Chapter 27: Depths of Uncertainty

…

"Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Delighted… but not surprised."

Link rose upon hearing Janni talk and turned to find her rummaging through Nester's desk. "You know," he said before pausing to swing his legs out over the floor. He stood and rolled his neck to help exercise some of his soreness. "After two years, I don't think my crew's very surprised, either."

"It's just as well," Janni said, sounding bored as she started throwing folders out of one drawer. "The shield will only bring one person here. And it's locked to you."

Link paused in front of the bed his gear lay upon and looked at the sleeping shield. Then he looked at Janni. "How do I get it to work on someone else?" he asked.

"It's never happened before, but I suspect two methods," Janni replied. "One: you get away from this island."

"And the other?" Link asked as he started putting his gear on.

"You die."

It had seemed like an appropriate question, but Link still felt that he should have seen that option coming. He shook his head and said, "So I'm it, then. The only one who can do something."

"For the time being." Janni shut the drawer and turned to him. "So. How do you think you'll die this time? Caught in a noose? Skewered on a pit full of spikes? Do you think being decapitated disqualifies you for being completely dismembered?"

"I don't know what the Night plans this time," he said as he pulled the Sorian white sword over his head. "But I'm not gonna get taken by surprise again. Not if I can help it."

"I believe you said something similar last night. Remember how well that went?"

"Last night, I didn't know what was gonna happen," Link said. He put his arm through the Dreamweaver's shield and tugged on the strap.

"You still don't know what's gonna happen," Janni pointed out.

"That's why I'm gonna raid the ship's stores," Link said as he walked past her at a brisk pace.

"Whoa, wait a sec!" Janni hollered, jumping into the air so she could fly to catch him. She chased him down the starboard stairs and came to a halt barely past the last step, still hovering. "How could you possibly know what the Night is gonna do next? I don't think even it knows what it's gonna do next!"

"I don't know," Link admitted as he shouldered a coil of rope. Then he stepped over to the storage cabinet in the middle of the orlop and opened one side. Link could already see needing a metal stake to anchor the rope down, but he wondered what else he could take from the cabinet. A hammer, definitely. He also grabbed a sheathed rigging knife and checked the blade. Serrated, which meant it would be good for sawing through rope quickly. He replaced the knife and clipped the sheath to his belt. He spotted a small bin filled with nuts, grabbed a handful, and stuffed them into one trouser pocket. "That oughta do," he told himself as he closed the cabinet.

"Huh," Janni grunted, crossing her arms. "Somehow, I expected you to pull something more impressive out of there."

"It's just a giant toolbox," Link said as he started on his way to the main deck. "We keep tools and spare parts in it. And, because we're in a dream right now, I don't have to worry about losing them."

"You are unusually positive for someone who's been killed twice," Janni commented as she floated along in his wake.

"I have to be," Link said. "My crew is already starting to act up."

"What, that one guy beating the other to a pulp? You think that was bad? That was nothing! One guy's paranoia gets the best of him, and you think it's an invitation to run straight into the Night's mouth again?"

Link paused at the last step to the main deck and turned to her. "No one messes with my crew," he told her as he shot her a hard glare.

Janni, unruffled, crossed her arms as she hovered before him. "The Night knows that," she said. "It's the perfect whistle to call you with. It doesn't have to lie awake in daylight wondering if you'll come the next night; it'll just snap its fingers, raid your crew's heads, and convince them that they're not making it home alive." She snapped her fingers. "Come, boy!"

"You can't honestly tell me it's going through the trouble of tormenting my crew just to get to me," Link said.

"At first? Probably not. And, to tell you the truth, I doubt if it thinks you're a threat now. You so easily fall into its traps that it probably won't even try."

"Well, too bad," Link said. He turned and stepped onto the deck. "I'm gonna make it."

He started walking, and Janni moved swiftly to catch him. "What, do you think you have some kinda rivalry with it?" Janni asked as she made to hover high on his left side. "Believe me, Link, it doesn't care about you."

"It seemed to care enough when I hurt it," Link pointed out.

