Chapter 6: At Least They Cleaned Up Before They Left

…

Half an hour later had brought Link, Line, Irleen, and Cale (and, presumably, Layna) to buildings consisting of two or three stories. The road they used had widened, but this appeared to be at the cost of some of the side streets. Terrain closer to the center of the island became uneven, resulting in narrow side streets with a few stairs randomly built in whenever someone had not felt like following the curve of the ground. Outdoor implements increased: barrels, crates, signage, and, mysteriously, a bed. None of the signs bore anything resembling the Sorians' claw-like alphabet; whoever had moved onto the island preferred to simply offer a picture to indicate purpose. Not that they did a very good job at times. One sign depicting a thermometer left Irleen and Line arguing about whether it was a clinic or a chemist's shop. The lack of open windows did not help. Although store-front displays had been set up using panes of glass, these were still curtained off alongside the locked doors all around them. There were no streetlights to be seen, however many of the larger businesses had lanterns hanging over their doorways and, sometimes, the windows.

It all looked just as abandoned as before, maybe even more so. Link began to wonder if this was the result of some type of disaster. Disease, maybe; it might account for why doors were locked. It did not appear to be the work of invaders or monsters roaming the island. Everything looked so pristine and orderly, if a little drab.

It was the same idea Line grasped when he finally noted aloud, "There's no trash."

This, of course, meant nothing to Cale since he decided to ask, "Should theah be?"

Link was in the process of looking around for a piece of contradictory evidence and barely heard Line say, "There should be if this place was abandoned."

"Maybe they were just good at cleaning up after themselves," Irleen suggested as she fluttered a little higher to examine the lay of the land.

"I doubt I'd be worrying about cleaning up my own shit if I was hauling ass off this rock," Line argued as he tried to peer into the front window of another store.

"I think Line has a point," Link finally spoke up. "There isn't even a shard of glass on the ground. Bottles, paper… animal crap…"

"I wouldn't expect a party around here," Line said. "But something like that, I would."

"Wellll…" Cale droned for a moment as he thought. "Ah we undah the assumption that the beings who used to live heah might be similah to Hylians?"

"Look at the buildings, Cale," Irleen told him as she flew a large, lazy circle between the three boys. "I know they don't exactly look like Hylian houses, but could you honestly not imagine some kind of Human-like thing living in them?"

"I can imagine all sohts of creatuahs that could fit the description of 'Human'," Cale pointed out. "So can you, with youh knowledge of mythical beasts."

"Aw, man," Line whined, slouching and slapping his legs in annoyance. "Cale, please: no more stories about your games."

Cale shrugged his confusion toward Line. "What?"

"Do you listen to yourself when you tell those stories?" Line asked. "Fighting a gigantic bug in the middle of a misty forest? A gigantic fish in the middle of a desert? Beautiful and crazy women in a mine? Who the hell believes that crap?"

Cale cast Link a look. Link sighed, but Irleen was the one to say, "Actually, all of that happened, Line."

"That was me," Link added with one hand raised.

"It was?" Line asked. He glanced aside as he tried to recall more of Cale's stories. "Attacked by living rock?"

"I told you that one, Line!" Irleen snapped at him.

"Does anyone really need to know about that one?" Link asked her.

"You attacked living rock," Irleen pointed out. "Ten times larger. Maybe eleven, considering your height then." Link looked up to glare at her. "Five times faster. And more blades than a kitchen. Oh, and it all also happened to be the same rock elevating your ass from the surface. For the record, I started rooting for the technoworks."

"Thank you. Irleen," Link quickly said before she could continue. "The point. There's no trash. Why?"

Cale blinked for a moment. Then he said, "Ostensibly, someone cleaned up. Oh… pehhaps the wind blew it all oveh the side."

"There's not enough wind here to give my cape a good wave," Line pointed out.

"You're not wearing a cape," Irleen said in an annoyed tone.

"My theoretical cape," Line corrected.

"I really hate that you know that word," Irleen told him.

"Stop!" Link immediately snapped, holding both hands up to silence both Line and Cale. "Guys, enough with the fighting. We've got a job to do." He indicated a building further ahead of Line. "Go take a look in there."

Line heaved an exhausted sigh and slowly stomped toward the next window. "Like I'm gonna see anything…" he groaned while Link pointed Cale toward the next building. However, when he stopped at the window, he tilted his head in astonishment. "Hey, Link! We got one."

