Last month: The Harrys fought Shadow Harry's monstrous creations, Boko Wolfoses, before fighting amongst themselves. Blue declared he wanted to admit some of their troubles to a trusted adult, and Yellow and Green disagreed vehemently. Meanwhile Shadow Harry went to talk to Vaati about the destructiveness of his new magical anchors; the conversation didn't go well.
Content warning for Yellow's particularly messed-up mindset regarding his past abuse, a gory injury (skip from "Words started making sense again" to "blood-smeared cheek" a few paragraphs after if you're sensitive to my style of describing gore), and someone throwing up.
Yellow stared into the dim blue distance, seeing nothing of it.
Talk to people. Talk? To people who weren't him? About those things?
No. He wouldn't. He couldn't. He was safe because he'd stayed quiet. He was allowed to have friends because he'd stayed quiet. If he spoke about the things he wasn't supposed to speak about, that delicate freedom would be ruined. It would be even worse than the time that nurse had noticed his thin wrists and burned hands.
The Dursleys had only allowed him to be sent to Hogwarts because of all the letters, capped off by Hagrid showing up to knock down their door. The thing about the Dursleys, though, was that they recovered rather well from things like that. Much like Harry, they were resilient people, even if that resilience was accompanied by a lot of loud complaining. Their pride and beliefs were not easily broken, and they only bounced back with a vengeance whenever anything wounded either.
If Uncle Vernon kicked him out of the house or Aunt Petunia signed him up for a Muggle reform school, there went his freedom. They'd let him attend Hogwarts only because it had felt like they hadn't had any other choice; if they realized he really was just a child, and that they held his life in their hands, that life would be effectively ended.
And what would be the quickest way to make them make that realization?
Opening his mouth about their missteps in raising him and making them angry enough to bring everything down around him. They'd done it before, when he'd had a lot less to lose. He knew with absolute certainty they'd do it again if he crossed them.
He couldn't allow himself—any of himselves—to ruin it. He was the Harry who kept them safe. It was his duty to keep his brothers quiet if they didn't have the sense to do so on their own.
The question was how.
"Erm, Yellow? You okay?"
Yellow blinked, then smiled. "Sure I am," he told Red, who was frowning at him with concern.
"Blue asked you like three times to move your shield so he could get closer to that treasure chest," Red said. "You didn't hear him, so he had to ask Green." He looked over at Blue, who was standing in the light of Green's Mirror Shield as he rummaged through the treasure chest hidden in the wall. Purple mist pushed against the beam protecting him, hungry for his magic.
An embarrassed blush warmed Yellow's cheeks. "O-Oh, whoops," he said sheepishly. "I was thinking a little too hard to hear him."
Red raised an eyebrow. "I can guess what about."
Yellow tried not to let his sudden anxiety show. "Well, I think about a whole lot of things," he said. "Like how Blue is really taking a risk by going out into that evil fog for optional treasure, for instance—"
"No, what I reckon is that you were thinking something dangerous about what Blue said earlier," Red cut in, lowering his voice. "Out of all of us, you'd be the one most against it."
Yellow shrank back from him. "I just want us to stay safe," he said meekly. "Talking isn't safe. It's never been and never will be. Blue's going to get us sent to St. Brutus's for real, with this idea of his. Even if no one gets fired, we'll be taken away from Ron and Hermione, and—"
Red reached out and squeezed his shoulder. "But are we, though?" he asked. "Ron got us out last year, and he hardly knows anything about it! Who's to say he won't try even harder next year?"
"We got in mountains of trouble last year and lost Mr. Weasley's car in the Forbidden Forest," Yellow said miserably. "It was so bad, Red."
"But it turned out alright in the end!" His brother clapped him on the back. "Let Blue try the idea out, at least, before you do anything scary. If the whole thing turns sour, we're tough enough to handle it."
"The best thing to do when you can tell something won't work out is to keep things from ever getting the chance to go wrong," Yellow whispered fervently. Blue was kneeling next to a pitfall now, describing what he could see in the distance below to Green. "A disaster doesn't always have to happen."
"Yeah, but we don't know for sure whether this'll be a disaster or not," Red said with a shrug. "Sometimes it's worth seeing how things turn out. Besides, how are you planning on stopping him? Or Green, even?"
Yellow shuffled his feet. "I don't know," he admitted. Intimidation only went so far. Getting sharp with his brothers only worked because they expected him to be soft. Depending on how committed Blue was to trying out this idea, Yellow might destroy any moderating influence he had over his brother's impulsiveness in trying desperately to stop him.
"Then I think you might just have to let this go ahead," Red told him. "Because, I mean, what's the alternative? Is it worth it?"
Yellow chewed on his lower lip. Was it worth it? Pushing Blue to keep his mouth shut, just like…
…just like his relatives had always taught him to?
He shuddered. No, he'd never want to remind any of his brothers of the Dursleys with his behavior. He needed to protect them from themselves, but there was a line between that and outright dictating what they were allowed to do.
"Guess not," he sighed. Then, in a flash of spite, he bit out, "You won't catch me whinging to anyone about things that aren't supposed to be talked about, though. I still don't agree with this, and I'm never going to go along with it."
Red ruffled his hair. "Who knows? Maybe it'll turn out alright and you'll change your mind."
Scowling, Yellow combed his fingers through his hair to fix it. "Or maybe it'll blow up in Blue's face, like it always does when we decide to be ungrateful and get mouthy, and I'll have to find a way to fix it," he countered.
Red smiled at him. "The difference this time is that you'll have 'Me, Myself, and I' to help you."
"What are you two muttering about?" Blue asked as he and Green rejoined them. "Why are you still all the way over here, anyway? We've got another whole half of the room to explore!"
"Keep your britches on, Blue! It's not like we're actually moving forward right now, anyway," Red called over. "All we're doing is cleaning the place out before we get back to where all the fights and excitement are."
"You and violence!" Blue cried with exasperation, tossing up his hands. "There's treasure to be found, and you're pining over something you can find just by stepping outside of Castle Town at night."
