he set outside instead of squishing," Red assured him.
Green withdrew from his investigation of the next room. "Great pep-talk," he said dryly to Red.
"I thought it was a pretty good metaphor."
"So, here's the plan," Green began in a low voice. "We need to get across the sand on the floor and up on the conveyors as soon as possible. We also need to split up so they can't hit all of us with a volley of arrows at once. There are three belts that are low enough to the ground for us to reach—one to the left, another to the right, and one in the center. The middle one is closest, but it has at least six Bokoblins posted around it. Each of the other ones has four, I think. I couldn't see everything from here."
Green went into a runner's crouch at the edge of the doorway, just out of the lookout's sight. "I couldn't see an exit, so we'll have to kill these archers while we hunt it down it unless we want to get shot full of arrows," he said. "I'm going to take the middle track and see what happens." He sprinted out of the lift. Sand flew up behind him, kicked up both by his boots and the arrows peppering the ground at his heels. Trepidation fluttered in Blue's stomach as Green vaulted up on the conveyors, summoned his Magic Rod, and started running and gunning the Bokoblins shooting at him with Arrow-Conjuring Spells and Severing Charms. Four Bokoblins fell from the conveyors, two with their bows sheared in half.
'He makes that look easy,' Blue thought anxiously. While he had all the same muscle-memory and athleticism that Green did, it was really the application of those skills that mattered. A sense of timing, knowing when to use which approach, and understanding all the abilities at his disposal were what made the difference between him and his more physically adept siblings. Also, the idea of getting shot with an arrow was terrifying. Those things could go through chain mail, which he wasn't even wearing because it had been too expensive for them to buy back in Castle Town. His brittle ribcage and helpless organs didn't stand a chance.
Red ran out into the open and took a sharp right. Fewer arrows hit the sand behind him than they had in Green's wake, though one of the armed Bokoblins on the ground was tracking Red's movements a little too carefully for Blue's liking. He sent a bright, attention-grabbing Sunburst Spell at the monster to foul its aim. It jumped in surprise and fired its arrow into the dirt.
Blue grinned at his successful intervention. These new glasses were working out great!
Yellow hooked an arm around the back of his neck and yanked him down. Through his legs, Blue saw an arrow bounce off the back of the lift at around chest-height. "Why don't we go together?" Yellow suggested, pulling him up. "You take the front and I watch the rear?"
"Sure!" Blue squeaked.
They took their shields off their belts and fled from the elevator as more arrows clanged off of its stala interior. Blue gritted his teeth as he fought against the drag of his iron-plated boots through the sand. Running through this stuff was bad enough without his outfit making it worse! He blocked an arrow from above with his shield, conjured his Magic Lamp, and chucked it up at the Bokoblin archer as he passed it. The monster was spattered in flaming oil and toppled from its perch as it frantically clawed at its skin. While that Bokoblin was occupied, Blue summoned his Magic Rod and fired off arrows at one currently taking aim at him. That was when he learned that the Arrow-Conjuring Spell, being a dangerous cheerleading spell rather than something actually designed to mimic a bow and arrow, wasn't designed for accurately hitting human-sized targets over that kind of distance. As a widening spray of arrows passed it by, the Bokoblin took its shot.
Blue's reflexive dodge landed the arrow in his upper arm rather than his chest. His running steps became a drunken wobble as pain overrode his ability to coordinate his limbs. Light-headed from agony, he pawed at the wooden shaft sticking out of his right bicep.
Yellow slapped Blue's hand away from the arrow, ducked under his good arm, and half-carried him until they were on a conveyor under the Bokoblin archer. While Blue sat on the wide iron tread, staring at his injury and wondering what the hell he'd do about it, Yellow crouched in front of him and sent Incendio fireworks at any Bokoblins who could see them from their vantage points. The spells didn't slay the monsters, but at least sent them running for cover.
"We should really talk to P'fessor Lupin when we get back," Blue observed from his somewhat detached mental position. Conjured monsters were Dark Arts. There were defensive spells that would work better against the Dark Arts than their little bucklers. Lupin, being the teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts, would know those spells. "If Green gets a sword tutor, I getta magic tutor. S'only fair."