"So, yes, by all means, you should go see if you can hurt it again," Janni replied, voice oozing dry intonation. "Look, Link, you don't even know how much damage you did to it. For all you know, you just lopped off its big toe."

"Good," Link answered as he walked down the gangplank. "If I take a few more, it might fall over."

Janni allowed herself to drift out of Link's peripheral vision and gave him a half-smile. "Wow. You are really determined to keep this going, aren't you?"

"You haven't met other people like that?" Link asked.

"One."

Link, preparing to launch himself into a run, stopped and turned to face her again. "Who?" he asked.

"My dad," Janni replied, her eyes focused on the ground to one side. Link quickly saw that he had struck a nerve, Janni's face a picture of depression she did not hide behind a smile. "When he started something, it was like… it was a compulsion. It occupied him for almost days on end. He never let anything go. Not even me."

Link glanced down at the Dreamweaver's Shield. "Did he ever find out where you went?" he ventured to ask.

"Yeah, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it," Janni said. "By then, the Dreamweaver was gone."

"Maybe," Link said. "But I'm sure he didn't give up." He glanced over his shoulder at the settlement. "Look, I'm going in tonight. Are you coming along or what?"

She gave him a flat look. "Boy, do you know how to end a conversation…"

…

Link did not want to share all of his thoughts with Janni. However, he wondered how permanent the Obeetans' transformation was. He considered the thought that the Obeetans' lack of physical features was another illusion of the Night. Naturally, the Night would have had years to figure out how to remove a person's individuality, but it could not possibly be maintained if the Night was defeated. It might require the Obeetans to readjust to life afterwards, but he ventured on with the new idea that a defeated, maybe even a dead Night would bring the Obeetans back to themselves.

Including Janni's father, wherever the man was.

Janni floated behind Link out in the open this time as he jumped from roof to roof across the settlement. He realized that, with as much time as it took for him to reach the river, he might have to use the Conductor to reach the mines.

Just as before, Link followed the screaming until he found the open well. As he dropped down to the street, he asked Janni, "Don't they ever stop doing that?"

"There was a reason they covered up anything the Night had gotten into," Janni replied. As Link stopped to rest against the open well, she drifted forward and sat on the edge nearby. "I wouldn't criticize; it's probably the only thing that they can react to anymore."

"Maybe not," Link said, dropping the rope on the ground. "Two days ago, we found another Obeetan that was willing to talk with us. I think it might've been one of the Obeetans I ran into when I was chasing you."

"I know, Link. You found out about the rations and sent your crew."

Link cast her an annoyed look before busying himself with tying one end of the rope to the stake. "They respond to other things. You just need to nudge them a bit."

"So you let one of them wake up for reality," Janni said in a mocking tone. "You do realize that with wakefulness comes clear thought, right?" When Link did not respond, she continued, "If that woman didn't return back to the daily drone like the other Obeetans, she might drive herself nuts realizing her family's missing. Just like Cale said."

Link stared at the stake for a moment. He had to admit that she was right. Just what kind of harm would it do to an Obeetan to just wake them up like that? If Janni was right about how the inhabitants behaved before becoming Obeetans (and there was not much reason to doubt, given her delight at telling awful truths), "Logan" might have ended up just like Maroon.

He let out a sigh and told her, "I'm only doing what I can. I wanna get my crew out of here."

"Everything for your crew, huh?"

Link glared at her. "You have a problem with that?"

"A problem? No." Her grin became sinister. "I just can't wait to see how 'noble' you look after you've caused a few more people to remember where they are."

Link's jaw dropped open, his whole body flooding with cold. For a moment, he was so stunned by the revelation that he had forgotten what he was doing. He looked down at the stake. Then a nearby Obeetan screamed, and he almost jumped free of his skin.

However, when he turned to look at the Obeetan, he realized that the street was empty.

