Lanayru Mining Facility [Squishy Panther] [COMPLETE]

She'd been right, then. One of the totem-like towers had sprung to life and attacked Idris the moment he'd set foot over some sort of invisible boundary. Laurel deduced it stood guard over something, as it was bound to its one spot and appeared rather docile as long as they didn't breach its boundaries. "Life would be no fun if everything were easy," she said, her eyes gleaming as her brain shifted into gear. She wanted to outsmart this bit of ancient technology. "Nothing for it but to turn this thing around in our favour. First course of action: take out the laser."

With those words, she lifted her rapier, a small ball of electricity forming at the tip until she tossed it towards the eye. However, as it passed the boundary, the eye glowed red and retaliated with its own laser, which not only dissolved her Magic Bolt but went straight through it, and Laurel could only just dodge out of the way. "...not that way, then," she said. "If we can get it closer to the ground, I could put my sword in it. That's faster and it might not have time to counter then. Any ideas, Lord Johansson?"

First, Idris had produced an enormous bolt of lightning. Now, he produced an enormous pillar of flame. "Your magic isn't exactly subtle, is it?" she said, grinning with her hands on her hips, "Is that inherent to House Johansson, or is it a personal thing?" She looked back at the totem, which seemed to have melted under the intense fire. Satisfied, but cautious, she walked towards it. It didn't move, so she put her hand on it, only to pull it back as the heat had lingered in the metal. "Ouch," she muttered. "Well, at least it looks like that took care of it." She couldn't keep a little disappointment out of her voice. She'd wanted to outwit it- not overpower it with brute force.

Still, it was out of their way, and Laurel walked up to the wall behind it. One of the wall panels looked different from the rest, and as she approached it, it effortlessly slid away into the panel above it; revealing a whole new room. "Whoa," she said, "Doorways in the old days were far more efficient than nowadays." She didn't wait, immediately walking into the new room with her sword still in hand. The Timeshift Stone's influence didn't reach here- the room was run-down and filled with sand, as the one before had initially been. Still, there was something funny here that compelled Laurel to explore.

"Stay near the doorway," Laurel hurried to point out. "If the Timeshift Stone's influence doesn't reach here, we may not be able to open that door from this side." She herself walked further into the room, pondering Idris' sarcastic question. "And don't sass a lady. I know that what I'm looking for is here somewhere..." She took another few steps forward, and suddenly felt compelled to look up at the ceiling. "Uh-oh."

Keese. Hundreds and hundreds of Keese. Every square inch of the ceiling that wasn't covered in crackling, yellow goop was laden with Keese. "I have a bad feeling about this..." Laurel muttered, fiddling with her rapier. Right on cue, the first of the Keese started to spread their wings, breaking free from the ceiling and fluttering around the room. Simultaneously, the goop oozed down from the ceiling, forming sentient blobs. Both the blobs and the wings of the Keese crackled with electricity...

But the majority of them were coming straight for her.

"Yes," Laurel shouted in response, "I'll be sure to keep that in mind next time I visit an ancient and abandoned mine!" she brought her hands up above her head, swatting away the Keese that came her way. She soon realised this was unwise, though, as she wore no gloves and the electricity would hurt. Still, she couldn't use her rapier either, as the metal blade would conduct the shocks right towards her. Her only hope was her Magic Bolt, but using it pur sang would likely not do much, and enchanting it with fire would run her through both her spells at once, leaving her helpless.

She stepped back to avoid a swooping Keese, but stepped right into a ChuChu as she did so. She got out of it just in time before it shocked in retaliation, but that put her in the middle of the monsters. This was bad... there was so much current flying around her that her hair fanned out with static. She started to frantically look around the room, hoping to find a way of turning this situation around with one spell.

Yes, yes. Your ice spell is impressive, Laurel though sarcastically. She had something else on her mind. Idris had taken out a fair number of them, but at least half of the monsters was still left and converging on her. They had realised that she was the less dangerous of the two Hylians in the room. Thanks a lot, Johansson. She couldn't even risk a kick towards the ChuChus, since that would just get the electrified jelly stuck on her boot and possibly shock her through it. And she still wasn't sure about wasting her enchantment or her Magic Bolt on a single monster...

But she saw something. There was a strange device on the wall, similar in design to several ones in the last room over. Judging from the buzzing sensation she'd felt in that room, electricity was relevant to the workings of the machinery... On a hunch, she raised her rapier and launched her Magic Bolt towards the device. It fizzled and crackled... and for a second, nothing happened. Then, a sudden gust of wind came from the ceiling, sending another pile of sand and dust falling down and pushing some of the Keese to the ground. But it stopped as suddenly as it had began, and the monsters quickly started to recover from being shaken about.

There was definitely something in the ceiling though, and it was definitely powered by electricity magic! "Idris!" Laurel shouted, "We need more power!"

Laurel covered her face with her arms when the fan on the ceiling started roaring, hoping to keep the high-velocity sand out of her face and eyes. She felt the streaming winds tugging at her hair and her dress, but she didn't care- she didn't see anything, but she assumed from the lack of electricity presently coursing through her that their plan was working.

