Chapter 44: XXXXX, Mystiriophilic XXXXXXXXXX

Link stirred and writhed in silence. Every part of his body ached, and his head reeled despite lying down. When he moved, he realized that there were sharp edges pressing against his back. He reasoned that he had landed on a staircase and carefully pushed himself up into a seated position. His legs were still stretched across a flat surface, so he concluded that he had at least reached the bottom of the stairs. Within milliseconds of sitting up, his head started pounding in a few narrow places. That pounding in turn felt like it pulsed throughout his body, increasing his pain to the point that he was starting to see colors that were not there. He groaned and leaned to his right in expectation of flopping to the floor. Instead, his head hit a wall, eliciting a second groan from him due to bumping against one of the sensitive areas of his skull. All he could hear for a few minutes was a dull ring that seemed to gain intensity with each beat in his brain.

When he gained some sense of himself, he sat back up and started feeling around his body. His first priority was his left side. Wet. He could not check the wound itself without undressing, but he assumed it to be as bad as possible; he had surely ripped it open. He found holes in both his tunic and his bodysuit, and the bare patches of skin exposed by those holes had been scraped open and bleeding at least a little. His right shoulder had been twisted to the point that it hurt to move his arm. His left knee felt like the kneecap had been replaced by rocks, although the pain was mild by comparison, allowing him to at least bend the knee. His greater concern was his left ankle, which experienced a fresh stab of pain when he tried to move it. If it was sprained, he would not be able to act quickly. He felt a large scrape on his right cheek. And, above his right brow, he felt a deep gash that allowed a small stream of blood to crawl down his face. As for his gear, he had lost his sword, the Dreamweaver's Shield, his flare gun and some of its shells, and the rigging knife he had clipped to his belt. Above all, he had lost the lantern.

"Oh, man…" Link groaned, leaning against the wall again. "This isn't good…"

"You're still alive."

"Yieesh!" Link hollered with a jolt. Then he groaned and rested again. "Janni. Man, you scared me."

Janni suddenly shone into existence in front of him, standing before him in her full-sized form. Link was amazed that not only was he able to see something, but that Janni was holding his sword and the shield in one arm. She promptly dropped both with a loud clatter, causing Link's ears to protest with sharp pain. "I tried to find what I could," Janni told him. "The shield, the sword, the lantern… a few of those shells for your gun, but I couldn't find the gun itself."

"How about that knife I was carrying?" Link asked.

"I wasn't looking for it," Janni admitted.

Link nodded. "Could be worse," he commented.

"It already is," Janni told him as she stepped forward. She held out the lantern to him. Link took it, wondering what she had meant. Then, as he turned the lantern to examine it, it immediately became apparent.

Light from the map on the inside was only emerging from one side of the lantern. The other two glass panels had been smashed out, which Link checked by placing his finger through where the panels should have been.

"Damn…" Link sighed. He turned the lantern so that the light would shine on Janni again. "How long was I out?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes," Janni replied. She twisted to indicate the darkness behind her. "About the time it took to find your stuff."

Link stared at her for a moment. Then he commented, "I thought you didn't wanna help me with any of this."

"I don't wanna help you," Janni told him, a scowl forming on her half-visible face. "It just seemed like the thing to do. I figured you might wake up if you couldn't find any of your stuff."

"I don't know if it's worth it trying to push it," Link said as he slowly stood up. He leaned on the nearby wall to avoid putting weight on his left leg. "I can barely move my right shoulder, and I think I sprained my ankle. If I have to start running again, I'm not gonna survive. And my side is bleeding again."

"All that fire just to give up over a little blood," Janni replied with a sigh.

"A little blood?" Link asked in a heated tone. "Remember that large gash in my side? It's open."

"You lost your leg in the last technoworks," Janni pointed out, her voice casual. "Other than a little discomfort, it didn't seem to bother you once you woke up."

"I'm not talking about when I wake up," Link told her. "I'm talking about now."

"Oh, does it trouble you now?" Janni asked as she shifted her stance to lean on one leg, her arms crossed.

Link took a breath's pause to try to comprehend her statement. Then he asked with exhaustion, "What?"

"Well, as I keep telling you, you're in a dream," Janni said. "Haven't you asked yourself how it keeps hurting you?"