"So ignorance must be a freedom to you," Janni said. Link spun around to find her still sitting on the well's edge. Her smile had returned to its usual delight as she told him, "I bet it isn't easy on you. Knowing that your actions, one way or another, could lead another Obeetan to suicide?" She slid off the well and stepped closer so that their faces almost touched. "Oh, I won't make this so hard for you, Link. For all your worrying about these people, they simply don't have it in them to return to a normal life. Whatever remains of them are just fragments of memory that won't die away no matter what. No body, no soul… no hope. I doubt if you'll ever believe me, but these people have been gone for a long time. So don't worry if a few of them go missing every now and then. In fact, a few hundred disappearing wouldn't be bad." She carefully slipped the stake from Link's frozen hands.

Link then watched her carefully place the stake in the brick road. Specifically, she overlooked the hole made by the first stake they had driven into the road and, instead, pressed the stake through the solid brick until half of it, including only part of the rope, was protruding. When she stood back up, he glared at her, his mind back into processing things. "You are cruel," he told her. "Pointlessly cruel."

"Maybe," Janni told him, her grin softening. "But you can't think that one dead Obeetan is one more soul that could have been saved from oblivion. That's just not how things work here. They're already gone, Link. It'd be easier to just let them finish." She indicated the empty surroundings. "This is what Obeeta should've looked like years ago. Deserted."

Link then watched as the Obeetans faded back into existence one by one. He turned to Janni and asked, "Are you saying that I should make them remember?"

"I'm saying that it doesn't matter," Janni said. "I'm also saying that you need to know that it doesn't matter."

Link picked the rope up from the ground. "I thought you liked watching me struggle with this," he told her in a bitter tone.

"Oh, it was fun while it lasted," Janni said, her voice taking a dismissive tone. "But I figure you're just gonna freeze what you're doing if you think you're making others suffer. Where's the fun then?"

Link gave a frustrated sigh; he was not sure how much of Janni's inconsistency he could take. First, she had warned him away from the Night. Then she had wanted him to go straight to the Night. She seemed to shift back and forth so much that Link had to remind himself that Janni must have been at least half as insane as the Obeetans. This thing about the Obeetans had to have been just another "Janni moment". "I'm not sure whether I should take you seriously or not?" he told her as he stepped up to the edge of the well again.

"I wouldn't."

Link looked into the well. Then he huffed in mild intrigue. "It's light in there again."

"The Night does not disappoint," Janni remarked as she watched Link heave the coils of rope into the well. "I can't wait to see where this one goes."

Link peered into the well once again as he slid part of the rope across his palms. All he could see was the color blue. He wondered if the Night was going for another drowning experience, which made him glad that he brought the rope. However, the other end of the rope looked to have descended too far to show where the surface should be. He tested his grip on the rope. He regretted that he only had a pair of fingerless gloves, as a pair of whole gloves would be more protection for his hands.

He climbed into the well with the rope wrapped around his left forearm in case he slipped. Then he started down, careful to slide his hands along the rope in case he needed to grab in an emergency. Almost a decade of climbing lines had trained him to hold his own body weight on a rope, but, once he was clear of the well and into the cavern, he started to sway. He froze at first, caught unprepared by the movement of a rope unsecured at one end. He tried to think of it as a strong wind and descended even slower than before.

"Question," Janni said as she descended to eye-level with Link, having changed to her fairy form once more. "Being on an airship, do people usually tell you not to look down?"

"Well," Link grunted, "when I was an airman… some of my shipmates… whew… would dangle me over the edge… so I had to look down. It… kinda made me… hate looking. Now… it's no big deal."

"Good. 'Cause I think you should look down."

It had not escaped Link's attention that he was descending from a rope hanging in the middle of an empty sky on all sides. One glance up showed that the hole where the well should have been had disappeared.

Looking down, he discovered that the air was just as empty, if there was any land or ocean at all. The sky was the only thing that existed beneath his feet, as if the surface had never been there to begin with. He looked into an endless blue, not the dark shimmer of an ocean or the earthen tones of the surface world. He double-checked the sky above to confirm the sun holding a few degrees past noon.

He then looked back down at Janni. "Isn't this a little obvious?" he asked.

"Wouldn't have been if you'd just jumped in like last time," Janni pointed out. "Though, that just begs the question of what you would've fallen onto to finish you off. The Night's brilliant, but I'm not sure it thought this one through."

