Chapter 58: The Night, Oneirophilic Hunger
…
"Well, it's time to wake up, Link."
Link stirred and rose from the bed. Janni stood nearby, a grim look on her face. This caused Link to sigh and ask, "Are we in trouble yet?"
Janni nodded. "We're in trouble," she told him. "Looks like the Facade wasn't lying. The Dreamweaver closed the entire tower with metal plates. He even has Dinolmos patrolling the ground around the base. Not small fries, either; these things look like they could lift the Symphony's entire weight. And there are things circling the air around the tower, so, you're right, the Conductor would probably be torn apart."
"Great…" Link moaned. He moved to the edge of the bed. "Guaranteed we'd have to do something drastic just to get inside. Any ideas?"
Janni shook her head. "Nothing the Dreamweaver hasn't already seen coming." She paused a moment as she thought. "Maybe…"
"Maybe what?" Link asked.
"Maybe… you should just stop, Link. Don't go after him anymore. The more you provoke him, the more he wants to kill you and your crew. If you leave him alone tonight, he might stop."
Link laced his fingers together and stared at them. Then he looked back up at Janni and asked, "Do you really think he'll let us live after all the crap we've done to him?"
Janni gave a hollow laugh. "Probably not," she answered, her eyes wandering to the cabin window. "And… I suppose I shouldn't have even suggested it."
"I asked for options, and you gave me one," Link said as he stood up. "It's rejected, so I need another one."
Janni looked at him. "I wish I could give you another one, Link, I really do. But the Dreamweaver isn't playing anymore. Probably the only reason it hasn't killed you yet is because it wants you to walk into its traps. I honestly think it wants to break you before it kills you."
"It's gonna have to try better than that," Link said as he turned around. His toes found something as he stepped toward his footlocker, and he looked down. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw his special boots had once again changed to their polished look. "Well that's a bit of good news."
"I repaired them when the dream started," Janni explained as Link took a seat on the edge of the bed. "I figured you could use all the help you could get. For what it's worth."
"It makes me believe we're not nearly as screwed as it seems," Link replied as he pulled the boots on. "It's small, but I think it's worth at least that much."
"That's fine, Link, but it doesn't solve our problems." She paused as Link stood up and started pulling on his gear. "It's amazing to think that just one swing of that sword or a stab with that lift reel would solve all this, but we can't even get close to the Dreamweaver now."
Link picked up the goggles, the last of his equipment, and had a thought. "Maybe it's just a show," he suggested. "If he's gonna invite me into a trap, he might simply be bluffing with the things on the outside."
"Even if he is, Link, you'd still have to contend with the things on the inside."
"Well, once on the inside, we might have a chance." With that, he pulled the goggles on, adjusted them so that they rested on his hat instead of his bare forehead, and moved to leave the room.
Once outside, Link moved to the middle of the deck (stepping out of Twali's way as she patrolled) to get a clear look at the island. Nothing appeared any different; the tower was still lit by lights from the ground, and the island itself had the look of a living being. Link pulled the goggles down over his eyes.
With these on, Link saw something small flying around the tower like a thin cloud of insects. It confirmed what Janni had told him about the Dreamweaver making creatures to patrol the tower. The gallows at the top of the tower looked like they had some color to them, but they were too far away for Link to make out any details.
"Well?" Janni asked, her voice at Link's side.
Link lifted the goggles and turned to her. "They're real," he said. "Well… you know what I mean."
"There goes your theory," Janni told him.
Link glanced at Twali as she marched past, oblivious to his and Janni's presence. "Any other suggestions?" he asked Janni.
Janni shrugged. "I just don't know at this point. It's kinda hard to take him by surprise when he's in your head. He's even in my head."
"So, we just need something he can't see because neither of us know about it," Link said with a little more sarcasm than he had intended. "Anything else?"
"I might suggest that we bring Sello along, but you know how that one's gonna end," Janni replied with a similar tone.
Link afforded himself a small chuckle at the thought of hauling Sello through the dream. It was a reminder that, of all of Link's crew, he would probably be the only one to survive simply because the Dreamweaver could not manipulate him.
Then it dawned on Link that there was something the Dreamweaver could not see. Sello, after all, was not merely a deadbeat drunk that the crew carried around just to make fun of (and occasionally abuse). He was their engineer, one who had to be the best in the Skyriders company if not the most brilliant engineer in history. This same man who would create chaos just by being let out for a little shore leave. The same man who rigged a train to outrun a Malgyorg the size of an island by pure coincidence. The same man who built a living creature, if nothing more than a batshit contraption, out of iron, glass, and a drunk piece of technoworks. The same man who singlehandedly assembled an engine for the Island Symphony.
And put together an even more insane engine for the Conductor.
Maybe… it was time to go for broke.
He realized that he was staring up at the doors to the boat deck. He glanced down at Janni quickly, and then he said, "I think that gave me an idea."
