Last month: Avoka and Draco clashed over personality and cultural differences as Avoka carried out his mission to learn more about the interlopers that had been transplanted to Hyrule. Draco admitted for the first time to anyone that his exotic creature-blood status puts his life at risk in Hogwarts's notorious House of purebloods.
Art of the mini-boss in this chapter, Lanroller, can be found on garden-eel-draws under the "dungeon 6" tag.
Content warning: this chapter has strong references to city bombings and ruined city imagery—specifically, references to the London Blitz of WW2. None of it has anything to do with the terrible current events in the Middle East, but I figured some people might have that kind of imagery on the mind right now thanks to all the coverage.
Red paused in a shadow to catch his breath and hike Green up higher on his back. The Light had been getting more intense as they got closer to where it was pouring out. Here, instead of the sky being yellow with a white sun, the whole sky was almost white. The blazing ribbons of stolen magic cutting through it were barely visible against the whole blinding ocean above. White light crept down from the sky along the buildings, turning the taller parts of the city to washed-out pastels.
Thanks to their hard work, their swords had lit up halfway down the street. Killing monsters since then hadn't exactly become a breeze, thanks to the stupid sky, but it had become easy enough that Red had started missing the monsters back in the Light World. Dark World Moblins just weren't all that difficult to fight one-on-one anymore. They were only two meters tall instead of three and moved like automatons instead of things with brains. With his sword juiced up, they died in just two hits! Where was the challenge in that?
When Red had complained about it, he and Blue had wound up in an impromptu mud-wrestling match. Red had won the quarrel when he'd planted Blue's face in the riverbed first. It wasn't his fault Blue had picked violence over words for the argument. Blue didn't get to be a sore loser about it!
While Green sat on the ground under a tree with his head between his knees, being fussed over by Yellow, Red looked for the next spot to run to. With their swords now glowing gold with the power to break Vaati's toys, their main goal was to get to the source of this city's problem. Following the ribbons had been easier said than done, though. They could see the paper cut-outs laid atop the sky pretty easily, but they'd had to travel up the no-man's-land of the riverbed in order to get there. It was a no-man's-land not because the monsters were too difficult to fight—they were actually a lot weaker here than in the Light World—but because the effects of Hyrule's stolen, concentrated magic kept getting worse and the places to hide from it were becoming fewer.
Now, having finally climbed out of the riverbed via a lamppost that had fallen into it at a shallow angle, they stood on a London street. A street which, unlike the river-bisected one they'd just left, was somewhat close to normal. There were plenty of shops they could hide within, a multitude of stopped (and smashed) cars, and dense clusters of buildings with long shadows cast by the ribbons arcing a few hundred meters ahead. Plotting a course through the safe zones here was almost scarily easy. Red figured it was a fair trade for feeling like he'd been set on fire every time he stepped into the Light.
Blue nudged him. "Red, I know where the generator is," he said urgently.
"Yeah? So do I." Red pointed at the ribbons above instead of looking up, since he'd learned the hard way that the sky in this area was bright enough to do a number on one's eyes.
"No, you doofus! I mean—" Blue seized his cheeks and turned his face, "—it's in Diagon Alley!"
The wooden sign for the Leaky Cauldron was just to the right of where Red had been plotting a way across the street, difficult to see against the city block's shadow but still recognizable. Sure enough, it was part of the bank of buildings that stood between them and their goal.
"Vaati sought out one of the biggest centers—if not the biggest center—of Dark World magic in the British Isles and parked his ground-tap there," Blue said. "If our dimension worked the same way his does, it would have been a good idea."
"And instead, he's blasting the place he wanted to remodel with that Light stuff," Red said, aghast. As magical as Diagon Alley was, he could imagine a lot of buildings coming down just because Hyrule's magic had "purified" their spells away. Every magical product sold there was now as useful as a handful of dirt. The people who lived and worked there were probably even more screwed than the Muggles whose shops had been busted into by monsters. "Damn."
"Do you think the people who live there got out okay?" Yellow asked. "The Light must be really awful in the Alley, if it's this bad out here."
Green braced the point of his sword on the pavement and used it to help him stand up. "I'm sure they just got turned into shadows faster than the people farther away," he said. "It's unpleasant and a little scary, but not deadly."
