Last-chapter recap: Sirius submitted memory testimony of his innocence using the Headmaster's Pensieve. While the teachers deliberated (and squabbled) over a preliminary verdict that would decide Sirius's treatment in the Light World, Sirius was paid a visit by Ron. Eventually, the teachers managed to come to a decision despite Professor Snape's misgivings: Sirius was proven innocent.
Art of this chapter's item and boss have been posted to the garden-eel-draws tumblr under the "concept art" tag, as well as linked and displayed in the Ao3 version of this chapter.
Content warning for blood.
(Also, long end notes ahoy!)
Hermione took long strides to keep up with the purposeful pace of their Zora guide. As soon as Ron had brought up their plan, not only had Prince Tiamus agreed to give them the weapons they needed, but he'd volunteered to go himself. The man was an unstoppable force once he set his mind to something; he couldn't be talked out of it.
Even so, she gave one last try. "Sir, you really don't have to come with us," she said. "We're going to be fighting a lot of Skullfish, and they could injure you severely. Your people can't lose their prince."
"The rest of my people are waiting for their lost family members to return," Prince Tiamus said with staunch conviction. He was stripped down to the barest signifiers of his status for this trip: a set of ankle and wrist cuffs studded with orange spell nodes. The straps for his trident went over one shoulder and around his waist. "I'm one of the few Zoras at this castle with significant battle experience, and the others are too old and fragile for me to send them into the lake with a clear conscience. In all honesty, you are more fragile than I feel comfortable sending into danger, but I respect your choice."
"You have battle experience?" Ron asked in surprise. "But you're a prince."
"In Zora culture—as well as most societies in Hyrule—it's expected for royalty higher in the line of succession to earn valor. A ruler with no battle experience would choose poor generals, after all," Tiamus explained. He gestured toward the pale gray scars on his nose and head fins. They looked like healed marks from claws. "As I am second in line for the throne, I have been placed in direct battle against invading forces more than once. Lake Hylia is an incredibly important landmark for any given takeover. Its waters support much of Hyrule."
"This one lake is that significant to a country hundreds of kilometers across?" Hermione frowned in thought. "Why? It isn't a very large body of water—unless it's deeper than it appears?"
Tiamus nodded. "Its heart descends over five hundred meters deep, and it has many pockets extending into the stone of the basin around it. The only way we were able to determine its full depth was by calling upon an Abyssal Zora able to safely descend that far. Inland Zoras aren't suited for diving below one hundred meters—the lakes and rivers we reside in don't tend to be deeper than that."
"Let's hope whatever's in the lake hasn't gone all the way to the bottom," Ron said nervously. He knew from experience that even a thirty meter dive could be terrifying.
"Much of the lake bottom is within my depth range," Tiamus assured him. "Lake Hylia's spirit, Jabora, is also easy to find. Assuming he hasn't been too severely poisoned by the malice within his waters, he should be able to show us to the root of the corruption. He's a much more active swimmer than his brother in Zora's Domain."
Running feet came down the hall. Given the click of the heels, it was someone wearing nice, respectable shoes. Hermione came to a sharp halt. She recognized those steps.
Ron groaned loudly. "Oh, great. It just had to be him."
"Stop right there!" Professor Snape's voice rang out. Once he'd gotten their attention, he slowed to an intimidating power-walk. His robes snapped around him like a storm. Anyone milling about the hall hurried out of his way.
Hermione found herself shrinking back like she'd been caught stealing from the professor's cabinets. Prince Tiamus, however, had no such fear. His friendly round face twisted with instant hostility. The large Zora planted himself between them and the irate professor storming up.
"These children are under my supervision and you, water-snake, will not interfere," he rumbled ominously.
Hermione's eyebrows shot up. Harry had mentioned the prince disliking Professor Snape, but not to this level! What on earth had the Potions teacher done to inspire this level of enmity?
"You have no authority here, you overgrown fish," Snape hissed up at him. "These children are under the care of the castle staff. They are not to go outside."
"This castle is in my family's lake, and thus you are all under the Lake Kingdom's jurisdiction," Tiamus snapped. "As someone with authority over yours, I deem a child-abuser like you unfit to interfere in the affairs of these students."
"Child-abuser?" Professor Snape said incredulously. "If you think a raised voice is child abuse, I'd hate to think of the state of your spineless spawn!"
"My 'spawn' would know to set you straight before you terrorized them and their classmates into compliance. I've taught them what to do with venomous creatures like you." Tiamus leaned down to put his face closer to Professor Snape's. "These children will do what they have set out to do, and I will protect them in that endeavor. You may accompany us or stay here, but I will not allow you to stop them."
"And what could you do to keep me from—"
Tiamus plucked the Magic Rod from the man's grip and put a large hand on Professor Snape's shoulder. With claws carefully kept flat against Snape's clothes, the fingers squeezed, causing the teacher to pale and clench his jaw. "If I so willed it, I could rip you in two. A magical nature does not make you superior," Tiamus said in a soft hiss. "You are only an oversized ego given more authority than you deserve. As a supposed educator, you have done nothing to earn any level of respect from me or the children forced to endure your vile personality." He dropped the Magic Rod and Professor Snape barely managed to catch it. "Make your decision, water-snake. Know that if you cast any spells toward me or these students, things will not turn out well for you." He motioned for Ron and Hermione to go ahead of him before turning toward the castle's front exit.
Professor Snape stood there, grimacing and clutching his shoulder. He watched Tiamus depart with a look of frightening hatred, and Hermione feared he might curse the Zora from behind. Instead, he turned on his heel and swept off in the direction of the nearest staircases. Hermione had little doubt he was off to tell the Headmaster to expel them.
Cold fear flooded her veins. She kept on walking toward the exit with stiff, robotic steps. This might be the last thing she did as a Hogwarts student. This was fine. The teachers hadn't done much to impress her this year, anyway. She could go to Beauxbatons. Hermione would still be a witch even if she was expelled.
Ron reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. "If Snape gets his way, we'll figure things out," he told her. "I mean, we've got big, scary blokes like Tiamus on our side." He nodded toward the prince. "What was he going on about at Snape, anyway? He uses a lot of big words I don't get."
"He was calling him a child-abuser and a water-snake," Hermione hiccupped, wiping at her watery eyes. "It was terrifying, but brilliant."
"My apologies, children. I let my temper get away from me," Tiamus said once they were outside. The island was mostly clear of Lizalfoses and Bokoblins in front, where the students' morning monster-blasting tended to be concentrated. Dark scorches from supercharged Incendio spells marked the stone steps, while the magic-resistant Hylian grass was only a bit bald in some spots.
"That's fine. I understand why you would be angry with him," Hermione said. "He can be a bit much."