"We get drunk and start acting like Sello?" Janni asked with a mouthful of snark.
Link gave her a disappointed look. As he opened his mouth to explain—
"Kryaaaaaaa!" A screech rang out in the distance.
Link and Janni quickly looked toward the island to find the source. Link then pulled the goggles back over his eyes when he found he could not see anything. Whatever the flying creatures were, he realized that they were not circling the tower anymore. Their profile had reduced, almost a speck on invisible wings. He quickly related the sight to how another airship would appear when approaching.
"Uh oh," he uttered, raising the goggles.
"Well," Janni said. "If the Dreamweaver is actually sending monsters our way, it must actually be a good idea."
"Sure, let's keep assuming that," Link replied as he stepped around Janni. "We gotta get to the Conductor. Now!"
"The Conductor!?" Janni shouted as Link sprinted toward the starboard staircase. She turned and lifted off the deck to follow. "I thought you weren't gonna use the Conductor! You couldn't risk losing it if the Dreamweaver decided to destroy it!"
"So I'll destroy it first!" Link declared as he set foot on the deck above. He rushed to the doors to the boat deck and ripped them open.
"I don't get it," Janni said as she chased Link into the boat deck. "If the Conductor is too precious to risk, why?"
"You said we need something the Dreamweaver couldn't see through our minds," Link replied as he climbed the ladder up the Conductor's transom. "We know the Dreamweaver doesn't like dealing with Sello; it probably can't make sense of Sello's thoughts."
"So?" Janni asked, having simply set foot on the aft section of the deck.
"Sello designed the engines for both the Island Symphony and the Conductor," Link continued once he was on the deck. He pulled his sword and marched past her. "He's the only one who understands them. If the Dreamweaver can't read Sello's thoughts, it doesn't know how to deal with the engines."
"So he couldn't stop you just by gumming up the engines," Janni reasoned. She slipped into the air again and followed Link as he sliced through the Conductor's mooring lines. "But why the Conductor? Couldn't you just as easily take the Symphony? Your crew wouldn't be harmed."
Link cut through the last mooring line and rushed back to the pilot station. "No, even at full power, the Island Symphony would be too slow," he explained. He had to pause to replace the sword. He gently placed his hand on the lever to control the launch's ballast and looked up at the hole in the poop deck. "Do you know how fast this thing can go?"
Janni was about to answer, having landed behind Link outside the pilot station, when the launch jolted and forced her to brace herself on the partition nearby. "Not really," she admitted.
Link's eyes carefully watched the hole in the deckhead as the Conductor ascended. "Neither do I," he told her. "So how would the Dreamweaver know if we're forcing the Conductor to go faster than it was built to?"
"Okay, so you can get to the tower faster in this thing," she told him. "You still have to climb the tower; there aren't any openings at the top."
"I'm not gonna climb the tower," Link told her.
Janni glared at him for a moment. Then comprehension dawned on her face. "That's an insane plan," she told him.
"I thought you liked that sort of thing," Link commented, glancing back at her.
Janni's lips curled into a wicked grin. "I love it."
"Good," Link said as he watched the Island Symphony's poop deck descend around them. "Then hold on to something."
"Why? It's not like a—" BWHSSSSSSH! "HOLY SHIT!"
For two years, it had always been Link's rule that no one was to run the throttle up to full immediately after leaving the boat deck. This had been the result of Line thinking that a joyride in a vessel powered by one of Sello's engines had been a good idea. A broken rail at the front of the poop deck and some snapped rigging had proven otherwise. As Line's antics had shown, the launch had a tendency to kick hard when its throttle was opened that fast before the inevitable screaming for one's life when the launch raced forward.
At least, that was what Link remembered from the incident. Repeating it forced Janni to grab onto the frame of the pilot's station to keep her feet on the deck. Link equally had to react with alert when he realized that the Conductor was about to smash into one of masts. Even though he spun the wheel hard to starboard, the Conductor jolted as it hit the mast. Link added more to the ballast and tried to steer away from the mast. The scrape sounded rough against the launch's hull, but Link's only priority was keeping it moving before the Dreamweaver's winged attackers could stop them.
Once the boat cleared the Island Symphony's masts, it began to pick up speed. Link eased the throttle when the bow started to rise so that he could see where he was steering. Then he turned the wheel so that the bow would aim inland. The Conductor rocked in response, its speed dropping slightly and forcing Link to straighten the turn before he put the boat in irons (or worse, rolled it, something which the Conductor would never recover from).
"This thing can take the punishment, right?" Janni asked from behind.
"I'm not worried," Link told her. "But this would go better if I had a way to see the tower; if I'm going too fast, the bow rises and blocks my view."
"You handle the boat, I'll handle the rise," Janni said as she jumped over the pilot's station and landed directly in front of the partition. "Let's punch this bitch!"
