Last month: Ron and Hermione spoke to Avoka, getting caught up to speed on Malfoy's tricky situation within Slytherin and telling him what they know about Harry's situation in turn. At the same time, over in Gerudo Desert, Blue came across a vibrating door and a strange apparition that could be signs of dangerous magic.
An illustration of the new item in this chapter can be found under my "dungeon 6" tag on garden-eel-draws and on Ao3!
Content warning for skull trauma, abuse of a corpse, and a potentially mortal wound.
Slaying ReDeads really sucked to do on your own, as it turned out. The only ways to do it were either safely and from a distance, which ate up a lot of bombs or arrows, or up-close and dangerous with no fallbacks. Red had gotten that crash-course lesson when he'd wound up locked in this room with five of the freaky things.
SCREEE!
Red internally swore a blue streak as his body became a prison. Dammit, he'd thought his Sunburst Spell would keep this one frozen for a few seconds longer!
The teal-skinned, mummified zombie dragged its feet toward him, the bloody chips of light in its eyes glowing brighter. It only had half a meter of distance to cross; Red's sword arm only had so much reach, and he hadn't been on the retreat when this thing had paralyzed him.
His silent swearing turned to screaming as the monster loomed over him. These things were so much bigger and freakier up close!
The ReDead's long arms shot out and snared him. He was crushed against the creature's ribs with his toes just brushing the ground. Air wheezed out of him, forced from his lungs by the bony coils around his chest. The shadow of the creature's head lengthened across the floor—
CRACK.
Pain thundered through Red's head. Stars flashed behind his eyes.
CRACK.
He couldn't see!
CRACK.
Red gasped for air. It was like his lungs had forgotten how to work.
CRACK.
He scraped up enough air to scream, "GEROFF!" Red blindly flung his body around with all his strength. In the control-room of his mind, blinded by emergency lights and deafened by klaxons, he pushed every button and pulled every lever. Muscles! Magic! He needed all of both!
Red woke up on the ground with the worst and scariest headache he could remember having. A halo of agony circled his skull at the level of his temples, the pain mostly concentrated at the front and back. He put a trembling hand to his forehead. The skin there was mushy and wet.
At the sound of a soft moan behind him, Red scrambled to his feet. No! He wasn't getting grabbed again!
He dizzily stumbled over to the farthest corner of the room from the slowly pursuing monsters. The three ReDeads stared in the direction he'd gone for a minute, then dragged their carcasses back to where they'd originally been standing.
Red let out a shaky laugh. Well, now he could say he'd survived having his head cracked open twice! Wasn't that exciting? Shame anyone he told about it would have kittens.
He conjured his bag to fish out one of those flat stuffed bread things that Link had made for the trip, then frowned at it. The front and back of his head felt squishy and hurty. Did that mean brain damage? Or bone damage? Those things were important and bad.
Blinking, Red reviewed the thoughts he'd just had with some difficulty. Yeah, that sounded like brain damage. Better to use a potion just in case, then. In between their long study sessions, Yellow and Blue had been drilling him and Green in assessing their injuries and healing them with the right amount of magic. He still didn't think an arrow wound or getting stabbed were as big a deal as those two had kept making it out to be, but he'd take a cracked skull seriously.
After gulping down a Red Potion, he reassessed the room. Still locked, still blue and eerie, still infested with things that were an absolute pain to fight. But there was something…missing?
There had been four ReDeads left to slay before, and now there were three standing in their starting positions. Where had the fourth one gone?
Standing up, Red looked around warily for any approaching ReDeads. It wasn't great to mess up a headcount for any monster, really, but these ones were particularly bad to lose track of.
There was nothing. Just the three zombies standing in plain view. And a crater in the ceiling for some reason. Had that been there this whole time? It didn't look like the room was about to cave in, but Red would rather not stand under those cracks for any longer than he had to.
"O…kay?" Red said, puzzled. He supposed he wouldn't look a missing monster in the mouth as long as it didn't creep up and pounce on him later. Or however that saying went.