"Me and everyone else," Link pointed out.

"Have you ever had a dream where you got hurt, and then woke up with those same wounds? You know, before today?"

"I once nearly drowned in a dream and woke up with one of Line's socks in my mouth," Link said.

Janni gave him a blank look for a moment. "How are you two still alive?" she mumbled to herself. Then she asked, "Anything else?" Link shook his head. "So why, after, what? Fifteen years? How come you suddenly have dreams that hurt you?"

"You mean other than being on an island controlled by an insane monster?"

Janni glared at him. "You really haven't been thinking this through, have you?" She held her left arm up and out to one side.

Then, without warning, her forearm bent upwards. At a point that was decidedly not her elbow. With a sickening crack.

Link quickly looked away as he felt his stomach twist. "Ugh. Janni!"

"What?"

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"Why should it? This isn't my real body; I've told you that before. So why should my real body suffer just because this happens in a dream? Why should your body have to bleed?"

"What?" Link asked, halfway exhausted. "I-I thought that's how it worked in this place."

"Sure, it can work like that here. If you let it."

"If I…" Link started to say. Then he stood up and stepped away from the wall. "You're saying that I don't need to be dealing with this? At all?"

Janni cracked a sharp-toothed grin. "This place certainly has its way with the truth, doesn't it?" She bent her arm again so that it returned to its unbroken state, again with a disturbing crack.

Link's mouth opened and shut, but all he could muster were a few sounds of shock. Then he finally snapped, "Why wouldn't you tell me this before?!"

"And miss watching your guts spill out onto the scene? Well… Because I'm insane, mostly." She tilted her head and let the smile grow. "It's all about perception. What's real about this place? Your body? Your clothes? How can they be affected when they aren't even near here? And why should they be affected just because you dreamed it? The only 'real' thing around here…" She bent forward to retrieve something. "… is this."

Link glared at the weapon for a moment. Then he said, "So we were right."

"Those mystics only had one thing in mind when they made this sword," Janni said as she admired the blade. "It had to hurt The Night in here. Because things here can only be hurt on the outside. In here, well… aside from being outright killed with the first strike, everything is invulnerable. Even you and me, Link."

"Again, why wouldn't you tell me this before?" Link repeated in an exhausted tone.

"Because I'm bored now. What's the point of enjoying watching you die when I can't even see you?"

Link heaved a sigh. "Right, I forgot who I was talking to," he told the floor. Then he looked up at her and asked, "So how do I get rid of all these wounds?"

"Get rid?" Janni asked, although with the delighted smile still on her face. "You don't have to 'get rid' of something that isn't even there."

"That's not helping, Janni."

"Sure it is. Just realize the truth."

Link opened his mouth to respond the negative. Then he stopped himself. In the few minutes they had been talking, he realized that he was standing without leaning against the wall. Moreover, his ankle did not even twinge with pain. He felt his side. The tunic was not only dry, it felt completely clean, as if it had been freshly laundered. Even the large bandage he had gone to sleep with was missing. He turned the lantern on himself to examine the holes and scrapes he had felt out earlier. None of them seemed to exist anymore. He rolled his right shoulder around and discovered that he had full, painless motion once again.

"There's no pain," he told Janni.

"There never was," Janni said. "You have to remember that this is a dream, Link. The world is a little more flexible in here."

"Okay," Link said with a nod. Then he crossed his arms, turning the lantern so that it was still shining on Janni. "But what about the technoworks? The blocks in the Conductor took injury. How is that possible?"

Janni shrugged. "The technoworks is alive, but it's perception is limited," she explained. "How is it supposed to tell dream pain from real pain?"

"The technoworks can dream?"

"Can you think of any living thing that doesn't? Besides. Do you think that dreaming like this could've been achieved without a potent source of magic?"

Link frowned at her. "You mean the technoworks are causing the dreams?"

"The technoworks maintain the dreams. It's The Night that starts them. It's an interesting little formula that took a while to figure out."

"More of the Dreamweaver's work?"

"Yeah. That's why The Night is so invested in inhabiting the technoworks. You didn't actually think it was attracted to the pretty lights, did you?"

Link shrugged. "I guess it makes sense. But how is it controlling the technoworks? Wouldn't it need a magic device? Like the blues harp I have?"