"A charitable description. His utter disrespect of the hatchlings in his care would be an exile-worthy offense for any citizen of the Lake Kingdom," the prince sniffed. "But on to our mission. We should seek out Jabora to see whether he can lead us to the problem before going on a blind search. It would save us quite a lot of fumbling in the dark."
Hermione and Ron left their shoes on the shore—they weren't the kind of thing the Lizalfoses and Bokoblins would find interesting enough to steal—and fired off Sunburst spells as they waded into the water. The Skullfish, whose numbers were currently at their lowest for the day, popped out of existence in the face of their purifying fire.
A Lizalfos zipped in from the side in a flash of frothing white water and dashed onto land. Hermione quickly shot a Knockback Jinx at it, which gave the monster a hard shove that sent it into a stumble. Ron yelped and raised his shield, his other hand fumbling to drop his Magic Rod and go for the sword he was now armed with. Tiamus unlatched the trident from his back and jabbed it so hard into the spear-wielding Lizalfos's chest that it went flying into the water. With surprising speed from someone only a meter shorter than Hagrid, he dashed forward, stabbing furiously at the backpedaling monster. As soon as one of his attacks stuck, lodging the weapon in the monster's chest, Tiamus forked it onto the ground. The Lizalfos went limp and dissolved into smoke, leaving behind its tail and scraggly monster-made weapon.
Hermione knew just from mentally gauging the size of that tail that she wouldn't be able to fit it into her schoolbag. She sighed. The first chance she got, she was getting something with the Hylian equivalent to an Expansion Charm cast on it. Not a top-of-the-line adventuring bag like what the Harrys were toting, but maybe a reasonable little pouch. She didn't need unlimited volume, just some.
"Could you toss that toward the castle, please? I'm sure someone will pick it up," she told Prince Tiamus. He nodded and expertly pitched the tail through one of the voids in the building's exterior.
They ran into the water after that to avoid further delays, diving as soon as the edge of the island dropped off. Only belatedly did Ron and Hermione cast Warming Charms to ease the unpleasant jolt of cold water enveloping them. Even once under the surface and beyond the reach of shallow Lizalfos patrols, it wasn't safe to slow down. Hermione conjured the Lenses of Truth in addition to her Zora Earring and picked off any nearby Skullfish before descending as fast as she could. The range of Lizalfoses was restricted to the surface of the water and land. Skullfish, however, would swim to wherever they sensed prey. They tended to congregate closer to the surface, though, so going farther down would give her and Ron more time to shoot them down as they swooped.
Tiamus, who had immediately jetted down to avoid those fin-eating predators, waved them over at twenty meters down. "We'll have to do a lot of swimming. Jabora lives by the palace." He pointed toward the opposite side of the lake.
Hermione and Ron exchanged a pained look. While they could theoretically swim forever using the Zora Earrings, the lake was still a couple of kilometers across.
The prince laughed. "Don't worry, hatchlings! I don't expect you to travel that distance on your own. I can ferry you." He hooked his muscular arms around Hermione's and Ron's torsos. After checking his grip, he rocketed off through the water.
Hermione was thankful that the bubble around her head kept water from shooting up her nose and trying to carve out her eyes. She didn't think Tiamus quite understood those particular weaknesses of human physiology.
She locked her eyes straight ahead. Panic turned in her stomach when she dared look anywhere else. The lake, while placid and pretty on the surface, was just as deep as Prince Tiamus had described; below her lay a fish-dotted void of deepening shades of blue with no bottom in sight. Not only that, but its diameter—more modest than that of the Black Lake—was considerably more intimidating when one lost sight of the cliffs even through the mostly clear water. Rather than ruminate on the amount of empty space below her, she set her mind to considering the unpolluted state of the lake.
It was amazing, what spirits were capable of. Like most residents of Hogwarts, she'd assumed they were direct analogues to their world's magical creatures. Powerful entities like phoenixes had certain unmatched abilities, but she couldn't imagine any one being possessing the power to undo the effects of volcanic fallout across an entire country. Surely that made a spirit like Endraal some form of god?
A change came over the water as they sliced through it, and not a pleasant one. Soon after they passed the deep supports of the Hylia Bridge, the lake took on an odd electric feeling. Hermione could smell ozone wafting into the air of her breathing bubble. It felt like they were passing through a liquid storm cloud.
They stopped not too far from a metal building that shone in the light filtering down from the surface a mere ten meters above its peak. A palace of grand arches and interwoven metal seemed to hover in the water. Its discreet supports braced it against a stone shelf not far below. The lattice-roofed structure took the shape of a rounded fish, with a fan-shaped tail at the back and an open mouth in front. Other buildings of blue-green steel spiraled out from the main structure, linked by gleaming bridges. Public areas indicated by bluish stone tiles and metal furniture were laid out below. From the top of one wing of the palace extended a long, stala-supported glass tube that led up to a building floating on the surface. Hermione assumed it was a human-friendly elevator. Metal pods trailed down the side of the shelf the palace stood on—presumably the homes of average Zoras, or perhaps lesser nobles who were still expected to show up at court.
"Oh Nayru…" Tiamus swam forward, taking in the state of the palace with wide eyes. "They've all evacuated! But to where?" He jetted to the palace and zipped around searching for any signs of life.
Hermione closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had air, she could defend herself through magical and physical means, and the worst things in this lake were monsters she had dealt with before. Even if something as bad as Argulla was circling below, at least it wouldn't be her first time running into something like that.
She gripped Ron's hand and the two of them swam over the vast abyss to reach the cluster of buildings. The sickening fear let up a bit once they were over some form of visible land again. Of course, Hermione knew objectively that this lake wasn't bottomless, but the human brain was a primitive thing that preferred to have ground within view.
Letting go of Ron's hand, she swam over to one of the extended sections of the palace and entered the doorless open building via an archway. The room was built to let sunlight filter in from above through the large-pattern lattice, though it had glowing blue-green accents and power lines leading to built-in Bluestone lamps for extra light. She felt around for a switch before discovering the globes of the lamps were touch-activated. They had multiple settings they cycled through with multiple pokes, so she set a few to the brightest they could go and looked around.
'Inland Zoras definitely have a thing for curvy shapes and sharp edges,' she thought as she curiously inspected a sculpture. It abstractly resembled a fish, featuring plenty of elegant points and fine-edged fins. It was much like a smaller version of the building she was in, which was shaped like a fish curling around horizontally to overlap its own tail. To her human sensibilities, the metal architecture, cold steel, blue lighting, and lack of anything resembling a cushion made the fancy place appear uninviting in a severe, posh way. She wondered whether a more common Zora's home would be any cozier.