Link looked down again. He could see that, although the rope was being blown by the wind, part of the rope looked like it was held up on something. "Maybe not," he told Janni. "Look at the rope. There's something down there."

Janni's response was a vague hum, so Link ignored it. Instead, he began to descend again, this time with a little more energy. This caused the rope beneath him to whip around a little more, and Link then paused to watch part of the rope bump against something not too far below. He decided not to question it and continued at an easy pace just in case the Night had another trap in store for him. As he came closer, the rope started to rest on a surface that, even if it was not directly beneath him, was at least nearby. Finally, once he was almost on top of the angle in the rope, he used the toe of one boot to prod around. The chances turned out to be quite good that, had he dropped from the rope, he would have missed whatever this surface was. However, he found that it was close enough that he could let the wind swing him on the rope a little more until he could plant his toes on it. He judged the surface to be just barely wider than his shoulders and stretched himself a little more along one side of the odd angle in the rope until he could put both feet on the surface. He was equally as careful to slowly place the rest of his weight on the invisible platform in case the Night decided that it needed to fall from underneath him.

He gave the ground a grin before looking up at Janni, one hand still around the rope. "Well," he said, "it feels solid."

"Great," Janni replied in a flat voice. "You're still in the middle of an endless sky."

Link's eyes passed at-level across the sky. That was when he finally spotted a structure that looked to be in walking distance. The whole building looked like a bun. The top half was a bulb of gold, twisted and ending at a single point. The middle section, from Link's distance, looked like it could be a wall of stones shaped to follow the bulb's circular form. Dark slots in the side at regular intervals hinted at the presence of windows. Directly underneath that was a surprise: spinning propeller blades larger than the Island Symphony, maybe larger than any ship ever built by the Hylians. The flash as they swung by told Link they were made of metal. How anyone could make metal propellers so big was a mystery, although Link was already telling himself that he was still in a dream. They spun with vigor, and he hated to think of what might happen to anything that just happened to fall in the way. Underneath that, below a support ring of similar stone to the middle section, were the familiar, jagged spires of earth common to the underside of any real island in the sky.

Link switched hands so that he could point with his left index finger. "Endless, but not empty," he told Janni. He glanced up along the rope. "I don't think I was spinning around, so I think that could be the direction of the technoworks."

"Maybe," Janni agreed. "But, this being the Night's realm, you're guaranteed that it isn't a straight path."

"I know," Link replied. "I need a way to check for gaps." He looked up at the rope again. Then he looked past his feet at the length dangling over the edge. It was not much; most of the rope's length had gone to getting him down safely. However, he decided that it would be enough for what he was planning and pulled out the rigging knife. "I've got an idea."

"Yeah, I saw this coming before you said anything."

"Would you mind pulling the other end out, then?" Link asked, although with only a half-hearted hope that she might do it.

"I'm here to watch, not help."

Link gave a shrug and tugged a little on the rope. "Worth a shot," he commented before using the knife's serrated edge to cut the rope off just above his head. The upper portion swung loose, and the wind pushed it away from him. Link watched it dangle from well beyond his grasp with disappointment on his face. "Probably won't be going back that way anyway."

Janni watched in silence as Link pulled the other end up and began to work the rope. First, he found a couple of the larger, heavier nuts in his pocket and slid them onto one end. He fixed them to the end as close as he could by tying two overhand knots on either side of the bolts. Then he wound the other end around his left forearm and secured it with a clove hitch, one that he hoped he could pull apart quickly should he need to drop the rope. He dangled the end with the nuts to make sure that they could not slide past his knots. Then he used an underhand swing to toss that end forward. They landed on a solid platform, and Link slid his feet toward the other end just in case there happened to be a gap the rope was not showing him.