"That does seem to be the main consequence here, as opposed to the Light World crumbling to cursed dust," Blue remarked. "Thank goodness for tiny strokes of luck. According to the Hylian Bestiary, the Dark World usually came off with the short end of the stick whenever the dimensions drifted too close together."
"Do you want me to carry you across the street?" Red offered to Green.
"I can walk," Green said gruffly. "I don't like being babied."
Red gave his brother a doubtful once-over. As a shadow, his smoky form was faint and flickering at the edges. Despite normally being better with his bow than Red and Blue, he'd missed enough shots during the last few hundred meters of their crawl up the riverbed that Blue and Yellow had forbidden him from using his bow. The reason Green had started wasting arrows? His hands had become unsolid enough that the bowstring kept passing through them before he was done aiming. In true Harry fashion, Green had assured all of them he was fine after they'd made that freaky realization.
"If you say so," Red decided to say. If Green ran out of energy and got knocked into the Shadow Realm, Yellow could sweet-talk Shadow Harry into letting him back up.
The Harrys filed across the street, Green going first (after much arguing about how perfectly fine he was) so the others could keep an eye on him. They dipped from car shadows to the slim darkness cast by a lamppost to the solid wall cast by the line of buildings ahead. After wary looks around for any monsters on the eerily quiet street, they ducked into the Leaky Cauldron.
A rancid, alcoholic stink of putrefying meat and fermenting fruit walloped Red in the nose. It was enough to knock him a step backward, into a gagging Blue. "Merlin!" he choked out before wadding up one robe sleeve and burying his nose in it. "What went on in here?" His words were muffled by the bundled wool.
Green squinted at the room with watering eyes. Like Red, he had half his face hidden behind his sleeve. "Everyone must have been caught by surprise," he remarked, pointing to a table. There were plates full of the rotten remains of some kind of meal on it. Red looked away before the sight could turn his stomach. "It looks like this place was in the middle of a rush when it got hit. Maybe even peak hours."
"'Got hit'," Yellow murmured. "Like someone dropped the kind of bomb that Mrs. Figg found in her garden."
The Harrys winced at the thought. It was a good comparison, though. People sitting at the pub, chatting and enjoying good food, and then—boom. Suddenly, the only sound in the room was people moaning in pain and confusion.
Red ruffled the back of his hair. "At least this 'bomb' was just people getting turned into shadows, huh?" he said with forced cheer. Being optimistic was more of a Yellow thing, but Yellow was busy looking around sadly at all the abandoned plates.
Blue wove through the tables to the counter of the bar. After using his Magic Rod to nudge a few sloshing mugs out of his way, he clambered onto a barstool, then onto the counter. From his high perch, he looked back at the other Harrys. "Yellow, do you think it'd be too morally reprehensible if I—?"
"Yes," Yellow cut in flatly. "If you steal anything, I will tell Mr. Tom and I won't feel sorry for doing it."
Blue sighed. "Alright, that's fair."
The Harrys trooped through the restaurant to reach the alley at the back. Red winced at the brightness of the Light that bounced off of the right wall of the narrow corridor. The alley looked like it had been sketched half in black, half in textured yellow-white. If not for his memories, he wouldn't have been able to tell the bricks were supposed to be red.
"Stay on your watch," Green warned as they crept in, half-crouched and hugging the left wall. "There's something not right here."
"A trap?" Yellow asked, halting sharply. Red almost ran into the back of him. "Like one of the pitfalls that were around Hogwarts?"
"Or a monster?" Red asked brightly. "Are there any ones that blend into shadows?"
"Floormasters, Red," Blue reminded him.
"I don't know what I'm sensing," Green declared with exasperation. "The sword just yells 'look out!' sometimes, and it's up to me to figure out what it means." He cautiously approached the back wall that led to their goal, testing the walls and ground with taps of his sword.
When they were halfway down the alley, a magenta-lined puddle of ink poured out of the shadows. It looked a lot like the flattened form of a Floormaster before the cartoon hand popped out and grabbed you. Red watched with fascination as the puddle widened, bloomed with a soft blue glow around the edges, and surged upward. The shadow stretched into a serpentine, four-meter-long blob, then sharpened into dark shapes separated by thick magenta lines.