A cluster of Skullfish shadows passing overhead started shuffling and getting larger. She sighed and sent an aggrieved glare toward the lattice ceiling. The holes in it were large enough for the small monsters to easily get through it. She unsheathed her borrowed sword and held it left-handed while she shot at the fish with her Magic Rod. Puffs of purple smoke darkened the water in a thickening haze as she picked them off. She swam backward, still firing, as the last handful of the swarm kept coming. She didn't want to use her sword unless she absolutely had to; it was a clumsy, heavy piece of metal in her hands on land, let alone underwater.
"Go away!" she finally snapped, swinging the sword at the fish still on a rapid approach. The silver blade clove through the last three of the nuisances. "Good," she huffed, putting it away. Inwardly, she was a bit tickled she'd managed to use the weapon successfully. She found an absurd sort of humor in someone like her wielding a real medieval sword.
Now that the room was peaceful again, she resumed her study of it. There were signs of a hasty departure in the small objects laying askew. A few metal vases had been knocked over and one of the painting-like panes of engraved and bejeweled steel on the walls was hanging at an angle. By one of the fish statues standing around the walls lay a discarded stone rectangle with a glowing eye design on its back. It looked like it had been kicked over there in the panic and forgotten. She swam over to it, recognizing the eye design. That was a Sheikah motif, not a Zora one.
Hermione picked the rectangle up and turned it over. Excitement rose in her chest. Was this a Sheikah Slate? One with full functions, not a limited Navi Slate like what the Harrys had? This device was sleeker than theirs, with a more elaborate glowing design on the back and a screen with a slimmer border around it. Did that make it higher quality? It was certainly lighter and more comfortable to hold.
She poked the screen, which didn't respond. Was it broken or just turned off? Feeling around the edge, she found a flat button and pressed it. The screen lit up with an eye symbol, bringing a smile to her face. Instead of opening immediately to a grainy, monochrome blue map, the display shifted to show a menu in turquoise lettering on black. There a good number of options, including "Games", "Camera", "Photos", "Maps", and "Documents", and "Applications". Not only was this a full-functioning Sheikah Slate, but it was a high-end model. A camera and games? Those were pricey features for an already expensive gadget.
Hermione hunched over the computer, looking around furtively. Whoever had left it behind must have been missing it dearly; she wouldn't have been surprised if the Slate and its downloaded files came out to two thousand Rupees' worth of magical electronics and data. It would be morally wrong for her to keep something so precious. But…
Biting her lip, she considered the device in her hands. This was a really nice computer, and she doubted she'd be able to afford something like this for quite a while, if ever. The only sources of money and potential cash she had were her allowance for Hogsmeade and the small collection of Rupees and bones she'd gotten from blasting monsters on the lakeshore.
With a mingling sense of guilt and victory, she opened the bag slung over her shoulder, shoved the Slate into it, and buttoned the flap shut. Ron and Harry wouldn't blame her, even if they'd be sure to point out her moral inconsistency. It wasn't like this was the first time she'd done something a bit dodgy. And whoever had spent so much money on that computer would be able to afford another, right? This was a wing of a palace, so chances were the occupants had money.
"No need to feel guilt, human. Something found is something gained," said a flat, croaky voice.
Hermione screamed and curled up in a floating ball around her bag. Her heart thundered a mile a minute as she slowly sank toward the engraved metal floor. Who had said that? Had someone been watching her this whole time?
A grayish face framed by swirling, wormy green hair appeared from around an archway and flashed her a smile full of jagged yellow teeth. "Did I surprise you? Best to keep your ears sharp in this place. The clear water holds just as many dangers as the Black Lake's murk."
Unable to respond, Hermione put a hand to her chest and took deep breaths to get her heartbeat under control.
The young mermaid swam into the room with a few flicks of her silver tail. She was around the age of a seventh-year, with squirming hair that went down to her mid-back and a string of polished glass pebbles hanging from her neck. In one hand she held a steel and stala Zora spear, and a rope around her waist accommodated a sheathed dagger with an enameled blue handle.
Hermione was shocked, though in hindsight she shouldn't have been. She'd completely forgotten about the merpeople in the Black Lake! It made sense that they would have been sent here, though—Vaati's transport spell had caught seemingly every sapient magical being from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade, after all.
"Where did you get those?" Hermione asked in surprise, pointing at the weapons. The mermaid tilted her head to one side, and Hermione felt foolish for speaking. Of course the merperson would have no reason to be able to understand her without sound—
"The Zoras, of course. We protect them and they let us use their finely-made things," the mermaid said. "A Selkie's scales and strong tail are much harder for the Skullfish to eat."
Prince Tiamus and Ron came swimming over, likely drawn by the sound of the mermaid's voice. The Zora slowed his approach when he saw who Hermione was with. He eyed the magical creature with wide-eyed wonder. "A River Zora of antiquity?" he said with awe. "Has Vaati altered the time within the lake?"
"They keep calling us that—River Zora. It's one of the few phrases we've managed to translate from their water-speak to Mermish," the mermaid remarked. "The strange land-fish seem to think we're related, even though Zoras are air-breathing two-legs like you humans."
Hermione turned to Tiamus. "She's a merperson—a Dark World Zora," she mouthed carefully in Hylian. "No time-travel needed."
"Fascinating. I never would have expected the tail to be a retained trait," Prince Tiamus said, swimming around the mermaid. "Does she know what has happened to the rest of my people?"
"The merpeople have been protecting them," Hermione told him. "They're evacuated and safe."
"Could you ask where they…oh, but we have a mission!" Tiamus shook his head. "Please ask her where we may find Jabora. Purifying the lake is of the utmost importance."
"Do you know about a creature named Jabora?" Hermione inquired of the mermaid in English. "We're trying to fix the lake, and we need his help. He would look like a very large fish."
The mermaid's dull yellow eyes lit up in recognition. "Ah, you seek the Source." She looked Tiamus up and down. "Not a safe place for a many-fins like him. Even merpeople can't approach—assuming the foolish Zoras would let us. They're very protective of the Source even as he taints their lake."
Hermione's stomach twisted. "Jabora is…the source?" she said with dread. The lake hadn't just been infiltrated; the Lake Spirit himself was being used to propagate these monsters. Well, this was a fine mess, wasn't it?
"He spits out the Skullfish. His tongue is not his own." The mermaid flicked her hand near her mouth to demonstrate. "To keep his 'children' safer, he hid himself in a cavern beyond a tunnel in the cliffs. The route he took was deep, but there is a shallower way that Skullfish occasionally exit from. The question is whether you can survive it."
Hermione looked over at Ron, biting her lower lip in uncertainty. One path was safer, but in the belly of the lake—probably beyond any Zora's or merperson's diving range, if the mermaid had felt the need to emphasize the word. Ron and Hermione would have to make it down there on the own. As she'd read in one of her Muggle science texts, light didn't penetrate through water after around two-hundred thirty meters. While the Zora Earrings they wore made them able to surpass that distance, she certainly didn't want to.