Red ambled after Green as their brother led the way across the paths of light. "Stalkoblins aren't half as cool as the Stalfoses in this place," he sniffed at Blue as he passed.
"That—" Blue puffed up, his cheeks going pink. Then he deflated. "I suppose that's true," he conceded.
Yellow followed silently after his siblings. He had a lot to think about, and they weren't thoughts he wanted to share.
The group stopped at the edge of a reflected sunbeam, angling their magic shields to clear the fog away from a staircase that descended below it. "There's a door at the end," Green commented. "Does that mean we should split up again? At least one of us will have to stay behind in the light, since someone has to clear the fog for the rest of us to get there."
Blue conjured his Navi Slate and slid his finger around the screen. "It looks like that room leads down a path that will eventually," he flicked the display up and down a couple of floors, "go down to that statue room I found before running into Red. The one with the big locked door and the messed-up timespace."
His brothers all looked at him. "The what, now?" Red asked. "Isn't the time in this whole dungeon messed up?" He pointed at one of the light-shining pillars around them, whose golden stripes looked as new as the day they'd been painted. The tiles they were standing on, meanwhile, were cracked and pitted with age.
"I saw a ghost there," Blue said. "Not like Nearly Headless Nick, but an echo of something that must have happened in that room a long while ago. That echo was of a mechanic with a belt full of wrenches and such, except she was a kind of Gerudo that I haven't seen in modern Hyrule before. She was too small and delicate, with round ears." He folded his arms with a thoughtful hum. "There's a feeling around the door with the final monster behind it, where I saw that 'ghost'—a sense similar to that of a dimensional weak spot we'd use a Moon Pearl on, but more eerie. If Green got close enough, the Four Sword would probably go berserk over it." He looked speculatively down the stairs. "I think it's worth trying to get all of us down to that room. Green might be able to get a better sense of what's wrong, and there's something about that statue that seems important. There were four normal doors in that area, too, and I've only gone through one."
"We're still gonna go to that room with all the Beamos eyes, though, right?" Red asked, pointing at the door opposite the one they'd used to get here. "The door on the other end must be worth going through, if it's so hard to get open."
Green sighed. "So many doors to go through, so many places to go." He consulted his own map. "Er…It looks like the door Red mentioned leads to a treasure chest and not much else. I'd say it's worth poking around in that direction first."
"Just as long as we remember to go back in this direction," Blue said, pointing at the stairs. He scrunched his lips at his Navi Slate. "I wish we could write notes on these maps. As we run into bigger and more complicated dungeons, I feel like our memories are going to start slipping up when it comes to remembering where we need to backtrack and where to investigate next."
"There are freelance enchanters who upgrade Slates," Green said. "They can switch memory crystals out for more storage or add functions that fancier Slates have. It's all magic rocks and enchantments, so they can do whatever you ask if you have the money and patience for it, basically."
Blue stared at him, wide-eyed. "And you didn't tell me?" he cried indignantly.
"I didn't tell you because Link only told me a couple of days ago and we were so busy I forgot to bring it up," Green replied. "Besides, after all the spending we're going to have to do to upgrade our armor again after this dungeon, there isn't going to be much left over for putting word-processor spells or whatever into our Navi Slates. Those computer upgrades can cost hundreds of Rupees apiece!"
"Yes, well, I just found a diamond and a chunk of topaz the size of my head in this room, so we'll see about that!"
They trooped along the paths of light to reach the door Red had pointed out. It led into a room full of clashing red lasers that quickly had Yellow squinting. There were metal eyes shooting lasers at one another, two platforms puttering around on a shaky-looking steel monorail over a gaping void, and a door at the end that needed a trick to open.
"Oh, we just need to bounce the light back at the eyes," he mumbled to himself. "That's easy."
Red heard him. "Easy to say when there's four of us instead of just me," he grumbled. "I really did try to think this room through!"
Green soon had them paired up and riding the platforms. Standing back-to-back, they used their Mirror Shields to reflect the eyes' shots and blind their sources. When all of the metal eyes had clacked their golden lids shut, the trick door opened.
"That was easy!" Red exclaimed. "Wow, it really sucked to be all split up, didn't it?"
"I managed well enough on my own," Blue said loftily as he stepped off his platform and onto more solid ground.
"Well, I didn't," Yellow declared as he joined him. "You're lucky the only monsters you saw were ChuChus, Blue. I'd hate to have to face a Stalfos in the dark on my own again!" There were benefits to being on his own, like having the freedom to say and do whatever he wanted without fear of making others worry, but he very much preferred to have his brothers with him. He liked having people he trusted completely around to protect and support him, even if he hated troubling them with his silly problems.
The next room consisted of four floors, each bedecked with lines of standing mirrors. A gap-toothed, crumbling staircase formed a square spiral that connected the floors. In the center, a beam of light splashed onto a raised square pedestal. Shallow steps, easily small enough for the Harrys to mount, surrounded it in a small pyramid. A Beamos stood at the base of each set of steps, however, daring anyone to approach.
"Four?" Yellow groaned. They were spaced closely enough that two or three of them could spot an approaching challenger at a time.
Green chewed on his lip in apprehension. "And with all those mirrors, too! This isn't going to be easy. These Beamoses have lasers a lot more powerful than the octopus-headed ones."
"The mirrors?" asked Blue, one of the Harrys who had yet to face one of these desert Beamoses. "They can use them?"
"Not on purpose, but their lasers will bounce off if you lead them into hitting one," Green said. "The way you fight these is you get them to open their eyes so they can shoot you, and then you hit them in the eye with an arrow. Or you can convince them to slice through their power cords, but that's harder."
Yellow conjured his Mirror Shield and held it up with both hands. "You can kill them by reflecting their lasers back into their eyes, too."
"Make sure not to touch them or their power cords, even after they're dead," Green warned. "They're electrified enough to feel it from a distance. I'd rather none of us found out how much power that takes."