A giant, spiky, blue-black centipede now stood at the end of the alley, clacking its huge mandibles together with a threatening hiss. Its helmet-like head had a large, gaudy eye on the front—a red and gold one with a thick gold border around it. Vaati's eye. In fact, the bluish tone to the monster's shadowy segments reminded him of the eyeball form he'd oh-so-briefly seen Vaati take before the mage had chucked Hogwarts across worlds.
Red stepped toward the monster first with his sword at the ready. He figured the huge, obvious eye had something to do with causing damage to this thing, but he still wanted to test his options. Now that the Four Sword was powered up, it could cut through just about anything without the need for tricky weapon-switching tactics.
The centipede's giant eye stopped drifting around the Harrys to settle on him. Red smirked, hefting his sword. "You wanna go?" he offered.
Instead of lunging at him, the bug clacked its mandibles one last time before rolling into a ball. The sharp points along its back turned into a double row of spikes that stuck straight out. With a flex that squashed it low to the ground, the coiled monster bounced into the air and went into a rapid spin. A split-second thought of "wha—?" crossed Red's mind before realization clicked. He sprinted down the alley along with Green and Yellow. Green snagged Blue on the way out.
With a loud, horrible grating noise like metal nails scraping against concrete, the monster landed behind them and began speeding down the alley. Red didn't make the mistake of looking behind him as he pumped his legs. Yellow and Blue, however, did. As Red snatched up Green, whose shadowy form was flickering, and hauled them both around the doorway that led to the alley, his other two brothers were a little slow to catch up.
Blue managed to reach safety, but Yellow caught a direct hit from the speeding monster as his foot crossed the threshold. Red was struck with the transmitted feeling of having been run over by a lorry-sized hedgehog. Three spots of stabbing agony marched up each side of his back, with a giant punch delivered directly to his spine. His vision went white, a breathless scream catching in his throat.
"Bad place to nap!" Hands pulled Red up and pushed him flat against the wall. The shadowy centipede went roaring by to crash into a section of Tom's bar. Shards of wood sprayed everywhere and water spouted from the broken, crushed pipes of the sink it had demolished. The centipede bounced back from what it hit, unrolled, and swayed on its magenta legs.
Red breathed out and peeled away from the wall while the monster was recovering from its attack. "Thanks," he said before doing a double-take at the brother he now realized was Yellow. "But you just got stabbed?" he blurted out. How had his brother kept on moving well enough to save his butt after taking a hit like that?
Yellow drank a Red Potion and returned the bottle to his bag. "I'm pretty used to it by now," he replied with a resigned shrug, "and Hora's enchantments helped a little."
The centipede scuttled over the counter, sending the Harrys scattering across the room. Its gold and scarlet eye swept around before settling on Blue. Bouncing up, became a spinning ball of spikes and shot at him, demolishing any furniture unlucky enough to be in the way. Blue dove out of danger and into a combat roll that Avoka had drilled into Green.
WHAM! Dust fell from the rafters as a shudder went through the building. The centipede rolled back from the stone support pillar it had left a spider-webbing dent in and surveyed the room for another target.
Well, since it had that big, brightly-colored peeper wide open…Red conjured his bow and fired an arrow at the monster's eye.
His shot hit dead-center. With a rasping, airy squeal, the centipede coiled up again. Red tensed, anticipating the monster's next attack.
The segmented black ball just sat there.
Red's body jerked forward after a couple awkward seconds of waiting. Was he supposed to attack? Even if the monster was in the same pose it took before it wrecked something, it seemed like he ought to stab it now. From those stumbling steps, he went into a sprint. On the other side of the centipede, Blue caught Red's drift and lunged forward with his sword held straight ahead of him.
Dark forks of electricity, crackling in a black oil-slick rainbow, jumped from the monster's armor wherever the Four Sword connected with it. The stink of burnt hair—the same reek that hung around Vaati's spell anchors—rose in the air. Red hissed at the tingling heat that kissed his skin, but kept on slashing until the centipede's body started shaking in warning. He abandoned the attack and leapt backwards just before the monster squashed down and popped itself into the air.
The centipede spun rapidly just beneath the rafters. It hung there in the air, apparently having decided it was too good for gravity now. Vaati's tainted electricity sprang into existence around it, turning the bug into a ball of whirling lightning that blackened the wooden beams above it.
