Chapter 20: Slayer Spirit, Thanatophilic Relic

…

After Link had retrieved his boomerang, he discovered that he was just small enough to fit through the doorway behind the demolished scaffold. The other side was a particularly gruesomely-designed hallway: pink muscle stretched over bone. Link could tell the layer underneath was bone because The Night had decided that there needed to be gaps in between the bundles of muscle decorating the walls. The bones were layered with another row underneath, all of them looking to be the longer bones of the body, to ensure that Link could not see if he was actually in the technoworks. The gushing sound as he walked the hallway made him glad he was wearing boots. He emerged into a small room with perhaps the one thing he had hoped to find: a ladder. It was a sign that this area was at least meant to be reached. Although, he had to admit that finding a ladder made of burnt wood (but sturdy nonetheless) instead of metal piping left him still doubting.

He noticed that the room below was darker as he climbed down. The walls blended into each other with a dark blue color, making it impossible to tell how far away they were. One glance down at the floor showed him a shimmering surface on top of black.

Then he splashed down in liquid. The sound alerted him to a layer of water covering the floor around him. He looked around with one hand still on the ladder.

"Huh," he commented in a casual tone. "This is like a dream I had before."

"You don't say," Janni replied as she circled his head from above, her tone indicating a lack of interest.

"Yeah," Link said as he stepped away from the ladder. "I think it was a dream I had when we first got here."

"You don't say," Janni said in the same tone.

Link looked up at her. "Can The Night recreate nightmares like that?"

"Eeh… I don't wanna say," Janni replied before she started giggling.

"Yeah, you're a lotta help…" Link told her as he looked around.

"Not trying to be."

"Wait a minute." Link suddenly felt a chill as his eyes passed over everything they could. "Where'd the ladder go?"

"Ladder?" Janni asked. She started looking around as well. "Oh. Well, that's a cool trick."

Link reached around his back. "Okay, this isn't funny anymore," he said as he pulled out his boomerang.

"Eh. I'm feeling pretty amused myself." Just to prove the point, she giggled again.

"We're underground," Link told her as he opened the boomerang. "The walls are around here somewhere." He then switched his hold on the boomerang and threw it toward where he was sure the ladder should have still been. He threw it as straight as he could.

The boomerang flew…

And flew…

And flew…

Spash.

Link's face managed to pale in the low light offered by the blue glow around them. He could not believe the distance the boomerang had flown. Even if he had not hit the ladder, he should have surely hit the wall. No room in the technoworks he had seen before was large enough for him to do that.

Janni's reaction was markedly different. "AH-HAHAHAHAHAH! AAAAAAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Her sudden burst of laughter caused Link to jump. He found her in the air nearby and stared hard at her. When she settled down, she said with an air of exhaustion, "Oh, don't look at me like that. I know in reality that would've worked." She chuckled as she added, "It just made your failure that much funnier."

Link glanced toward where the boomerang had disappeared. "Maybe, but at least I know I can go that way without running into a wall," he told her, pointing.

"Really?" Janni asked in a challenging tone. "You can see your boomerang?"

Link glanced across the room toward his boomerang.

He started when he saw bodies lying all over the floor, half-submerged in the water at his feet. Just like in his dream, they were face-down. Some of them wore the yellow jackets of Airliner airmen, and a few were Sorians, revealed by their feathered arms and heads.

Link glared at the field of bodies, his right hand clenching the shield's strap hard. "It's not gonna make me feel guilty," he told Janni as he started walking.

"Guilty?" Janni asked with some intrigue in her voice.

"I've felt guilty over these men's deaths for two stupid years," he said with venom now tingeing his voice. "I'm not gonna feel guilty just because it shows me their bodies in another dream."

"And yet, here we are," Janni told him. "You, wading through an invisible room full of fake bodies. Wanna talk about it?"

"I've talked about it until it's made me sick," Link told her. "No."

"Bet it's a good story."

"It isn't."

Janni gave an irate grunt and fluttered in front of Link to lead him. "So you expect me to assume that you're some kind of mass murderer feeling guilty about all these people?"

Link stopped. "How dare you!?" he snapped at her. "You don't know anything about me! How can you judge me?!"

"Quite easily, actually," Janni replied, not at all perturbed by his outrage. "If it bothers you so much, then maybe you'd explain why you feel guilty about these dead people."