Once Link had the tower in front of the boat, hidden from sight by the mast, he braced one foot against the step behind him and threw the throttle forward. The subsequent roar of Sello's overpowered engine blended into the rush of wind across the boat as it started moving so fast that Link could feel the skin on his face sting. The bow was trying to buck, its usual habit of rising in response to these speeds being countered by whatever Janni was doing to force it to stay level.
Whump! The Conductor jolted from impact, and Link had to grip the wheel with both hands to keep it on-course. "What was that?!" he shouted above the tremendous sound around him while he aligned the tower with the ship's mast again.
"I think we hit one of those flying things!" Janni replied, her voice a whisper to him. "He's gonna feel that in the morning!"
Link raised the boat more. Another hit against the port side forced him to correct again. Then he pulled his flare gun out and began fitting it between the spokes and the pedestal. This was interrupted by another strike, and Link glanced up in time to see a scale-covered body hurtle past the pilot's station and clip the transom as it tumbled over the stern. He had to correct the Conductor's course once more. Then he jammed the flare gun into a position that would keep the wheel locked in position against the pedestal. He glanced up in time to see that, where they were, the tower looked just a little wider than the Conductor's mast.
And growing fast.
"Janni, abandon!" Link shouted as he scrambled out of the pilot's station. However, he did not turn to see if she had heard him. Just within a second of stumbling into the transom, Link felt the heavy wind behind him sweep him off the deck before he had a chance to jump. Instead, he tumbled over the transom. He felt the heat from the Conductor's exhaust as he fell past the boat's stern.
For a moment, he panicked when he realized that he had just jumped from the launch at a tremendous height. It did not help that he could not stop his tumbling.
Wh-BWOOOOOOOM!
In the second following the explosion, Link felt something grab the back of his tunic just behind his right shoulder and wrench him out of freefall. He looked up to find a fireball had engulfed the tower about a third of the tower's height from the top. Even as he watched, the tower's stone exterior actually burned, likely from whatever Sello had used to fuel the launch. He glanced down and spotted the last of the Conductor's timbers tumbling to the ground.
Then he twisted his neck to see what was holding him up. Janni, one arm stretched behind his back, was floating upside-down above him so they stared at each other face to face. He gave her a questioning look.
She shrugged her free shoulder and said with a casual tone, "Didn't want you to land on your head." Link could not resist grinning.
Kr. KrrrrRRRRAAAAAGH! Link turned back to see the tower's outer wall begin to crumble, large chunks of stone simply falling free from where the Conductor had hit. Distant crashes of stone on stone from below hailed the tower steadily leaning over. Then came the cracking from below. Link felt Janni jolt with surprise as the tower then fell in a rush of sound Link likened to the roar of a waterfall. The tower dropped almost directly on top of itself. A final WHUMPH! preceded a massive dust cloud rising to block out everything in the middle of the island.
Link then watched as the island beneath him changed. The buildings below lost color. The only lights Link could see were the streetlights the Obeetans lit every night. The pulse under the foundations had ceased. The lights which had once let the tower shine against the sky, even as the dust cleared, were gone as well. If not for the streetlights, Link felt that he and Janni would be floating into a vast emptiness.
"What happened?" Link asked. "Where'd all the lights go?"
"I'm not sure," Janni replied. "Those were made by the Dreamweaver. I wanna say you might've knocked him out when the tower collapsed."
"I couldn't have," Link said, looking up at her. "This is the dream; it shouldn't have hurt him. Should it?"
"Look at the moon."
Link's gaze fell to the moon, a thick crescent lounging among the stars just a little above eye level. He could not be sure what Janni wanted him to see; the moon looked quite ordinary, and it was still a relaxing sight to see stars once again.
Then Link glanced down at the ground. Although dark, the moon provided Link a rough sight at the ground once the dust had cleared. There was a ring of dull grey in the middle of pile of debris with lines forming square corners inside. The ring would have to have been the tower's outer wall, meaning that the lines were the interior structures. Link then looked up at the moon again. No shadow. No indication that the tower's material existence still stood in the middle of the island. He felt the goggles still holding his hat to his forehead, so he pulled them over his eyes. Nothing. The stars remained their usual glow, the moon untouched by the shade of existence. Link had not just knocked over the tower in the dream.
"The actual tower fell?" he asked Janni as he raised the goggles again.
"So it isn't an illusion," Janni said more to herself than in response. She addressed Link, "You've attacked the rest of the Dreamweaver's body, both its actual body and the miasma. Something must've felt it. And when you're awake and asleep at the same time, the Dreamweaver must've jerked in response."
"And with a tower that high," Link reasoned as he glanced toward where he felt the top of the tower had been, "one little jerk from something so big took the tower out. When both towers fell, it probably did some more damage."
"No doubt, but you should remain on alert, Link. He still might have the miasma around, and he's gonna protect his body from you."
"You think the goggles might help?" Link asked.