With a buzzing crackle that sounded almost like a laugh, the monster slammed into the stone tiles underfoot. A wave of energy shot out, smashing its way across the pub's remaining furniture. Red threw himself behind one of the low archways that separated the more "private" tables from the usually chattier ones in the middle of the room. Flattened lightning passed on either side of him, parting around the pillar he'd tucked himself behind.
Fire tingled its way through him via his right shoulder. He muffled a scream into the crook of his elbow as he weathered the ten seconds of transmitted pain. One of his brothers had gotten grazed, but it didn't seem like they'd suffered anything worse than a burn. Given the Harrys' experiences with electricity's heart-stopping properties, he was glad no one had caught that attack full-on.
There was a clatter of metal on stone, then sounds of destruction that ended in a glass-breaking crash. A tremor went through the pillar at his back. Red stowed his sword in favor of conjuring his bow and stepped out from behind his cover.
The centipede was scuttling after Green on its many magenta legs, slip-sliding on the splinters of the tables it had crushed and the slick shards of the window it had shattered when it had slammed into the wall. Its clumsiness was the only reason it hadn't caught up to Green, who was huffing and puffing as he stumbled away from it.
Red internally cursed. They really should have taken a break in the Shadow Realm before leaving the river basin. Green's recovery from magically carrying all of them had been getting slower and slower the closer they came to reaching the source of the Light. Green hadn't wanted to wait, though, saying that Shadow Harry was in a bad enough mood that the spirit might leave them stuck there for a laugh. The fear that flashed in his eyes at the mention of going back there had told a different story; Red just hadn't wanted to pick a fight over it at the time. Maybe he should have.
He fired an arrow at the monster's eye, but the creature's weaving head caused the projectile to evaporate against its skin in a flash of electricity. "Oh, that's just great," Red muttered, drawing another arrow. Due to their kilometer-long, monster-slaying trench run without the ability to throw around spells like they were used to, the Harrys' reliance on arrows had made their saved-up stock start running thin.
A beer bottle came flying from the side and shattered against the side of the monster's head. Shattered green glass turned to a spray of molten droplets as the creature's lightning belatedly kicked in. Hissing, the centipede turned toward the bar.
Yellow took his shot before the bug had even finished swinging its head around. It hit perfectly (because this was Yellow), and the beastie was once again scared back into its ball. The Harrys converged on it without hesitation this time. Electricity flew up around them as all four copies of the Four Sword drew smoking magenta lines in the monster's dark flesh.
"Back!" Green called when the monster began shaking. "Find cover!"
Noting the darker, smoking spot on Green's robes in the area of his right shoulder, Red wrapped an arm around his brother and pulled him along as he found an archway to duck behind. Green wasn't stupid enough to fight Red off of him, but he fired a glare from the pillar next to Red's.
"I can do it myself, Red!" he snapped. "I can still walk!"
The monster was spinning in the air, a chittering buzz of electricity building around it.
"Being the leader doesn't mean doing everything yourself!" Red fired back. "What's the point of the rest of us, if we're not supposed to help?"
"I'm supposed to look after you," Green said stubbornly.
They both clenched their jaws and hugged close to the pillars as the ground jumped beneath their feet. Deadly energy flew past them and hit the wall, setting more of the stone building's wooden accents on fire.
Red bared his teeth in challenge. "Well, tough luck, because I'm helping you whether you want it or not!" He plucked an arrow from the quiver at the small of his back and darted out from behind the archway. Where was the beastie?
The rapid ti-tik-ti-tik of the monster's spikes rolling across the floor suddenly rushed at him, too fast for him to wonder where it was coming from. Red dove in a random direction, rolled, and ran once he found his feet.
A deafening bang sounded behind him and the building flinched. The sharp crack of stone breaking made his heart leap up into his throat. Turning around, he caught sight of an ominous black line snaking its way up through the blocks making up the pillar he'd been hiding behind. That line went up so far—!
He couldn't continue that thought because the centipede, crackling with electricity and wafting pink mist, wanted to have another go. Red ran to the side as the whirling ball dashed at him. The monster hit another pillar on the opposite side of the building, popped out of its coil to zero in on another target, and zoomed across the floor.
Green, who was holding onto the bar to stay upright, didn't stand a chance.
Red didn't stop to think. Instinct born of his sword-generated magical origins took control. He threw a hand forward and pulled, the entirety of his mind focused on save Green.