It was a slow progression due to Link's caution, but he picked up the pace a little better once he had his method figured out. Throw the rope, move, throw, move—even when the rope did not hit the walkway, it showed him an edge that he could slowly approach until he could take up the rope again and find more path. Amazingly enough, the Night had neglected to put any gaps in the path. Then again, Link also noted that the path did not get any wider as he continued on. One bad step could lead him to slip and fall at any moment. And, true to Janni's word, this invisible road was not straight. Link had expected as much, considering that the actual path formed by the river wound through four bends before the fifth granted access to the cave where he was sure the technoworks would be. He did not think that the path he followed perfectly mirrored the river's direction, but it certainly felt to him that he was winding back and forth. Unfortunately, after some time, his only reference was the large building, as the rest of his rope was either too far away to see or the Night had taken it away (a thought that worried him a little).

When he finally reached a rock slab that bridged the gap between the invisible path and the building, Link stopped short of stepping onto it. He glanced up at Janni and said, "I guess now we find out if this is real or not."

"You think, that after making a path you can't see, it'll make a flying palace that you'll just fall through?" Janni asked.

"I got killed by a statue the first time I came here," Link pointed out.

"Oh, I know you can't trust your eyes here," Janni said. "I just thought you'd like to know how paranoid you sound."

Link picked up his weighted rope and let its end fall onto the stone. Link then gave Janni a smug grin upon hearing the nuts clink against solid rock.

Janni responded with an insincere laugh. "I don't know what that smile's for," she told him. "This just proves you're paranoid."

"Yeah, but not stupid."

"What a brilliant comeback," Janni replied in a flat tone as Link took a single step onto the visible ground. "Are you gonna toss that thing around inside to make sure you don't fall through the floor, too?"

Link looked down at the rope. He knew he probably should do that just in case the Night decided to pull the floor out from under him. But, at the same time, he did not want to have Janni calling him paranoid every five minutes. He knew it was childish to let her bother him like that, but then, she was being just as immature. Link could not afford to have the Night catch him off-guard, especially now that his crew showed signs of succumbing to the Night's actions.

He started walking as he placed a hand on the clove hitch. He was still in conflict with the idea of taking the rope off, so he crossed the single slab of rock to a pair of bronze doors without having made up his mind. He immediately froze in front of the doors. Both doors were about the size of a full-grown Dinolfos. He could tell this because each door bore a relief of a Dinolfos, the left one holding a shortsword with a sharp bend in the middle of the blade and the other a hatchet and a kite-shaped shield. Link was amazed at the detail, so fine that each scale looked like it could be popped off. Their heads protruded enough that their mouths bore full sets of teeth that seemed sharp enough to bite a limb off. The hands holding their weapons had been molded into position to serve as door handles.

Link felt a shiver scramble up his spine and took a step back. "What do you think, Janni?" he asked. "Think the Night will attack me with something made of metal again?"

"After going through this much trouble? Yeah, I think you're about to be attacked by Dinolmos now."

Link took another step back. "'Dinolmos'?"

"Hey," she defended with a giggle, "you gotta name them something so you can keep track of them." Link turned his head to argue with her.

Then he spotted movement in the corner of his eye. He jumped backward to avoid a flash of orange metal flying through the air. The 'Dinolmos' with the bent sword had taken a swing at him. Link held his shield up in defense as he then watched the sword-bearing Dinolmos step out of the relief. Link released the rope in his left hand in a rush to grab his sword.

The other Dinolmos actually leapt from its door and swung sideways at Link. Link barely had any time to shift his shield, and, even though he probably saved his arm from being sliced open, the Dinolmos was still a living statue with a heavy amount of metal behind its swing. The attack knocked Link off-balance, forcing him to stumble sideways in attempt to recover.

He ran out of path before he could.

Link felt the cold, hard pang of realization the moment he felt his left boot miss the stone walkway. He let out a frightened scream as he fell backward over the edge.

Then he had the sensation of swinging just a split-second before his body smashed into something hard. His head spun from the blow. Something had clamped down hard on his left forearm, and he could tell that all his body weight was in that thing's grasp. At first, Link thought that one of the Dinolmos had caught him so their opportunity to kill and maim him would not be wasted. The moment Link's head cleared, he looked down onto the propellers holding the palace in the sky. Then he looked up to see if the Dinolmos would pull him up.

