Landia

"A four-headed dragon that sleeps on Halcandra, Landia has been revered as a protector since ancient times…until now."

- VS Landia

Landia, the four-headed dragon, appears in Kirby's Return to Dream Land. It is a guardian who has kept the legendary treasures of Halcandra safe since ancient times, but - according to Magolor - it suddenly awoke and rampaged, attacking the Lor Starcutter. It appears as a boss in the seventh level, Dangerous Dinner. Landia is able to split into four separate dragons whenever needed, but attacking just one will cause damage to all 4. After defeating it, Magolor steals the Master Crown from it, and heads into an interdimensional tunnel connecting to his world and Kirby's Pop Star. Landia, in its four separate forms, will help Kirby and friends get through the level, acting in a similar fashion to the Starship ability. They can shoot normal and charged fireballs at the Lor Starcutter and Magolor. Landia is only seen separated after that. Once Magolor has been defeated, the entire space around Kirby, Waddle Dee, King Dedede and Meta-Knight will start to collapse, but Landia and the Lor Starcutter save them and bring them all back to Pop Star before the darkness closes in on them.

When Kirby enters the fight against Landia in EX Mode, a new scene will play. At first, normal Landia flies in and roars like before, but then apparently uses the Master Crown's power to enhance its own. It alters its colors and turns purple with a blue underside. When it is defeated, Landia EX reverts back to its normal red-orange color scheme.

Physical Appearance
Landia is an orange dragon that has four heads that is roughly the size of Dyna Blade when compared to Kirby. The position of the heads are that of the four cardinal directions of a compass. The northernmost head wears the Master Crown, which has a blue jewel in its center. Each of the heads have dark green eyes, two orange ridges along the sides of their faces, and dark orange marks shaped like stars across their faces. Around the necks of Landia's heads is a mane of what appears to be white fur. Its wings are like that of a bat, with the webbing colored yellow and a single light red talon atop each wing. Each of its heads have pink and red striped horns on them, with the side heads having three horns and the top and bottom heads each having two. Landia has two large feet, each foot having three light red claws on them and being a lighter shade of orange than the main body. Its underside is a shade of peach and it also has a long orange tail that ends in purple arrowhead with small orange stripes.

When knocked to half its health, Landia taps into the power of the Master Crown and splits into four smaller dragons after roaring. One of the dragons still retains the Master Crown on its head, which now has a green jewel in it. Its eyes turn from red to green and each dragon has two face-ridges instead of three. The smaller Landias each have two striped horns and their own manes of white fur now. Their wings lose the talons they previously had and their feet are much smaller, each only having a single dark orange claw. The ends of their tails also lack the purple arrowhead from before.

In Extra Mode, it looks almost the same, save for a different color scheme: it is purple instead of orange. Landia EX also has a light blue underside, black star-shaped facial markings, dark drown eyes, yellow fur around its necks, black horns, claws, and arrowhead, and orange webbing for its wings. Its eyes still turn red when it splits into four after it loses enough HP. The Master Crown's jewel during this fight is orange and remains the same color even after Landia EX splits.

Main Game
Landia in its first form will use a variety of attacks, such as shooting fireballs at a downward angle, blowing wind with its wings that sends energy blades along the current, and flying down low across the screen. Another attack it has is to fly in the center of the screen and have its two side-heads belch out streams of fire at the ground. It will then use its two heads to sweep the flames across the ground, sometimes rising high into the air to cover more ground. Another variation of this attack is for Landia to shoot out the fire-streams underneath it, then fly to another spot to breathe down fire again. Landia can also hover low to the ground and use its tail like a whip by spinning forward a total of three times. It may sometimes spit out a single fireball in between tail-whips.

After taking out half of its health, it will turn into four smaller dragons with one head. They will start out by flying to the top part of the screen and will spit a fireball downwards. They will repeat this action several times, but quickly fly to random spots and altitudes, making it hard to dodge. After shooting about four rounds of fireballs, they will move to new locations and surround themselves in electricity. Each Landia will shoot out an electrical beam to connect to another and move about in random patterns. The beams can be arranged both vertically and horizontally. After enough patterns have been done, the Landias will each gather into groups of two and stare at the middle of the room. Each pair will then take a turn to perform a spinning swoop towards the ground in order to hit Kirby and his friends. Another attack for them is for each dragon to move into a corner of the screen, and one will spit up a fireball. The dragons will then take turns passing it around to each with their wings. After they pass it around for a bit, one will knock the fireball into the background where it will then come crashing back down into the center of the room. Should enough time pass by while battling them, the four small Landias will eventually reform into their combined form and can spilt again into four if enough time passes by.

Extra Mode
Landia acts quite different when in EX Mode. The main differences are that its heads spit larger fireballs that actually aim for the player characters, larger energy blades ride along in its wind-currents, and it is also faster. It also uses its lightning attack in a different manner. One Landia, each in the corners of the field, will surround themselves with electricity while moving across the field, acting in a similar manner to the Spark Sphere Doomer's attack, only the electricity lasts longer. Finally, not all Landias do the same thing. Three could spit fireballs, while one swoops in on Kirby, making the attacks tougher to avoid.

Related Quotes
"Landia to the rescue in Planet Popstar’s – no, the entire universe’s – time of need! Joining up with Kirby, the dragon takes to battle!"

- Pause-screen description

"Landia has lived on Halcandra since ancient times, protecting the land and guarding the world’s most legendary items, but …"

- VS Landia EX

Trivia

 * Landia is the only boss in the Kirby series to have multiple heads, excluding tag teams, Computer Virus, and Twin Woods.
 * Landia is one of the few bosses to help Kirby. The others are Meta Knight, King Dedede, Bandanna Waddle Dee, Dyna Blade, Daroach, and the Lor Starcutter. This does not include the anime.
 * When the battle starts, Landia's eyes are green (dark red in Extra Mode); when it separates into four dragons, they turn to red; when it's finally defeated and helps the party, they turn blue.
 * Although introduced as a four headed dragon and described as such in the background info, Landia does not recombine after being defeated and spends the rest of the game as four separate dragons that seem to share the same mind, even departing Pop Star in this state. It is therefore not clear if the combined form is Landia's natural form or a result of the Master Crown 's power.
 * In EX mode he resembles four Spyros (before of losing half of his HP he resembles a four headed Spyro)