His brother flew in his direction as if yanked by Blue's new summoning spell, then tumbled across the floor. Red sprinted forward to grab him and drag him out of the monster's line of sight. Behind where Green had been standing, the front of Tom's bar was crunched into scorched splinters.
Blue sprang out from behind a table as the centipede turned to look around. His arrow landed in the bug's eye right as it was curling up for another attack.
"Go get it," Green said, pushing Red away from him. "I'm too tired."
"Alright." Red ran after Yellow and Blue to lay waste on the monster. Electricity licked painfully at his hands as he drove his sword into the creature, even more wild and powerful than before…or maybe just more desperate. He was the one to deliver the last blow, sinking his sword into the monster's head up to the hilt.
With a raspy, hissing scream, the centipede fell apart into its many segments, then melted away into the shadows. A thin, foul-smelling pink mist and a large blue Force Gem were left in its wake. Though it wasn't necessary at this point, Red swung his sword to collect the jewel. A pleasant thrill went up his arm and his sword's light flared.
As the fire of battle in his blood slowly cooled, Red looked around at the results of the battle. Half of the tables and chairs in the room were either crushed or completely broken. Sawdust and wooden daggers covered the floor, kicked around by the monster's skittering feet. A scarily large crack ran through the pillar Red had been hiding behind, a low column that had been rammed twice. On either side of the black line traveling up through the stone, the mortar between the blocks looked like it had been knocked apart.
"Erm, Green?" he said uncertainly. "I know you're kind of on your last legs now, but do you think we could fix this place up at least a little?"
Green followed his line of sight and went wide-eyed when he noticed the big crack. "Y-Yeah, I think we could. At least that much."
Red conjured his Magic Rod and, after glancing worriedly at Green, cast a Reparo. Green gasped and wobbled as the black line in the shadowed stone sealed up. The crack didn't entirely disappear, apparently too deep to be mended with one spell, but the pillar at least looked a bit less scary now.
"Okay. Let's go," Green panted. "No more magic."
Red ducked under his arm. "Yeah, someone else can handle the rest."
Yellow dithered in the doorway to the alley, looking guiltily at the room they were leaving behind. "Oh, I wish we could help," he said, chewing in his lower lip. "I feel so bad leaving such a mess."
"No one will know we were there unless you tell them," Blue told him. "Besides, it was the centipede that was rolling around like a wrecking ball, not us."
Yellow made a displeased little noise before following. He gripped the edges of his robe sleeves and twisted the fabric back and forth. "Sorry, Mr. Tom," Red heard him mumble.
When they reached the wall at the back of the alley, they crammed into the shadow it cast while Green handled tapping the bricks with his wand. As the wall folded away, they flattened themselves against the dark side of the open-air corridor to see what they'd have to deal with next.
Red grimaced in pity at the state of Diagon Alley. The fun, twisty, magic-supported buildings were slumping precariously. Cracks ran through the bricks and some of the shops with more looming upper stories leaned forward at unnerving angles. Front display windows lay in glittering puddles on the ground, the colorful paint on their frames having bubbled away to reveal bare metal. Painted signs had been rendered blank; the wooden ones were black and smoldering. Drained of their color and character, the shops lining the street were difficult to tell apart. Heat shimmered so powerfully in the air that it was like being on Death Mountain again. The whole alley blurred and swayed with it.
"Goron outfits, maybe?" Blue proposed.
"The necklaces should be enough," Green said. "Since our current clothes are the ones we had Hora juice up, I figure we should keep those ones on for now."
They conjured their Dragon Fang Necklaces to dim the heat and, after a suggestion from Yellow, switched out their glasses for the Lenses of Truth. With the arcing lines overhead casting a scant amount of shadow over the left side of the alley, they sidled down the line of buildings.
Light seared Red's throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. It was like trying to inhale the sun. Even in shadow, he felt slow and heavy; he was glad they hadn't worn their Goron clothes, because the iron plating would have felt like carrying one of his brothers on his shoulders. Every time he had to risk leaping into the Light to avoid a puddle of molten glass, his heart hammered against his chest with instinctual fear. Even if Red wasn't afraid of a little scorching, the very power that made him a wizard was quaking in its boots.
"There!" Green called out, pointing ahead. "It's in front of Gringotts!"
