Chapter 34: Horn Among Ivory, Ivory Among Horn
…
~~Same day, 1000.
~~A few issues came up this morning. The generator finaly gave up, and we had to scramble to get lanterns mounted throughout the ship. Leyne says we don't have very many replacement candles. I've already asked if it might be possible to find a candlemaker in the settlement. That's gonna be a lot of buildings.
~~Then there's Beech, and that's what's been weighing on my mind more. We've put him in his berth again. We've also had to clean out that room some. The guys have been told to keep an eye on him, but now, I'm a little worried about putting him back on duty. He told us he doesn't know why he ws throwing up in the trashcan and ddn't mention it to anyone, and I'm a little worried that may be a sign that The Night is making him lose his mind. Who am I kidding? Everyone is loosing their mind. What's worse is that as bad as we think it is, Janni just tells me it's nothing compared to what The Night can do. At the rate we keep finding things out, we just might be gone by the end of the month.
~~But I'm still hoping. I don't know if I've already lost my mind, but I'm still hoping.
…
Link slept for the rest of the morning, the grind of command handled by Leynne. It was all he could do to keep his head about him. He could feel the events starting from The Night's latest defense begin to overwhelm him when they should not. Link's crew were not quite taking his recent injury in stride in spite of how benign Nester continually told them it was. Link had rarely needed to punish his crew for misbehaving (never mind for attacking each other), and he felt that he was mishandling Beech's case, his only serious discipline problem not only the result of chronic fatigue but evidence that the fatigue was not ending. The generator losing power now meant that they had to rely on lanterns, which included the fact that they would need a fresh supply of candles with the brief window of daylight they now had.
At about mid-afternoon, he went ashore. It was not meant to be a whimsical thing. With the pileup of issues weighing on him and his lack of progress in the mines, he needed something to do or else, he feared, he would dwell on these things until they made him absolutely miserable. He did not want to go back to the mines feeling that way; it would only invite failure. A success against The Night would help, especially since the need for candles was caused by The Night affecting their generator. So, he took Gillam and Layna with him to see if they could find candles. No one could deny their existence; without electrical generators, candles were a necessity to the Obeetans.
Even if it was relatively pointless. All the more reason Link would not feel sorry about swiping some for his crew.
Layna came along because she could sense when someone was watching, which would be useful if they lost track of time. Gillam was muscle.
Ka-TING! Link imagined there to be some measure of relief in being able to kick a door off its hinges. He wondered if he should have just left the crowbar on the ship. He waited in the doorway while Gillam searched around. From what little Link saw of the inside, they had found another house.
"My Captain," Layna spoke up. Link glanced to her to see her indicating something between the buildings. "Sariyk."
Link held up a finger and called to Gillam, "Find anything?"
"Two candlestick holders and five fine plates," Gillam replied. Karshhh! "Two candlestick holders and four fine plates."
"If they have candlestick holders, they've gotta have candlesticks," Link told him.
"Aye, sir."
Link stepped out of the doorway and next to Layna. She indicated the horizon, and Link followed the direction of her finger toward a pair of thin trails of smoke just barely visible in the storm-clouded sky. "Yeah, those are probably more Obeetans I woke up a few days back," he told Layna. "If we had the time, we could probably go ask them for some candles, but it'd take too long to walk there."
"We could use the Conductor," Gillam said as he stepped outside.
"If we get the chance tomorrow," Link told him. Then he nodded at a small crate in his arms. "What'd you find?"
"A box…" He pulled a single, yellowish-white candlestick out. "One candle…" He dropped the candle back in the box and glanced around at the other contents. "And maybe about a hundred years' worth of dust."
Link glanced down the street, estimating the number of broken doors at somewhere around twenty. "It's a start," Link said. He turned to examine the road past Layna. "I bet if we move closer to the tower, we'd find some businesses with a better stock."
"Closer to that thing?" Gillam asked, nodding at the tower. "Are you sure The Night isn't gonna go for us if we get closer?"
"Layna should be able to sense it before it gets close," Link said, waving an arm to signal Gillam and Layna to start walking with him. "Besides, it won't come out. Not this far. But if you see pitch-black liquid crawling toward you, run the other way."
"Do I wanna know what it is?" Gillam asked, moving to walk on Link's left.
"The Night's miasma," Link said. "I don't know what it does. That should scare you enough."
Gillam's neck recoiled. And then he moved behind Link and Layna so that he could walk on Layna's opposite side. "Save me…" he whispered to her. Layna, visibly annoyed, leaned away from him.