The other path was potentially the Hero's Trail the Harrys had mentioned. She wasn't looking forward to that, either, but at least she wouldn't have to do a deep plunge and Tiamus would be able to stay with them. There was something comforting about having the Zora nearby. She'd become accustomed to thinking of him as a teacher, since she religiously attended the Hylian language lessons going on at the school. He was a very big, very strong professor who could whisk them away from danger and was capable with a trident. She couldn't ask for a better aquatic chaperone.
"Shallow path?" she mouthed at Ron.
He nodded fervently. "For sure. No deep-diving if we don't have to."
Hermione explained to Tiamus and then told the merperson their answer, to which the girl responded with a shrug and a wave to follow her. She swam off at a sedate speed that the flipper-less humans could keep up with. It looked all too easy for the mermaid to propel herself with slow swishes of her tail. Hermione knew objectively that the earring she wore gave her capabilities beyond those of any professional extreme diver—namely, the ability to ignore depth and air consumption—but she would have liked being less helplessly human in water. Maybe she could buy a set of flippers if she ever got the chance to go to Castle Town.
They eventually arrived at a neat hole drilled in the side of the cliffs a comfortably shallow twelve meters down. It was ringed by a set of Bluestone lights, with lines of the glowing material stretching down the more natural-looking tunnel beyond.
'How on earth did the Hero of Lights manage to power this place up? Chisel out all the Bluestone channels while underwater?' Hermione wondered, inspecting the lights. Of course, the madwoman had also built a Bluestone-dotted obstacle course and a Bomb Flower greenhouse in the middle of a volcano, so perhaps Hermione shouldn't have been surprised. She sighed and shook her head. 'Don't worry about how it was made, just how it might try to kill you,' she thought as she and Ron swam toward it.
To her surprise, Tiamus hung back warily. She turned around just inside the dark entrance. "Do you want to stay here?" she asked. Silently, she hoped not. While it would be perfectly understandable for the prince of a kingdom to prefer to avoid mysterious dark holes, she'd rather have some adult supervision here.
The prince shook his head slightly, seeming to snap out of a mild daze. "I apologize. The water in there is just…" He winced and put a hand to his temple. "It's quite magically charged, and Zoras have an electrical sense that certain similar forms of energy can influence. I believe I can weather the effects, however."
That piqued Hermione's interest. Was it like a shark's electrical sense, given the resemblance there? Prince Tiamus in particular resembled a whale shark, with his general width and spotted coloring. Perhaps the storm magic in the water was creating false positives, or nonsense readings for his hunting senses? What did the world look like to a Zora? Would Malfoy wind up with that sensory experience?
Ron seized her by the upper arm and exasperatedly towed her off.
"You should keep that Zora away from the fences in there!" the mermaid still floating by the entrance called after them. "I've already had to drag a few of those foolish two-legs from this cave! That lightning is enough to fry even a Selkie on the spot!"
That explained why the merperson was standing watch instead of following them in; she expected them to get cooked like the other people who'd decided to play hero. Hermione groaned into her silent bubble. Electricity and water again. She never would have thought she'd encounter it even once in her life, let alone thrice.
Before they'd gotten far down the natural tube, they came across a section where the glowing Bluestone lines went into a sharp spiral studded by protruding nodes. The orange studs, arranged in pairs and set a meter apart, slid along stala tracks that ran around the circumference of the tunnel. Whenever they crossed the double-helix of power lines, they blinked turquoise and produced a shimmering wall of blue energy for a second before resuming their spin. Six "gates" flashed in sequence along the remainder of the tunnel. The mermaid had described it as lightning, but Hermione thought a more apt term would be "plasma". This didn't have the buzz or crackle of electricity, though it raised the hair on the back of her neck just the same.
Hermione stopped to watch the hazards flick on and off, doing several estimations in her head. She was a particularly weak swimmer, so there was no way she'd be able to just sprint down the line. The spacing between them was closer than her height, though, so she'd have to be quick about getting herself vertical in between fences. There was also the fact that they only had two Red Potions on hand due to the difficulty of gathering anything but monster parts for ingredients; the fish needed to complete the brews were hard to come by. She'd have to be especially careful…
Ron struck out toward the spiral. Hermione sucked in a breath. He cleared the first two gates, forced himself to a hard stop with a forceful flap of his arms, and then surged forward again as soon as the cycle of force fields flicking on had created an opening again. It was a nerve-wracking game of Red Light, Green Light. He passed the sets of nodes two at a time in jerky bursts of speed, swiveling around to check the timing of each wave of activations.
Once her friend was through, it was Hermione's turn. She took a few careful breaths, watching the timing of the gates closely, then approached at her fastest doggy-paddle. Though she probably had enough time to cross the interstice and squeeze past the second pair of spinning nodes before they went off, she stayed put after passing the first set. An excess of caution was better than not enough.
The fences in front of and behind her went off a few seconds apart as the activations traveled down the tunnel. She gasped at the sudden sense of fire licking gently at her being. The water tingled around her like it bore an electric charge, but the strange burn that had brushed against her soul had been something else. Was that what the Light World's raw magic felt like? It was as though the sun had oh-so-softly whispered a warning in her ear. She shuddered before continuing through the next set of nodes.
Though she could see Ron growing increasingly impatient at the end of the tunnel, Hermione continued passing the gates one by one. When he made a face, she stuck her tongue out at him. It wasn't her fault she hadn't grown up with any particular fondness for water! Her parents had taught her enough so that she'd be able to stay afloat until a lifeguard reached her, and that had been good enough until all of this Hyrulean chaos! Really, how could she have foreseen that situations such as this would become commonplace?
Tiamus was the last through the gates. Against expectations, he didn't use his speed to flash through them in one rush. He dashed forward two rings at a time, stopping on a dime in between. His eyes slitted in intense concentration as he halted and held himself perfectly upright between the hazards. Hermione was struck by an unpleasant realization; if the Hero of Lights had built this trail for Hylian-sized beings to challenge themselves with, Tiamus was going to have a difficult time. He was big even for a large species of Zora, a head taller than most of his subjects and much broader in build. Would he have to turn back, leaving them to fight whatever had corrupted Jabora on their own in a dark underwater cave?
The prince made it through successfully. He joined them at the end of the tunnel, blinking and rubbing his eyes. "This tunnel has been here since my grandparents' time, but it's always been common knowledge to avoid the 'Bright Cave'," he said. "I never thought I would ever find myself breaking that rule." He leaned over the edge of the tunnel and peered down. "It's becoming increasingly evident why my grandfather made that decree."
Hermione followed his gaze. The next section of the "shortcut" was deceptively simple-looking at first. Then her mind started unspooling the workings and implications, and anxiety rose in her gut.