Link could feel his fists shaking with rage. He continued to glare at Janni until the muscles in his face hurt. When he found he could not keep it up anymore, he relaxed his face with a sigh. "Two years ago…" he started. He felt a lump in his throat, and he paused to swallow it back. "Two years ago, I got shot out of the sky by another airship. I was trying to help out a Sorian airship that was being attacked at the time, and that airship was eventually shot out of the sky, too. The other Hylians… were shot down by an airship from the same company that I work for."

"And the rest of the bodies?"

Link took a moment to look around at the people dressed in plain clothing. "Some of them are probably people from Might Island; they were killed by Lizalfos that had invaded the technoworks. The others… people who were killed when the airship that shot me down attacked Autumn Island and Center Island." Link sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. "When I first had this nightmare… it was only the airmen. Now it's showing me the islanders, too?"

"The Night knows what you fear," Janni said. "And it's gonna keep pushing that little button of pleasure until you've been milked dry."

Link shook his head. "I'm not afraid of them. And, like I said, I'm sick of being guilty over them. At what point does The Night get the idea that I'm gonna be afraid of them?"

"Oh, I'm guessing when it twists this old nightmare on you," Janni said as she looked around. "Which'll probably be about, uh… now?"

"Huh?"

Link looked around at the bodies. He had not realized that, while he had been talking to Janni, the bodies had slowly begun to glow. Now, a soft, gray light from each body shone against the water's broken surface.

He drew his sword and said, "Let me guess. Now all my guilt is gonna cause these bodies to rise and attack me, right?"

As he watched a nearby Sorian, however, he saw what looked like steam rising from the body. The steam thickened and formed a bubble over the body. A dark line crossed part of the face Link was looking at, and it opened into a single, yellow eye with a black iris. Another slit opened under the eye to reveal a smile. Then it opened its smile to reveal rows of pointed, misaligned teeth and a blue tongue which simply lolled out of its mouth.

"That would be a no," Janni pointed out as Link watched similar creatures rise up from the bodies around him.

"Thanks," Link replied in a snide tone.

"You're welcome!" Janni said with glee.

Link kept his eye on the closest one. But movement caught the corner of his eye. Another of these creatures was flying at him fast, and Link's best reaction was to twist. PANG! The creature impacted the shield, sending Link staggering backwards and the creature careening into the ground with a splash. A screech alerted Link as he regained his footing, and he wheeled around to find two more charging at him. He only had a moment to spin out of the way, and, at the same time, he swung his sword in a wide, horizontal arc. As he came around to face the creatures again, he aimed for the closer one and struck the upper half of its back. The creature bounced off the floor and high into the air, releasing a hiccup-like giggle as it sailed away.

"Ghini, Ghini, such a ninny…"

"Gah!" Link cried out. He looked down to find that one creature, which had approached from behind, was now digging its sharp teeth into his left thigh. He swung the pommel of his sword down and struck it directly in the eye. The creature released in shock, and Link again bashed the pommel against the top of its head. The creature bounced up from the floor and collided with another. Link barely had time to watch where they disappeared to as he spun his head to watch his right side.

"But still, a nasty foe…"

He barely had time to deliver a good blow, so he opted to elbow yet another approaching creature. It backed away, but Link had to pull away as well as one more creature tried to clamp down on his exposed upper arm. He used his folded arm to strike out against the new creature, bashing the shield in its face.

"Go on and bet…"

Link finally leapt into the air when he realized that too many of the creatures were surrounding him. He traveled forward a bit, just enough to give him room to move despite almost landing on top of a Hylian body.

"And don't regret…"

The creatures, almost all of them gathered where he had been standing, turned and immediately started toward him. Link raised his sword, ready to start beating them back while he located more standing on either side. There were too many to count, but he guessed that there had to be at least thirty chasing him.

"Just one can take a blow."

Janni's poem as she hovered somewhere in the air above at first seemed like just another way to taunt Link. But once she chanted that last line, Link realized that there was something different about these creatures, these "Ghini", than what he had initially seen. Their eyes were just a shade brighter than their skin, but he remembered the first one he had watched forming had a yellow eye. He looked left and right only to find more white-eyed Ghini charging for him.