Link and Cale immediately crossed the street and stepped up on either side of Line. The bay window they looked through was still covered by a curtain, but the curtain was not actually in the window, instead hanging at the corners of the window and allowing sight at whatever was in the bay. And in that bay was a small collection of odd, complexly-shaped pieces of iron; a pair of sacks without labels, one of them empty while the other was bulging with contents; and, astonishingly, a stone statue depicting a Sorian. The statue used a stand to support a female Sorian lying flat with the vertical member of the stand connecting to the Sorian's stomach. The Sorian's arms looked strange; Link knew that a Sorian had an additional appendage on their arm to stretch their wings to their full length. This Sorian, however, had arms that were complete wings like a bird. The nose looked wrong, appearing more as a bird's beak. The clothes, however, looked Sorian: a sleeveless, backless top and slacks fastened at her ankles.

Irleen fell to look the statue in the eye, her glow casting just a little more illumination on it. "This is it," she nearly whispered to the boys. "This has got to mean this is the Lost Library."

"Cale," Link ordered as he pointed, "check the door."

Cale only had to reach for the doorknob. "Locked," he told Link when the knob would not turn.

"We gotta get in here," Link said. "Cale, Line, go around back and see if there's another door. Irleen, let's see if we can get you under this door."

"Sounds good," Irleen said.

"Wait a minute!" Line hollered as Link walked around him. "Why do I gotta go with Cale?!"

Link was on one knee when Line asked, so he had to turn to tell him, "So you'll get away from me."

Line blew a raspberry. "Whatever. C'mon, Chief Twig, let's go fall into something."

"I knew it…" Cale groaned under his breath as they disappeared around the corner of the building.

Link pulled his sword and slid the blade under the door. "Can you see inside?" he asked Irleen as she slowly dropped to the ground.

"Not a whole lot," she said as she approached the gap. "Hmm."

"What is it?" Link asked.

"There's something in there," she said as she jumped up from the ground and suspended herself above Link's hand. "It's… I-I don't know how to explain it, but… there's something alive in there."

"Can you go in and get a look at it?" Link asked.

"Iiiii… really don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Do you ever get… I don't know how to explain it. Do you ever just feel like something is just so wrong that… that fiber of your body tells you not to do it?"

Link nodded. "Pretty much describes everything that happened two years ago."

"I'm not joking, Link," she snapped, jerking toward Link's face. "Right now, if I had a spine, it would shatter from all the shivering."

"What did you see?"

"Life, but not like I've seen it before. Slivers… shards… fragmen—any-any way you describe it. It's life, but it's so disjointed, so… in pieces, I don't even wanna go near it."

Link frowned at her for a moment. Irleen, presumably like any other Sorian, could actually see the life in any living thing. She had once allowed him the same kind of vision, if only for a few moments. Almost everything involving the Sorians pulsed with life; even the Horizon's Eye, a Sorian airship, was made of living planks of wood. As far as Link knew, the Sorians viewed life as a gold or white light that flowed over a living being. Death, based mostly on his assumptions, would be the complete absence of that light. So what exactly was Irleen seeing that looked like life but made Irleen react as if she had just seen death?

Ga-GRRRRSHAAH!

"AAAAAAAHHHHH!"

Link's head immediately looked up at the sound of something heavy and numerous falling as well as listening to both Line and Cale scream like little girls. He slid his sword back out and wheeled around to follow them around the corner. He kneed a barrel around the side of the building, but his panic left him barely acknowledging it as he charged up the four steps to a higher part of the street. He turned the next corner around the building tight.

And he immediately slid to a stop, so immediate that he slipped and fell backwards. He landed on his bottom while his feet dangled over the edge of a large hole spanning the width of the street. It was as if the brick had spontaneously decided to fall away, leaving a jagged mouth the same width as the backside of the building they were investigating.

Link pulled his legs away from the hole and turned so that he was on his hands and knees looking into the hole. "Cale! Line! Are… you…"

Link trailed off when he realized that the hole was not that deep. Both Line and Cale were lying on their backs on top of the fallen bricks, writhing and groaning in pain. With a bit of stretching and if the two of them stood, Link could probably reach them. So he sighed and asked in a normal voice, "You guys okay?"

"I hate you…" Line groaned back.

"What happened?" Irleen asked, unable to completely hold back the giggle in her voice.

"It just collapsed," Cale said as he and Line slowly stood up.

Line picked up a sign made of canvas and metal piping. After staring at the picture on one side, he turned to glare at Cale. "You just had to look at the stupid sign, didn't you?" he asked. "I oughta bust it across your face. You wanna look at it that bad?"