He conjured his bomb bag, scowling at it. Bombs were really cool, and he didn't have any of his brothers here to nag him about how he used them…but he didn't want to use them. He was a real swordsman now, with a teacher and everything! He ought to have been fighting these monsters the same way a Hero of Light would, with his muscles and magic blade! Picking off ReDeads from afar was so lame! Not to mention, a waste of limited ammo. The Four Sword had unlimited ammo, as long as Red's arms were still attached, but he only had six bombs and fifteen arrows. It had taken three bombs to kill the first ReDead, and there were three of these monsters left!
With a loud groan, he took out a bomb and threw it toward the center of the three monsters' loose formation before conjuring his Magic Rod. Much to his annoyance, he was going to have to take a leaf out of Blue's book here to keep from wasting resources. Getting his skull cracked open sucked more than being forced to do the smart thing.
The bomb went off with a deafening bang that shook some dust loose from the cracked ceiling. All three monsters staggered a step away from it, which Red took to mean they'd all caught some damage. The sight wasn't enough to put a smile on his face, but it dampened his sense of wounded pride as he brandished his Magic Rod.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" He seized the monster closest to him and, with a swing of his arm and a flex of his will, whipped the creature at the spikes that had sprung up over one of the doors. It stuck in place with a steel spike going through its ribcage and out through its back. Red winced at the sight, but the monster wasn't defeated yet. It wrapped its long, knobby fingers around another part of the barricade at the door, placed its feet on either side of the cone embedded in its torso, and began slowly pushing itself up. The ReDead's head cranked around and lolled in Red's direction and it seemed to grin with its lipless mouth. Those giant tombstone teeth clacked together in a deadly promise.
Red forced back the wave of dread that made his wand hand briefly quiver. Who was afraid of having their brains spilled on the floor again? Certainly not him!
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Red lifted the monster off the spikes, then slammed it down. He re-cast the spell and did it again. And again. And again. Each time the ReDead was flung toward the ground, the gaping hole in its torso opened wider and wider. There was no blood, but shards of shattered ribs and vertebrae were soon scattered about the floor. Red only stopped once the monster crumbled into purple smoke and slipped through his magical grasp.
He stood staring at where the ReDead had been, dimly noticing the fact that his lungs were screaming like he'd stopped breathing and there were spots swimming at the edges of his vision. He'd lost track of how many spells he'd used to make sure the ReDead didn't get the chance to slip free or scream. Too many, maybe. Or just enough.
He put a hand over his pounding heart. "Huh," he panted. "Maybe that dragon left more of a mark than I thought." Not that anyone would ever know. His brothers had enough of their own issues to deal with, and he was one of the more stable ones. He had to stay strong so they could, too.
"Your turn now," he said, approaching the next ReDead in line. "This time, let's see how well you burn. Incendio!"
He took out the rest of the ReDeads from a distance, burning through his magic in short bouts of spellcasting. It was lame and took a lot more time than chucking a few bombs their way, but it was also technically ammo-less if he had enough recovery time. And it kept him from having his skull cracked open.
He didn't want to go through that again. Never.
Once the monsters were slain, as Red leaned against the wall to catch his breath and force thoughts of his own mortality out of his head, a treasure chest appeared. It was one of the larger ones, too, so it just had to be something good.
Loping over to the chest, he opened it to find a mirror-bright gold and silver disk around eighty centimeters across. It was a fairly plain-looking thing, aside from its high polish. The silver metal that made up most of it was decorated with one of the pinwheel-like sun symbols Red had seen on a couple of doors in this temple, surrounded by a narrow band of shining gold.
Red leaned into the big treasure chest to fetch the shield and slid the piece of equipment on his arm. Oof, this thing was heavy! Easily as heavy as Ron's Hylian Shield, and even bigger. The great disk would be great to hide behind, since it was large enough for one (if not two) of the Harrys to fully curl up under, but it'd be difficult to maneuver with in a fight. This thing was more than half his height all around!
There was also the fact that once he added it to his summons list, this shield would count as a tool, which meant he wouldn't be able to use his Magic Rod or cool new fire sword for offense if he was using this big-arse heavy Frisbee for defense. He could already tell this thing wasn't going to be his favorite item.
He unfolded the rolled-up leather carrying strap on the inside of the shield and slung the big disk onto his back. If he had to tote this oversized dinner plate around until he found Blue, who currently had the blank spell scroll, he wasn't going to wear his arm out doing it.