After what felt like an eternity, the winds died down and Laurel lowered her arms to straighten out her skirt. As expected, the Chus had been pushed against the ground so hard that the jelly had been splashed all over the room, ending their animation, and the Keese had been outright ripped apart by the winds. "Well," she said, running her fingers through the fresh tangles in her hair, "That worked. And now we know that we can get machinery to work with our own magic if we lack a Timeshift Stone. Shall we try it with that door?"

"Laurel will be fine," she said. "We're peers, after all." She realised that her own magic wouldn't be strong enough to open the door, and Idris's was too volatile to safely use while still under strain from the most recent cast. She decided to use the time to try and return her hair to an acceptable state while she spoke to him. She knew well how rude it was to be busy with anything else than the conversation at hand, of course; but Idris was a well-known prick even to noble standards, and under the circumstances she highly doubted anyone cared.

When he asked about her interest in enchantments, Laurel looked at a particularly nasty tangle in concentration. "I... I'm not sure why I became so fascinated with them. But I have a theory. You know how magic is sometimes theorised to draw from reality and alter it to suit the mage's needs." Of course, it was only one of many theories. For how much the Hylian race studied and used magic, they understood precious little about its origins or inner workings. "I believe Enchantments are the most pure and primal application of that. When I enchant my sword with fire, for example, that is nothing more than changing the composition of the blade to include fire... magic..?"

As she had explained this, she had drawn her sword to illustrate her explanation. Now, however, she found herself staring at it, blinking slowly as the gears in her head turned. "...dear Mother Nayru," she then muttered. "I am an idiot." She raised the weapon, laying a few fingers of her free hand against the blade, and shut her eyes. She focused and began to apply a Fire Enchantment to the steel... but instead of visualising red and imagining heat emanating from it, she visualised yellow and imagined sparks dancing along it. Normally, that wouldn't have been enough to get the trick done, but Laurel had recently been exposed to a lot of electricity magic and her mind remembered the structure and sensation of it.

When she opened her eyes, she did so to a yellow-glowing blade with not just sparks, but an outright current of electricity flowing past it. Her eyes widened at her success, but not wanting to celebrate too early, she looked at the door. "Let me just..." Not seeing a device like the one for the ceiling fan, Laurel went out on a limb and touched her sword to the door directly. The electricity surged and the door hummed, before slowly sliding open.

"It worked!" she shouted, "I did it!" She turned around, promptly leaping at Idris and kissing him on the cheek just to relieve the excitement she felt right now. Besides, he'd earned it- without him she wouldn't have gotten this far into the mine. "That was the Shock Enchantment! Did you see that?"

Laurel noticed Idris's red face, but decided not to say anything about it. She was much too excited about her progress to tease him, anyway. This was only the second enchantment she'd learned, but if she mastered it, maybe she could use her experiences here to help her develop and understand the other elements as well..! She hurried out of the room behind Idris, only to realise that they had not emerged in the same room as they had exited before.

There was no active Timeshift Stone. Instead, there was a big statue in front of them. It was quite freaky, resembling a large head with large staring eyes, a pair of magnet-shaped appendages on the top of its head. The spikes on its base gave Laurel pause, too, but it appeared that unlike the totem pole-like machine from before, this one was not alive. "...let's find a Timeshift Stone," she said, "And hope this one isn't as territorial as the last."

"Up the ladder, huh?" Laurel didn't think twice before grabbing hold of it and starting to climb up it. It wasn't a long ladder, but the way it creaked and groaned while Laurel climbed it was a little ominous. "You stay down there," she said to Idris, "Keep an eye out for anything that will want to kill us once I bring this place to life." Once at the top, she pulled herself onto the edge and stood straight, smoothing down her skirt. Idris had been right, she saw, and she drew her rapier to strike the Timeshift Stone.

Soon, the room was buzzing and whirring with mechanical life, and Laurel walked to the edge of the plateau to see the statue from before. It had regained blue and red colours, its blue eyes staring out front of it vacantly, but it did not move or look around. A silent sentry, perhaps? She was still pondering it when she started to descend the ladder. "Do you see anything?" she asked on her way down.

The statue was territorial. Great.

Laurel hurried back up the ladder and turned around just in time to see Idris struggling to hold on. The statue was still advancing towards them, and the tremors it caused made it harder for the noble to hold on. Laurel dropped herself to her knees and grabbed hold of his wrists, thanking the goddesses for his incredibly fragile form as she started to pull him up. "Come on," she said, "Work with me here."

Finally, she pulled him up on the platform. Apparently, in doing so she extracted him from the statue's territory, as it turned around and started to hop back. As she looked, however, she saw a large, ornate chest in a crevice that the statue had previously blocked; and now returned to block once more. "What's that?" she muttered to herself, leaning forward in hopes of seeing it better. The statue re-assumed its position, and fell dormant once more. "...we need to find a way to get behind that thing," Laurel said to Idris. "Do you have any ideas?"