When she'd gone to France over the summer and visited the seashore for the first time in years, her parents had made certain she'd recognize one of the biggest dangers of the beach: riptides. And any currents, really, but the potential lethality of rip currents and undertows had been the bulk of their worried lecture. Currents, she had been taught, could be more dangerous than a shark. They were far easier to come across and more difficult to escape.
The next room appeared to be empty of everything but a huge stone ball and cup at first, but upon second glance she realized it was full of moving water. Large stala fans embedded in the walls of the cylindrical room turned the room into a silent hurricane. The currents were only made visible by the scarves of shimmering blue Zora fabric tied to the protective grate in front of each fan. A blue or orange node lay at the base of each stone appliance; blue for those currently running and orange for those whose scarves lay limp. Several fans were angled up toward the center of the room, supporting the ball of engraved beige stone hovering there with a substantial water cushion.
Ron swam out of the tunnel and was immediately intercepted by a current. He drifted helplessly across the room, flailing as he attempted to escape. Another fan caught him partway through and started shuttling him in another direction. Hermione panicked, reaching for him even as her common sense screamed at her to stay put. Tiamus picked up on her panic and leapt into the room. He caught Ron and pulled him up to a calm spot by the ceiling, then turned upside-down to study the fans.
"I don't believe these currents are dangerous for you—simply annoying," he said. "Of course, any human divers using time-sensitive equipment could easily wind up drowning here, but I digress." He hung stationary in the water using his fins, frowning at the orange-inscribed stone ball and its matching cup built into the floor. "That shouldn't be floating, even with the support of those currents," he remarked, pointing at the ball. "I recognize it, though. It's a Keystone—one much larger than the ones Sheikah use for their fortress gates and upper-class homes." He looked around. "This is quite a lot of work, both in terms of magic and construction, for an obstacle course. The Hero of Lights's reputation for perfectionism appears to have been well-earned."
Hermione leaned over the edge of the tunnel, now that she'd been reassured the room wasn't technically dangerous, and studied the area like a puzzle. The fans most likely had the ability to be toggled on and off by the crystals mounted right under them. Most obviously, the solution of the room was to get the ball in the cup. 'What happens when we accomplish that?' she thought, looking for the goal. Her eyes caught on a spot of brownish green metal in the floor. It was a stala grate with a fancy, twisted design that reminded her of a Victorian fence. Blue light bloomed behind it, meaning the Bluestone-lit trail continued beyond.
Alright, she had the object of the room and where to go figured out. Now she just had to get the ball in the cup. She swam out and attempted to reach the top of the "windy" cylinder. When a current caught her, she paused for a moment. The force was even across the span of the fan pushing at her—insistent, but not trying to rip at one part of her body and shove at another. That was much less scary than she'd imagined. Hermione easily escaped the current by swimming straight up. Partway through her crossing, Tiamus realized where she wanted to go and ferried her to the top of the room. She mouthed a thanks to him and then treaded water to look down at the fans.
Since the ball was suspended in the upper center of the room and the cup was off to the side, they'd have to find a way to guide it to its socket by using the fans. Even if it was light enough to float somehow, she was sure there would be something preventing them from simply knocking it to the floor and pushing it around. From this angle, she could see an orange Bluestone crystal incorporated smoothly into the car-sized sphere. Curiously, she hit it with a Sunburst Spell—something unlikely to damage it.
The crystal turned blue and a faint aura formed around the ball it was embedded in. The sphere floated slightly up before dropping back into the opposing currents buffeting it in the center of the cylinder. 'Ah, a reset button,' she thought with relief. In the event she screwed this up, it was reassuring to know she wouldn't be ruining their chances to reach Jabora. Experimentally, she cast a Levitation Charm on the Keystone to check whether she could cheat the game. In response, the sphere bobbled and Hermione experienced the bizarre mental sensation of her magic sliding around the object like water over greased metal. It was far stranger than having her spell simply fizzle out.
Ron tapped her shoulder. "What if," he mouthed, and then started pointing to the spiraling column of fans. "Off, on, on, off, on, off, off, off, on?" he said as he pointed to the appliances from top to bottom.
Hermione blinked. "Erm…" She ran through the list in her head as she calculated where the keystone would go. The ball would drop, move right, shuttle to the side, drop again, return to center…Her eyes went unfocused as her mental gears started locking up. This wasn't the kind of thinking she was best at—guessing at the future movements of something. She was better at the rooms that worked like jigsaw puzzles, where you slid the right parts into place and the problem would just be solved. She supposed that solution would work. Ron would know better than her.
"Let's try it," she mouthed to him, readying her Magic Rod. She and Ron hit the Bluestone nodes from the bottom of the room on up. When Ron set one of the fans maintaining the Keystone's position to "off", she watched the stone ball descend with bated breath. Sure, they could reset if they needed to, but a puzzle like this could have thousands of possible fan configurations. The fewer they had to try, the better.
The ball puttered downward in a meandering path. Hermione was tempted to get behind it and push, as if she could speed up something that massive. Still, its wandering around the room eventually resulted in it finding its cup. The ball's pulsing orange lines flared blue and the fence blocking the way onward retracted.
"Yes!" Hermione cheered. She and Ron exchanged a clumsy underwater high-five.
"How clever! It would have taken me quite a lot longer to figure that out," Tiamus praised.
They crowded around the hole to see what lay ahead. A slim stone column striped with stala took up the center of a long vertical tunnel. Tiny blue spell-nodes studded the bronze metal, mirroring another helix that ran along the outer wall. Larger, orange Bluestone crystals stuck out of the pillar like toothpicks; Hermione could see at least eight trailing into the distance. The main source of light came from the corkscrew of magical fencing spiraling up the shaft, linking the rails in the central column and the cylindrical walls. It was almost painful to look down; doing so subjected Hermione's eyes to a harsh contrast of bright blue light and utter darkness.
She wasn't the only one wincing; Ron was squinting through his Lenses of Truth and Tiamus had his teeth bared in a pained grimace. "I'm afraid I'll have to stay back here in the event those fences can't be disarmed," the prince said with dismay. "While masterful in terms of early Bluestone engineering, this test of courage and athleticism wasn't crafted with beings of my size or species in mind."
Hermione's stomach sank. She and Ron would have to go into the shadowy room on their own? Just two small, frail humans in the big, watery dark?
Tiamus laid one of his huge hands on her shoulder. "You will not be alone, Hermione. I will stay up here for fear of making myself a hindrance for you and your friend in that room, but I will still keep an eye out. If I sense any danger that you and Ron are not equipped for, I will rush in to strike it."
Despite how irritatingly unhelpful her professors had been since the Light World had begun leaking into the Dark World, Hermione still felt heartened at the thought of having adult supervision in a place like this. If the darkness drove her to scream, at least there would be someone bigger and calmer than her nearby to talk her down.