Janni shrugged. "Actually, I think it's harder to make an illusion of a dream than making the dream. But they'd at least protect your eyes; you've certainly had enough trauma to them."
Link nodded and pulled the goggles back over his eyes. Then he noticed the moon fall behind a thin curtain and looked down to see that they were just barely above the ground. A quick glance showed Link that four stories of the tower remained in place (he could count the number due to one of the exterior walls on the nearest side having been stripped away) while everything above that as well as the portico had fallen away. Where he finally set foot on the ground, he looked to be near the thinnest part of the fallen tower. The base of the tower was covered in debris about as high as Link's chest. Whereas he had initially thought he had seen the tower fall almost straight down, he saw that the field of debris stretched in the direction of the river. Crumbling sounded from behind, and he looked over his shoulder. Some of the taller buildings closer to the tower looked to have fallen over as well; being nowhere near any of the fallen debris, Link assumed that some of them had succumbed to their age and the concussive force of the tower similar to the way Biluf had inadvertently knocked one over when she had blown open the library. The field of debris in front of Link piled up about where the smaller buildings sat. In addition to the pile of destroyed materials being higher (almost as high as Link), the glow from the moon and the streetlights showed a wide gap in the skyline where buildings had been crushed under the weight of the tower.
"Woooooow…" Link breathed as he stared at the disaster.
"I think you topped that bomber Gelto you're carrying around," Janni commented from nearby.
"That's the last thing I need, to be in competition with one of them…" He pointed down the trail of ruin and said, "I'm guessing we'll have to find the end of this to get to the Dreamweaver's body."
"Glad I fixed your boots?" Janni asked, her tone hinting at a large grin on her face.
"It'll certainly make this easier," Link said as he sighted a short building on the edge of the debris and squared up to it. "Can you keep up?"
Janni scoffed. "Please."
"Just thought I'd ask." With that, Link ran at the building and jumped up. Once he landed on the roof, he turned and located a taller building and leapt onto it. One more building, and he could look over the tops of the surrounding buildings at the large swath of carnage wrought by the tower's collapse. The end of the debris did not look far away, maybe a dozen or so rooftops. Link nodded, ready to strike out toward the end of this dream.
Then the flat roof under his feet rumbled, forcing him to widen his stance to keep from falling. His ears reported the sound of grinding not too far away, roughly in the same direction he was aiming toward.
The debris in the distance shifted under the moonlight. A red light shone through from under the massive stone blocks that had once comprised the tower. Link was already aware that his job had become tougher even before the blocks started to rise from the ground. The red light cast itself over the area, emerging from between the blocks as they formed into a crude body. Well, perhaps "body" conveyed much more than what actually appeared. The form that the blocks took, seemingly lodged into the red glow of a liquid mass, looked roughly like a human body buried in the ground up to the waist. The shoulders were wide, and each arm ended in a ball-shaped fist, one composed of stone and the other composed of broken timbers and iron beams arranged to act like spikes. The head, where most of the red light was concentrated, simply rose from the collar with no sort of neck. Stone fragments closed around the light as if to act as a crude helmet. Nothing discernable as a face took shape. Still, Link had the sensation that, once the creature had fully taken form, it turned its head to look at him.
"Aw, crap, he looks pissed…" Link breathed in exhaustion.
The creature, most assuredly the Dreamweaver, raised the closer fist of stone high into the air. Quite high, the length of its arm rivaling that of the distance between it and the rooftop where Link stood.
"Link!" Janni shouted from nearby. "Get off the roof!"
Link decided mid-run for the next roof that her idea was much more likely to succeed and, instead of jumping, stepped onto the parapet and quickly slid off. His fall arrested by the feather in his pocket, he swiftly moved to the nearest side street and turned the corner hard. Only seconds after he had cleared the side street, the air was shattered by the awesome crash of house-sized boulders impacting each other. The buildings behind him crumbled in a waterfall-like roar. A heavy gust shoved him from behind, and his vision was quickly enveloped by dust as he tumbled to the ground. To his fortune, he only felt small pieces of rubble pelt him as he rolled to a stop in the middle of the next street.
"Link!" Janni cried out just as the ringing in Link's ears subsided. "Are you okay?!"
"Yeah," Link grunted as he pushed up from the ground. "Boy! Glad I dropped down."
"Yeah, but you're not safe yet," Janni told him. "You've only got seconds before he figures out where you are; you have to keep moving."
"Do you know where his body's at?" Link asked, his voice a growl as he returned to his feet.
"Probably under all that rock he's wearing. I don't know how you're gonna get to it, though."
Link glanced around as the dust cleared. "Me, neither," he said. "Which way is he?"
"Straight ahead and to your left. I'll try to keep track of when that fist is about to hit."
Link nodded. "Okay, then."