"Keep your eyes open," Link told them both.
"Hey, Captain," Gillam spoke up as if he had an idea. "What about that workshop you guys opened?"
"Workshop?" Link asked.
"Yeah. That shop the lieutenant was gonna use to make replacement parts. I figure, if we're just going around breaking down other people's doors, a shop we already broke open won't matter. Besides… uh… we-well, it's not like the shop's owner needs them anymore."
"I get it," Link replied impatiently, not wanting to think about Maroon's suicide. He nodded and said in a calmer voice, "We'll head there, then."
They did not go directly to Maroon's shop, as Link still felt that there was merit behind breaking open buildings along the way. However, since opening homes appeared to be useless, he had Gillam knock down doors to four or five businesses (the inexact count being caused by Gillam thinking that one might have been someone's home in spite of appearances) to test the merit of finding a stock of candles in a business. At least, that was Link's reasoning behind his decision to let Gillam smash things.
"Pay dirt!"
A few minutes later yielded some relief. Gillam had broken into a grocery store which, from the appearances of the interior, had not stocked any sort of food for years. The shelves and bins were layered with dust, some even with the petrified remains of unsold food. Gillam ransacked the small, shoddily-built counter at the front of the store for a handful of candles. As Link continued to watch the entrance while Layna lingered nearby with her eyes and ears on the lookout, Gillam moved to a stockroom at the back of the store.
"How's this, Captain?" Gillam asked as he presented Link with his box now half-filled with candles.
Link picked one out and examined it. He gave it a brief squeeze to see if it would hold its shape. Then he told Gillam, "Looks good. We'll have to cut them to fit them into the lamps, but it's a decent haul. I'd like to see if we can fill the box, keep us from having to worry about this for a couple days."
"No arguments here, Captain, just as long as we don't get any closer to that tower."
Link gave Gillam a confused look. Then he glanced at Layna to find her giving an equally perplexed expression, one of the few acknowledgements that she really understood Hylian. If Link had been paying attention to the person he had just shared the look with, he might have realized this. Instead, he turned back to Gillam and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," Gillam replied, casting his own confused expression. "Why?"
"Well…" Link paused to work his thoughts into something coherent. "It's just… I know we all have some kind of fear of The Night, but we aren't that close to the tower and it still seems to bother you."
"I just don't wanna get near the tower," Gillam told him, his voice bearing the kind of casual tone a person would use to end a line of questioning.
Link did not want to press the issue anyway. He favored chalking it up to paranoia. After all, Gillam had been in that tower only a few days ago; he knew what was in there, and Link was familiar with the way hearsay could evolve on an airship. So, he simply said, "Okay."
Perhaps the payback for yielding to Gillam's paranoia rather than confronting it was venturing as far as Maroon's shop just to cause Link even more discomfort. Whether it was his own obsession with The Night or some side effect of being internally mauled over the past few days, Link still felt as if they were being steered to that same shop. Entering the dreary and dusty building only helped remind him that Maroon had ended his life here. He tried to take solace in the fact that Maroon was already gone by the time they had met him. It was not much comfort as he stood at the end of the shelves to watch Gillam ransack the shop, Layna perched in the doorway on the other side.
When Gillam was done, he returned to Link with a box so full of candles that he had to hold the box in such a way as to keep the candles pressed to his chest instead of spilling out of his arms. "So, what do you think, Captain?" he asked with a grin on his face.
Link replied with a weak smile of his own. "I think it'll do for three or four days," he said. Then he mumbled under his breath, "Goddesses help us if we have to stay any longer…"
"Someone'd better help us," Gillam said.
"My Captain," Layna spoke up. "Gifalwun."
Gillam scrunched his face and asked Link, "What's that mean?"
"'Voices', I think," Link said. He started toward her, prompting Gillam to fall in step behind him. "I bet it's Line's group; they're probably on their way back from the library."
"Ay'a, My Captain," Layna said with a nod.
"Hey, Layna!" someone outside called.
Once Layna had moved from the doorway, Link and Gillam stepped into the street just as Line, Cale, and Irleen approached. Link raised a hand in greeting and said, "Hey, guys."
"Oh, hey, Link," Line said. "You came out, too?"
Link twitched his neck. "I needed to get off the ship."
"So you… come to the dead guy's shop?" Line asked, pointing at Maroon's shop.