She and Ron took a deep breath, shared a look of nervous determination, and then swam out into the room full of spiraling force fields. Hermione brought her Magic Rod to bear and started picking off the orange crystals sticking out of the pillar. While she couldn't be sure what they did, she was certain they had to do with getting past this challenge.
Off to her right, Ron suddenly started thrashing. Hermione hesitated, caught between self-preservation and swimming over to help. She couldn't see what had attacked him, and thus didn't know whether she could assist at all.
Ron flung the shadow on his arm away from him, and Hermione caught sight of its skeletal silhouette against the deadly barriers glowing above and below.
Skullfish!
While Ron dispatched the singular monster with a swing of his Zora sword, Hermione dropped her gaze and peered through the layers of translucent hazards underfoot. The shadows of approaching fish skeletons could be seen shimmying up the corkscrew of blazing fences. Despite her fear—because this was just about the worst place to have a fight—she found herself fascinated by the undead creatures' show of threat avoidance. It appeared they had just enough intelligence to understand that the fields of pure magic would fry them just as surely as a Sunburst Spell.
Hermione and Ron swam forward to confront the enemy. They would have to fight the pests sooner or later if they wanted to proceed, anyway. Ron swung his sword despite the nearness of the fences. Hermione watched with surprise as it passed through the "ceiling" worryingly close to Ron's head without sending any kind of shock through its wielder.
'Ah, because the fences are made of magic and the sword is made of an electricity-conducting material! The energy only follows magical conductors like stone and stala, not steel or iron!' she realized. It was like seeing the scientific principles of Hylian magic in action.
She blasted away as Ron took care of any Skullfish that evaded her shots. They continued down the dangerous magical corkscrew with greater haste, eager to get this room over with before they had to fend off too many more waves of undead fish. Hermione fired Sunburst Spells at the orange switches sticking out of the pillar as they went, while Ron picked off stray Skullfish up ahead before they could gather into swarms.
Soon Hermione was treading water in front of the last switch, at the bottom of the pillar. The brightness of the fences had become something of a comfort; she knew that once disarmed, the only light in the shadowed room would be whatever meager amount trickled in from the Bluestone-lit room above. It wouldn't be enough. She would start feeling water currents where there were none, seeing things that weren't there—
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a controlled breath. Damn the human mind for being such an illogical construct! While she knew what was wrong—the pattern-matching habit of the human brain linking one bad experience in certain circumstances with every instance of being in those circumstances—she couldn't reason away her irrational fear. It was like the thoughtless, nonsensical fright that now seized her at the sight of snakes. No, not every snake had the power to kill or Petrify on sight, but that one snake had, and her stupid brain had made the wrong connection.
"It's okay. You're not alone. You can do this," she spoke into her air bubble. Taking heart in the sight of Ron floating next to her, looking equally fearful and determined, she hit the last switch.
One by one, the blazing barriers shut off. Darkness cascaded upward until the entire room was lit only by the hole at the top…and two Bluestone knobs shining at the base of the pillar?
Casting an Illumination Charm, which her Magic Rod boosted enough to throw light all the way across the circular room, Hermione swam toward the blue globes. Between the simple lamps and her spell, she could clearly see a treasure chest sitting within a niche at the bottom of the central column. A bloom of excitement pushed aside the irrational fear gnawing at her thoughts. What prize had they won?
She opened the treasure chest, saw the scroll within, and braced herself before picking up the magic-enriched parchment. Knowledge painfully inscribed itself in her mind. It explained in detail something that was neither a simple spell, nor a magical tool, but something balanced between the two. She whimpered as the particulars of fluid dynamics were dumped into her head. Ow, those were more complicated than she'd thought!
When the effects of the scroll ceased, she saw Prince Tiamus hovering worriedly in front of her and Ron. "What happened to you? Did a monster cause this? Are you all right?" he asked upon seeing her unfreeze.
"We're fine. We just found an artifact that taught us a new spell," Hermione told him. "It hurts at first, but the scrolls actually have a healing effect."
Ron felt around his previously bitten arm and nodded in satisfaction at the restored state of it. With a flick of his wrist, he conjured the new item/spell device they'd just learned how to create. The light of his Illumination Charm flickered and he clutched at his chest, mouth falling open as he suddenly panted for air. "What the hell?!" he mouthed, looking at the large blue coin in his hand like it had bitten him. "It just sucked the life out of me!"
Hermione rooted around in the fresh knowledge that had just been shoved into her mind. Their new tool was a powerful, one-time-use spell linked to a temporary physical object. When conjured, the spell would drain a considerable amount of magic, which would reside in the medallion until it was needed. Then, upon use, the magic would lash out at every nearby target the mage wanted gone and the medallion would vanish until being conjured again.
Tiamus leaned over Ron. After checking that the boy wasn't about to pass out, he peered closely at the medallion. "I've never seen a magical object like this before," he remarked. "Do you children know what it does?"
"In theory," Hermione said. She was a little nervous to test it. Not only did summoning the powerful weapon seem unpleasant, but she wasn't quite sure how its targeting system worked. Did it only attack what the user had hostile intent toward, or was it a line-of-sight thing? What if it was thought-based and she wound up accidentally targeting Ron because she was worried about him in battle?
Tiamus suddenly twitched his head up and to the side, his wide feline pupils staring at something past Hermione. Without warning, he surged forward, hooked his arms around Hermione's and Ron's waists, and whisked them sideways.
A massive shape surged past them as Tiamus jetted out of the way. It thrashed in the water upon its attack being denied, a mass of dull scales and ragged fins flexing and twisting. Then the dark figure turned around and wailed.
The creature was a fish—one the size of a whale. It looked like a carp with large, uncannily human-like eyes currently half-shut in pain and misery. Hermione knew very little about fish, but this one seemed far from healthy. The reason for its purplish, poisoned-looking complexion poked out of its mouth. Its tongue stuck out ahead of it, capped by a bony, chitinous thing with the same hollow, glowing red eyes as a Skullfish.
"Oh, Jabora," Tiamus despaired softly. "What has this creature done to you?"
A miserable warble left the fish's mouth. The monster on its tongue reared up, dragging its host forward, and produced a shrill trill, waving around like a wagging finger puppet. Its cry sent an unnatural chill through the water.
Skullfish began appearing, as if formed from the water itself. Jabora coughed, expelling even more of the creatures from his cavernous mouth. Soon, over a dozen of the little skeleton monsters hovered around him. The spirit's eyes went wide and frantic afterward. When the parasite started pulling him forward again, he flared his fraying fins but was unable to resist.
Tiamus pulled Ron and Hermione up as the huge fish was forced to surge toward them. Jabora crashed into the wall, the metal helmet-cap he wore gouging a dent into the dark rock. That knife-like fin sticking out like a unicorn horn was sharp, apparently.