Blue bounced excitedly in place. "They're electric?"
"They have the same buzz as a fridge or a microwave, just unshielded," Green said. Looking over at Red, he said, "Please don't touch them to check."
Red pouted. "Aww."
"You could douse them with water and see if that does anything," Yellow suggested.
Red perked up. "Okay!"
Splitting up, they crept around the edges of the room. Yellow sent a curious glance upstairs as he walked around to his side of the pyramid. What was the goal of this room? What was on the fourth floor?
'Ah, well. It's best to get rid of the danger before we start getting distracted,' he thought. If they got lost enough focus, they might forget there were laser-robots in here to be worried about until one of them got fried!
Tucking his limbs behind his Mirror Shield, Yellow went into a half-crouch and cautiously approached the Beamos on his side of the pyramid. As soon as it saw him, he dropped fully behind his shield and angled the disk up. The Beamos's laser seared across the ground toward him, began carving across the ceiling once it bounced off of Yellow's shield, and then flicked down to hit it in its open red eye. Its head twitched erratically, the orange ring of its ruined eye sputtering, and then blew apart.
'Nice and neat,' Yellow thought with satisfaction. How kind of these monsters to practically take themselves out!
Like a silent red comet, a laser came flying in out of nowhere and narrowly missed his face. Cleaving straight through his robes and one leather pauldron, it left a smoking half-pipe in his armor and a sting in his ear and shoulder.
Yellow stifled a shriek. What were his brothers doing?!
Vanishing his shield, he dove and rolled behind a mirror. "Watch it!" he called out. Not a second later, he heard a loud crackle and was beset by a flash of tingling, burning, blinding pain. He forced measured breaths through his teeth as he silently endured it. An electric dome—visible in a way electricity wasn't supposed to be—had snapped open around one of the Beamoses for a moment. Yellow couldn't see which of his brothers had gotten caught in it, but there was a good chance it had been Red.
He snaked around the center of the room, darting between mirrors to block any reflected lasers, until he caught sight of his downed sibling. Red was painfully prying himself up from the sandstone floor, his robes smoking. Blue had reached him first and crouched in front of him with his Mirror Shield propped up to defend them both.
"What is it with you and getting electrocuted?" Blue groused over the buzz of the Beamos's laser. The deadly scarlet beam doodled across the wall as Blue struggled to redirect its reflection without hitting a mirror.
"Yellow…gave permission…to use water," Red panted. His body still quivered with the lingering effects of the hard shock. "Bad idea…turns out."
"So that's what using water on electric monsters does," Green remarked. He was tucked behind one of the dungeon's mirrors with his archery kit on. The Beamos in front of him was a smoking wreck, but he was too close to another, functioning Beamos to collect the spoils. "I've got to admit, I've been meaning to try it."
"I'm sorry, Red," Yellow called over. "I didn't know!"
Blue carefully threaded the needle with the angle of his shield until he managed to bounce the Beamos's laser into the center of its eye. Once the robot had dramatically exploded, he turned and rapped his knuckles on Red's forehead, then threw a stern scowl at Yellow. "For future reference, the reason why electricity and water shouldn't mix is because the electricity can follow back through the water to you," he said. "The electricity in Hyrule clearly has different rules it plays by, but the basic idea is the same."
"What kind of spell could counter electric monsters, then?" Green wondered. "I was hoping that water might—I don't know, short them out."
Yellow had thought much the same. He'd learned from Aunt Petunia lecturing Dudley about being safe with his gadgets that putting electronics in water would break them somehow. "What is a short-circuit, anyway?" he asked.
The Harrys all looked at Blue, who went pink in the face when he realized they actually expected an answer. "It's, er, it's probably when the water makes a circuit between circuits where there isn't supposed to be one?" he said with faltering confidence. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I haven't gotten the chance to study electronics yet. Hermione doesn't have any books about it, and it's not like the school or Castle Town libraries would be helpful on that front."
"Maybe a Gerudo library would?" Yellow suggested.
Blue snorted. "If I wanted a laugh, sure. I do at least know what an insulated wire is."
While they were talking, Green conjured his bow, nocked an arrow, and drew it back as he walked toward the last Beamos with smooth, stalking steps. As soon as the robot paused to take note of him, he shot it in its opened eye and retreated. Within a few seconds, the sentry was down. And with no risk of it hitting a mirror, either!
Yellow whistled. "That was cool, Green! Very Hero-looking."
Green blushed and shuffled his feet. "Archery is a lot easier than sword stuff," he said. "Besides, we've got to get decent at this eventually, don't we?"
"You've certainly been working yourself hard enough," Blue said. His tone was balanced precisely between a compliment and a mild scold. "Now, what are we doing in here?"
Standing straighter, Green said, "This room seems like one with something important in it—maybe a key, or even another magical item. We should clean it out from top to bottom, just in case there are any monsters hiding on the stairs, and then start on the puzzle."
The other Harrys nodded, then broke away to begin searching the room while Green collected the spoils from the Beamoses they'd slain. Yellow looked up speculatively at the stairs linking the floors overhead—specifically at all the gaps and cracked, fragile stone barely seeming to hold on, and conjured his magic bag. He took out the Christmas present Shadow Harry had given him—the purple cloak with silly bunny ears on its hood.
Yellow hadn't used his Bunny Cloak in the field yet, too paranoid about wearing something that would interfere with the way he moved. The cloak mildly boosted his running speed and added quite a lot to his jumps, which messed with his sense of grace. It also worried him that getting used to its enhancements might cause him to become a lot clumsier when he took it off.
It could be useful for traversing this room, though, and Yellow was the one whose judgment would decide whether it was worth adding to the Harrys' limited magical item list. Red and Blue were itching to try it out for themselves, so it was only fair that Yellow put in some work toward making that decision. He took off his hot school robes and put on the more lightweight purple cloak in their stead. After a couple of experimental bounces, Yellow bounded up the first set of stairs and loped across the second floor walkway with long, springy strides.