"We've already talked about this," Irleen said in Cale's accent. "They'h not dead."
"—not dead, I know," Line said, overlapping Irleen's voice. "It doesn't make these people any less creepy."
"And they're the harmless ones," Gillam pointed out.
"You guys are heading back to the ship now?" Link asked.
"Well," Cale said, looking up at the clouds above. "The Night hasn't exactly made it easy to tell the time."
"Don't you boys have a watch?" Gillam asked.
"Yes," Cale answered, "but, since the stohm makes the day shohtah, we thought we should retahn soonah."
"Sounds good enough to me," Gillam said.
"Great," Link said. "We can go together." He waved a finger to indicate that they should begin the return walk. As they started, he asked, "How's the search going?"
"Much of the contents of that library has been rewritten in the local dialect," Irleen replied. "It seems that, the oldah a book is, the closah I come to being able to read it."
Link grimaced. "So… not that good," he concluded.
"Actually, it is a little moah promising than that," Cale spoke up. "Just because the Sorians heah rewrote most of theih texts doesn't mean that they disposed of them. It's simply a matteh of finding the old texts."
"It isn't easy, though," Irleen added. "Many of the texts ah inconsistent with theih shelf labels. I suppose it is possible that whatevah librarians that weh around befoah they buried the library, they lost touch with reality and didn't bothah ohganizing the shelves befoah they went mad."
"Don't the Sorians print anything?" Gillam asked.
"I don't think the Sorians waah interested in the concept of a printing press," Cale said.
"We simply have no use foh machines," Irleen said. "Anything we want to do, we've found a method using eithah magic oh plants."
"But theah is still evidence of metal wohking," Cale pointed out to her.
"True, but it's mostly foh decorative puhposes," Irleen said. "We only evah make a few weapons in the couhse of a yeah, and they only evah remain in storage unless something drastic happens."
"Well," Link said, "something drastic has happened. So what do the Sorians do when an insane creature starts causing nightmares?"
"I can't be cehtain; it doesn't come up that often," Irleen replied. With Cale's accent, Link was not sure if she meant to sound sarcastic. "This type of magic, this whole situation is rathah beyond my experience."
"You know, I just thought of something," Link said. He had to slow his pace so that he was walking beside Cale and was able to look at Irleen hovering over his head. "Kinda like a ship's crew specializing in different areas. Are their specialists for magic?"
"From what Ihleen's told me, theah ah some specialties," Cale answered.
"Fat lot of good it does when we can't even find my people," Irleen added.
"But if we just knew what kind of magic we were dealing with, could it help?" Link asked.
"I suppose," Irleen said in a hesitant voice. "But you can't just tell based on what you see."
"Maybe not you," Link said, eliciting an indignant huff from her. "But what if we knew someone who had that experience?"
"Who among us would?" Cale asked.
"Janni."
Both Cale and Irleen sucked in a breath through their teeth (or, at least Irleen made a corresponding hiss). "What the hell kinda reaction is that?" Line asked. "And, well… who's-who's Janni?"
"Link… I don't know that it's wise to trust someone you've only met in youh dreams," Cale said.
"Oh," Line uttered. "That Janni…"
"It isn't like she's been stopping me," Link argued at the same time Line spoke.
"Besides, how would she know about different types of magic?" Irleen asked.
Link shrugged. "She's been here for a while. She told me she was here when the Sorians put this sword—" He knocked his knuckles on the white sword's handle again. "—in the technoworks. She said there were other chests in the other two areas."
"Wait, wait, she's been here for that long?" Gillam interrupted, slowing his pace so that he was closer to the conversation. "If she was here that long, could she be a Sorian, too?"
"I don't know," Link said with another shrug. "She doesn't exactly look like one."
"So, what does she know about Sorian magic, then?" Irleen asked.
"She told me the goggles that I found in the river were made by…" Link then realized that he had forgotten what Janni had told him, the information having been overwhelmed by the fight he had had at the bottom of the technoworks. "Uh… crap, I think I forgot…"
"What goggles?" Irleen asked.
"Huh?" Link asked. "Oh! Right, I forgot to tell you. It's a pair of goggles you use for flight."
"I know what goggles ah used foh," Irleen told him in an impatient tone. "Why do you have a paih?"
"Because they let me get through the technoworks. While I was down there, they let me see things that The Night was hiding from me. They have this blue eye mark on one lens."
"Blue eye mahk?" Irleen repeated. "With three paihs of points protruding from it?"