He dashed to the left and rammed his shield into one of the Ghini to send it flying away. He used a horizontal swing to knock another toward the large group that had nearly descended on him first. This scattered the group like marbles striking together. Even still, they continued to advance toward Link, and he ran toward another Ghini. The Ghini tried to open its mouth and bite down on Link's face as he approached, but Link instead ducked to one side and slid to a stop next to it. He wheeled around, smacking the Ghini with his blade. The Ghini screeched just before bowling into its companions, scattering the large group again. He took a moment to look for the yellow-eyed Ghini before turning to backhand another Ghini he knew would be approaching from behind.

Janni began to chant again, and Link found her hovering beyond the group not too far above the floor. Assuming that she might actually be hovering over the "one" she was chanting about, Link took a running start at the pack of Ghini. He did not know how thick the pack was, so when he jumped, he kept his upper body low. This resulted in his legs receiving more force with his jump, and he performed a flip as he rose from the ground. He had his legs stretched out to keep the flip from over-spinning him. As he came down, his feet led him. Unfortunately, he was not expecting to clear the Ghini only to land on top of one of the corpses. One foot landed on the Sorian corpse, and the corpse slid while his grounded foot failed to actually grip the floor under the water's surface. Link's fall was as spectacular as his jump: both legs high in the air. His back struck the floor hard, and his skull rang from the subsequent hit. He felt water lap around his face and body as his head swam with disorientation.

Janni cackled from nearby. As soon as Link was able to decipher his situation, he scrambled to his feet and turned to meet the Ghini pack again. He sluggishly drove his shield between the two closest Ghini, allowing the one on the right to clamp down on the shield's top edge. Link had to bat the other one away with his sword before using a short vertical strike to clock the Ghini on the shield. He held his sword level to his chest, about eye-level with the Ghini, and spun in place to knock away the Ghini that were coming around the first two. He stopped just as his sword clipped one Ghini, sending it sailing into the air, to now look at the situation. Most of the pack was scattered apart. Barring a handful that had gained some impressive distance, they were still close enough to turn back on Link and begin their advance again. Link used the time he had bought to spin and find Janni again. As he expected, Janni was singing as she danced above one Ghini who did not look to be interested in chasing him down. He rushed over to the Ghini with his sword raised to stab it in the eye.

He halted when he saw that this Ghini not only had the same eye as the others, but it seemed to lack any sort of attention as its single eye stared off into space with its tongue hanging out of its mouth.

Janni giggled as Link looked up at her. "You didn't really think I'd lead you to the weak one, did you?" she said in her gleeful voice. "This is too hysterical to end so quickly!"

Link rushed to deliver a death glare coupled with bared teeth before spinning to deliver a diagonal downswing on an approaching Ghini. He used a backswing to knock away the next, and his follow-through smacked the brain-dead Ghini into the distance, causing Janni to give a disappointed moan. Then Link turned left and jumped to escape the pack bearing down on him once more.

There, on his left as he reached the height of his jump. Link barely had time to make out the Ghini's details, but he realized that there was one that hung toward the back of the pack not even looking at him.

Once Link was on the ground again, he turned in a direction just on the edge of the pack. He dashed in that direction, knowing that the Ghini would be on him the moment he stopped. So he held out his sword and mowed three or four nearby Ghini out of the pack. When he stopped, those Ghini continued moving in the same direction, taking out a pair of stragglers that had been in his way. From where he stood, he caught sight of the single Ghini that was not looking at him.

This Ghini turned around, and Link could see the darker contrast of its yellow eye against the collective glow from its nearby companions. The Ghini turned toward the open air on its left. But Link, utilizing his boots' speed boosting ability, was within striking distance in the next two seconds. He used a backhanded, horizontal swing and cut into the Ghini's eye. The Ghini had a brief moment to scream before it disappeared in a puff of smoke. Then Link spun, ready to take on the Ghini some more.

The Ghini had disappeared from the room. And, Link realized, the space he had been bounding around in had returned to being a room again. The water on the floor was lapping the blue walls surrounding him. He looked up to see a hole in the ceiling showing the brighter room above at the end of the ladder of burnt wood, which just happened to be within arm's reach. He could not believe that the ceiling had been there the whole time; for those times he had jumped, he should have smacked his head into it. The bodies were gone. Instead, Link found a dark doorway leading out of the room to his left.

Janni groaned as she lowered herself into his line of sight. "Well, it was fun while it lasted," she said.

Link, stumped, looked around the room. "That…" he started through his heavy breathing. "That doesn't make sense. This room was gone."