"It does have a device. The device that the Greys of this island made for the Dreamweaver."

"Oh. But then, that might help us. If we can get that device, The Night couldn't make dreams like this anymore."

"You'd think it would be so easy. But the problem is that The Night doesn't need this dream. It feeds on good dreams, remember? It draws them in with its own power. Meanwhile, this dream is the only way you can fight back. Otherwise, The Night will rip you apart the first time you try to approach it. Without that disgusting engineer."

Link sighed and raked his free hand through his uncovered hair. "Yeah, I guess you're right," he said. He looked at the light in the lantern. "We should get moving; we've spent too much time here."

"Just where do you intend to go?" Janni asked.

Link set the lantern on the floor and angled it so that it shone on Janni's feet. "You came in through that doorway behind you, right?" he asked as he bent over to grab the Dreamweaver's Shield. "What's through there?"

"I'm not sure," Janni replied. "I think it might've been some kinda garden. That desperately needs to be mowed."

Link turned and grabbed the lantern. "Sounds like a place to start," he said. He held out his hand to her.

Janni flipped the sword in her hand and passed it to him by the handle. As soon as Link had it in his left hand, she switched back to her fairy form. "Yeah, by 'desperately needs to be mowed', I mean the grass is as tall as you," she told him.

Link shrugged and said, "Everyone's always commenting on how short I am. How bad could it be?"

"That's a bad argument, and you know it," Janni accused him with a giggle.

Link saw the archway in the lantern and used the sword to feel where it was so that he could walk through without bumping into it. He stepped out into an open area, as indicated by the storm clouds overhead. The horizon in front of him was jagged. He saw through the lantern that he had less than a dozen steps of clear ground before he would have to wander into the tall plants in front of him. He could not quite tell that they were plants; it was simply his impression from looking at them with the lantern, which showed a wave-like motion across the ground like grass being blown by wind.

"What do you think?" Link asked Janni, coming to a halt just outside of arm's reach of the tall grass.

"I think there's a good chance you're gonna get lost," Janni said. "Are you supposed to be able to navigate through here?"

Link turned around and looked up. Then he pointed with his sword. "Look at how high the building is," he said, indicating the line in the sky where the clouds ended and the black of the surrounding structures began. "We should be able to see it from a distance, so we can use it to keep track of where we're at."

"How's that gonna help?" Janni asked as Link turned back around.

"It's the best I can do," he answered as he used the Dreamweaver's Shield to push aside the grass in his way. He found that the grass easily gave way, like he was pushing smoke away.

Then a black band latched to his right forearm.

"What the…?" Link started to say, reflexively tugging his arm away. The "grass" responded by tightening its grip. Link, at first staring at the black stripe across his arm, noticed the light in the lantern change and glanced at it.

The "grass" had originally showed up as orange. It had changed to bright red. And it had stopped moving.

"Okay, this got bad," Link growled as he jerked his arm to one side. The band held until he swung his sword on top of where it felt like the grass was pulling from. The blade met so little resistance that Link only knew he had struck the right place when the band slipped off his arm.

The ground suddenly shook, forcing Link to widen his stance to keep from toppling over. He twisted so that his shield was between him and the grass. He glanced at the lantern to see if it would show what the grass was doing.

The grass was gone. He was surrounded by bare ground.

The ground had also quit shaking. Link kept his eyes on the lantern as he turned, trying to keep sight of anything which might come from the black.

Then he let out a sigh and allowed his guard to drop a bit. "Well… I guess that happened," he said aloud.

"That 'grass' looked like it just slipped into the ground," Janni answered. Link located her hovering just above his vision. "Is it still there?"

"The lantern says it's just gone," Link said. He glanced around at the darkness. "Wasn't much of a trap." His eyes lowered to his feet seemingly hovering in black. "That was weird. Why'd the ground shake?"

"If the ground shook, I didn't notice," Janni told him.

"It felt like it shook when I sliced that grass off. It wasn't for very long, though."

Janni sighed. "I'm beginning to hate this place."

Link moved back to where the grass had been standing. He used a foot to probe the ground. While the soil felt soft, he was waiting for one of those blades of grass to snap up and ensnare his ankle. When nothing happened, he took two steps forward and repeated. "Nothing's happening."