Red looked around, counting three doors. Two that he hadn't gone through were on the same side, so he picked one by closing his eyes, spinning in a few circles, and picking the one he wound up facing. It was as good a navigation method as any when he didn't have a map.
He opened the door with a press of the moon-shaped button on it and found himself facing a room that consisted of a small rectangle of stone and a lake of bluish purple fog. The platform held a few clay pots and human skulls, with a square of light falling in through the ceiling forming the only point of interest. Support pillars interrupted the fog, letting him know there was indeed a floor somewhere, but that was all the detail the room felt like giving him.
'Pretty color,' he mused, watching the thick mist lap against the sides of the platform he stood on. It smelled like a moldy teabag, though.
He took his sword out of its sheath and dropped it into the mist. Rather than soundlessly disappearing and reappearing on his back, it clanged against the floor. Alright, it didn't look like he was about to break his legs, then. Red hopped down from the platform.
And immediately regretted it. The second the mist touched him, Red's blood froze over. His heart squeezed, then stuttered in his chest. Red gasped for air, clawing at it like that would help put breath in his paralyzed lungs.
Something had gotten snuffed out. Something important that he needed in order to live. He needed it back!
Red fell backward, hooked an arm onto the platform he'd just left, and dragged himself back up. He laid on his belly, too weak to roll over as his heart slowly found its old rhythm. He sucked down air like he'd been drowning, and it helped chase away the spots swimming in his eyes.
"Shadow," he panted, "you there?"
After a few seconds, he heard a reluctant, "Sometimes. Why?"
"D'you know what happened just now?" Red asked. "Was I dying?"
"That mist is meant to disarm treasure-hunters and other invaders of this place, both magically and physically," the spirit said. "If you were a Light World mage, it would be an annoyance at worst. Since you're both made of magic and copied from a type of human whose magic runs soul-deep, that mist will suck the existence out of you if you touch it. I'm sure Green isn't feeling too great right now."
Off in another part of the dungeon, Harry went from an all-out sprint to skidding and rolling across the floor. The strength in his body had suddenly winked out, leaving him a boneless ragdoll helplessly tumbling to a stop against the wall.
As soon as the power came back on—after several terrifying seconds of watching sparks approach him in the darkness—Harry chucked a bomb at the Stalfos chasing him and ran off. "What the HELL are you three doing?!" he hollered at the ceiling.
Red sneezed from the moldy smell wafting off the fog right next to him.
"Anti-wizard mist? Well, that's just great," he groaned, flopping onto his back. Sometimes being a fish-out-of-water in this world had benefits, like being able to impress people just by casting a basic first-year spell, and sometimes it backfired like this. "Can I use my broom in this place?" He and his brothers hadn't yet gotten the chance to test how dungeon-magic affected those.
The spirit rose up from the ground, leaned over him, and shrugged. "You can try."
"So that's a 'no'?"
Shadow Harry smirked. "Like I said, you can try."
Red sighed, then sat up. "Figures," he muttered, scowling at the mist. Much like the ReDeads, that stuff just plain wasn't fun. What ancient architects did he have to piss off around here in order to get a good old-fashioned sword fight?
"If you discorporate, I'm curious to see what'll happen next," Shadow Harry said as Red stood up.
Red glanced at him over his shoulder. "If I what?"
"If the anti-wizard mist makes your body go 'poof'."
Red snorted. "Yeah, of course you'd like to see that." He stood at the edge of the purple fog and frowned at it. That stuff filled this whole big room, about a meter deep. There were two doors in this place—one locked, and one all the way on the opposite side of the long mist-carpeted rectangle. Was he too magical to even cross the room? Would he have to skip it and take a different door?
Shadow Harry poked him in the side of the head. "Kid, you have a new item. Learn to use it." He walked past Red, hovering in the air over the mist. "I've got something planned, so try to keep existing long enough for me to spring it on you, alright? I'd like to see all four of you running and screaming at once. After that, you have my blessing to play in the pretty purple mist." With that, he collapsed into a dark cloud of roiling smoke that swirled away into the fog.
"Ooh, something to look forward to!" Red said gleefully, rubbing his hands together. At least he could be sure he'd get one good fight in this place!