"Kinda like you were back in your dream, right?" Janni suggested.

"We—… well, yeah…"

"Need I say more?"

Link let out a sigh and dropped to one knee. He took a moment to bring his breathing under control. His heart, however, was not going to calm so easily. He did not realize what kind of things The Night could do in this space that it had claimed as its own. What kept it from simply taking the imaginary space from under his feet and letting him fall into the ground? Or force him to run into oblivion trying to chase something? Why were the Ghini so hard to hurt but easily defeated by striking just one?

"It's not taking me seriously," Link said aloud.

"You're a teenage airship captain lady's man expert swordsman perfect marksman monster killer," Janni said. "Can't say I'd take you seriously, either."

Link let out another sigh and looked up at her. "'Lady's man'?" he asked.

"You seem too nice to be called a 'womanizer'."

Link pushed himself to his feet. After a moment to let his arms hang almost lifelessly, he replaced his sword and turned toward the doorway. "Well, I don't see any light in the next room," he remarked dryly to Janni. "Am I now gonna relive all my nightmares of being stuffed in a cannon?"

"Hmmm…" Janni dropped into his vision again as she pondered the doorway. "I don't know. Sounds a little… unimaginative, especially after all this."

"Great," Link replied as he started forward. "I guess I should take it to heart; you seem to be able to think like The Night."

"I've been here for a while," Janni said as she trailed after him. "It isn't hard."

Link was about to respond when he saw something in the water along his path. He moved over and picked up what he first thought was his boomerang. What he grabbed was a soft piece of wood full of holes. He looked down into the shallow pool and realized that the boomerang, despite not having struck anything but the floor when he threw it, had fallen apart.

"What the hell?" he asked as he bent over to retrieve the metal centerpiece. The steel frame was covered in a thick, rough layer of rust. The ruby, smashed to pieces inside its setting, had grown smoky and dull. Link turned it to look at the joints the arms had been attached to, causing fragments of the ruby to fall out. "How did this happen?"

"You mean other than throwing it to find a wall?" Janni asked.

"I've thrown this at plenty of walls. Even if it broke against one, it shouldn't have this much rust on it." He showed her the piece of wood in his other hand. "And this. This wood is rotten and eaten through. It's like this has been sitting here for years."

"Water ruins wood," Janni pointed out. "Metal rusts in water. What about this confuses you?"

"Salt water," Link told her. "Metal rusts fast in salt water. And there was no exposure to air. I've seen that sort of rusting before."

"Why do you keep assuming that things in this place make sense?" Janni asked him, her tone switching to incredulous. "You just got done fighting a pack of Ghini in a room that wasn't a room."

"But why did it need to beat up my boomerang?" Link asked.

"Beat up? I'd say 'broke'. 'Rusted'. 'Aged'. Maybe even… 'killed'."

"'Killed'?" Link stared at her for a moment. Then he asked, "Is that what it's going for? It actually is trying to kill me?"

"I think it would've had a few more traps set to actually take you down if that was the case, Link," she said. "Think about this. Skulls and skeletons all over the place. Burnt and rotten wood. A gallows made of bone. A dream you had with people you know are dead. A room full of ghosts. A single weapon aged into uselessness and decrepitude. I think the theme here is 'death'."

"You make it sound like some… storybook," Link said, his disgust punctuated by dumping the pieces of his boomerang back into the water.

"If this was a storybook, it'd have a happier ending," Janni told him. "Beating a room full of Ghini would've actually made sense."

"Fine, this place doesn't make sense," Link told her. He locked his determined glare on the dark doorway. "But I'm not through."

Link continued toward the door and entered into a short hallway made of bricks. He saw that the mortar in the walls had worn thin, and the bricks were crumbling apart just as he touched one corner. It reminded him of some of the older buildings he had seen back in Hyrule. Older… and decaying. He did not want to think about Janni calling death The Night's theme. Instead, he pressed on with his left hand ready to pull his sword at the first sign of danger.

He stepped into a larger room, although it was harder to see and more like a feeling to him. Somewhere in the hallway, the layer of water had disappeared. Link turned to be sure that the other room and the hallway were still there; everything else was covered in black.

Something rough made a grinding sound near his feet. Link looked down to see that whatever was moving had started at the bottom of the doorway. And it was rising. Link used a boot to prod at the doorway and discovered that there was something blocking him. He hunched low to place his hand on the obstruction as the grinding continued.