Link took quick stock of the surrounding street. It was not particularly straight or wide, and someone had left a large wheelbarrow in a position to block it off. He glanced back down the side street where the Dreamweaver had smashed the buildings. Then he took off straight ahead and vaulted over the wheelbarrow. He continued down the street, having to dodge around crates and slip past doors that had been knocked off their hinges. He continued until—
"Link, the fist is going up!" Janni cried out.
Link immediately located a side street on his right and turned, nearly striking an arm on the corner. Then, without a moment's hesitation, he took the next left. Before he came back out onto the first street, he happened to spot an alley and turned right into it. The air rushed by his ears, the only sound his breathing and the buildings zooming past. Another right, then he skipped the next turn and took a left down a different street. Another left, past two buildings, and then a right. He found another street covered in large objects and had to jump aside to keep from smacking into a bay window protruding further into the street than he had expected. He lost track of where he was, where he had turned. With the tall buildings around him, he could not get his bearings. He just ran, taking another left, and then the next left, potentially turning him back the way he had come.
KrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRSSSSH! Link slid to a stop and turned toward the source of the sound somewhere behind him. About three blocks away, he saw dust rising from where a pair of buildings had been mercilessly rendered into piles of rubble smeared along the ground.
"Rrrrrrrrr—LIIIIIIIIIIINK!" The deep roar made the street shake.
Once Link realized that his name had been included in that sound, he smirked. "Janni, where is he?!" he hollered.
"Straight that direction and to the left," Janni replied, her tone filled with excitement.
Link rushed straight into the debris and leapt over as much as he could. As he flew through the air, he caught a glimpse of the Dreamweaver's hulking form through the space where the buildings had been. He had opened the distance much more than he had intended. Then he landed hard on the debris, his ankle twisting and cracking as it smacked into a short wall of demolished brick. He fell forward and felt hard points stab into his chest. The wind was knocked out of him for only a moment, and then he scrambled to his feet and stumbled over the debris.
"Oh, sh—Link!" Janni hollered. "It's going up!"
The Dreamweaver had torn a large gash out of the neighborhood, meaning that Link had jumped into an open area nearly two blocks wide. He quickly reached for his gun belt and wrenched open the buckle while he ran. "Janni!" Link hollered. He then threw the belt over his shoulder. "Light the whole belt! Now!"
Almost immediately, the belt erupted into a cacophony of hissing and whistling as both the smoke and flare shells fired at the same time. The belt incinerated, the shells sprouted into a blossom of smoke which obscured Link from sight. Although this did not aid Link's vision in his attempts to get away, almost a second later, bursts of light from the flare shells threw moving shadows all over the debris. When Link was close enough, he leapt forward again and landed on the edge of the debris field. Then he zigzagged his route through the streets again, occasionally glancing down side streets to make sure he did not accidentally wander back into the open.
WHAUMMMMMPH! A street to Link's right erupted with sound and dust, knocking Link over and into the side of a building. The collision dazed him, but he was on his feet in the next second and quickly located where the strike had come from. A large mass of stone mixed in a dull-red liquid loomed just beyond the neighboring buildings and the thinning cloud of dust. It had been a close one; just one street over, and Link would have been flattened. Thinking this was a good opportunity, Link reached to his left hip for his lift reel.
It was gone. Link realized that he had lost it when he had detonated his gun belt, having forgotten that he had been attaching the lift reel to it. He quickly formulated a second plan and ripped the Sorian sword out of its sheath. The mass moved, so Link charged forward and leapt for it with the sword, reverse-gripped in both hands, raised for a downward stab. "YAAAAAAAH!" His voice heralded a successful stab into the liquid between two slabs of stone.
Then Link was flung into the air when the fist jolted upward in response. The sword slipped out of the liquid, causing Link to go hurtling almost straight up. "JANNI!" Link screamed, realizing that he had to save his fall as soon as he could.
Something gave his collar a tug, slowing his backwards spin. He landed hard on his knees, feeling the kneecaps crack from the impact while his wrists snapped saving him from striking his head. He only had to witness the odd angle for a moment before he got up, his body recovering in the next second. He checked that his sword was still in-hand. Then he looked up.
He had landed on top of the Dreamweaver's stony fist. He turned to see the Dreamweaver looking at him with that faceless head.
So, Link pointed the sword at him. "I'm still here!" he hollered.
Then he staggered when the fist started moving. The Dreamweaver was retracting its lengthened arm. At the same time, once Link stood firm, he saw that the Dreamweaver was raising the other fist, the metal beams gleaming in the evil, red light. Link glanced down at the arm he stood on. Then he realized that he would make a hard target if he was closer.
He started running. Once he was off the fist, the arm almost seemed flat to him thanks to its incredible width. The Dreamweaver stopped raising the other fist once it realized what Link was doing. Instead, it decided to swing the arm.