He took the shield off his back and looked it over skeptically. This thing was supposed to be useful, somehow? It was just an obnoxiously over-polished, inconveniently big and heavy metal circle. He supposed it was good for defense at the cost of speed, maneuverability, and stealth, but—
Wait. It was shiny. So shiny, in fact, that he could see his warped reflection in it perfectly. And there was a ray of sunlight right over there, beamed in by mirrors, so it wasn't reaching this place by accident.
Red put the shield under the sunlight. It lit up bright as day and bounced a stream of light into the wall. The matte sun symbol in its mirror surface showed up as a slightly duller shadow in the middle of a brilliant circle.
"Neat!" he remarked, swishing the light back and forth. When he tilted his arm to shine the beam into the fog, a clear spot immediately opened up. Drawing the light across the fog burned a path through it.
He hummed thoughtfully as he tested the distance he could send the unnaturally visible beam—about fifteen meters—and all the angles he could bounce it in. Carving lines through the fog revealed the many secrets hidden under it, scattered among moon-decorated tiles. Pitfalls, Floormasters, spikes, and random tripping hazards were thick on the ground and fully invisible under the opaque cloud-cover.
The biggest question was how he was supposed to carry along enough sunlight to get through this room. Because of how dense and liquid the fog was, it filled up any clear spaces he created pretty damn quick.
His question was answered when the light beam revealed a pinwheel-like sun symbol painted on a pillar that matched the one on his shield. When the crystal in the middle of the marking caught the light of his shield, a port opened in the pillar that spouted reflected sunlight across the room. The beam, visible in the same way as the light cast by Red's new shield, cut through the fog and formed a bright path that he could safely walk across.
"Brill!" Red said. He gave the shield an appreciative pat before starting down the path.
The obstacles he'd seen from up on the platform started hassling him three steps in. A crackling Yellow ChuChu jumped out of the mist, landing only centimeters from him. Red quickly backpedaled, conjuring his whip as he did. Once was sure he wouldn't get caught in its radius, he snapped the weapon at the monster. The ChuChu's charge left it in a golden globe of lightning, leaving it deflated and darkened. Red slayed it in a couple swipes of his sword, then ducked a moving object he saw out of the corner of his eye. A clay pot disappeared into the fog off to his right and shattered on the floor.
"Let's see how you like sunlight!" Red proclaimed, spinning around with his shield at the ready. A beam of light swept across the room before landing on the beastie that had chucked the pot at his head. The Floormaster reared up and then stuck there, paralyzed. Moving the light away from it let the monster instantly resume moving.
'If I had one of my brothers here, then one of us could hold it there while the other went to attack it,' he mused, freezing and un-freezing the Floormaster as it tried to grab something to throw at him. Since this mirrored shield wasn't on his summons list yet, he could use it and another tool at the same time. Too bad his bow required two hands and his Magic Rod wasn't all that effective at dealing direct damage to monsters.
He had to slay the Floormaster with a frustratingly slow stream of Sunburst Spells, since he couldn't run over and hit it with his sword while also keeping his shield in the path of sunlight. Again, it sure would've been nice to have his brothers here, clearing paths through the mist with their shields so Red and Green could slay whatever blocked their way!
"Stupid fog. Wish I could punch it," he muttered.
Now that he knew the path forward lay at the base of one of the columns around him, he waved his shield every which way. The reflected light caught on another sun symbol that revealed another stream of light, and so he moved onward.
A Floormaster sprang out of the ground to greet him when he was halfway to the next pillar. Red jumped back with a yelp of surprise, vanishing his Magic Rod to conjure his Dragon Hammer instead. When the giant shadowy hand's grab for him missed, he smacked it upside its palm with the jet-powered mallet.
The monster didn't go flying, much to his disappointment. It stretched back dramatically with a squeal of pain, though, which gave him time to unsheathe his sword. Shining the light of his shield onto the monster, which had appeared just outside his bubble of safety, he hacked it to death in a few swipes. "Man, that's so much easier than using magic!" he declared to the room as he collected the red Rupee the monster had dropped. "Why does everything around here have to make it more difficult to have fun?"