"Now I'm just depressed," Janni said. "I was hoping to hear you scream as those things dragged you into the distance."

Link waved his sword as he told her, "Let's go."

He had to look back twice to make sure the earlier structure was still behind him. Then he started in a direction away from it. He kept his eyes on the lantern, waiting for a sign that something was approaching him. Janni remained relatively quiet, heaving a bored sigh every few minutes. The lantern showed that she was simply hovering in his wake as he moved. The terrain hardly changed, except for the fact that he was walking on something very soft, like sand. Or a mattress, because it felt a little springy. After what felt like an eternity, he was amazed to realize that he actually wanted something to pop out of the darkness to attack him. He could not tell if it was the monotony or the tension getting to him; he felt just as bored as he felt anxious. At the rate things were going, The Night was going to fall asleep and cause the whole dream to reset, forcing Link to start all over the following evening.

One of Janni's sighs finally hit a nerve. So, he asked her in an annoyed tone, "Are you having trouble keeping up back there?"

"Not really; you're not moving."

Link jerked to a stop. For the second time that evening, everything within Link, his intuition, his guts, his heart, his blood… they all called attention to the inanity of Janni's statement. He just barely turned his head to glance over his shoulder at her as he asked, "I'm not?"

"I've been hovering in place this entire time," Janni replied in a casual tone. "I've barely budged."

"Okay… then where have I been going?"

"I don't know, but I bet it has something to do with that thing on the horizon."

Link lowered the lantern. Once his eyes had a moment to adjust, he realized that a small tower had appeared in the distance in front of him, just barely a lump sitting on the horizon. He turned to look behind and found that the building from before was nowhere to be seen. It set off even more alarms to Link. Even if he had been walking for a while, he expected to at least see a break in the horizon where the building should have been.

"I got a baaaaad feeling about this…" Link uttered.

"I got a feeling it's about to get worse…" Irleen's voice sounded distant, so Link looked up to find her.

He barely spotted her shrinking in the distance.

And then gravity decided that he was not standing up correctly.

It was a strange sensation, and Link felt he was lucky to realize that it was happening at all. He had the sensation of falling forward before his boots began losing their grip on the spongy ground. His mind told him that he had to anchor himself down, so he flopped forward onto the ground. Even this action felt wrong; he was starting to slide toward the tower behind him. He pushed himself up on his right arm and quickly swung the sword to change his hold on it. Then he plunged it into the ground.

"HURAAAAAAAGH!" The deep roar accompanied the ground quaking. Link pulled himself closer to the sword and wrapped his right arm around the handle, careful not to slip and cut his elbow on the blade.

He felt a tug and a gust, a sensation he easily identified as suddenly moving with the ground. The force caused his knees to slip, and he quickly swung his right arm away before he could accidentally slice it open.

Then the sudden stop came. Link, with only that one hand holding him to the ground, felt his whole body lift up and over the sword with such force that his fingers slipped. He let out a terrified scream as he flew head over heels through the air far beyond where he previously was. He could not tell if he was rising or falling, completely disoriented as he flipped through the air. Black, clouds, black, clouds, black, clouds.

Whumph! He hit a solid surface hard directly on his shoulder blades and felt the sheath jab into his left scapula, which subsequently snapped his neck backwards and caused the back of his head to smack the same surface. Greys swam through his vision, and he was barely aware that he was still falling, having just skipped against the ground. The impact had slowed down his spin. Just in time for Link to meet a sudden stop by belly-flopping into another solid surface with a whump and a barely audible groan.

Between the flipping and the first impact, Link had to take a moment to recover from disorientation the likes of which he had only felt once before. Naturally, he could not name the instance from before, but it hardly troubled him at this point. Once he had some clarity of thought and felt the onset of pain in his head and back, that pain just as quickly subsided.

"Link!" Janni called out. "Are you all right?!"

"Yeah…" was all he could muster in an exhausted voice. Even though the pain was gone, he still felt some measure of fatigue and stiffness from being thrown. He picked himself up slowly.

"Wow!" Janni said as Link located her hovering directly over his head. "You went flying! Bet you appreciate not being hurt now."

"Maybe a little less than before," Link replied. He glanced around to figure out his surroundings. In the direction he faced, he saw a massive wall of black. Either side was also obscured by black. He looked up to still see clouds above him.