"Yeah, that's it."
Irleen sighed. "Mystics…"
"Mystics?" Cale asked.
"A branch of magic that deals with the values of truth," Irleen explained. "It's a confounding combination of magic, symbolism, and philosophy. I've only baahly explohed the subject myself."
"What can you tell us?" Link asked.
"Only so much. One of the basic principles of the mystics is that there is always truth even in lies and there are always lies even in the truth."
Link and Line shared a look. Then Line groaned, "My head already hurts…"
"Sorta like… you never get the whole truth," Gillam spoke up. "Right?"
"In laymen's terms, I suppose that's the best way to explain it," Irleen said. "Like I said, it's a lot of philosophy gahbage that I'd ratheh avoid. I've nevah been very patient with it."
"So, how does it apply to what's happening to this island?" Link asked.
"Pehhaps it's the presence of the dreamscape which you exploh in youh sleep, Link," Cale suggested. "A completely different layah of reality which has its own events and its own effect on the waking wohld."
"Quite the mystic's dream, really," Irleen added. "Foh everything that exists in ouh wohld, theah is a countahpaht in the dream wohld. A whole new meaning to truth as it is."
"New meaning all right," Link said, pointing to his left eye.
"You said the goggles helped you in the technowohks while you waah in the dream, right?" Irleen asked. Link nodded. "What did they do?"
"Well, they let me see a skeleton creature that almost took my head off," Link said. His casual tone caused both Gillam and Layna to look over their shoulders at him in surprise. "There were also these two girls, about my age, that turned out to be some kind of… living water creature."
"Now, I know you told me that The Night likes to change the way the technowohks appeah in the dream," Irleen said. "Did the technowohks look the same as when you waahn't wearing the goggles?"
"Yeah."
Irleen did not continue right away, prompting Cale to look up and ask, "Something you've noticed?"
"Just… if theah waah some measuahs taken befoah the Sorians living heah became Obeetans," Irleen explained, "it's possible that the Sorians had some kind of answah to this situation. Being able to see the truth inside a lie, but still seeing the lie…"
"The lie being… what, the dream?" Line asked.
"Yeah," Link told him. "Well, maybe not the whole dream, but definitely the parts that The Night controls."
"So what do we do with all this?" Gillam asked. "I don't know about anyone else, but this is coming across as a little… pointless."
"Maybe not entiahly," Irleen said. "If this island's mystics knew about the problem, they might've come up with a solution befoah they disappeahed."
"And you suggest that they might've left the infohmation foh anothah to find in case they couldn't stop The Night themselves," Cale concluded.
"You'll have to talk to moah people," Irleen said. "Maybe even knock a few back into reality. We have to find these mystics."
"My Captain," Layna spoke up. Link glanced forward at her as she indicated the right side of the sky. "Sariyk."
Link smiled at her. "She's right," he told Cale and Irleen. "We know right where to find them."
…
Link ate dinner feeling a little smug. He considered that, even if The Night knew that the Sorian mystics had a plan against it, The Night could not act fast enough to stop him and his crew from finding it. The Night would have to keep his crew off-balance constantly without killing them, and, while Link's crew had already succumbed to some outlandish behavior, the members with aptitude to find such information were also the ones that The Night was not affecting. Link, Cale, and Irleen later shared this with Leynne, who expressed a cautiously optimistic outlook on the situation. By word of mouth, the rest of the crew gained the idea that the command staff had something vaguely resembling a plan.
With the generator no longer providing power, the Island Symphony had a dim glow about it. It made things feel just a little more depressing than usual, even with the news that there may be a solution to their largest problem. However, since they had brought back a small stock of candles and mounted the lanterns in places that the normal electric lights did not cover, there was still a soft waft of lingering hope making its way around the ship. When Link went to bed, it was with a newfound desire for a tomorrow which promised his crew an escape.
When he woke up, he saw a tall, armored figure holding a morning star over its head.
"D'HHHH!"
Link jerked back into the waking world with a resounding gasp as he tried to breathe through a crushed chest.
The sound Link made startled Nester out of nodding off further back in the sick bay. With a clatter, Nester jumped to his feet and stumbled in Link's direction. "Captain, what is it?!" he hollered. Link rolled onto his side and made to stand. However, because he still was not breathing right, he became disoriented and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. "Captain, talk to me," Nester said as he grabbed Link's outstretched arm.