Yellow turned to him, his face ashen. "Oh no, you're slurring." He tried laying Blue down, which drew an agonized scream from Blue when the head of the arrow in his arm hit the conveyor belt. "I'm so sorry! Bad idea, bad idea!" Yellow bleated, pulling Blue back into a sitting position.
"Any cure for it, Doctor?" Blue asked dizzily. He was breathing in controlled intervals to keep himself from screaming, but it still felt like he didn't have enough air. "I dunno a spell for this."
"I-I don't want…It's too…" Tears ran freely from Yellow's eyes. He ran his hands through his hair and pulled at it, looking close to breaking. Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them. "I know a Muggle method to get the arrow out," he declared with less of a quiver in his voice. "A-And it does need to come out before you drink a Red Potion, because healing potions always do something weird to wounds with big stuff in them. This is going to h-hurt, so, erm…" He patted himself down, then cursed, which made Blue jolt in surprise. Wow, he must have been in a really bad state! "I-I don't have a-anything for you to b-bite down on, sorry. I'll have to remember that next time," Yellow said, chewing on his lower lip. "Just, erm, keep your tongue out of the way and try to p-pass out before you break your teeth, okay?"
"Pass out before wha—?"
Yellow pointed his Magic Rod at the fletched side of the arrow. "Diffindo!"
The arrow jolted hard when the spell sliced through it. Blue barely heard his own scream over the jagged lightning bolt of pain sizzling through his arm. When the urge to leave his current reality rose to claim him, Blue let the comforting darkness whisk him away.
He awoke to Yellow pressing a bottle to his lips. His arrow wound was shrieking with the fire of a thousand suns and threatening to suffocate his brain. "I don't know how to make you swallow while you're unconscious," Yellow said apologetically. "But at least the arrow's out!"
Blue greedily drank the fish-tasting potion. The agony peeled away like a greased plaster, replaced by a rush of physical energy that Blue was too mentally exhausted to appreciate.
"Scourgify," Yellow said, startling Blue.
"Why are you cleaning me?" he asked.
Yellow looked wan and a tad green. "Er, when I, erm…p-pulled the arrow through, there was a lot of b-blood that it was h-holding in," he said with supreme discomfort. "Also, I kinda threw up—not on you—because of s-some really bad m-memories." He hugged himself and shuddered. "Sorry. You were the one that got hurt. And Green was the one, back then. I shouldn't be so dramatic about things."
"You shouldn't be so dramatic about watching yourself almost die twice?" Blue reiterated incredulously.
Yellow went wide-eyed and shook his head. "You weren't dying! The arrow had a lot of blood around it, but I don't think it hit your brachial artery—"
"You're deflecting," Blue cut in.
Caught mid-tactic and without any contingencies, Yellow went silent without further protests. He looked away, his shoulders tensing defensively.
"You need to talk to someone about this. Yes, I was the one injured, but I'm sure medics and doctors can wind up permanently shell shocked by some of what they see. The human brain is designed to be revolted at the sight of graphic injuries as a survival measure. You've seen yourself on your proverbial operating table twice," Blue told him. "Being disturbed by that isn't 'causing trouble' or 'being dramatic'. If you could see that kind of thing without being unnerved, I'd be afraid you'd gone off the deep end." He put his hands on Yellow's shoulders. "At some point, I think we should speak with Madam Pomfrey. She won't approve of what we've been doing, I'm sure, but she'd know the most about severe medical situations and how to mentally endure what you see."
"I can't talk to her about this!" Yellow squeaked, horrified. "How do you think she'd feel, knowing that students under her care are seeing things like that?"
Blue felt like his brain had hit a curb. He stared at his brother with blank incomprehension. "How do I think she would feel?" He gave Yellow a shake. "How do you feel, you bloody idiot?"
"Erm, worried about you? I mean, you had a whole arrow through your arm—"
"Yellow." Blue laid his forehead against his brother's. "I love you, but your brain is full of so much self-sacrificing emotional baggage that I want to jettison everything in the plane." He pulled back and fixed Yellow with a stare that Green had described many times as "intense" and "you're freaking me out". "I'm going to put this in Yellow-speak so it filters through your terrifying idea of logic. You're hurting your brothers by hurting yourself, and it would make us feel a lot better if you would stop doing that. As much as you're afraid of seeing us physically hurt, that's how it feels for us when we see you breaking down inside like this."