This was bad. Link did not have enough time to traverse the arm up to its shoulder; he was already stumbling over the side. Knowing that he was going to fall anyway, Link twisted backward and stabbed the Sorian sword into the semi-solid mass that served as the Dreamweaver's arm. The sword sliced into the arm without interruption; Link had not realized that, with all the debris the Dreamweaver had picked up, it had nothing solid inside its arms to protect them. Link's fall picked up speed, but it was at least controlled enough that, when the sword finished cutting through the arm, he was falling feet-first to the ground. He landed on the rooftop of a three-story building just under the Dreamweaver's arm.
He looked up in time to see the Dreamweaver lean forward. WHAMMMMMMPH! Link had to brace himself against the building's shake. Then he looked over his shoulder at the cloud of dust that the crash had produced. The Dreamweaver's arm had fallen, but… why did it miss? He glanced above just in time to see part of the Dreamweaver's arm retreat back toward its body. No fist. Link quickly located the arm to see that it had been reduced to a long stump that the Dreamweaver was pulling back into his body. He then glanced down at his sword.
The rubble was not vulnerable… but the softer liquid body was.
Once Link had an idea of how to attack, he looked up again. The Dreamweaver had finished pulling back his arm, shifting his mass so that his head was a little higher off the shoulders. Link also saw that the position of his opposite shoulder was changing; the shoulder was currently traversing the Dreamweaver's chest. Link realized that he had to act fast, or else he would have to repeat his maze-like dash through a city made of buildings very quickly dwindling in number.
He ran forward and started hopping roofs. As he charged, a new sound rumbled through the air. He had to take quick glances in the direction of the sound to see what was happening. The Dreamweaver was dragging the spike-laden fist through the buildings as he shifted his shoulder's position. If it finished the move, Link realized that the fist would sweep him into a hell filled with broken wood and metal that he might not survive. He could not jump down in between the buildings this time; the fist was too close for him to try changing directions, and it was easily wrecking through the buildings just on the edge of the tower's debris field. He wished he could put more effort into moving. As it was, even with his boots restored, the gap between success and a bloody failure was extremely narrow.
Jump.
RRRRRRRRRGH…
Jump.
RRRRRRRRRGH…
Jump.
RRRRRRRRRGH…
Jump.
RRRRRRRRRGH…
Jump.
RRRRRRRRRGHAAAAAAGH!
The building Link had just landed on suddenly collapsed from under his feet. He was sent hurtling forward as it toppled in the opposite direction. Link smacked into the roof hard. He lost his grip on the sword as he realized that he was falling backwards, unable to stop himself as the building crumbled underneath him. His scream of panic was drowned out by the rush of falling brick. Something struck him from behind, turning his vision into a jumbled, watery mess he did not have the senses to interpret. The sound around him was like falling into water, and he felt heavy brick pelting him from all sides.
He could not tell how long he had been not moving. He had to blink the dazed feeling out of his eyes in order to see his surroundings. In front of him was the rooftop that he had fallen from, sitting at a diagonal. He discovered after a quick glance around that, while the building he had landed on had collapsed, the building he had last jumped from had also been demolished. He sat on a mixture of rubble from both buildings. How he had not been buried underneath, he chalked up to an astounding amount of luck. Another glance revealed that his sword was only just out of reach. His aches disappearing, he rolled onto his hip and grabbed the hilt.
A rumble in the distance alerted him to the danger he still faced. He looked up as the dust around him cleared. The Dreamweaver's arm loomed overhead, and Link could see that it had changed directions to go back over the path it had just torn into the island. He was on his feet in seconds and hustled to the side of the building so that he could round the rooftop.
Once the rooftop was out of the way, he could see down the street into the tower's wreckage, cast under the red glow of the Dreamweaver's head. Without hesitation, he ran straight toward it. He had to reach the Dreamweaver this time, knowing now that he could cut into the Dreamweaver to do away with the last of his defenses and reach his true body.
By the time the rumble turned into the building-shattering roar that had just taken apart the street, Link was already at the edge of the untouched buildings. He leapt forward and onto the pile just short of where the Dreamweaver's body rested. He glanced backward in time to see the Dreamweaver raise its fist off the ground. He did not watch to see where the fist was going; this close, he did not have time to be distracted by how the Dreamweaver was going to mutilate him next. Instead, Link sighted a stone slab sitting level enough on top of the Dreamweaver's hip for him to jump onto. He turned and jumped.
The Dreamweaver shifted the slab out of the way so that Link was falling back toward a soft body.
Link twisted so that the sword was pointed in that direction.