"Ghet-uh…" Link tried to say as Nester hauled him to his feet. Then he forced himself to cough. It seemed to help because he was able to take in a deep gasp afterwards. "Get Geordie," he told Nester. "It's here."
"What?" Nester asked. "What's here?"
"The Night."
Nester set Link so that he was leaning against his bed. However, when Nester stopped to process what Link had just said, his eyes became wide. "Oh, shit…"
Link nodded. Then he took in another large breath. "ALL HANDS BATTLE STATIONS!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, startling Nester. "ALL HANDS BATTLE STATIONS!" Link then stumbled over to his gear as he heard people outside the berthing deck repeating the call. He did not bother with putting anything on. He grabbed the Sorian sword, the belt holding his flare gun and a few attached items, and the Dreamweaver's Shield in one hand and scooped up his trousers with the opposite arm.
"Link, what's going on!?" Line demanded from the front of the sick bay. Link turned to see him only wearing his trousers and boots over his undersuit, one of Leynne's rifles slung on a shoulder. He also wore a frightened look on his face, and Link understood why; this was only the third time he and Link had been on a ship declaring a battle.
So Link snapped, "We've been boarded! Give Nester a hand; we need to get Geordie above!"
"C'mon, Line!" Nester hollered as he pulled Geordie's semi-conscious hulk off the bed in back.
"Shit," Line uttered as he and Link strode past each other.
Link stepped out into the cargo bay just as Ray, Dholit, and Brandon rushed up from the galley. "Captain, what's going on?" Brandon asked.
"The Night has someone aboard," Link told them as he pulled his trousers on. "I want everyone on-deck. Go get the boys out of the engine room now."
"Goddesses a—" Brandon stopped himself as fright registered on his face. He turned and hustled back down the stairs.
"Dholit," Link then snapped. "Pass the word to the deck crew: all weapons at the ready."
"Right!" Dholit said with a sharp nod. Then she said a single word to Ray, and they both ran up the stairs to the main deck.
"Augh!" A pained shout caught Link's attention, and he looked back into the sick bay. Just as they were at the threshold into the berthing deck, Nester had collapsed. "Agh, damn! What the hell was that?!"
"What're you doing!?" Line cried as he felt Geordie's whole weight lean onto him.
"Doc!" Link hollered, stepping forward. "What is it?!"
"I-I just… suddenly lost feeling in my legs!" Nester declared, trying to haul himself up again on the doorframe while Geordie's arm remained slung over his shoulders. "And my back feels like I just had a ton of rocks land on me!"
Link's face paled. It was his worst fear coming true before him: The Night was able to not just hurt him while he was in the dream but could also hurt his crew while they were out of the dream.
Link heard footsteps and turned his head just in time to catch Dubbl and Biluf running up the stairs. "Dubbl, Biluf!" he hollered at them. He pointed at Nester, Geordie, and Line. "Get Nester and Geordie above-deck! Now!"
"Ay'a!" Dubbl said. Then she told Biluf, "Saylotan 'anw talb!"
"Go, go!" Link shouted at them as Dubbl shoved Nester aside to take his place. Biluf slid up to Nester's side and took hold of one arm and the back of his trousers to support his greater weight. "That thing's in the sick bay!" Link's vision switched between the stairs as more crew ran up onto the main deck and the progress of the crew evacuating the sick bay. Once they had gone up the steps, Link followed them.
On the main deck, part of the crew stood at the bulwark. Flower, Hunter, and Randy each held a sword at the ready for a quick draw. Ray, Biluf, and Gold held knives in their hands. Standing at the head of the quarterdeck were Leynne, armed with one of his rifles, and Twali with an arrow nocked in her bow. Botu and Lawrence quickly strode forward and grabbed Geordie. Nester, having recovered from his injury while they were climbing the stairs, followed them to the back of the forecastle, where Gillam and Flower were already waiting with Beech's huddled form and a conscious but swaying Sello.
Link dropped the Dreamweaver's Shield and the flare gun belt to the deck so that he could put on the sword. "Everyone, check the person next to you!" Link hollered across the main deck toward the quarterdeck as his fingers fumbled around the large buckle. "If anyone falls over from a sudden injury, holler out!"
This was followed by a thud from somewhere nearby, startling Link and causing him to pull the sword's belt too tight over his chest. One hand on the sword's hilt, he spun toward the forecastle. To only the slightest amount of relief, he discovered that Sello had simply fallen over. Link slowly pulled the sword out and gave the belt a tug to position it a little more comfortably.