A flying skull was his answer. It bounced off his shoulder armor and clattered to the floor. Red dropped into a half-crouch, chucked his sword far enough to make it vanish in order to free up his hand, and conjured his Magic Rod. "Where are you, you bastard?" he demanded, squinting. The Floormaster had either gone behind a pillar or ducked under the clouds. Red cursed his inability to chase after it.
He shone around the light of his shield, both to find the beastie and to reveal the next path. When a pot came soaring in, he ducked behind the shield—not a difficult task, as big as the clunky thing was—and slung a Summoning Charm in the direction the pot had come from. "Get over here!"
The shadow reluctantly slid a little ways out from behind a pillar…then ducked under the fog again.
Red dragged a hand down his face. He wasn't cut out for dealing with this annoying room-hazard stuff. Now, if the fog were lava, then the architects of this place would've been cooking with gas! But this lame, life-sucking mist that he couldn't navigate without one of his brothers to make a way for him? Perfectly awful in its boring-ness. It was a nice color and quite deadly, but that was all it had going for it.
After locating the Floormaster in front of him by wildly sweeping his shield around until the light made it spring up and freeze, he slayed it with round after round of Sunburst Spells. Then came finding the next pillar that would reveal a mirror, and then, and then.
But things became exciting when, as he neared the back of the large room, he caught sight of something he hadn't been able to see through the general haze earlier. There was a large, dingy lump of yellowed fabric sitting in front of the platform he was trying to reach. It wasn't one of the props lying around for the Floormasters to use as ammunition, nor was it a creature he recognized. This was new.
In his distraction, he let a purple ChuChu tackle him to the ground. The joke was on the monster, though, as it just turned to stone as soon as it hit the light. Red shoved its statue off of him and climbed back to his feet, ignoring the dull pain of a future bruise running across the back of his ribcage. 'If this thing weighs enough to squash me, that means it's got to have a good amount of heft,' he thought, rubbing his chin. His eyes were still on the mummy-wrapped thing sitting with its back to him. What if he just…?
"Wingardium Leviosa." He lifted up the ChuChu statue and moved it out ahead of him, then flung it at the huddled creature. The ChuChu shattered across its broad back in a cloud of rocky chunks and gray dust.
The large creature grunted in a way that reminded Red of a ReDead, though less blood-chilling, and creakily stood up. It wasn't quite as big as a Light World Moblin, and much more human-shaped. Red still had no idea what the hell it was, though.
He watched as the shuffling lump of aged bandages started pacing back and forth in front of where he needed to go, about ten meters away. It wasn't a quick monster, only a bit faster than a ReDead, and it wasn't holding any weapons. Though there seemed to be a sword on its back, Red doubted the creature could wield it; for one, the monster's arms were stuck straight out in front of it by all its wrappings, and for another, said wrappings were holding the sword in place under their many layers. There was no pulling that thing out without quite a struggle.
Red sized up the purple mist, then the monster. There was no way he'd be able to fight that thing in all this fog. The pathways formed by the mirrors were too narrow, and he'd surely wind up stepping out into the life-suck all around him. No, he'd have to do a smart thing again here.
He hit the giant mummy with a Banishing Charm that launched it backwards through the air. It hit the wall with a loud, hollow thud, then slid down to the raised, fog-free platform below it. "Now there's a battlefield I can use," Red muttered to himself, pleased.
There was nothing to do but cross the rest of the room. Dilly-dallying just wasn't possible unless he fancied sitting down and counting ceiling tiles. He couldn't even wander into a hidden pitfall, with the way his magical vulnerability forced him to navigate this place's main hazard.
Red had noticed, as he'd flung the light of his shield around at random in search of Floormasters, that there were some prizes and secrets hidden around here. One wall had crumbled away to reveal a treasure chest, and a section of floor had dropped down to show a door. He'd spent some time gnashing his teeth and complaining at length to no one about those events before forcing himself to move on. Red would easily describe himself as being a bit thick and quick to jump into danger; however, he wasn't dumb enough to push his luck against the fog in order to reach those prizes. Having spent time in Hyrule's punishing Light had cured him of that particular kind of recklessness. He'd just have to drag his brothers in here later so they could use these Mirror Shields to help one another explore the area.