Red leaned as far away from the building behind him as he dared in order to get a look. Down the cobblestone road lay one of the big garlic-bulb sculptures that sparsely dotted Hyrule. Its shape was a wavering silhouette hidden behind the Light pouring from the sinkhole it had caused. The ribbons in the sky spewed from the broken, blackened edges of the street like water bursting through a dam. Everything ahead was drawn in pure ink on paper. It would have been amazing to look at if it weren't so painful.
"Have to split up," Green said hoarsely once they reached the small square in front of Gringotts. The bank was opposite them, on the other side of the interdimensional disaster. "Eyes are…spread out. Across the square. Stick to the edges. Avoid the Light." He coughed and clutched his throat. "I can't handle much more. Not doing so great."
Red, Blue, and Yellow looked at him with horror. A Harry saying he was fine was bad enough. A Harry willingly admitting he wasn't fine set even louder alarm bells ringing.
"Yeah, I know," Green said with a grimace. "Move fast, okay?"
"Okay," the other Harrys chorused.
Red and Blue darted to the other side of the alley, hissing in pain as the Light immediately gave them sunburns. They kept to the shadows of awnings as they made their way toward the black shapes of Vaati's electrified eyes. Blue stopped at the first one they came across, panting with his hands on his knees. Red ducked under the stream of rainbow lightning leading toward the center of the square in order to keep going.
'I'm never going to take summer for granted again,' Red thought as he forced his legs to keep dragging him through the hellish heat. English summers were humid and miserable, but they had nothing on the fire currently crawling down his throat. This heat boiled from the inside out and the outside in. It was in his veins.
If he'd had more energy, he would have cried out with relief when he nearly fell into the buzzing black orb hovering near the cracked, crumbling marble pillars of Gringotts. A shout echoed against the buildings, "Everyone ready?"
"Ready," Red said as loudly as he could. His parched throat and chapped lips let him know not to try that a second time.
"On three!" Green called out. Red was envious of his brother's ability to sound so strong despite taking all this magical radiation the hardest.
He unsheathed his sword and struggled to maintain his battle stance as Green counted, "One! Two! Three!" On the last word, Red brought his sword down on the spell anchor.
The eye closed, then shattered. Immediately after, the ground began to rumble.
In the center of the blaze of stolen magic, the power generator's bulbous shadow vanished. The ribbons flailed like panicked worms, becoming more violent as they shrank. One line of blazing energy lashed across the buildings before it withered completely. Red ducked as he was pelted with shingles and chunks of stone.
An open black pit was the only thing left after the ribbons died their silent deaths. Instead of dimming, though, the light around him seemed to grow stronger. A wave of white swept out from the pit where the generator had been—an eraser sliding across the black lines of the world. Red didn't have the energy to run. He watched, powerless, as the eraser wiped away the shadow he stood in.
Everything was rendered blank.
Then, there was pain. Scratchy, stinging, suffocating pain. Red took a breath, then started sneezing and coughing when it sent some kind of powder up his nose. He sat up, noticing his body felt a hell of a lot lighter than before, and opened his eyes to a world of blinding, whirling orange and gold.
…Sand. The air was full of angry, clawing, wind-blown sand that lashed at his skin and hissed against his clothes. Red closed his eyes, vanished his Lenses of Truth in favor of his bag, and dug out his ash-mask. Once he had the mask on, he re-conjured his magic glasses and pushed them as tight to his face as they would go. Luckily, they seemed to have some kind of enchantment that would let them stay put in the howling wind.
"Green?" he shouted into the wind. "Yellow? Blue?" His voice was torn away and swallowed as soon as it left his mouth.
Red staggered to his feet. The wind immediately tried to push him over. It caught in his robes and used them as a sail to shove him backward. Sand shot up his billowing, wildly snapping sleeves. Heat was quickly soaking into the black fabric despite the darkened sky.
'Damn, we need to find a town and a shop with better clothes for this place,' he thought, wrapping his robes tighter around him.
A bright gold light suddenly lit up the storm like a small sun. It couldn't have been anything but magic. Red hustled in that direction with one hand holding his robes shut and the other pressing his glasses to his face.
He was relieved to see Green standing tall with his staff held high, his unprotected eyes tucked behind his sleeve. Visibility was so terrible out here, even with the Lenses of Truth, that Red never would have spotted his brother if not for whatever spell he'd used to cast such a big Lumos.