Yellow's expression of horror morphed into terrible guilt, which took Blue several seconds of mental gymnastics to understand. "No, that doesn't mean you should bury everything even deeper," he said in the same tone Aunt Marge used on rare occasions to lecture her dog. "That will make the breaking worse, and the rest of us will only feel more terrible about it. To make things better, you need to start talking to us about what's bothering you before you explode and rain shards of your sanity everywhere."
Yellow's lips pinched with doubt. "Like how Professor Lupin wanted us to talk to him and our friends about the Dursleys?" he asked.
Blue blinked. Huh. There were certain parallels that he hadn't noticed. He hadn't kept up with that request because, well…there were monsters to fight and million other less unpleasant things to do than have those discussions, but perhaps the offer held some merit? "Yes, like that," he said firmly. "Now, could you continue helping me stay alive while we deal with the Bokoblins over here and find a door?"
Yellow sniffled and smiled. "That, I can do!"
With Blue charging ahead and Yellow covering him, they raced up the levels of conveyor belts. Blue ran up a tilted tread, his speed much improved by the direction it was rolling in, and jumped for the next layer up. He caught the edge of another functional belt, making sure to keep his fingers out of its jostling joints, and used its motion to pull himself up. He ran against its direction, leapt to a sand-covered conveyor across from it, and clambered up a series of stair-stepped sandy treads until he was atop the whole mechanical mess. From there, he had an excellent vantage point to see the remaining Bokoblin archers from.
"You're lucky I don't know how to cast a Blasting Curse," he muttered as he took aim. He raised one arm like a horizontal bar in front of him, rested the shaft of his staff on it, and closed one eye to sight over its crystal globe. "Diffindo." One Bokoblin toppled backward from its perch on a lower level of the conveyors, a smoking line blooming across its chest. Blue clicked his tongue in annoyance. Damn, he'd missed the thing's bow. That would make slaying it on the ground more irritating. Blue turned, ducked an arrow, and took aim at the monster who'd shot it with a vicious glare. He took the archer down with a Severing Charm to the head. The spell didn't do much damage to anything larger than a Keese, but watching the Bokoblin fly backward like a Moblin had socked it in the snout was so gratifying.
"Move left!"
Blue jerked to the side. An arrow snagged at the edge of his Goron tunic. Yellow rushed past him and cast a Severing Charm at a Bokoblin that Blue hadn't noticed taking aim at him from a patch of shadows just under the highest level of conveyors. The monster's bow split in half with a loud crack of wood. It stared dumbly at the pieces, then let out an angry yell and threw them at Blue and Yellow. Blue swatted the creature to the ground with a sparking, spiraling Incendio.
Yellow hit another two Bokoblins with Disarming Charms, frowning when the monsters on the sandy floor picked up any dropped weapons they came across.
'Treat the monsters here like Floormasters when it comes to stray weapons and potential projectiles. Got it,' Blue thought. He toppled the disarmed, confused Bokoblins with Knockback Jinxes that shoved them off their perches.
"I don't think there's any left up here," Yellow said, "just the ones on the ground."
"I guess it's time for the hard part." Blue peered over the edge of the conveyors, where disgruntled Bokoblins were milling about below. "Well, almost. Let's take care of those bows first." He pulled out the arrow in his tunic, put it in his bag, and settled down on his belly with his Magic Rod braced on his arm like before.
'Sniping is kinda fun,' he thought as he split a Bokoblin's bow. Sword fights were too fast to let him think, but shooting unaware targets could be as slow and careful as you wanted it to be. Perhaps Red's drive to learn how to use a bow was less foolish than it appeared. Blue was still having some trouble figuring out what effective damage-dealing alternatives they had to their swords; perhaps Light World arrows would do more direct harm to these monsters than the Harrys' semi-incompatible Dark World magic.
Stabbing pain lanced through his thigh. Blue gritted his teeth against a scream and ground his forehead into the conveyor belt until his nerves stopped misfiring. He resumed breaking Bokoblins' bows while he waited for the rush of a Red Potion to hit him. And waited. And waited…
"Whichever one of you got hurt, you'd better heal yourself before we have to figure out whether Red Potions can treat a case of sepsis!" he hollered across the room.