The sword stabbed into the soft body. Link was still unable to land, but his body flying past sliced the sword's blade through the Dreamweaver's body. Link slid on his bottom past the Dreamweaver's hip and down toward the ground again. However, he was able to stop himself on a rock jutting out of the body. His boots planted firm, Link twisted and ripped the sword out of the Dreamweaver. A dull moan filled the air along with a crash of stone and steel somewhere in the distance. Link turned and located another stone sliding in the direction of the Dreamweaver's back. He leaned toward it and grabbed it with his right hand, a considerably difficult thing to do since he still had the Dreamweaver's shield strapped to it. The stone pulled him off his foothold, and he nearly lost his grip as his body flopped against the Dreamweaver. The Dreamweaver must have realized what he was doing because the stone stopped in the middle of his lower back and sank into the softer body. Link kept his grip on it, and the body simply enveloped his fingers, solidifying them. Link then used his feet to steady himself against the Dreamweaver's back. He raised the sword in a reverse grip and stabbed into the Dreamweaver's back up to the guard.
The Dreamweaver's moan rose to a pained roar. The stone slipped from Link's grip as the Dreamweaver twisted. This flung Link toward the other side of the Dreamweaver's back, which the sword cut through until Link fell out of reach. Fortunately, Link did not have far to fall. He landed hard on his right shoulder and smacked the flat of the Sorian sword against his left leg. The pain subsided before Link could even think about it. Instead, Link quickly scrambled to his feet to see what the Dreamweaver was doing.
The gash Link had cut into the Dreamweaver's back expanded like a knife cutting through jam. The Dreamweaver flailed its single arm as it toppled forward. B—WHAAAAMPH! Link felt the whole island shake under his boots, a force so strong it was a wonder the island was not falling.
Link quickly retrieved the sword from the ground nearby. If the Dreamweaver was not attached to the ground anymore, it might mean that he could move around easier. He had to act quickly. Thinking this, Link scrambled up and over the mound that had served as the lower half of the Dreamweaver's body as the remnants of its softer body retreated under the debris.
Link was over the mound and started down it before he bothered to look up to see where he had to go.
And when he looked up, he saw nothing.
The debris field was empty. Sure, he saw a large pile of stone slabs which could have been the pieces the Dreamweaver had used to armor his head. To his left, the metal and wood it had used to make its other fist had also fallen into a pile that stabbed into a building on the edge of the field. However, that was all the evidence of the Dreamweaver's fall. Suspecting that the Dreamweaver's body was in the pile of slabs, Link raised the shield and approached the pile.
PWAHH! Something behind Link exploded, pelting him with small pieces of rock and wood. His surprise quickly turned to fear when he realized that he might have made a mistake. However, just as he was spinning to confront another threat, he heard a new sound.
Heavy. Steady. The sound of large wings beating against the air. Link looked up.
The mound he had stepped over was now a crater. In the air above, Link perceived a great, black bird against the starry sky. This was not like Cunimincus; whatever this was, it was perhaps a quarter of that size, although still quite large compared to Link. Link could not make out any features, the moonlight only giving him a silver outline.
The bird rose higher and higher into the air. With a sudden jolt, it then pushed forward. Link turned to follow its motion, shield raised to defend from what would surely be a devastating strike from that high in the air.
The bird did not even look at him. Before Link could process what was happening, the bird was already in the distance. Link lost sight of it against the night sky.
Link waited, eyes darting over rooftops, ears straining to hear more than the occasional shift of rubble.
After almost a minute, Link lowered the sword and shield. The excitement of the fight had long since worn off his mind and body. Instead, his heart beat against his chest in dread. Something was wrong. What was wrong?
"J-Janni?" Link finally asked. "Janni!?"
"Over here, Link."
Link turned back to the crater. Something floated in his vision at the lip of the crater, lit silver by the moonlight. Link thought that it was an abacus at first. The frame looked like metal with a dozen slots cut into it. However, Link saw that there were no beads on the rods in between the slots. He took a step closer. The rods were actually threaded and protruded from one side of the frame with a wingnut-like key on the outside end and a cap as wide as each slot on the inside end. The slots had been cut so that they gradually widened the closer they were to one side.
Link used his right hand to pull the goggles off his face. Janni stood before him; she was holding the device against her chest with one arm. To Link's surprise, she had a sad look on her face, her eyes seeming to take more interest in Link's boots than his face.
Link glanced back toward where he had seen the bird disappear. "What was that thing?" he asked as he turned back to Janni, pointing with the sword.
Janni took in a visible breath. "The Dreamweaver," she replied.
Link's eyes widened. "The Dreamweaver!?" he hollered. "Wha—… Where'd he go!? What happened!?"
Janni looked to one side as she said, "It looks like I made a mistake, Link. The Dreamweaver… never wanted to draw more ships to Obeeta. Or, at least, he probably changed his mind. After all the crap you put him through, he must have changed his plans." She offered a small shrug. "Or he might've been planning this the whole time."
"Planning what?" Link asked as he looked around again. "What was he gonna…?"
As Link's eyes wandered the scene, his sense of direction kicked in. He looked at the moon. He did a quick read on the stars. He glanced back toward where the bird, the Dreamweaver, had flown away. Northwest. Not toward the Island Symphony.
Link's eyes widened again as he realized what was happening. He slowly turned back to Janni. "No…" he uttered to her, his head shaking.