Yellow and Blue soon came stumbling into the glow of Green's spell. "We need to find shelter!" Blue hollered over the sound of the wind.
Green peeked out from his arm, then switched his staff for his magical glasses. "Where are we?" he asked.
"Gerudo Desert!" Blue yelled back. "We must be in Hyrule again! Only one place with sandstorms there!"
"The Navi Slate doesn't show our current location! It's too cheap!" Green shouted. "How do we navigate?"
A dark shape swooped out of the storm, clipping Green in the shoulder. Blue caught him before he fell forward into the sand. Red drew his sword and glared into the cloud of sand. "What was that?" he demanded.
"A Peahat?" Yellow guessed.
Blue squinted at something overhead. "A big Keese?"
Green straightened and glowered at the dark round shape now lowering from the sky. "Vaati!" he hollered to them all. "That's one of his eyes!"
Now that he knew what details to look for, Red could make sense of the fluttering black orb now revolving slowly to look at all the Harrys. It was like a mobile, winged version of the eye that Vaati implanted in Shadow Harry's face whenever he got angry with the dark spirit.
The wind picked up and gave them all a hard shove that sent them skidding across the silky sand. "Youuu little INNNSECTS!" it screamed. The floating eye opened wide with fury. "Dessstructive, meddling WORMMMS!"
Yellow clung to Red. "Is that eye Vaati?" he asked. "Is he here?!"
"No, that's a camera, not him," Green told him. "He might be channeling magic through it, though—"
"You stolllle myyy quarrry! Youuu stole myyy workerrrs!" the wind shrieked. "Don't you unnnderstand what I'm doinnng for youuu? Arrre your tiiiny minds incaaapable of grasssping my visionnn?" The floating eye swung its little wings forward. In answer, the wind picked the boys up and threw them like toys. Red lost track of which way was up as he tumbled down the side of the dune that he and his brothers had apparently been stood at the crest of. Sand found its way up his tunic, down his trousers, and through his mask.
"I'm builllding a WORLD forrr youuu! For AAALL my subjectsss!" Somehow, Vaati managed to make the howl of the storm sound like a teenaged whine. "Howww DARRRE you interferrre? UNNNGRATEFUL!"
Red shook the sand out of his mask, adjusted his magic glasses, and located his brothers. Green was a couple of steps away from him, already on his feet and glaring up at the sky. Yellow and Blue were vague silhouettes in the orange smokescreen of kicked-up sand.
"We need to find shelter!" Green yelled. "Any ideas?"
"You wiiill payyy for yourrr insolence!" Vaati vowed. The eye fluttered past the crest of the dune to glare down at them. "You willll beee PUNISHED!"
A tornado formed under the Harrys' feet, then launched them through the air. The force of it was all too reminiscent of Ignikanos's hurricanes. It was enough to make Red lock up in fear. Just for a moment, but a moment was a long time at the speed he was going.
He was blinded by the sand scraping past him. There was no difference between the ground and the sky; it was all shades of orange and shadow. He knew the hard, painful stop was coming, but not when, or from what direction.
Darkness suddenly closed around him, and the wind went from shoving to sucking. The air was hungry now, not angry.
Red seized his panic and shoved it away from him. Getting his flailing arms under control, he conjured his Magic Rod and cast a Falling Spell. He hadn't been able to save his life with it before, when Ignikanos had hit him too quickly to react. He prayed it would help him now.
The wind clawing at his robes dimmed—slowly enough that he couldn't be sure whether he'd caused it or the air had decided it had gotten what it wanted. He sank slowly through the dark, blinking as his eyes adjusted. The only thing within view was a single shaft of orange light falling from an unseen ceiling to splash against a floor of painted tiles. Everything else was dusty shadows.
Where the hell was he now?
Notes:
-I lengthened the back lot behind the Leaky Cauldron a bit. It just felt better in the scene ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-The Lanroller mini-boss that the Harrys fought was a Vaati-crafted cousin to the Lanmolas that have long appeared in the Zelda franchise.
-There are different models and qualities of Navi Slate that one can buy, same as any computer you can get in the our world. The Harrys bought the cheapest model they could find, so it's just a basic map display and storage device. Fancier Navi Slates allow for location-tracking, map annotation, marker-placing, and photography.
Next month: Green must wrestle with his fears in the darkness of Light World Dungeon 2, Medusa Warren.