"But we only have two left!" came the echoing reply.
"Drink the bloody potion or I'll do it for you!" Stupid meatheads. Repressing emotions to keep a clear head was understandable, but hiding injuries? From themselves? That went beyond "troublesome" and straight into "life-threatening". It would become especially dangerous once the Four Sword was functional enough that they no longer felt one another getting hurt.
"FINE, geez." The expected zing of a Red Potion soon followed.
With all the Bokoblins now weaponless, Yellow and Blue leapt down and used Falling Spells to keep themselves from breaking anything. Unsheathing their swords, they laid waste to the weak red monsters. Bereft of their bows, the creatures were almost helpless. Blue ran up to one, sidestepped its slow, clumsy punch, and slashed at its unguarded torso. These things made him look graceful! He'd been afraid that they would have the same martial skill as Moblins, but they were clearly not designed to defend themselves without weapons.
'Note to self: disarmed Bokoblins are like fish in a barrel. The red ones are, anyway,' he thought, stabbing the Bokoblin to death. It dropped a clump of pulsating purple meat—ew—a set of wool-padded aluminum earmuffs that it had likely taken off a worker's skeleton, and a large chunk of sparkly clear crystals growing out of ordinary stone. Quartz, maybe? Blue ducked a punch from another Bokoblin and jammed his blade into its chest to make it back off. "Who cares about you? I'm busy," he snapped the monster as it shuffled backward with the hilt of the Four Sword sticking out of its ribcage. Blue hastily stuffed the monster organs in his bag, took a moment to appreciate how useful Malfoy would find those earmuffs before putting them away, and studied the hunk of crystal for a second before deciding it was best to defer to a Goron's mineral expertise before he did anything with it.
When the weight of his sword reappeared on his back, Blue slayed the Bokoblin he'd briefly stowed it in with two sweeping slices. He happily collected the bundle of arrows it dropped. Now he had eleven arrows for that bow he'd looted!
A metallic scraping noise reverberated through the room.
"Door's open!" Green or Red announced from somewhere among the conveyors. "We just had to slay all the monsters!"
"Oh, is that all?" Blue said ruefully, rubbing his previously perforated arm. It was amazing how horrible it was to be shot with an arrow. Of course, guns were also frightening—they offered instant death at the squeeze of a single finger!—but there was nothing quite like having an 80cm long, barbed projectile sticking out of you. Bullets were too small to inspire that particular brand of mortal terror.
"We'll have to find it now. Stay in your groups and hunt down doors we can actually use!" definitely-Green called out.
While Green and Red journeyed into the metallic undergrowth, Yellow and Blue went to search the higher levels. Blue threw an arm over Yellow's shoulders as they headed off toward the other side of the room. "Remember, if you start losing your head over one of us dying again, you need to say something before you lose it completely," he told Yellow in a low voice. "I know you don't care about your feelings, but we care about your feelings and we'd worry a whole lot less if we didn't have to guess what was wrong with you."
"But if you don't know anything is wrong in the first place, then you don't have to guess—ow!"
Blue interrupted him with a sharp yank on his ear. "No! Your logic is bad and you should feel bad for thinking it would convince me. Which Harry do you think I am?"
Yellow pouted and rubbed at his ear. "Okay, fine, I get it," he said. "Just don't expect me to tell you everything."
"Something is better than nothing. I'm not empathetic like Red, and Green can miss things like this because he has a lot on his mind. It helps if you give all of us something solid to work off of."
After a considerable amount of searching, the two groups of Harrys found two ways to proceed: a set of doors in an upper corner that were held shut by a heavy, bolted-on key lock, and an exit on the ground floor that was almost buried under conveyors. There were other openings they noticed, but the doors were either leaking lava or spliced into places they shouldn't have been, like into the sandy floor or sideways on a wall, so they decided to leave those be.