Thoroughly annoyed by his limitations, Red stomped up to the platform the large monster was now lumbering around aimlessly on. Upon spotting prey, the mummy dragged its feet toward him, then picked up speed.
Red rolled his shoulders, conjured his Dragon Hammer, and wound back as the creature kept coming at him in a straight, line. He stepped forward, braced his lead foot, and swung. Having had so much time to prepare, there was no way his strike would be any less than perfect. The golden hammerhead slammed into the mummy's gut hard enough to lift the thing off its feet.
And that was all it did.
The monster lifted a few centimeters off the ground, landed on its round, stubby feet, and stared at him with the glowing green lights that shone out of a dark slit on its bandaged face. After a moment's pause, it started barreling toward him again.
Red gritted his teeth and hit the mummy with another swing. And another, over and over. Six strikes later, he'd become fairly certain he wasn't getting anywhere. A smack from the Dragon Hammer was only a little less powerful than a bomb. While hunting monsters outside of Castle Town's gates, he'd had time to figure out that kind of stuff. One bomb was worth four sword strikes and a hammer hit was worth three. This monster had soaked up the equivalent of twenty-one slashes of his sword and it was still fine. He could have killed five Red Moblins with that many hits!
He bit the inside of his cheek. The only way forward was getting that thick cushion of bandages out of the way, it looked like. He wasn't stupid, though; that glaring sword on this thing's back looked like it was going to be a problem.
…Although, it was a pretty cool weapon. Too big for Red to use, but maybe he could shrink it. Or get Blue to shrink it. Maybe it was worth taking the obvious bait of getting rid of the cloth holding it in place.
He backed up, summoned his Magic Lamp, and swung it hard. Flaming oil spattered the monster's dry wrappings and spread across them in a flash. Red barely had any time to conjure his Magic Rod in the meantime. He pointed it at the huge, hooked sword as it fell from the mummy's back. "Accio cool sword!" The blade jittered off the ground, then shot through the creature's bony legs. Red ducked as the sharp missile flew right at him. With a loud "SHINK!" it embedded itself in the mortar between two blocks in the wall.
Red's eyebrows went up. That was some strong metal, for it to slide right in instead of bouncing off or shattering! As aged as it looked, he bet there was magic holding it together—strong magic, like the enchantments on his Hylian artifacts. If he couldn't get any of the real treasure in this room because he was too wizardly, he was at least grabbing that sword before he left.
The monster had gone from a heavyset mummy to a long-limbed human skeleton in grotty-looking, enameled gold armor in a matter of seconds. It glared at him with glowing green hollows that held an eerie degree of intelligence.
Much faster than Red expected, the skeleton lashed at him with one of the spike-knuckled, clawed golden gauntlets it wore. Caught off guard, Red's attempt to dodge didn't carry him far back enough. Metal claws raked across the front of his leather breastplate, catching only slightly before slicing through.
Red hissed at the four stinging lines that scraped across his chest—not in pain, but in sudden worry. Green and Blue had added some magic to their armor at Hora's Fountain, and this monster was strong enough to carve through it without its main weapon. That put this creature in a class of its own above the red and blue Moblins and Bokoblins he'd faced so far.
He skittered back, adjusted his grip on his hammer, and lunged forward. The skeleton lifted one heeled golden shoe and kicked at him, but Red managed to throw himself sideways while keeping most of his forward thrust. He kept dashing onward and brought his hammer to bear.
Mid-swing, he saw the spiked punch coming for his gut.
With a sharp crack and a dull thump, both of them were sent flying. Red's jet-powered knock to the monster's ribcage dashed the whole skeleton to pieces. Aged bones and tarnished Gerudo armor clattered across the floor. Only the monster's skull stayed moving, hopping around angrily with flexes of its jawbone.
Red slid across the floor on his back, curled around the agony in his belly. He didn't have to look at the wound to know the monster's wicked glove had done the kind of damage that could kill him if he didn't deal with it quickly. It took all of his willpower not to lie there like a lump and sob.
Balled up on the floor, he conjured his bag, took a Red Potion out, and did his best to drink it sideways. As soon as the firecrackers in his intestines and the cold, sinking certainty of doom had faded, he was back on his feet.