The effect of the cloak blended so naturally into his movements that it felt barely there—just as he'd feared. It would be all too easy to get accustomed to the subtle, comfortable boost. Still, he imagined Blue might get an extra kick out of using it. Though Green and Yellow tried to keep Red's mentions of it to a minimum, it was undeniable that Blue was the least agile of the Harrys. Yellow thought the cleverest of his brothers might benefit from a gentle suggestion (with no mention of his physical shortcomings) to try wearing the Bunny Cloak in battle once they added it to their list.
He quickly caught up to Red, who was standing tensely in front of a dark opening in the wall. Blue had run ahead to continue up the stairs, but Red seemed unable to move. The sword in his hand quivered with the subtle tremor running through the rest of him. The clammy cast to his skin shot down any possibility of his shaking hand being due to bloodthirsty anticipation.
Yellow stopped close to his brother, but not so close he might get caught by a panicked attack. "Red?" he said gently.
Red jumped. His head whipped toward Yellow. It took another split-second for him to stow away the fear in his wide eyes. "Y-Yeah?" He made an attempt at sounding nonchalant.
Yellow looked into the dark. There were dim scarlet eye-lights floating in it. A quiet sense of cold raced up his back. "Oh. ReDeads," he murmured.
Red was scared of ReDeads. There had been a transmitted feeling sent across earlier, of one of the Harrys having his skull chomped on. Yellow hadn't known what the feeling might have come from, or which of his brothers had suffered it at the time.
"It's okay to be afraid," Yellow told his brother. "I get scared all the time."
"Who said I was?" Red blustered. He jerked himself free of his frozen state, taking a step toward the doorway. "I've already fought plenty of these things in this dungeon. I can handle it!"
Yellow sighed. Red was usually one of the Harrys who was more honest about his feelings…unless those feelings made him feel like he couldn't be depended on in a fight. Then he was worse about it than Green, digging an even deeper pit of denial and guarding it jealously.
He gripped Red's upper arm tightly, making his brother look at him. Red's scarlet eyes were wild with desperation. Desperation to prove he wasn't weak, Yellow knew.
"I'm helping you," Yellow said firmly.
Red was shaking his head before he'd finished speaking. "You don't have to—!"
Yellow stood tall and stared him down. "Let's put it this way: either I help you by fighting whatever is in there, or I help you by using a Levitation Charm to throw you onto another floor of this room. Pick one."
Red bit his lower lip. His eyes flicked between Yellow and the dark doorway. "I can fight them," he insisted.
"Yes, and I'll help you with that," Yellow agreed. "Now, do you want to be the one hitting them with a sword or the one stunning them?"
His brother looked away, his shoulders hunching. Shame burned bright in his cheeks. He didn't say it—wouldn't say it—but his preference was obvious.
Yellow put a hand on his shoulder. "I'll do the close-up work, and if you want to switch out, just tell me," he said. "You can let me and Blue go to the front sometimes, Red. We've got swords, too."
Red crossed his arms and looked away. "Blue gets hurt too much. He can't fix us if he's the one bleeding out," he said gruffly. "And I know you don't like sword stuff, Yellow."
Yellow bumped shoulders with him before walking toward the zombie-infested room. "No, but I like helping my brothers."
As he crossed the threshold, he summoned one of Red's Christmas presents, the glowing Flameblade, into his hand. Just like his Bunny Cloak, he thought it was worth testing out. It cast a gentle orange glow around him—not as strong as his Magic Lamp, but enough to make out the shadowy form of the nearest ReDead. There were three of them in here.
There was more to the room, though he couldn't make it out without switching to his lamp. Something metallic glinted in the middle of the loose triangle of ReDeads. Part of this whole area's puzzle, no doubt.
Red started shooting, and Yellow began slashing. His sword trailed brilliant orange-red sweeps of flame with every swing, which caught and crawled along the monsters' dry green skin. The ReDeads didn't react outwardly to the charring that spread outward from every slash mark, but they collapsed in six hits as opposed to the ten that Yellow had expected. He kept up a count in his head as he leapt from one ReDead to another, slaying them with cold efficiency.
The downside that Yellow discovered, once the room was clear, was that he felt like he'd been swinging a claymore around instead of a one-handed sword that was a little long for him. His limbs burned with exertion and something in his chest was strained and tight. He vanished the Flameblade and kneaded his knuckles into his sternum.
"You'll want to be careful with that sword, Red," he warned his brother. "I think it might use our magic to power itself, like the Lenses of Truth do."
Red conjured his Magic Lamp and grimaced in its orange glow. "I guess that means I'll get an earful from Green if I have too much fun with it, huh?"
"It probably won't affect him too much if you don't really overdo it or try using it the next time we have to sort out one of Vaati's new generators," Yellow assured him. "We—he's got enough magic for most things, I think."
They searched the room by lamplight, trying in vain to locate anything to the tune of a light switch. A fire bin, a torch, or a toggle for hidden lightbulbs—anything would have been useful. Strangely, in this temple themed around lighting, there were none of the above.
The metal object Yellow had glimpsed earlier had turned out to be a set of huge stationary mirrors, each of them at least two Harrys across. One mirror faced the door and angled downward to face another mirror that pointed straight up, which might have faced another mirror that was out of range of the boys' lamplight. Yellow supposed, looking at the way everything was pointed, that light was supposed to come in through the doorway, bounce up to the next floor, and exit through the opening he could see several meters overhead.
"Do you have an idea?" Red asked him.
"Yeah, but I can tell this is going to be an 'all-over-the-room' thing," Yellow told him. "Blue or Green will have to tell us how to aim the mirrors so no one gets confused. Everything needs to be pointed just-so."
When they stepped out of the room, Blue leaned over the balcony on the third floor opposite them to shout, "What did you find?"
"Big mirrors!" Red shouted back.
"We think they're supposed to reflect light up to where you are!" Yellow elaborated.