The ground-floor exit was well-hidden behind a thicket of conveyor belts, shaded so heavily that it was difficult to tell the doors from the wall at a distance. Yellow and Blue climbed over and ducked under several sandy, frozen treads on the way over. Blue shivered whenever he heard an ominous creak from the tangle of metal around them. There were at least ten very heavy iron contraptions crossing the air overhead, all freshly magicked to their current size and of dubious stability at best. What a pleasant thought that was.
Red noticed them and walked over, looking worried. "What the hell was that earlier?" he demanded. "I had to yank an arrow out, but it wasn't nearly as bad as whatever happened to you. It felt like one of you was pushing a pole through your arm!"
"Red passed out on the top level and I have to save him from falling twenty meters," Green explained.
"Oh my goodness, I'm sorry!" Yellow said. "I forgot how bad it would be for you. I saw the arrow in Blue's arm and panicked." He looked down, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "That bad feeling was me, erm, pulling the rest of it through."
"And I'm sorry, but did you say you yanked that arrow in your leg out? Barbs and all?" Blue asked. You could have ruptured your femoral artery doing that!"
Red blinked. "Really? That sounds bad."
"You would have bled out in seconds," Blue growled. Why were his brothers like this?
"Is there a way to remove an arrow without doing that, though? Because it's kind of a choice between having the head in there and doing more damage to get it out," Green said.
"I, er…" Blue had no clue what the alternatives were. He hadn't done research into Muggle techniques for dealing with Muggle weapons because that information was hard to find in Hogwarts's library and pressing Prince Tiamus for potions recipes had seemed like the more productive option. Looking back, he could admit he'd been a little one-track-minded.
"There's a way to do it with two quills capping the ends of the barbs. We could use that trick if the head is in really deep in a bad spot," Yellow said. "I found this pompous old book in the library comparing 'barbaric' Muggle medical techniques from the Middle Ages to 'enlightened' wizard ones from back then. The whole thing sounds like Malfoy when he's being mean." He made a face. "It's accurate about the methods it's insulting, though, and has good tips for things that we might not want to use magic for. Like, maybe a Vanishing Spell would work on an arrow if we learned how to cast it, but what if it got so supercharged by our Magic Rods that it vanished a chunk of the patient, too? I think I'd rather take the Muggle route on that, even if it hurts."
Red nodded. "Yeah, not being vanished would be nice."
Green opened the doors, which slid aside to admit a wave of shimmering, stinking air. Dry heat scraped against the inside of Blue's nose. He sighed. Great, more lava. He'd hoped for more sand.
The four of them cautiously poked their heads in. Since archers seemed like one of the quirks of this place, it was best to minimize the amount of body parts sticking out into targeting range.
Blue's eyes went wide as he took in the scale of the next area. Reminiscent of one of the main stairwells at Hogwarts, it stretched at least twice as far across. The vertical column was made even bigger by its lack of a floor. Below the activity on the walls lay only an open freefall into a shimmering superheated white-violet lake in a vast cavern below. Running treads—yes, even more of them—were the only things that made the room traversable. They all shifted like the animated staircases of Hogwarts, making the walls seem to writhe with their activity.
Monsters staffed the conveyors, of course. Green Lizalfoses carrying wicked spears and red Bokoblins armed with shoddy-looking metal swords trotted along the rumbling belts. Nothing too difficult to beat, but obstacles all the same. Luckily, and likely as a measure to keep his conjured creatures from getting killed, Vaati had kept the pace of the treads slow and refrained from adding marbles or spikes.
As his brothers walked out onto the first squirming conveyor, Blue held onto the doorway and leaned in to take a good look at the monsters' positions. Were there any he could pick off? The way those belts were going up and down, it'd be pretty difficult to keep his footing in a fight. Even the monsters were sent wobbling when their perches shifted.
He thought about his repertoire of spells. Transfiguration was something he'd like to try on monsters, but given their resistance to most magics, he feared he might just wind up turning their swords to rabbits and birds. That would lower the threat level, but it was a terrible waste of weapons they could use or sell later. They'd only broken those archers' bows because they had been an active threat; these swords and spears weren't currently throwing deadly steel-tipped sticks their way. He could disarm the monsters, too, but that came with the same issue of losing things they could loot. Ach, he wished they had a spell to retrieve the objects the monsters dropped when hit with a Disarming Charm! He'd have to look into that after they got through this place.