He saw the rope clamped tight onto his arm.

One Dinolmos glanced over the side to watch what was sure to have been an amazing display of carnage. Instead, it clapped its happy jaw shut and tilted its head upon realizing that Link was still hanging there. Link quickly latched his other hand onto the rope, keenly aware that the only thing stopping him from falling to another messy death was the Dinolmos standing on the other end of his rope. He pulled himself up hand over hand as fast as he could. The Dinolmos had to change the angle of its head in order to realize that it was standing on Link's rope. By the time it thought to lift its foot (more out of stupidity than actually allowing Link to fall), Link had clambered to the edge of the walkway and placed one elbow on the surface to hold himself up. Link then continued his upward climb by grabbing the Dinolmos' scrawny foot. The Dinolmos almost crushed Link's hand when it stomped its foot down to regain its balance, and Link nearly slipped back over the edge. The Dinolmos tried to shove Link over with its opposite foot. However, Link already had a leg up and rolled onto the Dinolmos' foot, forcing it onto the ground again. The Dinolmos hollered as its balance wavered again.

Link was on his back when the other Dinolmos stepped beside the first one, hatchet held across its chest as it judged for a strike. At the same time the Dinolmos aimed the strike at Link's chest, Link raised his shield over his chest. The hatchet glanced off the shield and chipped a piece out of the other Dinolmos' knee. The injured Dinolmos reeled and smacked its companion in the head, causing it to stumble away. Link pressed hard into the Dinolmos' feet as the Dinolmos toppled forward. He felt its legs come close to crushing his shield into his chest before its feet slipped out from under Link. Link quickly rolled back to look over the edge, careful not to slip. The Dinolmos had enough air to tumble once before—PAINNNNNG!—its bronze body hit the propeller below. Pieces flew off the Dinolmos, some being sent back into the air only to ring off the propeller again.

Link quickly rolled onto his back and scrambled to his feet. He tugged the clove hitch until it loosened, allowing him to throw off the rope. Then, once he located the Dinolmos as it started to recover from the blow to the head, he reached behind his back and pulled the white sword. The Dinolmos turned to look at him.

Link rang it in the face with an upswing, forcing it to throw its head back. This blow, it recovered from much more quickly. However, it could not get its shield up in time to deflect Link's horizontal backswing across its face. The Dinolmos stumbled into the swing and then attempted to get Link as it spun back on him with its own horizontal swing. Link could see the swing coming and leaned on his heels to let the hatchet's head breeze by. Then he raised his shield to intercept the Dinolmos attempting to bash him with its own shield on the follow-through. Their shields struck, and Link held his ground since he was not in motion like the Dinolmos. Link shoved his shield into the Dinolmos' shield, and the Dinolmos deflected Link to its left while it regained its footing. Link was lucky it decided to deflect him to its left, or else he would not have been able to press a solid thrust into the Dinolmos' narrow chest. As beautiful as the detailing on the statue had been, it came with a price: the groove between the Dinolmos' scantily sculpted pectorals prevented Link's white sword from simply glancing aside. The high hit, especially with Link's augmented strength backing up his meager weight, thrust the Dinolmos backward into a tumble. Unfortunately for the Dinolmos, Link had already driven it to the edge of the platform. The Dinolmos fell over with a high-pitched scream until—PAINNNNNNG! Pink pink pink! Pink!

Link waited for a moment. Then he let out a sigh. "Geez…" he breathed to himself as he replaced his sword.

"Wow," Janni commented in a dry tone. "I kinda expected those two to last a little longer than that. Not that I really thought they would win."

"You trying to make me feel better?" Link asked.

"I seriously didn't think that you'd have a problem with that fight," Janni said, her tone sounding genuine to Link's ears. "Sure, I was waiting for the mess when they ambushed you, but since that failed, well… yeah, you were gonna win that one."

Link allowed a small grin and said, "Be careful, Janni. Any more of this, and you just might start believing in me."

"Oh, what blasphemy," Janni replied in a mocking tone, although with a small chuckle afterward.