And when he turned around, he realized with a start that he was standing on the edge of a decidedly bad fall. He leaned forward just to ensure his hunch and saw nothing but grey clouds swirling into oblivion just beyond the obscured floor.

"Holy crap, how did I not fall off?" he asked himself, taking two steps backward.

"No kidding," Janni said. "I went up higher because I lost sight of you. You looked like you fell over the edge of the world."

"What? There is no edge of the world."

Janni giggled. "There is here. Check the lantern."

Link raised the lantern, somewhat amazed that he had still held it despite his violent landing. The ground that he stood on looked like a platform that just protruded outward into the air; there was no ground beneath him, and the black walls in any direction were too far to appear in the lantern. He looked up at the wall directly across from the edge. And he realized what he was looking at. Years of looking down on the horizon of the surface world allowed him to immediately recognize the curve of the world. The walls to his left and right terminated in sharp edges, but the wall directly in front of him ended in a curve.

"We're on a small world…" he mumbled to himself, his awe having stolen the rest of his voice.

"Uuuh, something tells me this isn't quite a world," Janni told him.

Link checked the lantern again.

The platform he was standing on was blood red.

"Oh, crap…"

Those were the last words Link could get out before the platform suddenly rose, forcing him to bend his knees to brace himself against the movement. Then his feet left the platform, and Link instantly knew that he was being thrown again. Since he was able to this time, he looked down to confirm what he feared.

He looked down on a black shape, circle-like with two spires on opposite sides and an uneven outcrop in the direction from which he had been launched.

As he descended, he quickly reminded himself that he did not have to worry about the pain of landing. This only mildly helped because the impact knocked the wind out of his lungs. He had landed on his chest quite arguably on the opposite side of the "world". He began sliding over the round side. However, to his fortune, he was sliding for one of the spires, which seemed to rise up out of the black and pierce the clouds. He reached his right arm forward, angled the Dreamweaver's Shield, and thrust its bottom point into the ground. The point dragged, allowing Link to flip himself around so he was sliding/falling feet first. There was a moment when he lifted off the surface he slid on, and then his bottom bounced hard against it. He hollered when he finally slid off the black surface and began to fall forward. He was not sure how far away the spire was nor how big it was. So, after a minute of falling, he was surprised in the split-second that he realized the size of the spire before smacking into it hard face first. His neck and spine screamed in pain. That was all he could think about in the following seconds before he returned to his senses, allowing his neck and back to simply forget that they might have been broken.

"Oh, I'm having a bad day…" he grumbled to himself. Then, as he pushed himself up, he realized that the surface he had landed on was not a single, featureless mass. Instead, the surface felt like ropes bound together. He fit his left hand in between two strands.

Without warning, the spire suddenly jerked. Link's hand became trapped as he flopped onto his back. His gaze fell onto the sky in front of him as he felt himself being pulled away from it. He tightened his grip on both hands, hoping that he would stay lodged in the structure while not dropping the lantern into the cloudy abyss around him. The sensation only lasted a few moments.

And then whatever surface he was holding onto unraveled. If it had not been for the fact that he was still hanging with just enough of the spire underneath to delay his fall, he might not have had the time to grab for a rough strand. This was still complicated by the facts that he was falling and that the strand he had grabbed was thicker than a line from an airship. The strand burned his fingertips as his hand began to slide. He brought his opposite arm up and latched onto part of the strand just above his left hand, resulting in the lantern busting his knuckles while making gripping with his right hand difficult. He pulled up and pressed his knees together hard. He had caught the strand close to his groin and had to squeeze harder to stop himself.

He was still swinging. He looked up to see the "world" above block out the swirling clouds. To his right, in the direction he was swinging, he could see that the underside of the "world" sported a third structure. Which, upon glancing down, he realized stretched all the way into the abyss below. It was not narrow and straight like the spire he had fallen from. It was segmented with three pairs of bulging nodes on the underside of the sphere, each one looking much larger than Link.