Blue sighed. The only way to steal weapons at this point was to get up close to a monster that didn't have a shield and snap his Vine Whip at it. 'Alright, fine, I'll sacrifice some potential spoils. I just hate to send a good sword into the abyss,' he mentally groused as he took aim from the doorway. He hit a Bokoblin with a Disarming Charm, then a Knockback Jinx. Its sword went flying, then falling past the bounds of the room, soon followed by the Bokoblin when it staggered sideways off of the conveyor. He attempted to do the same with a Lizalfos, but the more quick-witted and agile lizard caught the edge of the conveyor as it fell and hauled itself back up.
Blue rolled his eyes in annoyance and stuck to knocking down Bokoblins.
"Hey, we could have fought those!" Red shouted down at him. He was already halfway up the room. The conveyor he stood on swayed under him and he rode it with a seaman's legs. "You're sending our loot into the lava!"
"I'm not having a sword fight on a moving, tilted platform swinging over fiery doom!" Blue snapped.
"Then just follow the rest of us as we kill the stuff in front of you! These monsters have stolen some really good stuff, and you're wasting it!"
Blue puffed up. There was no need for his brother to be so rude, even if Blue kind of agreed with him. "Why should I listen to you?"
"Because sometimes I'm right!"
"Sometimes."
"Do you two need another nap?" Green called out from the other side of the room, "because I'm the only one who can open doors and I can declare naptime in the next safe spot if I want to."
"But Greeeen, we just woke up!" Red whined, hopping onto a higher conveyor. He ran up to the Lizalfos standing on it and deflected its spear with his shield as it took a stab at him.
"Red started it!" Blue protested. He stepped out onto the first rolling iron road, which Green had cleared before him. It decided to move while he was still getting his balance figured out, making him swear and stumble as the ground shoved upward and jerked sideways under his feet. How had his brothers managed to navigate these so easily?!
He kept his sword sheathed, vanished his Magic Rod, and unabashedly wind-milled his arms to keep his balance as he walked up the angled, jouncing floor to another platform. This was hard, damn it!
The next conveyor swung in an unexpected direction as soon as he hopped onto it. He cried out and flailed, unable to hold onto anything without breaking a finger in the treads or risking his life to grab the edge. His momentum carried him toward the waiting spear of the Lizalfos standing on the next walkway.
Blue cursed his sudden circumstances and conjured his new hammer, since it was quicker than pulling out his sword. He swung it down and laterally in front of him as he stumbled forward, using the long shaft to sweep aside the razor-edged spear coming for his gut. He had leather armor there, under his Goron clothes, but that didn't mean he was in the mood to test it against the Lizalfos's strength. Hefting the heavy hammer up, Blue whipped it into a sideways arc. He'd been serious about not wanting to get into a fight on these crazy platforms; while he was more physically adept than most kids his age at this point, he knew his weapons skills and footwork were the worst out of his brothers.
His rocket-powered strike smacked the Lizalfos into the wall the conveyor spouted from. Its body met the red stone satisfyingly heavy thud. Blue grinned at the victory, but was soon sent tumbling toward the wall himself as the conveyor belt reared up.
"At least the stairs back at school are stairs!" he cried out in annoyance as he struggled his way up the aggravating ramp. It helped that all the conveyors were rolling toward the center of the room, but the damn thing was at a forty-five degree angle! He felt like he'd gotten caught trying to steal the Hylian Bestiary from Hermione's dorm—back before Vaati had broken the stairs-to-slide enchantment.
His feet caught a joint in the treads, giving him a small amount of climbing leverage. With a metallic clang, the Lizalfos's spear bounced off of the conveyor at his heels. Blue shot a glare over his shoulder. The lizard was on its feet and eyeing him with defiant challenge as the rumbling iron tread brought its weapon back to it.
"The monsters back in the Dark World weren't half as infuriating as you jerks," Blue seethed. The creatures here had long-distance weapons, shields, battle tactics, more durability, and—most aggravating of all—bloody persistence. Combined with their greater intelligence, it made their behavior push all of Blue's buttons.