Since the monster hadn't quite pulled itself together yet, Red took the initiative. He conjured his Dragon Hammer again and smacked the skull out of the air as it hopped back toward its reassembling body. The building tower of bones collapsed as the Stalfos's head cracked off the wall.
"Yeah, that's not happening!" Red declared as he chased after it. He whacked the skull farther away from its body, bouncing it off of the door at the back of the platform.
As fast and lanky as this thing was when it was in one piece, he couldn't afford to let it reconstruct itself. If he'd had his brothers around to apply potions when he couldn't, then fighting this monster blade to blade might have been a nice test of his combat skills. Alone, though? He couldn't play around, as much as he hated ruining his own fun. Like a ReDead, this monster was too likely to kill him for Red not to slay it as quickly and unfairly as possible.
He bounced the skull one more time, then managed to crush it under his fifth hammer blow. The Stalfos's bones vanished, leaving behind the sword in the wall and the armor that had been struggling to wrap itself back around the reconstructing skeleton.
To Red's surprise, his knees gave out before he could take a step toward his spoils. He dropped to the ground, unable to react in time. His limbs barely felt like they belonged to him.
"Oh, wow," he murmured, observing his shaking hands. Exhaustion was crashing in; that Red Potion he'd drank had been one of Blue's, rather than a fancy brew by Maple or Syrup—something made as minimally as possible without any green stamina-restoring stuff in it. Now that the excitement of killing that monster before it killed him was wearing off, he could feel the amount of oomph he'd been putting into throwing four kilos of hammer around. It was a good thing being hopped up on violence made it easy to forget annoying things like human limitations.
He sat down, brushed off his stinging knees, and conjured his bag. With a few flexes of his memory, he set out a three-legged iron cauldron, a leather pouch of rock salt he'd already ground up with a mortar and pestle, and a couple of Stamina Shrooms. He washed his hands with Blue's nifty new Cleaning Charm, tore the mushrooms into smaller pieces with his fingers, sprinkled a bit of salt over it, and added a drizzle of (precious, expensive) Gerudo cooking oil. Then, summoning his Magic Rod, he gave the pile a stir and set the salted fungus on fire.
He laughed a little wickedly to himself as he watched the pieces darken. Ooh, his aunt would have killed him if he'd ever done that with any of the food in the house, let alone in one of her pots!
Red ate the roasted mushroom chunks once they were done being on fire, which didn't take long. Light World resistance to wizard spells, and all that. The strips were bland and plain, tasting mainly of toasty burnt, but the quick snack made some of his trembling weariness lift. He'd be able to keep going for another room, as long as he didn't swing his hammer around like a piñata stick again.
"At least I know I'm getting stronger," he remarked to himself after he'd put the cauldron away. A couple of weeks of guided training and regular monster-hunting weren't going to cause an instant change, but he could tell he had more power and endurance than he'd had in the last dungeon. And definitely way more than in the first four, back at Hogwarts. Thinking back, he was amazed at what he'd managed to survive while not even having the knowledge to know what he didn't know about using Muggle weapons. Maybe that was the power of friendship in action, since he and his brothers had always had some extra buddies along back then.
He swept the Stalfos's heavy, chunky metal armor into his bag, then yanked the oversized sickle-sword out of the wall with a Summoning Charm and quick-dodging reflexes. Red frowned at the state of the scratched-up, chipped blade, then shrugged and added it to his hoard. If it could be fixed, Link would know about it, and if it was more useful being melted down into whatever metal it was made of, Link would know about it.
The next room was a puzzling one. No mist, thank goodness, but it took him awhile to figure out its individual quirks.
A ceiling-mounted metal railing formed a jagged figure-eight loop across the large space, interrupted by two great squares of hanging blocks. Sun-shaped eyes marked each of the pillars—two on each side—met by matching eyes on the walls around them. There was no floor, only a long stretch of unlit dark that ended in a bluish vision of the next level of the building way, way down. No, instead of a floor, there were two platforms that slid around the angled figure-eight railing, pausing at each corner. As they puttered around, the eyes shot bolts of red light at one another every second or so, like stuttering Beamoses. The bolts violently smashed together and cancelled out over the center of the platforms' path. Meanwhile, a skin-tingling buzz ran through the rails, sending up small, brilliant blue-white tongues lightning between any joints that no longer quite fit together in the contraption's old age.