"I'll distract the monster controlling Jabora, but I'll need you to keep those Skullfish away from me, children," Tiamus said urgently. He cast a fearful glance toward the cloud of ravenous undead fish now shuffling toward him with an eager glint in their scarlet eyes.
Hermione and Ron nodded determinedly. Once the Skullfish were dealt with, they could start focusing on the monster spawning them. Hermione started lassoing her Magic Rod, picking off the monsters one by one. Ron did the same, focusing on the edges of the swarm. A dull purple haze started clouding the water as monsters fell to their purifying light.
A sad warble and chilling cry signaled the summoning of another swarm…somewhere. Tiamus cried out in pain above them. Hermione broke away from the attack and searched the water.
Jabora rushed at Tiamus, simultaneously wailing in protest. The prince darted out of the way before he could be crushed by his kingdom's guardian spirit, his fins trailing blood. He pried a Skullfish off of one of his arm-fins, took his trident off of his back, and desperately stabbed at the others catching up to him. His right hip fin had a terrible bite ripped out of it, the water quickly turning pink in its wake.
Ron was still occupied with the fish below, so Hermione swam up as fast as she could. It didn't seem nearly fast enough. Tiamus had to dodge again as Jabora swung around toward him, and his hiss of pain echoed through the water.
The prince needed her help now, and firing at the fish swarming him ran the risk of her hitting him with her spells. They still had yet to test how effective spells cast through a Magic Rod were on Light World natives. Hermione bit the bullet, vanished her Magic Rod, and conjured up the new item they'd just come across. It felt like having the breath vacuumed from her lungs. Her vision flickered to static like a TV with a bad signal. Then she was okay, just a little breathless and tired. A mild ache still sat in her chest, but now she had a spell made solid clutched in her hand. Hopefully the thought-based aspect of it would allow her to throw her magic around without hurting the prince.
Hermione thrust the medallion over her head. "Nayru's Tears!" she cried in Hylian.
A pale blue glow flared around her, then formed into swirling pearls of watery light. Twenty luminous missiles flew off in arcs toward every set of red eyes in sight.
Skullfish died in an overlapping series of small explosions. Blooms of smoke filled the water like strange flowers, fading to reveal a scattered handful of green Rupees slowly sinking toward the ground. Suddenly, the only monster in the room was the one on Jabora's tongue.
A furious ululation came from above her, and Hermione could guess who it was aimed at. Now with two free hands, she flapped her arms to push herself hard to the side. Jabora rushed past her in a flurry of bubbles and thrashing fins. Hermione took advantage of the negative water pressure to help her spin in the Spirit's direction, conjured her Magic Rod, and took aim. While the water was clear and Tiamus wasn't in danger of being eaten, she would press the advantage.
Hermione fired Sunburst Spells as Jabora swiveled around. The parasite on his tongue shrieked and flashed white with every one that hit. Those spells that missed merely bounced off the spirit's scaly hide, leaving spots of green that were quickly overtaken by purple-gray. After three hits, the creature slumped over with its eyes rolling dizzily.
Ron swam for the monster at top speed. Tiamus zipped in to help him close the distance, and then both of them slashed and stabbed at the parasite with their respective weapons. Jabora seemed either unable to swim away from the assault or willing to let them hack at his tongue. He just hovered in the water and watched with a look of pure exhaustion. It looked like the fish barely had the energy to move when released from the parasite's control.
The parasite ended the skirmish by dragging Jabora in a tight circle, sending Tiamus and Ron tumbling with a heavy current from the giant fish's swinging tail.
Hermione swam farther away from the possessed spirit and gathered her magic about her. They would need that barrage spell if they were to keep the next wave of Skullfish from eating Tiamus, and she'd rather sacrifice a fraction of her own vitality than have Ron be winded. He was a more capable close-range fighter than her, while she'd prefer to pick off Skullfish from afar.
This time when she called up the Water Medallion, the world went white. A shrill whine rang in her ears and numbness tingled in her limbs. For a brief moment, it felt like she was suspended weightlessly in time and space.
A desperate scream from her lungs to breathe snapped her out of it. She lapsed into a fit of coughs, then sucked in a deep gasp of air. There was a sharp pain in her right forearm—a Skullfish that had gotten to her while she'd been insensate. Hermione stowed the Water Medallion in her bag for later use, summoned her Magic Rod into her left hand, and banished the fish with a Sunburst Spell that lightly singed her skin.
Looking around to get her bearings, she saw Ron and Tiamus valiantly fighting off a swarm of Skullfish as Jabora circled above. Hermione picked off a few of the little monsters, then aimed up at their source. The parasite squealed when her first spell hit, then yanked Jabora around to face her. Hermione boldly fired off another spell in the face of the spirit's incoming charge, then took a deep breath and struck out upward. The air in her lungs compensated for some of her poor swimming form, but not all of it. Jabora's tattered dorsal fin whapped her in the ankles as the giant fish rushed by beneath her.
"OW!" She curled up in a ball to clutch at the injury without thinking, causing her to sink through the water toward the creature that had caused it.
Ron swam in and dragged her upward, flinging spells behind them. Hermione gritted her teeth against the pain that flared in the bite on the arm he was firmly gripping. It was the kind of injury that any one of the Harrys would hardly notice, but it hurt.
Below, the parasite let out a scream as Ron's spells weakened its hold on Jabora. Ron let go of Hermione's arm, gave her a worried look, and then dove to join Prince Tiamus's furious attack in the creature controlling the spirit. Hermione swam up and away toward the room's center pillar and held onto one of the peg-shaped switches sticking out of it to save her some energy as she set about picking off the remaining Skullfish from the last wave with purifying spells. No need to have them team up with the next batch of beasties to come.
Once again, Jabora smacked his attackers away with an involuntary spin and had his mouth forced open so the parasite could summon reinforcements. A cloud of Skullfish appeared, even thicker than the ones that had come before, and Jabora coughed up more of them as he swam up into the darker area of the room above, fully out of sight. Tiamus gritted his teeth and brandished his trident as the undead fish made a beeline for him, Ron already casting Sunburst Spells at his side. Hermione thought, with perhaps a touch of exertion-induced delirium, that it would have made for a stunning photo.
She held up the Water Medallion. "Nayru's Tears!" Another halo of pearlescent missiles coalesced at her command before sailing off to pummel the Skullfish swarm. As the little monsters became a haze of purple smoke, she braced her legs against the pillar behind her and listened. The parasite was guaranteed to make another run for her after this.
Sure enough an angry cry sounded from the darkness above and in front of her. Hermione kicked off at a downward angle as Jabora charged the pillar full of switches. Jabora hit the structure with a thunderous crack of metal helmet on stone and thrashed to get the point of his helmet free. Ron and Hermione took advantage of the spirit being forced to hold somewhat still, firing spells at his tongue once again to stun the parasite yanking his body around. Tiamus and Ron swam in to lay the final blows on the monster.