The grinding intensified. Link saw movement at the top of his vision. The light from the other room was being blocked out. "No no no no no…" he chanted as he rose again, his hands now pressing on a brick wall as it built itself over the doorway. He tried to head the bricks off by hopping up to put one hand through the top. Instead, the brick struck his fingertips and bent his fingers in an unusual way. "Ow!"

"Huh," Janni said. Link located her hovering in the air behind him. "Kinda dark."

Her remark seemed to be a cue. Within a second, about fifteen torches around the room lit into existence, startling Link. The torches, mounted to all four walls, revealed a room made of large, gray, granite blocks.

Also mounted on the walls were skeletons.

Spaced in between the torches rested skeletons chained in some way to the walls or the floor. Half of them were stretched out against the wall by their short manacles. Two were sitting on the floor because their necks had been collared lower on the wall. Two more were hanging from the wall by a single manacle. Three had fallen into a heap on the floor with nooses draped from the ceiling above them. And Link turned to find that, instead of a doorway, behind him was a skeleton that had been half-buried in the wall, one arm reaching out. Link jumped backwards to get away from the outstretched hand.

Chains rattled. Link spun to look around at the skeletons again. He focused on a pair of pillars on the opposite side of the room from him. Just like the rest of the room, they were made of granite stones. They were also wrapped in what had to be hundreds of lengths of chains. The chains were not restricted to the pillars; something was tangled in between the pillars. Link was about to cross the room to get a closer look before he noticed the basin in the floor. How he had missed it was something he was beginning to realize, especially since the basin was filled almost to its stone brim with red liquid. It did not take imagination for Link to notice the furrows in the floor starting under each skeleton and traveling into the basin. With Janni's reminders in mind, he took the look of something bleeding these people dry worth little more than the dirt on his boots. Still, he had to admit that the scene still unnerved him.

"Ritual sacrifice," Janni hissed with excitement as Link started around the basin. "Now that's a death theme."

"Even though it's all fake?" Link asked.

"Oh, now you believe me?" Janni said in a challenging voice. "Even though the blood is now crawling out toward our metal-clad adversary?"

Link gave her a confused glance before looking down at the basin. The blood, against the flow of gravity, was draining itself out of the basin into another furrow that split apart about halfway to the pillars. There, the blood climbed up the pillars through the spaces between the stones.

Link drew his sword. Then he caught Janni staring at him. "What?" he asked defensively. "I never said it didn't hurt."

The chains started rattling on their own. The "blood" soaked into the stone and disappeared. Then, the chains loosened enough that the object fell into the top of a moss-covered box directly between the pillars with a heavy thud. The chains continued to fall, revealing a handle capped with a bulb of dark metal. The handle looked like leather laces, but Link was not sure if he wanted to get close enough to be sure. Then the chains revealed the black iron blade: easily taller than Link and wider than Link's neck. As the length was revealed, Link saw that the sword was broader at the end, easily matching the distance between Link's shoulders. The blade was double-sided and sported a shallow curve instead of a single point. Link looked around when he realized that the torches were dying down.

Then movement called attention back to the sword as a black cloth twisted about the sword. Link tensed as he watched the cloth grow larger until a cloak the size of a camping tent hovered over the handle, spread open like a wind was blowing into it from below. A metal clang sounded, and the massive sword gave a jerk before it rose. Link watched as the cloak again circled the sword, which turned in mid-air like someone was wielding it.

He did not even realize the sword was descending on him until one blade turned toward him. Even after raising the shield to intercept the downward strike, the weight behind the sword almost broke his arm with its impact. For a moment, Link was staring at the blade just a hair's breadth away from slicing into his scalp. Then Link sidestepped and let the weight of the sword slip over the shield away from him. The sword clanged into the floor, and Link brought up his own sword to stab into the cloak.

His blade only skipped off the large sword's pommel and into the air where the cloak had been.

Link quickly withdrew and looked around for the cloak, thinking that the creature had somehow disappeared while he was distracted looking at the sword. The only sound he heard was his own breathing. His boots softly grunted as he backed away from the sword, his head looking left and right for that black cloak. He even peered into the basin to see if it had dove in there for cover.

Chink.