He stopped swinging in one direction and was immediately pelted with similar strands from behind. The surprise caused his grip to slip for a moment. Once his hold was solid, he looked back at the segmented structure. The nodes were stretching out. No, he realized as he carefully watched the shapes forming. They were unfolding. Into arms. And they reached into the clouds. Link felt for the strand he was holding through his boots, having comprehended that he was not going to enjoy when those hands emerged. He faltered for a moment trying to pin the strand between his feet in a way so that he could step on it, distracted as he was by a newfound fear. Once he had the rope where he wanted, he squatted and used his feet to clamp down on the rope so that he could reach further up. This enabled him to start up the strand.

Xxxxxxxxxxx

He started climbing faster.

XxxxxXXXXXXXX! In the middle of a squat, a rush of air hit Link from behind and shook all of the strands, including the one he was holding onto. He straightened up to grab further up and felt the other strands around him pelt him as he rode his own strand in an upward swing. The ensuing swing backward caused the surrounding strands to hit him again, forcing him to bow his head to protect his face. He intended to wait until the strand stopped swinging before starting up again.

Xxxxxxxxxx

Upon hearing the rush of another attack, he decided not to wait.

The strand suddenly tensed, and Link lost the length that was between his feet in the middle of a squat, forcing him to grab onto the strand with hands and feet. The surrounding strands pressed against him. He ventured a look through the strands into the open air beyond.

XxxxxXXXXXXX! One of the arms was swinging back toward him, a long, flat, rectangular shadow where the hand should have been. Link immediately tried for a hand-over-hand only climb and almost lost his grip trying to hold on with just his right hand, still encumbered by the lantern.

KKKHHHHHHH! The tearing sounded close, so Link pulled his legs up and gripped the strand and two other nearby strands with his thighs. He could not see it happen, but he felt the strands' lengths not far under him fall free of what was still connected to the creature above. He glanced down past his legs as the strand shook. Only a strand about his height remained beneath him; the rest had disappeared.

Link felt that he did not have time to fix the rope between his feet as before. Instead, he just clamped his feet around his strand and started to ascend as best as he could. He had not moved much when he had the sensation that walls were closing in on him. He glanced over his shoulder and realized that another black mass was approaching from behind. He hastened his pace. Then the strand shook while he was holding it with only his feet and his right hand. His grip slipped, and he missed a nearby strand trying to catch himself.

However, the strands quickly closed in around him, halting his fall. He grabbed around with both hands and picked himself up. He realized that there was a level surface nearby and pulled himself through the strands until he set foot on that surface.

The moment he was out, though, the surface shook, and Link fell forward. To his fortune, the surface had rolled, and he fell onto a wider space. He could still feel it moving and hugged against it. The sensation of ascending caught his attention, and he glanced back toward where he had known the strands to be. When he saw the spherical edge of the world creature go past, he checked the lantern.

Through its single glass panel, he saw that he was riding a red hand almost four times his size. It could scarcely be called a "human" hand; it had two thumbs, and the pointer finger looked like it was missing its whole fingertip. His best guess was that he was riding the back of the hand, his feet dangling in a good place to be crushed should the inner thumb decide to close.

He was still rising and turned his head to find that he was approaching the top of the storm. He felt the hand slowing, so he carefully rose. Being this close to the top gave him the impression that something was going to happen, so, once he was on a single knee, he reached behind his back to pull the boomerang from its pouch.

He glanced up when color entered his vision. A red circle hung in the air in front of him, its appearance just slightly shrouded by the clouds in front of it. An X-shaped pair of slits opened in the middle of the circle. Link recognized its color as the same object that he had seen in the corridor. Whatever this creature was, this must have been its eye. With his hand still behind his back as he rose to his full height, he pressed the button to cause the boomerang's arms to spring open.

The hand shifted, causing Link to rock as he kept his balance. He looked directly above his head. Then he checked the lantern to confirm his suspicion.

There was another hand poised above him, palm facing down in a good position to squish him flat.

Link quickly switched his hold on the boomerang and took aim at the eye. With only a split-second to decide if he would go for it, he threw the boomerang as hard as he could, making it disappear into blackness the moment he released it. Then he held the Dreamweaver's Shield over his head despite the futility of trying to stop a gigantic hand with a measly shield. He entertained leaping off for a moment.

"AAAAUGH!" The bark of pain came out of the storm around him at the same time that the red eye retreated into the clouds. The decision to jump from the hand became obligatory when the hand he was standing on turned, causing him to slide off.