For a few minutes, the crew barely breathed. Some of them were still confused as to why a battle had been declared, their minds still slow from poor sleep on top of the need to be fully conscious in the earliest of late hours. Still, their eyes passed over the deck to watch their crewmates for signs of attack. A few times, a head would jerk in response to movement only to find it to have been an idle motion from a fellow. No one dared talk, each of them fearing that the smallest sound they could miss being a crewmate falling to… well, whatever they were supposed to be armed against.
This lack of knowledge regarding their adversary eventually prompted Leynne and Cale to descend the deck, Irleen hovering behind Cale, and approach Link. Link watched them come in between sweeping the deck with his eyes, looking for the armored aggressor.
"Link," Leynne said in a voice just above a whisper, his rifle leveled at the deck away from them. "What ah we doing?"
"Promise you won't just brush it off?" Link asked at the same volume.
"I find I'm hahdly in the position," Leynne replied. "What's happened?"
"Something attacked me just as I went to sleep," Link explained. "A tall knight in full armor. It hit my chest with a club and woke me up."
"You mean it's heh?" Leynne asked, his voice switching to a concerned murmur.
Link nodded. "On the ship. It struck Nester as we got out of the sick bay."
"Oh, my…" Cale trailed off.
"You mean Nestah was awake?" Irleen asked.
Link nodded again. "It hit him in the back. He couldn't feel his legs for a moment."
"Wheh did you see it last?" Leynne asked.
"I only saw it in the sick bay," Link said. "I haven't been able to see it since, but it could be on-deck right now."
"But we can't see it while we'h awake," Leynne said. "Should it staht attacking us, we won't know wheh to aim."
"Link, do you have the goggles with you?" Irleen asked.
"The what? The goggles?" Link said. "Yeah."
"Put them on."
Link glanced up at her. "Do you think they'll work like this?" he asked.
"I don't think we have much choice," Irleen told him. "If we don't try something, we all might be on ouh backs by mohning."
Even as she said it, though, Link was using his right hand to pat down his trousers. He found them in his left pocket and twisted to pull them out with his right hand so that he did not have to drop the sword. Then he changed the sword's orientation so that he could fit the goggles over his head without slicing his face open.
Once he had the goggles over his eyes, he looked toward the port hatch. To just the slightest of surprises, he saw the fully-armored figure standing at the top of the stairs. Its armor flickered with the lantern hanging on the outside of the hatch. Its head, hidden behind almost a form-fitting helmet with a cross-shaped slit to look through, was staring at the crew grouped at the back of the forecastle. It only had the mace and no shield, and Link knew what it took to defeat armored opponents even if there was nobody under the armor.
"Leynne," Link said in a low voice as he slowly changed his hold on the sword again. "The goggles are working. It's standing right in front of the doorway on the port side."
"I wish I see the same thing," Leynne told him. "What should we do?"
Link saw the knight jerk its head in his direction. "Everything that exists in reality exists in the dream," he told Leynne in a louder and faster voice.
Leynne looked at the rifle in his hands. Then he raised it, giving Link just barely a glimpse out the corner of his eye. "Undehstood," was all Leynne told him.
Ch-PAOW! Link had forgotten how loud real firearms could be and ducked away from the sound and the flash flying out of the muzzle of Leynne's rifle. He had to wait for his vision to clear for a moment, the deafening effects of the shot already gone. Then he looked back at the knight. He was amazed to see that, unlike other monsters that The Night had sent after him, there was no body. Link just caught a large tuft of thick, black smoke disappearing from the front of the stairs, although he was not sure if that was the remains of the armored creature or just the smoke from the rifle. Either way, unless The Night had decided that it wanted its heavy knight to have an unfair advantage in speed, Link was quickly convinced that Leynne's single shot had gotten rid of the creature.
"Nice shot, Leynne," Link said, glancing over his shoulder. "Dead on."
Then Link felt the warmth drain out of his face for the second time that evening. His brain had told him that there was something colorful and spooky about Leynne when he had glanced at him. So, Link turned back to him. Leynne returned the fear in Link's features with a look of confusion.
Link then let his eyes wander the deck while he remained ignorant of Leynne's attempts to question him. Everyone had one. Invisible to all awake and asleep, Link knew it had to be an effect of the goggles. It explained why Layna could not get over the feeling that she was being watched.
Because every member of his crew had a pair of large, angry, amber eyes looking over their shoulders.