"Not anymoah," Cale groaned as he planted a hand on the wall of bare earth nearby.

Irleen's tone changed as she asked, "Cale, what are those next to your hand?"

Cale gave the wall a tired look. "What, the roots?" he asked. "What about them?"

"They're alive."

All eyes turned in her direction. "They can't be," Cale said. "They'h undahground; theah ahn't any plants attached to them."

"Well, yeah, they're dying," Irleen said. "But they're still alive. Cale, there's a tunnel full of them behind you."

Cale turned around to peer into the darkness behind him. "This is a tunnel?"

Line, closer to Link, pointed toward the side of the hole underneath Link. "There's a tunnel down this way, too," he said.

Link switched around again so that he was sitting on the edge of the hole. He grabbed his sword, and then he dropped down while Irleen trailed behind him. He glanced down both directions for a moment. "Any theories?" he asked.

"It would seem that the street was built ovah the tunnel," Cale said. "Theah doesn't appeah to be an entrance in eithah direction."

"Irleen, this looks like it could be a tunnel down into the island's technoworks," Link commented while he replaced his sword.

"It could be," Irleen agreed. "It'd be great if it was."

Line dropped the sign on the ground. "How?" he asked.

"If we can get to the technoworks," Link explained, "we could change the nearby Sky Line and make the way home shorter."

"Or maybe even reset the Sky Lines around here," Irleen added. "It could give us a Sky Line to return on, make the trip home even shorter."

"Should we exploah it now?" Cale asked. "It's neahly pitch-black, and none of us have any lights."

"Maybe we should get Layna down here," Line said. "I'm sure she can see in the dark."

"I think I've got a better idea," Link said as he removed the flare gun from behind his back.

"Right," Line said with a flat tone. "Let's fill the tunnel with smoke so we know where to find it."

"I'm gonna shoot a flare into it," Link said. He paused to examine a shell he had pulled from his belt. Then he opened the gun's breach and loaded the shell. "Watch it, Cale." Cale stepped behind Link while Link cocked and aimed the gun down the tunnel toward the center of the island. FZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz! The shell disappeared into the darkness for a bit, a thin trail of black smoke and the strange sound being the only evidence that Link fired. About a second later, green light erupted from further down the tunnel, almost a pinpoint from the boys' perspective.

"Cute," Line said in a flat tone. "I'm not going down there."

"I wasn't gonna tell you to," Link said as he replaced the flare gun. He started forward as he added, "Layna, Irleen, and I will."

"Ahn't you going to call foh haah?" Cale asked.

"Look behind you."

Cale and Line exchanged looks. "You first," Line said.

Cale glanced over his shoulder. "AH-hah!" he cried out upon realizing that Layna was behind him. Layna, a young Gelto woman with long, fiery hair tied high on the back of her head in a ponytail that reached as far as her lower back, stepped past the two with an emotionless gaze on her face. Her attire, a black body suit adorned with pockets and straps, helped her blend back into the darkness of the tunnel while she used a brisk pace to catch up to Link.

"How about it?" Link asked as they finally stepped into the flare's light about ten minutes later. "How does this tunnel look?"

"Not good," Irleen replied. "These roots in here are all on the verge of dying. It's a wonder they've lasted this long."

"Is there a way to save them?"

"Nuh-uh. But if the people here wouldn't cover the topsoil, these plants might emerge in a year."

Link paused as he stepped around the flare. Then he stopped to search for another on his belt. "How about you, Layna?" Link asked. "See anybody but us?"

"Na', My Captain," Layna replied.

Link had to change shells twice before he found a blue flare. He took time to load it before he started moving. But, just as they were leaving the other flare's area of illumination, Irleen spoke up, "Link, we're nearing the end."

Link glanced over his shoulder toward the entrance. "Pretty good walk," he commented.

They were still another minute away from the end. Then, Irleen called out, "Link, stop! Stop!"

Link froze in place. "What? What?" he asked.

Instead of answering, Irleen fluttered forward. Her green light showed Link a brick wall. He took a single step and placed a hand on the wall. It was definitely solid, and, as Irleen flew up and down, there did not seem to be a hole or any sort of entryway for them to go through.

"This is weird," Irleen commented. "Who makes a tunnel and then covers one end with a brick wall?"

"Maybe it was a shelter at one point," Link suggested. "They built the road over it when they didn't need it anymore."

"Maybe not," Irleen replied as she looked at the corner of the wall. "Link, I can feel air flow over here, right where this root is.

"There's an open space on the other side."