The rush of air he felt as he fell feet-first was astounding. He gnashed his teeth together in an attempt to not scream. His mind tried to picture him landing on the creature's body with maybe a tumble to the ground to save him from hurting himself. However, this was problematic; his thought dwelled on the fact that he was once again a victim of any sane airman's worst fear: gravity. He watched as the ground rushed toward him. With the black concealing everything, he had no way of knowing when he was going to hit. Every second that ticked by was more time for him to grasp that this landing was going to be everything but painless. He finally gave in to his fears and screamed.

Whumph! The sound of him hitting the creature's body covered the snaps and cracks of nearly every bone in his body breaking. The pain so overwhelmed him that his vision dimmed. He could not move due to having mangled his legs underneath his body. And his arms now bent in three different places, his right arm having folded around the Dreamweaver's Shield. His spine had snapped, allowing him to remain a broken heap on the ground. The hard landing ensured that his head reached the ground in spite of his body being in the way, allowing his jaw to shatter and rob him of the ability to vocalize the ungodly feeling of crushing his own body. Each breath was a sharp, fresh stab courtesy of his broken ribs. The only gift of the darkness was that Link could not see himself bleeding even with his certainty that the impact had caused bones to break through his skin.

And yet, he survived. While he experienced a whole new level of anguish, his mind slowly cleared. In seconds, the pain was gone, and he was lying on his back looking up at the storm. His body felt stiff and just the slightest bit sore. The memory of the pain lingered as he sat up to get a better look at himself.

However, the lantern's final panel had broken, and all light had extinguished. Link let out a sigh and tossed the lantern aside with only a tinge of frustration. No light meant that he could not see. But then, with the storm around them, he could see all that he needed.

"Link!" Link glanced up to see Janni's black-green light bounding his way. "What happened?"

Link looked up to see that both hands and the eye were gone. "I fell," he told her.

"And the lantern?"

Link glanced toward where he had thrown it. "Busted."

He could hear the smile in her voice as she asked, "So now what, o mighty Captain Link?"

Link grinned at her. "I get my sword back."

"Sounds crazy enough."

Link pulled a flare shell out of his belt along with the pin hammer on the opposite hip. He leaned forward so that he could switch to a kneeling position. He placed the pin hammer on the ground with the pointed side of the head up. With the shell positioned in his left hand, he carefully slid it across the hammer's point until it stopped on the groove around the cap in the middle of the shell. While he knew that Biluf had already warned him not to do what he was about to do, inside a dream, he was not worried about the consequences. He raised the shell and aimed for the subtle glint of metal poorly reflecting the surrounding storm.

Pkh-FZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzz! The explosion caused Link to spring backward onto his bottom again, dropping both the shell and the hammer. He considered himself lucky that his head had not been hovering directly over the shell as he watched the flare soar into the sky. It did not travel straight up; instead, it looked to have gone in a direction away from Link. The pop was inaudible, but green light replaced the flare's flame. Link quickly spun in place.

He saw his sword's blade gleaming in the distance.

Xxxxxxxxxx

"Time to go," he told Janni.

Then he dashed for the sword as the turbulent roar of a massive attack got louder. Link reached the sword with seconds to spare and yanked it out. Then he quickly changed direction to his right. The ensuing XXXXXXXXX-WHUM! cast a heavy gust around him but utterly failed to touch him. He changed directions again, winding back around in a wide arc to get a better look at what had struck. He saw a massive plain of shadow. At the far end was a hand that was slowly retreating from a handle-like protrusion in the plain. Link ran straight at the hand and leapt into the air with a brilliant boost from the feather in his pocket. With a roar of his own, he raised the sword and swung just as he felt the sensation of passing under the hand (not having gained enough height to reach above the edge). The sword bucked when it encountered flesh.

"RAAAAGH!" the creature hollered in anguish from all sides. Link did not look back to see the hand retreat faster. Once he landed, he continued running forward. And he leaned to his left so that he could jab the tip of his blade into the ground. "GRAAAAAAGH!"

The creature shifted its body in an attempt to trip Link. While Link was forced to pull the sword out, his footfalls were much to fast for the shaking to throw him off. However, he felt the air around him slow and immediately reasoned that it was rotating in order to keep Link on the top. This left Link confused until he realized that, while it was spinning, it was bringing the very high walls of the corridor at him fast. Link jabbed the sword into the ground again and slid to a stop. The creature stopped as well as it released a wail of pain.