Janni was watching his reaction. She gave a solemn nod and said, "That's right, Link. He's jumping into that Sky Line you guys put there yesterday.
"He's going after Hyrule itself."
The best Link could do was stare at her. He started forming images in his mind of what would happen if the Dreamweaver made it to Hyrule. His stomach twisted with the thought of so many people dying of insanity while the rest turned into the same, hollow-lived existence as the Obeetans. The Dreamweaver did not need to draw them in once he reached Might Island; the sheer amount of traffic the island saw would feed him much better than Obeeta ever had. And once the population had been drained of every good dream, he could jump to the next island. Then the next, and the next still. Hyrule would become an archipelago of ghost islands every bit as haunted as Obeeta. And, when that was done… the surface. Surely, he would know to go there; by now, everyone in Hyrule knew there were still people living on the surface in the old kingdom. Hell, he had probably discovered everything he needed to know from Link's mind.
"I knew this would happen." Janni's words broke Link out of his thoughts. He shook his head and listen as she said, "No matter what you did, Link, he still won. I shouldn't have thought otherwise. Every move you made, every part of the miasma you killed… He needed you, Link. He needed you to cut the miasma off so he could leave. He manipulated you into it, threatening your crew every time you slipped up until you did it right. It was the only thing anchoring him to this island." Link glanced down at the sword still in his hand. "Now he's free. And there isn't anything you can do to stop him."
Link's grip on the sword tightened. With rage in his throat, he turned and hurled the sword in the Dreamweaver's direction. He had no words. Even after the sword clattered in the distance, he stood with his eyes on the horizon, his breath rasping as he seethed.
"Rrrr—NO!" he snapped, spinning back to Janni. "There has to be something we can do! We can't let him get to Hyrule!"
"There isn't any point, Link," Janni answered, her melancholy voice hardly affected by his shouting. "He's known what to do with you from the start. You'll just die if you follow him."
"Then I'll die!" Link hollered. "I'll crash the Symphony on top of that bastard if I have to, but I can't just let him go!" His eyes fell on the device in Janni's arms. "What is that thing?"
"This is the Dreamweaver's device, the tool he uses to build these dreams. He left it behind. He probably doesn't see much need to use it; he'll have all the dreams he needs without making his own fantasies every night."
Link looked back over his shoulder at the horizon. Then he asked, "Is the Dreamweaver the only one who can use that thing?"
"No. This device is just like your harmonica; anyone who can read it can figure it out."
"Then we can use it," Link told her. "If we can catch up to it while it's still between asleep and awake, we can make the dream again, and I can go in and finish it. And we'll have control of the dream this time!"
"You make it sound so easy…"
Link pointed a finger at her as he said, "It may not be, but it has to work. I've gotta wake up." Link then shut his eyes and willed himself awake. He would have to hurry to pick up the device and then rouse his crew to chase the Dreamweaver down.
However, when he opened his eyes, he was still standing in the tower's debris with Janni in front of him. He thought he had done it wrong and closed his eyes again. He found himself confused when he opened them back in the dream once more.
"What's… what's going on?" he asked himself. "Why can't I wake up?"
"I… can't let you," Janni replied.
Link looked at her. "You… huh? What do you…?"
"I can't let you wake up, Link," Janni said. Link then became aware that she was turning one of the keys on the device back and forth. Janni gave a weak laugh as she told him, "Ridiculous as it may sound, I can't let you kill the Dreamweaver."
"You can't…" Link started. All reason was lost. Janni wanted so bad to kill the Dreamweaver, so why was she suddenly telling him she could not let him? Link snapped, "What are you talking about!? Last night, you were willing to tell me everything about how to kill him! You even changed the dream to give me a chance!"
"Yes. Yes, I did."
"Then why?! Why would you stop me!?"
"Because I just can't!" Janni hollered back at him, stunning Link into silence. "I've had more than a hundred years to think about this! And I thought, for one night, that I would be better off if he was dead! But I can't live with that anymore, Link! I can't! I can't let you kill him!"
Link let her words echo for a moment. Then he said, "Janni, you have to let me go. If you don't, what's happened to Obeeta is gonna happen to millions of people!"
"I know that!" Janni shouted back. "They don't mean anything to me!"
"Well they mean something to me! And they mean something to each other! Are you okay with them going crazy and dying?!"
"I don't care!"
"Well I do! Let me wake up, Janni! You have to!"
"I can't, Link!" Janni screamed. Link opened his mouth to argue more.
Then he caught sight of the tears trickling down her cheeks, barely a glint under the moonlight. Once again, he felt his heart punch his chest, trying to warn him that there was something very wrong with this scene. Janni gripped the sides of her head, her voice breaking into audible sobs. Link raised a hand and took a step forward as if to go to her, but he was not sure what he could do.
Janni then shrieked, "I can't let you do it, Link!
"I can't let you kill my father!"