With a final death scream, the parasite flailed around and then collapsed, its red eye-lights extinguished. Its pale, segmented body cracked apart and then vanished into smoke.
Jabora let out a low moan and slumped in the water. Green flowed into his dull purple scales, his frazzled fins turning from sickly magenta to orange. He still looked like he'd been put through the wringer, however. The ends of his fins remained ragged and his body hung limply from where his helmet had become lodged in the room's central pillar. Tiamus, with his feet planted against the pillar and his hands on Jabora's helmet, gave a mighty heave. With a grating noise, the giant carp drifted back from the middle of the room. His orange eyes opened to tired slits and his fins flicked weakly to stabilize him in the water.
The Zora prince flitted up by the spirit and inclined his head humbly. "My deepest apologies for not coming to help you sooner, Great Jabora," he said.
Jabora did not speak in return, but produced a soft warble, like muted whale song, and swam forward to gently lay the front of his helmet against Tiamus's hand. The Zora prince patted him on the nose, looking over the spirit with worry.
Hermione hung from one of the switch pegs on the room's central pillar, her body screaming at her. Not only had she done a lot of swimming, which was a kind of exercise that worked every muscle in unfamiliar ways all at once, but she'd had to do combat swimming to keep from getting mashed into red paste against the walls of this cave. On top of that, she'd conjured up two magical missile-launchers in quick succession and cast a whole host of Sunburst Spells on top of that. She was too exhausted to think, too consumed by soreness and the urge to sleep to be glad that the lake was now clear of the Skullfish that had been helping reinforce Hogwarts's isolation. Ron swam up next to her, gave her a long look, and then poked her in the cheek.
"Nnn," Hermione grunted, smacking his hand away. She buried her face in her arms, laying her cheek against the smooth crystal surface of the switch holding her up. If she wound up giving into the adrenaline crash and magical exhaustion sucking at her ability to stay conscious like a vacuum, she trusted Ron and Prince Tiamus to get her back home.
Item Get: Water Medallion. The Water Medallion is a single-use magical item that summons a salvo of 20 watery bullets to pummel the target(s) of the caster's choice in the immediate area. Up to three of the same medallion may exist at once in a caster's possession; however, a Light World mage can only conjure one a day without risking death.
Notes:
-Jabora is the twin spirit to Jabun, who lives in the basin below Zora's Domain. His design is a mixture of Wind Waker Jabun and a Hyrule Bass.
-Hagrid is canonically eleven and a half feet tall! Prince Sidon, according to some Reddit nerds, would translate to 11'0" when removed from BOTW's somewhat wonky sense of visual scale. Hagrid is taller than even that, and Tiamus is three feet shorter.
-The Skullfish Parasite on Jabora's tongue is based on Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating louse. It's a parasitic isopod that causes a fish's tongue to fall off and takes its place, mooching off of the fish's blood. Jabora still has his tongue, though!
Timeline Stuff:
With Tears of the Kingdom now out, you might be wondering if the lore of that game will figure into this fic, huh? Well, while I love the gameplay and the amazing amount of exploration, TOTK retcons some previously established canon that I really like, so…I'm personally putting it in its own box separate from BOTW (and thus, this fic). A small amount will be added to the background of this story, however. Here's a timeline for this fic's "era" (this shuffles some canon events a bit):
The beginning: The original tribe of the Zonai established a society on a large highland area at the edge of a larger continent. Their society naturally rose, fell, and dispersed into the wider continent.
A long time ago: the Lokomo came across an inland section of the highland region, now sparsely populated by a few Zonai holdouts, and settled there and on part of the larger continent below.
~3,100 years ago: the Hero of Time disappeared partway through fulfilling his destiny, and the King of Evil returned with a vengeance. Though the people of Hyrule prayed desperately to the gods in hopes of a savior, none came. Hyrule, Hytopia, Labrynna, and Holodrum—the latter three being part of the large continent—were reduced to archipelagoes by the Great Flood. Only the Lokomo living atop the highland prairie—now a new, smaller mainland between island countries—survived. A war between spirits ensued in the post-apocalypse, resulting in the deaths of most of the Lokomo survivors and the imprisonment of the demon Malladus using the Spirit Tracks.
~2,600 years ago: the Hero of Winds used the Master Sword to seal Ganondorf in the sunken heart of Old Hyrule. In response, a cult of rogue Sheikah arose. Calling themselves "Yiga", they vowed to resurrect their King from the depths of the Great Sea. Following the defeat of Ganondorf, the Pirate Queen and the Hero of Winds came across the now mostly-abandoned continent. With this discovery, they founded the New Kingdom of Hyrule.
~2,500 years ago: the Hero of Spirit and future Spirit Queen faced the escaped demon Malladus. After slaying the demon, the Hero went on to expand the Spirit Tracks from the mainland to the Southern Isles of Hyrule and establish it as a tax-funded public transport system. The Spirit Queen led expeditions into the deep-sea ruins of Old Hyrule, retrieving cultural history and knowledge that helped tie New Hyrule to its roots. A new tribe of Zonai rose, formed from the monster-hunting jungle peoples of Faron who lived among the ruins of the original Zonai.
300 years ago: A mad wizard slayed the World Spirit Ordona, predecessor to Farosh, casting the people of the Faron Province into shadow. The Hero of Lights was called upon to defeat the mage before he could kill the rest of the World Spirits and sink the entire world into darkness. Using her affinity for Sheikah Bluestone technology, she spread light in her wake and became a symbol of hope. The Hero of Lights went on to establish Bluestone technology as a major industry within Hyrule, leading to greater cooperation between Hylians and Sheikah and a sweeping wave of modernization. So began the earliest stages of the Sheikah Civilization.
Now: Vaati the Wind Mage, trapped in a prison between worlds, discovered a dimension on the other side of the one he'd been cast out from. Clawing his way into the Dark World, he used its magic to crack the walls of his prison. A young mage native to the land was called upon by one of the world's few remaining spirits to claim the sword holding Vaati in place before the Wind Mage could permanently shatter the tool of his sealing.
~2,000 years ahead: A prophecy predicts the rise of Ganon yet again, and production of the Guardian automatons and Divine Beasts ensues. The Calamity is stopped in its tracks by the Hero and Princess of the era. Ganon is sealed beneath Hyrule Castle.
~12,000-12,100 years ahead: Calamity Ganon breaks free of his seal and ravages the New Kingdom of Hyrule using the army of Guardians built by the ancient Sheikah. The Princess of the era sacrifices her freedom to pin him in place. A hundred years later, the Hero who nearly died in the unexpected war against Calamity Ganon faces the great evil once more and succeeds in his duty.
Next month: the Harrys get the first sign of where to go next on their quest, and Link and Harry learn a little more about each other.