Blue nodded. "I thought so." He looked up to the fourth floor to call out to an unseen Green, "Did you find what's up there?"
"A treasure chest behind bars! There's a sun lock keeping the door shut," Green replied. "There's also a mirror on the other side of where the chest is. I'm not sure what that's about."
"Alright, I've got this room figured out," Blue declared. Pointing to Yellow, he said, "Switch places with me. I'm going to start us off and guide everyone from the ground." He ran around the third floor and carefully picked his way down the stairs.
Red raised an eyebrow as Blue ran past them. "He could have just jumped. With our magic, we don't have to worry about falling."
Yellow was just grateful Red had held his tongue until after Blue had gone by instead of picking a fight. "If one of you decides to take the cautious route, I'm not going to complain about it," he said, giving Red a pointed nudge in the ribs.
Yellow dashed off to his assigned post, enjoying the feeling of each light, bouncy step. What a lovely Christmas present Shadow Harry had given him! Maybe there was a way to repay him that wouldn't hurt his bad-guy feelings? Shadow seemed to enjoy watching people suffer and Yellow was good at enduring suffering, so perhaps he could arrange some entertainment for the spirit.
It was almost disappointing once he'd leapt up the stairs three-by-three and arrived on the third floor. All too quickly, playtime was over. With no excuse to keep bouncing around, he dutifully leaned between the mirrors standing on the balcony to listen to Blue's instructions.
Blue stood in the light shining down on the pedestal in the middle of the room with his Mirror Shield. Angling his shield up, he hit one of the mirrors on the second-floor balcony across from Red. It bounced the light onto a mirror standing opposite it, creating a double-bright path of light through the air. "Alright, that wasn't it," came Blue's echoing remark. He slid the beam across the five mirrors until it found a clear path across. Red yelped when he was blasted in the face with reflected light and ducked out of the way. The light kept going until it disappeared into the dark doorway behind him, then reappeared right next to Yellow. It bounced back and forth between the mirror beside his left shoulder and the one across the way, producing a stream so bright that he had to avert his watering eyes.
"Yellow, get those mirrors arranged so the light has a clear path! Red, help him!" Blue commanded. "And Green, get around to the other side of the fourth floor! You'll need to adjust the mirrors up there, too."
Glancing over his shoulder, Yellow noted that there was a doorway behind him. With the same floor-to-ceiling mirror setup as on the second floor hidden inside all that dark, he assumed. After a bit of confused tugging and feeling around, he realized that the wide row of mirrors in front of him weren't the swiveling kind, but were instead attached solidly to stone blocks in a smooth track that spanned the balcony. The mirrors were clustered tight together—too tight even for a small thirteen-year-old to get between them. Yellow rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck; this was going to be a bit of a work-out.
Red jumped up the stairs with heavy-footed abandon. Chips of stone fell to the floor several meters below with a hiss and trickling clatter. "What do you need me to do?" he asked cheerfully once he'd arrived.
"Well first, don't jump so hard on the next flight of stairs. They could have collapsed under you!" Yellow scolded. "Second, start pulling these mirrors back from the outside. Move the first mirror on your side all the way to the end of the track, then start pulling the others out and spacing them so you can get between them and push again if you have to."
They went to opposite sides of the row of mirrors and started hauling the big, heavy ornaments across the balcony. Though they were enchanted to be moveable even by people the Harrys' size, that didn't mean they made it easy. Yellow breathed and hauled back on the handles at the mirrors' bases at a controlled tempo. Exhale, inhale and pull.
The last mirror was dragged out of its inconvenient position minutes later, and the river of light flowed through. Bouncing across the mirrors in the room beyond in a dazzling zig-zag, it disappeared upon reaching the fourth floor.
After a few seconds of waiting, Blue called, "Green, what are you doing? Hurry up!"
Green grunted, and there was a grating noise. "The mirrors…are arranged…all fancy up here," he panted. "Just a second—" There was another metallic grating sound, and the path of light reappeared. Shooting by just under the ceiling, it splashed against the sun lock. The brownish crystal lit up gold. Its metal flames rotated until there was a click, and then the door it was attached to grated up into a hidden niche.
Without the door in the way, the light continued beyond. Yellow couldn't see where, but it must have done something. He couldn't think of any other reason for the sudden earthquake that followed.
Yellow clung to the low stone lattice wall at the edge of the balcony and stared up at the ceiling in fright. Sand—not just the kind that came with neglect in the desert, but bits of the sandstone blocks making up his surroundings as well—cascaded in pale orange trickles as the building vibrated. One block of stone large enough for all the Harrys to stand inside of slid halfway out of the ceiling and hung there, bleeding dust from its seams.
The tremor passed quickly, though. After a few scary seconds, the rumbling was over. Yellow continued to hold on tight to the railing, his eyes locked on the loosened block in the ceiling. Would it fall?
Red leaned over and followed the path of his gaze. "Want me to launch a bomb up there to get it over with?" he offered. "I've been meaning to see how well our magic works with tossing those things around, anyway."
Yellow sent him a Look.
Red raised his hands and patted at the air. "Alright, fine, I'll leave it be," he said quickly. "What do you think that shaking was, though?"
"Something in the dungeon changed!" Green reported from above. "Some puzzles can make things happen in rooms we aren't in. To let us know, the dungeons rumble like that."
"I bet I know what happened!" Blue called from the ground. He vanished his Mirror Shield, letting the path of light disappear. "There was a statue in that atrium with the broken time, sprouting from the wall to loom over the boss-monster door. It was eye-catching enough that it seemed like part of a puzzle, but there didn't seem to be any way for me to change anything about it from inside that room."
"We'll head toward that room next, then," Green decided. "I think there's a shortcut up here, behind the treasure chest and a couple of Gibdos in the next room. It looks like a well in the floor."
"What's a Gibdo?" Red wondered.
"Have you run into any mummy monsters around here yet? Ones that, if you set them on fire, turn to bones and get way faster?" Yellow asked. At his brother's nod, he concluded, "Those are Gibdos."