Link's eyes snapped back to the sword just in time to see it rise high in the air. He barely had time to stop the blow with his own blade. Even then, the horizontal strike lodged in the corner where Link's blade met the meager crossguard, and Link was struck in the shoulder as the impact shoved his left arm out of the way. The floor disappeared, and Link flew over the basin and slammed his right shoulder into the floor. He rolled sideways, but he kept his arm outstretched to avoid stabbing himself. His flailing legs kicked apart a skeleton sitting on the floor, but the shield saved him from hitting the wall hard. The room swirled for a moment as Link tried to regain his focus. Then he pushed up from the floor and looked toward the sword.

The cloak had returned, appearing to rest on the shoulders of something much larger than any human Link had ever known. Both it and the sword jumped through the air as if there really was someone physical underneath the cloak. The sword rose to aim its curved head at Link. Link dug the toes of his boots into the floor and propelled himself forward into a roll just as the sword stabbed into the floor where he had been standing. The roll gave Link enough momentum to rise to his feet and wheel around. The cloak did not disappear this time, so Link lunged the four-step distance toward the cloak with his sword poised for a stab. He was not sure if the creature had been caught off-guard, but its reaction was to jerk the sword around just to clip Link's head with the flat of the blade. Even with the minimum contact, Link stumbled to the right and landed on his hands and knees. This time, Link did not want to chance being down within striking distance and pushed up from the ground so that he could move out of the way. It had been the right call because the creature reoriented the sword to aim the head of the blade down. Where it struck the floor would have decapitated Link if he had not already moved.

Link positioned himself almost in front of where the doorway should have been and turned with his sword raised to the creature. Ideally, he wanted the creature to come at him again while he was standing so that he had a chance at a clean shot.

Then the creature turned its shoulders while changing its hold on its sword.

Link dove aside into a roll when the sword suddenly hurled toward him. He felt something slice into his left calf and had to bring himself to a stop on his hands and knees. He could not take time to look at the wound. Instead, his eyes fell on where the cloaked creature should have been standing. But the cloak was gone again. His gaze jerked back to the sword.

And something grabbed his left forearm. He was ripped straight into the air, his skin screaming in protest of the rough grip, his muscles straining to keep his arm in its joint. He rose until he was about halfway to the ceiling. He reached toward the fingers holding him with the intention of tugging loose.

All color drained from his face as he perceived his arm, from elbow to fingertips, as a bleached skeleton of an arm. The bodysuit sleeve simply ended at his elbow. His skin and his muscles were simply gone.

His arm shimmered, and he was suddenly looking at another skeletal hand holding his bare forearm. The bones were twice the size of his own hand and black with a reddish-white outer layer peeling away. He followed the shimmering as it revealed an arm, a shoulder, a collar bone, a spine. Link's eyes could not get any wider as he gawked in horror at the skull of the creature he had been fighting. It had a protruding structure like a dog's muzzle. One eye socket had been broken, revealing black space inside. Horns sprouted from the temples on either side. The left horn had only come out a bit before it appeared to have been broken into a jagged spike on that side of its head. The other horn protruded out into a sharp angle which brought its direction forward, where it flattened out and formed a blade that skirted the right side of its mouth. Link looked down to see more ribs on this creature than a skeleton should have, followed by a pelvis and set of legs that looked like they bent back uncomfortably at the knee. Its feet were wide and almost spider-like.

Link raised his eyes to the skull again. The skull gave a grind as it jerked at him as if to bite his face. Then it turned, swinging Link, and smashed him into the wall hard. Link let out a grunt as pain registered across his back. He had avoided letting his head hit the wall, so he grabbed the creature's crooked thumb with his free hand. He panicked when he saw his other hand suddenly turn into a skeleton's hand and pulled it away. The movement caused the muscles in his arm to cry out in further pain.

The monster swung him again, this time causing the shield on Link's arm to clang as his whole right side hit the wall. This time, the whiplash caused Link's head to hit the wall. In his dizziness, he relaxed his hand and dropped his sword. He lost track of what was happening and could only tell he was swinging again. For a moment, he felt light, like he was floating.