Having satisfied its desire to reach for the skies, the angle of the platform went mercifully shallow. Once he'd recovered from the sudden slide to the left, Blue switched his hammer for the Vine Whip and snapped it at the ground. The wooden hand returned bearing the Lizalfos's weapon. Upon seeing this, the monster pointed accusingly and stamped its foot. Blue dismissed the whip and gripped the stolen spear with both hands, an evil grin on his face. He jabbed the creature in the belly with wicked glee. Undefended and unarmed with little space to dodge, the Lizalfos was quickly dealt with. Blue gathered up the green tail and work gloves it had dropped, shoving the spear into his bag thereafter. At least he'd gotten a little loot in this roo—
The ground bucked and lurched, threatening to yank his feet out from under him. Blue actually bounced into the air as the animated tread jumped up to meet a neighboring path. "Behave, will you?" he snapped, smacking the panel he was standing on. Running with the direction of the conveyor, he leapt onto the next platform and rode it up.
"What is even the objective of this room?" he asked in exasperation. "Kill all the monsters? Get across? Find something? Why are we here?" He didn't see any doors or switches or twinkling silver keys. Was this a dead end?
Green summoned up his Navi Slate and walked backward along his current platform as he studied it. "Apparently this place is supposed to be full of doors. It was like a hub for the Sand Processing Sector, with a door to every subsector in the area," he declared. "Even if Vaati spirited away some of those doors to other places, at least one of them might still be here."
Red's face lit up and he conjured his hammer. "So we break the walls?" he asked excitedly.
"Not willy-nilly!" Yellow called out in half protest, half warning. "Even if the room isn't unstable, bad things could still happen if you're not careful."
"Good point. Break the walls, but be prepared for traps," Green said. "There might even be bombs hidden around, since this is Goron territory."
"That's a bad thing, Red," Blue said snidely, throwing a narrow-eyed look across the room.
Red flashed him a toothy grin. "Not if I can use them to break the walls faster!"
The room rang with metallic thunder as the Harrys beat down the walls. Some were hollow, some weren't. Blue ran down a ramp, using gravity to overcome the drag of the opposite-running tread, and brought the Dragon Hammer down in an overhead strike. A rough ellipse of stone cracked, crumbled, and fell away. Blue was met with the hair-raising sight of a tightly-packed cluster of Bomb Flowers growing from the walls and three Fire Keese swooping from the ceiling of the revealed cave. Blue turned and legged it. Caution was thrown to the wind, overpowered by the basic urge to flee. He didn't realize he'd leapt over the fiery void until he began falling.
"CATCH ME!" he screamed, clawing at the air. The room flew past him as he helplessly flailed like the flightless mammal he was. Would he have to risk his broom burning up to save his life? Would the Nimbus 2000 be able to hold out for long enough in this shimmering, hellish heat?
Yellow saved him from having to test that hypothesis. Blue's brother snapped a hand out, his Magic Rod belatedly appearing in it. "Levio!" The Hover Charm bounced Blue to a stop in midair like a bungee cord.
BOOM!
The whole room shook with the force of the hidden garden going off. Yellow's eyes went wide enough to show the whites all around, but his hand didn't shake as he cast a Levitation Charm and pulled Blue back up to the middle of the room. Blue landed on a conveyor and gratefully slid down it to hug the wall. Ground, sweet ground!
Red ran along an upper path, leapt across the room, and used a Falling Spell to keep himself from breaking his legs upon landing much farther down. He poked his head into the gaping, black-scorched hole now in the side of the room. "Wow, there must be about twenty Bomb Flowers in here!" he proclaimed. "You know, there has to be a safe way to pick these and turn them into things we can use. Gorons use them for mining, after all."
"Putting them in a Bomb Bag makes the wicks go out," Green blurted. He clapped his hands over his mouth, eyes wide. "I mean—no! No bombs!"
Red pouted. "But why not? There's a whole bunch of free ones right here!" He gestured toward the huge blasted hole.
"I wouldn't trust one of me with a bag full of dynamite, let alone four!" Green said. "I mean, look at that hole! How much it would hurt, screwing up with one of those? You could blow an arm off! And imagine if one of you blew me up. We'd all be dead, then!"