A look of delight bloomed on Red's face. "Oh, wicked!" he crowed. "Let's fight the Gibdos!"
Blue started scrambling up the stairs. "I still want at least two of us to take the long way down to that floor using the stairs in the mist room!" he declared. "We'd miss a lot of treasure, taking a shortcut!"
"You want us to split up again?" Green asked incredulously. "In this place, where the monsters can rip through our armor like it isn't there?"
"To discover ancient secrets and earn treasure? Absolutely!"
Green grumbled something that didn't echo down, but Yellow could take a guess at which of Blue's traits it was about. Looking at the third floor over the railing, he asked, "Red, are you alright with going treasure-hunting with Blue, or should I send Yellow with him?"
Red raised his hand. "In a place like this, each of the Nerd Harrys should have a meathead," he said. "I'll go with Blue and you can stay with Yellow."
"I got quite far through this place on my own, I'll have you know!" Blue huffed indignantly. "I'm not incapable!"
"Yeah, that sounds good," Green told Red. "Blue, trust me, when you see what these Gibdos are like, you'll be glad to have one of us meatheads with you."
Gathering on the top floor, they collected the silver key from the treasure chest there (Green held onto it so he and Yellow could use it in the Time Funny Room) and crowded in the short hallway that came before the room with Gibdos. "There's a trick to beating these, I'm sure, but I haven't managed it," Green admitted in a low voice as he tensely watched the mummies mill around the raised port in the floor. "It was too dark for me to try fighting them. Once those wrappings are off, they're as bad as Wolfoses. Not as fast, but way stronger with each attack."
"You've got to knock their heads off and keep them that way," Red advised. "Set their wraps on fire, steal their swords before they can pick them up, and whack their heads off with something. Hammer, bombs—maybe even the whip would work. Once their head's on the floor, their body goes down. The main problems are that you won't be able to hurt them as long as they're wrapped up, and they'll keep trying to put themselves together after you take their heads off."
Yellow nodded, chewing on the inside of his cheek. His stomach was doing flip-flops at the thought of facing such lethal monsters again. He conjured his magic bag and checked it for his remaining Sheikah seals. Still remaining were two paralyzers, three magic-suckers, and one emergency wall. There were also the two magic blue medallions that Ron and Hermione had given him for luck. Plenty of just-in-case material. He breathed out.
Green beckoned Yellow to follow and motioned for Blue and Red to split off. Then, hunched in a half-crouch with his sword and Magic Lamp in hand, he silently led the charge. Yellow followed close behind with the same soft-footed steps.
The Gibdo they were creeping up on had its back to them as it lumbered along its patrol path. Yellow tapped Green on the shoulder, pointed at the sword woven into the mummy's wrappings, and mimed taking it. Green nodded before throwing his Magic Lamp at the monster's back. While Yellow focused on staying out of sight, Green ran around to the front to get the emerging Stalfos's attention.
"Accio Gibdo sword," Yellow said as the heavy weapon began to slide off of the undead warrior's bony spine. He caught it before it clattered to the ground—to his surprise, it only weighed as much as his Mirror Shield—and shoved it in his magic satchel.
Green was already dodging swipes of the Stalfos's clawed gauntlets when Yellow went to join the fight. "The head!" he cried out, jumping back to avoid a kick. He ducked to keep his own head from getting knocked off by a punch, then started running. The long-legged skeleton was quick to follow. Its steps sounded like cracking bones as its low golden heels clattered across the tiles. Green blocked another punch with his Mirror Shield. A terrific clang and a spray of sparks accompanied his backward tumble. Springing back up, he threw his shield at the monster's feet in hopes of making it stumble and sprinted off empty-handed. "Get it before it gets me!" Green shrieked over the sound of the Stalfos kicking the shield aside.
Yellow ran after the monster, thinking wildly about his options. The Vine Whip could work at a distance, but he was a bad angle. A bomb would be too risky; the explosives were on a timer, rather than being contact-triggered, and he couldn't trust his timing was good enough not to blow up his brother. His hammer could work, but it had the same bad-angle problem as his whip and it was heavy enough that he wasn't sure he could get in front of the Stalfos and use it before the monster took him down.
A memory from the previous temple came to mind. He was wearing the Bunny Cloak. And what if he could get the hammer to…?
Yellow conjured the Dragon Hammer and poured on as much running speed as he could. His legs were a lot shorter than the skeletonized Gerudo warrior's, but he could move them fast enough to start outpacing the heavier, armored monster. When he was even with the Stalfos's hip, he poured his magical focus into both the Bunny Cloak and the hammer and pounced.
The hammer kicked in as he pushed off the ground—not only to boost his swing, but to boost him, just as he'd imagined it doing. He flew above the monster's back, upside-down, as the jet of his hammer guided him through a front-flip. With a flick of his will and a wrench of his arms, he launched into a midair spin and smacked the Stalfos's skull toward the ceiling as he passed it by. The monster collapsed under him like a dropped sack of marbles, ribs and other fiddly bones scattering to the four winds as armor and heavier anatomy fell atop them.
Thanks to the agility granted by his new cloak, Yellow landed lightly on his feet. He faltered a moment later, though, when he felt the phantom sensation of his face being torn off.
Across the room, Red fell back from the monster chasing him. Droplets of scarlet flew in an arc, trailing after the Stalfos's crimson-stained claws. Blue was behind him, the surprise in his eyes and off-balance posture indicating that Red had just shoved him out of the way of the attack.
Yellow watched his brother's blood splatter on the ground, the inside of his head filling with a numb white buzz. Red writhed on his back, his screams muffled into his hands. The sound drilled into Yellow's ears, mingling with the sudden roar of his heartbeat.
Unlike Yellow, who had frozen in place, Blue only took a split-second to process the sight of Red on the floor before throwing himself back into the fight. He roared with fury and swung his Magic Rod like a mace. Spitting the incantation like a curse, Blue fired off a Banishing Charm that launched the monster like a lorry had slammed into its chest.