Then he crashed into something hard, knocking whatever structure was in front of him into pieces that scattered across the ground just to stab him. The floor battered him with both bounces until his front slammed him to a stop against the wall. He then dropped onto his right arm, which caused him to roll onto his back. All over his body, he could feel different spots trying to prioritize pain above the others. Perhaps the most significant was his right arm. From the shoulder down felt like he had shoved his arm into a bonfire. He knew, with perhaps just a subtle note among the other aches he felt, that the shoulder had been dislocated. He had to use his right foot, sporting pain that he guessed might have been a twisted ankle, to roll himself away from the wall so that he could face the monster across the room.

The broken remains of the monster sword's pedestal blocked his view. But, just looking at them, he saw that the pedestal had been hollow. He propped himself up on his left arm to look at the wood boards and splinters littering the floor around him. And right in front of him, sheathed in gold and azure, appeared to be a sword.

Movement forced him to look up as the monster, having gone invisible again, started across the room with sword in hand. Link had no time. Battered and broken as he was, he was sure he would be killed if it reached him while he was unarmed. And he was quite sure he would be killed; even if this whole setup was fake, the pain was real enough to convince him that he would definitely die should he lose. He reached his right hand out to pull the sword closer, a feat he wished more than anything that he did not have to do. He sat up with his feet folded beneath him, allowing him to reach forward with his left hand. The sight of his normal hand assured him of the previous illusion, and he grabbed the roughly-textured handle of this new sword. He had to use it to help himself to his feet. He looked up to see that the monster was angling its sword to jab in between the pillars. Without hesitation, Link placed his weight on his twisted ankle. He felt a new surge of pain as he spun to his right. The monster jabbed at him and struck the wall instead. It withdrew quickly, and Link ducked behind the right pillar as it stabbed again. Fresh heat seared a line across Link's shoulder blades, and he stumbled forward as the increase in pain threw off his concentration. He heard the chink of metal pulling out of stone and looked at the flash of black on the other side of the pillar. He knew it would hurt, but he dove and rolled underneath a horizontal swing now aiming to sever him at the chest. Falling onto his dislocated shoulder only worsened the pain, although he was glad that the rest of his arm had gone almost completely numb. He could not rise to his feet as before, instead making it only to a knee. In lieu of this, he used the momentum to swing his sword arm through the air. This flung the azure sheath off a clean, unmarred blade of almost pure white.

Link had no time to admire the blade, already strange enough that he could feel the difference between his Whittleton-forged blade and this shining piece of craftsmanship. The monster, having embedded its own sword into the pillar, had just parted the blade from the pillar and was already in the middle of a devastating horizontal swing. Link could not use the sword to parry, so he purposefully fell onto his stomach. He felt a breeze as the sword passed almost close enough to shave the clothes off his back. He pushed himself up on his good arm and watched as the sword swung into an ascending arc away from him. Then he saw that the sword was coming back down on him, using the blade on the opposite side. He rolled to his left. Clang! The sword rang off the floor. He rose to watch the sword prepare for another downward swing. He had to end this. So instead of rolling again, he used his speed advantage to push off the ground and advance quickly on the invisible monster. The sword still came down, forcing Link to dodge right or else have the sword cleave him in two. He held the new sword at a downward angle. The monster saw what he was doing, and the cloak tried to collapse over it in order to escape.

Link raised the sword in a clumsy upward strike. Clumsy, but still with enough accuracy to strike the handle of the monster's sword. An animal's howl echoed off the walls as the handle was cleanly sliced free of the sword down the middle. The cloak backed away from the sword, its movements now angry and scattered as if it was restraining itself.

Link watched the pommel dance around on the floor. It occurred to him that, instead of trying to pick up the sword by what little handle that remained, it was only touching the part of the handle he had cut off. He took a step forward and planted his foot firmly on the pommel, pinning it to the floor. It still tugged, and Link could feel something quite thin trying to pull across his boot. With the contrast of his brown boot underneath it, Link saw a black thread trying to pull across his foot. After giving the cloak one last look, this one of utter antipathy, he raised the sword and cut the air across where the thread should have been.

The cloak froze in the air. Then it fell out of the air and into the basin, where it caught fire. Link stepped up to the edge of the basin and watched the cloak burn out of existence. Even the last remains of the fire simply disappeared, not even leaving ashes behind.

Link collapsed to his knees and dropped both the sword and the shield. His head pounded as hard as his heart, and his body simply refused to answer his desires to move. He felt broken. Rusted. Dare he even think it?

Dead.

His consciousness started slipping away. The last he could make out was a rumble and a ray of orange light protruding from somewhere nearby.