Blue pouted, too. Just because Red definitely couldn't be trusted around bombs, that didn't make Blue unworthy of the privilege. He was sensible enough to use them responsibly!
'I'll ask Shadow Harry about it sometime later, maybe, when Green isn't listening,' he thought. The spirit wasn't quite on their side, but he seemed like someone who'd be all for giving children industrial-grade mining explosives. 'Or maybe I'll go to a Bomb Shop next time we're in town and see whether they'll sell to people my age. We can't be the only conspicuously young adventurers out there.'
They found a set of doors after two more bomb scares and a hidden fire-breathing Lizalfos chasing Yellow off of a platform. All of them were nursing sore legs and a couple were still smoking from their brushes with flames or explosions—particularly Yellow, who had been caught in the Lizalfos's stream of fire-breath. As they went through the doors, Red and Blue sent despondent looks toward the clusters of Bomb Flowers they'd uncovered while finding a way to proceed. Free explosives sitting there for the taking, and yet nowhere to safely store them! What a tragedy.
The next room consisted of stone platforms sliding across a lake of bubbling white-violet lava. Blobs of lava with dark beady eyes jumped in the gaps where the platforms met. Dotting the room in three places were cylindrical stubs of iron circled by rows of hovering fireballs. The lines of fire swept over the plane of lava and moving squares like the spokes of giant wheels. The middle of the room was taken up by a stout, rectangular, iron-plated column that made the platforming area more of a circuitous route than an open plain. On either side of the support pillar, Blue could see the edge of a door.
Blue sighed loudly. Two new doors, possibly three if there was one out of sight on the other side of the room. There was still that locked door two rooms behind them, and openings behind the Bomb Flowers in the room they'd just left that hadn't been proper doors, but had still led to other rooms in the facility. As if they weren't lost enough! "Oh, this is a load of bullsh—"
Yellow elbowed him hard. "So we just have to pick the door that leads us to a key or where we need to go, right?" he chirped. "Maybe we'll find the compass for this place while we're at it!"
"Assuming there is a compass in here." Green conjured his Navi Slate and frowned at it. "Since this was just a normal facility before Vaati got his hands on it, not a traditional labyrinth, this map might be all we've got. If Shadow Harry hadn't been on such a tight leash, he could have hidden something around here to give us a fairer chance, but, well…"
"With your map, we can at least find our way back to safety if we need to sleep or eat," Yellow said, still stubbornly optimistic.
"Should we split up to explore faster?" Blue asked Green. He tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We have three new doors to go through and no idea which one is the right one."
"We can't split up, remember? You don't have a map," Green pointed out.
Blue face-palmed. Merlin, his brain was tired. Was it still the same day that he'd fought a dragon and watched Green get eaten? He needed like five more naps before any of today's events properly sunk in. "…Right. I knew that."
Notes:
-Impa making Avoka argue in favor of visiting Link is adapted from something my mom used to do with me and my siblings if we wanted an extra piece of candy at the shop register. It might seem a little mean, but it was good practice for learning how to argue a point more intelligently than "because I wanna". Impa is essentially giving Avoka some rhetoric practice using the kid's best friend as an incentive.
-The average length of an arrow in the Middle Ages was 31 inches. Imagine having almost 3 feet of fletched dowel sticking out of you and knowing that if you lived beyond the end of the battle, you'd have to work the barbed head of that thing out! Also, one of the reasons it's assumed that people being given surgery without anesthesia were given a leather strip to bite on in the Olden Days is because people in that much pain could wind up clenching their jaw hard enough to break their teeth.
-Blue's pep-talk to Yellow is the gunmetal gray pot calling the kettle black. None of the Harrys have a healthy sense of self-worth, emotional trust in others, or the understanding that they deserve love, care, and concern, but Yellow is the most abuse-affected in this regard and Red and Blue are somewhat less so.
-Green's reaction to the notion of his brothers having Bombs is basically my thoughts as I've been deliberating behind the scenes about whether I'd give the kids explosives in this story (thus the Dragon Hammer being able to break cracked walls). This fic runs on a relatively high level of realistic physical consequences and it can get kinda chaotic when four people are chucking bombs, y'know? I've come to a decision, though, and you'll see what it is at some point during this dungeon.