The Stalfos barely seemed to feel it. After cracking against the wall, the creature simply dropped back to its feet, shook its rattled bones out straight, and lunged back at its prey. It was all too quick on those tarnished gold heels, crossing the distance in a matter of seconds—
Yellow was running toward Blue with his Magic Rod at hand before he even thought of moving. "Protego!" he shouted. The incantation came out airy and hoarse, almost too desperate to be voiced.
A ball of white light shot from his staff and came to a sharp halt between Blue and the undead warrior. The moment the Stalfos's claws struck it, the ragged sphere bloomed into a filmy white barrier more than large enough to cover Blue and Red. In a defiant flash of light, the monster's lethal fingertips both bounced and slid across the barrier, knocking the creature off-balance. The shield vanished thereafter, but Yellow had bought Blue enough time to think past his initial rage.
"Accio Stalfos Skull!" Blue barked out. The monster's head tore off, carrying a few vertebrae with it, and reluctantly wobbled through the air in Blue's direction before dropping to the ground partway there.
Though not fully effective, the spell did the job. Without its head, the Stalfos's body crumpled to the ground with a clatter. Yellow didn't slow his magic-boosted sprint in the slightest, summoning his hammer and adjusting his angle of attack with his feet flying under him. He only skidded to a stop in order to line up a golf strike to the monster's angrily hopping skull. With a satisfying crack, it rocketed off toward the back left corner of the room. Yellow chased it with his hammer still in hand; using his sword on this monster wouldn't let him bleed off the angry energy burning in his arms quite as effectively.
He bounced the skull off the wall like he was playing a one-man game of tennis. Twirling his hammer between strikes made it possible to keep his momentum going, saving him the time-waste of rearing back for each blow. He didn't keep count of how many times he brought his hammer down, unconcerned by the effects of its weight and force on his body. When the skull suddenly shattered into a spray of bone that pelted the wall, he blinked in disappointed surprise.
That was it?
Searing, prickling, emotion still surged through him like ants under his skin. It wasn't a kind of anger that came naturally him. Not out of nowhere, without a long run-up of building pressure.
Maybe there was a build-up, though. Blue, going down in an explosion of blood with a ragged trench carved across his entire torso. Green, pale and gray and clammy as his life flowed out onto the ground. Red, lying on the ground unmoving, his eyes glassy and his neck at the wrong angle as his scaly killer leaned in to eat him—
Yellow swallowed hard against a surge of nausea. Yes, there might have been a reason he'd overreacted to seeing one of his brothers have their face clawed off. But he could get over it. He needed to get over it, for his brothers' sakes.
Green had finished off his Stalfos and was making a beeline for Red and Blue, who were huddled on the floor. For some reason, Red hadn't been healed yet. Blue had a potion in hand and Red was conscious and sitting up, so why…?
Words started making sense again. Blue wasn't trying to comfort Red with that hand on the back of his neck, but berating him. "…so help me, I'll shove this whole sodding bottle down your neck!" he snarled at the scarlet, dripping mess that had been Red's face. "Drink it!" He tried to force the bottle against Red's lips, only for his hand to be pushed away. From the amount of red smeared on his wrist, it wasn't the first time.
"Nah. G'na get c'll scars," Red mumbled wetly. He shoved Blue's face back, leaving a sticky handprint across his nose and cheeks, then gave a drunkenly careless wave. "I'll be fiiine." Bubbled blood and drool ran down his chin and flowed down his neck. He was lisping strangely because his lips were no longer the only opening for his mouth.
Ice took up residence in Yellow's gut. It dropped into his legs, propelling them with single-minded, robotic purpose. Yellow pushed Green out of his way, crouched next to Blue, and took the potion from his hand. He downed it in one gulp.
The pulpy furrows across Red's face filled in and sealed shut with a new growth of skin. With the regrowth of his ruined eye, Red's pain-fogged gaze regained its alert sharpness. Blinking and shaking his head, he ran a hand across his blood-smeared cheek.
"Oh, wow, I was really out of it," he said. "Thanks, Yellow."
Blue buried his face in his hands. "I'm an idiot," he moaned. "I got so cross I forgot I could do that and smack Red for being a moron later."
"You're welcome," Yellow said. His voice sounded to him like it had echoed out of a tunnel instead of coming from his mouth. He set the potion bottle down, stood up, walked away, and was forced to sit back down again when his legs folded under him. So much for making a graceful retreat.
He really was being a baby again. Overreacting, as usual. He'd done his best to desensitize himself to medical things by hunting down and forcing himself to look at every gory surgery illustration and photograph he could find while in Castle Town, but it apparently hadn't worked. Red had only gotten his face ripped off. What was that compared to having his skull smashed in or his neck broken or his leg spilled out—?
Nausea welled in his throat again, and Yellow was too frazzled to do anything about it. His body wrenched him forward and he was sick on the floor.
"Yellow!" a chorus of worried voices exclaimed.
"Sorry," Yellow said weakly. He used Scouring Charms to do away with the mess and scrub out the inside of his mouth. "I'm just...being dramatic. I'll be okay in a minute." Yellow curled up and laid on his side. "Can we—erm, can we take a nap, please? Green?"
"Yes, absolutely," Green agreed in an instant. "Yellow, did you get hurt? Are you okay?"
"Is it because of that hit I took?" Yellow heard Red ask in a low voice. "It wasn't that bad, was it?"
There was a sound that Yellow recognized as Blue cuffing Red upside the head. "Not for you, maybe," Blue snapped. "I could see your tongue with your mouth closed."
"…That's kinda brill."
"It is not!" Blue hit him again.
Green's voice cut between them, tired but no less sharp for it. "Red, Blue, if you get into another fight now, I'm tossing you down that well over there. You can sort yourselves out the bottom."
"Sorry, I'm just a little wound up from having to argue with my brother that no amount of 'cool scars' are worth losing one's face for," Blue grumbled waspishly. Yellow could imagine his crossed arms and scowl.