Red let out a low whistle as he tried to figure out a way across. The way those laser bolts clashed like fireworks over the platform, he'd have no way to avoid getting hit. He'd have to block himself from both sides at every turn. One direction could be covered with his Mirror Shield, but what about the other? The Abyssal Vase? That was a very two-handed item, and he wouldn't be able to hold it steady while using the Mirror Shield. His buckler was conveniently one-handed, but it was made out of normal steel—lightly enchanted now, thanks to Hora. What if those lasers were hot enough to melt through it? The green, octopus-headed Beamoses he'd seen in the forest-themed dungeon back in the Dark World hadn't been strong enough to melt holes in him; the brass eyes on the front of the temple, however, had been hot enough to cut through his buckler for sure.
"Hmm…" He put his hands on his hips and frowned at the floorless room, as if that would make it less tricky. The door on the other end, he now noticed, was blocked. No sun symbol, nor a lock; it was the kind that was waiting on a puzzle to be solved.
"What the hell am I supposed to do?" Red declared in frustration, tossing up his hands. Maybe he could survive the crossing if he curled up tight under his Mirror Shield and did his best turtle impression, but then there was that door!
"Merlin, it sucks being on my own," he sighed, rubbing his temples. There was a droning sense of "you're going the wrong way" that nagged him with every step, courtesy of the magic composing him. He wouldn't feel right unless he had at least one of his brothers nearby.
Scowling down at the railing, he noticed something move in the distance. On the floor a hundred or so yards below, something dark was sliding across the tiles.
Red switched his prescription spectacles for the Lenses of Truth and squinted hard. That odd black shape…it wasn't a Floormaster, but shifting cloth. Billowing robes.
One of his brothers was down there!
He delightedly switched his glasses back and summoned his Magic Rod. Screw this confusing Beamos room! He had better places to be!
Red hopped off the edge of the platform he stood on and fell. Wind screamed past him, stealing away the sound of his laughter. Blue only looked up when Red dropped from the long dark shaft and fell into the domed atrium below. Red caught himself with a Falling Spell and toppled gently to the ground, then launched himself at his sibling. Blue almost tipped off his feet with an indignant squawk.
"Yes! I found one of you!" Red crowed. "Now we can start going through this place proper-like!"
Item Get: Mirror Shield. Crafted by a Beamos-obsessed Gerudo cult centuries ago to aid in their robotics experiments, the Mirror Shield is the perfect counter against light-based weaponry. Indestructible and able to reflect energy attacks both magical and mundane (aside from electricity), it provides the ultimate defense. Its only weaknesses are that, being made of metal, it can be turned against its owner by applying enough sustained heat, and its magical mirror-brightness makes it a visual hazard if used outside under the sun.
Notes:
-If Red had kept his eyes open during his freak-out, he would have seen that ReDead rocket into the ceiling hard enough to crater it and "die" on impact. Accidental magic is going to become more common the more the Harrys use their Magic Rods and expand their internal power reserves.
-The purple mist is the Blue Fog hazard from Wind Waker. Light World mages are prevented from using magic within the Fog, while Dark World mages basically have a section of their soul blocked off. Green could survive in it for a little while, but it would feel a lot like having a stroll through Light-poisoned London.
-Brooms only work in the Overworld. Dungeon magic keeps them on the ground.
-Just so everyone knows, I'm not holding strictly to what number of strikes takes down whichever monster, because that's a bit difficult to keep track of in a fight scene and might impede the action writing I love so much; however, I do try to keep in mind a general sense of how long the health-bar of a particular type and color of monster is. I just wanted to say that in case anyone takes the numbers mentioned in this chapter to be a rigid guide that I'm following. In essence, they just mean that the Four Sword currently has 15ATK, the Dragon Hammer has 45ATK, and a Bomb has 60ATK (with the drawback of possibly dealing massive damage to the player(s)).
Next month: Avoka attempts to put his plan to help Draco into action. Over in the desert, it's Yellow's turn to face the dungeon's dangers.