Link looked around, trying to find another way to hurt the creature. When he glanced up, he saw five arms hovering above him, each one holding a flat weapon poised to fall on top of him. Unable to tell which one was going to descend first, Link opted for a direction that the weapons simply were not covering while also bearing away from the corridor. He continued to drag the sword through the ground, which he reasoned must be the creature's flesh upon hearing another roar of pain.

WHAAASH! Link glanced over his shoulder to see that one of the hands was no longer holding a weapon. Instead, six fingers were bearing in his direction. The creature was not trying to halt him by rotating this time, so Link pulled the sword from its flesh once again and let himself slide over the edge just underneath the hand's grasp. He had chosen the right direction upon seeing a spire protruding from the edge before him. He let the sword slice through flesh as he fell over. He felt weightless for a moment before landing on the spire again, this time leaning back so that he slid to a stop on his bottom. Just like before, the spire was covered in the rope-like strands. Link angled the sword and jabbed it into one strand. The strands immediately fell apart as the creature once again howled. Link took some of the loosened strands into his right hand and let himself fall with the other bundles.

He was much closer to the base of the spire as he swung this time. And as he swung back toward the creature, he became aware of a mist-like substance blurring the edge where creature ended and clouds began. Once he was close enough, he plunged his sword into the mist. The creature must have jerked because Link suddenly changed directions. This did not last long, and Link was once again swinging for the creature, only this time with more power. As he swung, he held his sword thrust into the dark mist. He could feel the blade penetrate something soft, and a quick glance backward revealed a black liquid gushing into the sky behind him.

"GRRAAAAAAAAAAAH! YRAAAAAGH!" The creature's cries of pain shook the air around him. The fact that it now looked like it was bleeding only further encouraged Link to find more ways to harm it. Having reached the end of his swing, he let his grip loosen. This caused him to fall away from what he had cut. He dropped for as long as he dared before gripping the strand again to stop himself.

XxxxxxxxXXXXXXX! The weapon was nearly on him before he saw it. However, the creature was aiming far too low to hit him. This gave Link another idea, and he released the strand. He dropped for a few moments.

Wham! His feet hit metal, and he immediately dropped onto his belly due to the weapon's movement in relation to him. He hustled back to his feet and ran toward the hand. He jumped onto the back of the hand just as it released the weapon. From there, Link gauged where the arm was by looking down as he ran along its length. The creature tried to jerk its elbow toward the clouds. However, jerking its elbow was much too slow to throw Link, even with the ensuing rush of air aiding it. At best, Link had to slow his pace a bit. Once he was on the elbow, he changed directions to follow the upper arm toward the large tower-like structure that held the creature's body up.

The creature jerked its arm again, and this time, Link was forced to stop and stab his sword into the arm to keep from being thrown off. He rode the arm as it swung toward the tower. Realizing the opportunity he had, Link pulled his sword out and immediately leapt in the direction of the tower. The momentum from the upper arm swinging added to Link's jump, and he came quite close before he started dropping. Even falling, Link was determined not to give up and poised the sword at arm's length toward the tower, both hands on the handle.

Falling…

Falling…

Falling…

Shk! The sword found flesh! The blade was plunged it almost to the hilt. However, the impact knocked Link against the tower. His whole weight on the blade, he continued to fall. He had no control; he was too heavy, and the blade was cutting too cleanly through the tower. Where he had landed, there were no more arms to stop him.

"GRAAAAAAAAGH! AUGGGGH! HARAAAAAAGH!" The creature was near-constantly roaring in anguish as Link fell. Link looked up to see what kind of damage he was causing. However, the entirety of the creature above him was shrouded in black.

A black that was steadily growing. He twisted around to see that the nearest edge with the sky was moving farther away from him, as if the creature was trying to swallow the sky. Link took a moment to realize that the creature was falling on top of him.

He could not stop. And, even if he could, the creature was likely going to eventually crush him (assuming there was a solid surface on the other side of the clouds beneath them). He had caused as much damage as he could. So, Link closed his eyes and willed himself awake.

About a minute later, a loud thud and a shudder made him open his eyes.