"Alright, getting ready for bed, then," Red said with a verbal shrug. "But Yellow…I mean, should we talk, or—?"
Yellow summoned enough of his voice to croak out, "No, thank you. Maybe later."
"Maybe later" was Harry-speak for "probably never".
He knew what the problem was. Whining about it wouldn't help. There was nothing for it. His brothers weren't going to get any less hurt in the future. They could upgrade their clothing and find new artifacts, but the monsters would only grow stronger to match. All Yellow could do was get a thicker skin, study as hard as he could to improve his medical skills, do his best to take care of his siblings.
Footsteps—light and quiet, as all the Harrys' treads were—approached him. Yellow hid his tear-streaked face behind his arms in a bid to seem slightly less pathetic. "Red, really, I'll be fine—"
A scuff and a slight breeze heralded another one of his brothers sitting next to him. "I'm not Red, and I don't believe you," came Blue's deadpan drawl.
Yellow sniffled and peered at him through a crack he opened between his arms. "Y-Yeah, you wouldn't, huh?"
Blue laid down on the ground next to him, close enough for Yellow to feel his brother's exasperated sigh on his raised forearms. "I know you don't believe me, either," he said. "Not when I say that you should talk to someone about your issues before they backfire on you like this, anyway."
Bitter spite coiled on the back of Yellow's tongue. Before he could wrestle the half-processed, frustrated words back, they poured forth in a venomous hiss, "And just who should I talk to? You or Red, so you can fret over me instead of worrying about yourselves? Green, so he can know how useless I am? Madam Pomfrey, so she can tell the Headmaster and he can bring every kind of trouble on our heads? Professor Lupin, so he can cause that trouble himself? Who, Blue?!" He revealed his face to glare at his brother. "It's not safe to talk. It's never been safe and never will be. The only way to stay safe is to keep our mouths shut! We've always known that! How could you forget?"
Blue's expression hardened. "I haven't, Yellow. Like you said, how could I?" He rubbed at his right forearm—the one Uncle Vernon tended to grab with bruising strength when he manhandled them into their cupboard. "But now, being able to think independently from the rest of myself, I've been reconsidering some things," he said. "We've doing the same thing, over and over, for as long as we can remember. We've done as we were taught: stay quiet, avoid adults who say they want to help, hide all signs of anything abnormal about us, and so on. Despite that, things have never improved. Instead, they hit a plateau of tolerability, and once the pressure started pouring on with this quest, they started getting worse. Not exponentially so, but certainly trending in that direction."
He tucked a hand between his cheek and the gritty, sand-strewn tiles. "I'm sick of it—of treading water, going nowhere, and only getting more tired. I don't want to talk about what a mess we are, either, but at the same time I don't want to watch us break down and rationalize worse and worse situations as being normal just to keep from losing our minds." His sapphire eyes tightened in anger. "You shouldn't feel like you need to be professionally calm about Red having his face clawed off. Neither should Red! Green shouldn't think he's a bad leader just for being scared of things sometimes. And you and I shouldn't have to argue with our brothers to heal injuries that we've trained ourselves into thinking we can walk off!" He flung a hand in their brothers' direction. "We've stagnated in our old habits instead of learning to change tactics, exactly like we've criticized our teachers for, and so the status quo is steadily getting worse." His lips pressed together grimly. "We'll survive it, of course. We always have, and always will. What will we become in the end, though, having bottled everything up tight? Will we still be Harry? Will it be worth hiding in our own mental cupboard for the rest of our life?"
Damn him. Blunt, logical Blue. He just had to wedge thought and sense into matters best left in the realm of fearful avoidance. They weren't supposed to think about these things. Harry was supposed to keep his head down, be quiet, follow orders, and never be more trouble than the bare minimum of his existence allowed.
Blue was making sense, but he wasn't supposed to.
Yellow curled up tighter on the floor. All the bony points on the right side of his body had begun complaining about the hard tiles they were being crushed against, but at this point the needling ache felt like a good thing. Pain like that had a soothing familiarity to it. Anything was better than the sticky black pit of feeling trying to swallow him. What feelings, he didn't know. He'd do his best not to find out.
"Stop talking," he growled. "Now." If Blue kept on, Yellow might start screaming to drown him out.
Blue reached out and patted him on the shoulder, making him flinch. "I'll start unrolling the sleeping mats," he said. "If you're not ready, that's alright. I'll take that step for us."
Yellow slapped his hand away. "And I'll clean up the mess when it blows up in our face, like always," he spat. "Since that's what I'm for."
Blue grinned back, a defiant flash of teeth. "I suppose that means I ought to live up to my full potential as one of the Harrys that causes problems, then."
Notes:
-Coincidentally, I was playing through the Lightning Temple in Tears of the Kingdom at the time I was planning this dungeon out. This room (specifically the multiple-floor puzzle) was inspired by that.
-Summoning Charms won't work consistently on Stal-monsters, because that would be too easy lol. With enough force of emotion and intent, a Summoning Charm will work enough to snatch the monster's skull and immediately drop it, but it isn't a dependably consistent tactic.
-Yellow and Blue represent opposites in terms of the Harrys' mindset regarding their upbringing. Yellow desperately values rules and consistency, clinging to them in order to feel safe. He is concerned entirely with staying alive and keeping anyone who has the power to punish him happy, regardless of what he has to emotionally inflict upon himself to do so. Blue, meanwhile, represents a part of Harry that has always wanted more, and has gone to self-endangering lengths to pursue it. Stealing bits of food behind his relatives' backs in order to survive, sneaking books from the public library and charity bins in order to learn what he'd otherwise never know, and snapping back at his tormentors when his anger and resentment outpace his survival instincts. Green leans a bit more toward Yellow's view in this area, while Red is more on Blue's side in terms of wanting to see things change and improve.
Next month: Time-tangles, doom lasers, and ancient mass-murder, oh my!