Chapter 51: Depths of Self

…

Link stared at the shocked expression on his face.

Then Janni leaned out from behind the mirror she was holding in front of him. "Enjoying the look on your face?" she asked. She glanced at the mirror and then added, "I don't get to do this; this is fun."

Link's face changed to a glare, and he reached forward to push the mirror aside. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

"When did you expect me to say 'Oh, by the way, the complete monster you've been fighting every night used to be the Sorians' Dreamweaver, so he's essentially an expert on dreams'?" She released the mirror. This allowed to simply pop out of existence, causing Link to swipe at the air and stumble a moment. "I know it's a little cliché, but you never asked what happened to the Dreamweaver until now."

Link glanced at the island. "So what happened?" he asked. "What caused the Dreamweaver to turn on the Sorians?"

"No one really knows," Janni said. The change in her tone caused Link to frown, believing that she was being sincere. "It wasn't a very sudden process; no one knew it was happening until it was too late."

"How did it start?"

"Probably with the nightmares." Then Janni shrugged. "Probably."

"You don't know?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure I had a few nightmares before I wound up in the shield," Janni said. Then she put on a difficult face. "Or maybe that was someone else." She only contemplated the statement for a moment before dismissing it with a shrug. "Either way, when you have a Dreamweaver around, you don't exactly go around talking about your nightmares. It's about the same as admitting that you did something to piss him off. By the time anyone realized that the Dreamweaver was eating people's good dreams, most everyone was sleep-deprived and losing their minds."

Link gave her a confused look. "I don't get it. You guys were afraid of the Dreamweaver before he became The Night?"

"You don't exactly wanna piss off a Dreamweaver, Link, whether he's a nice guy or not. You have to realize that, when a society has a Dreamweaver, they become dependent on him. A Dreamweaver works the nightmares out of people's dreams so that they can get a good night's sleep. If you make him mad, though, the nightmares a Dreamweaver can make will wreck you. Insomnia that can last for a few days, plus all the things that sleep deprivation can do to you. And, quite frankly, there's no real good reason to piss off a Dreamweaver. They don't go into society very much; the art of modifying dreams can take a lot of time. On top of the fact that our Dreamweaver was also managing the waking dream that we're in, not many people even knew his name." She shrugged and added, "Although, really, he kinda forget his name, too."

"Sooo… no one admitted they were having nightmares… does that mean the Dreamweaver just got fed up with everyone?"

Janni shrugged again. "No one really got a straight answer out of him. The Dreamweaver was going insane, too. Probably a side-effect of eating everyone's good dreams."

"In other words… you weren't imprisoned because you made him mad, were you?"

Janni grinned at him. "Sure doesn't seem like it anymore, does it?"

"This is insane…" Link groaned to himself.

"Yeah, that pretty much describes my world."

"So, when you said that the Dreamweaver was fighting with willpower… what? What do you mean?"

"Well, I'd like to think the Dreamweaver was resisting going insane."

"This is…" Link started to say. But, once he thought about it, he realized that he was not sure what to do with this information. The fact that The Night was the Dreamweaver meant that The Night knew much more about dreams than anyone else. It certainly explained why some of his dreams were easily the most horrific nightmares he had ever experienced. It might have also explained how The Night was able to manipulate his crew into sleeping.

Janni watched him stare at the tower for a bit. Then she said, "It's not like anything's changed, Link. It just means that, whatever plan the Dreamweaver had, it already failed."

Link tried to sigh, but it came out as a groan as he rubbed his eyes with a hand. "Yeah, but it doesn't really help, either," he said. "This means I'm trying to steal the Dreamweaver's device. I don't know that it's gonna be so easy anymore."

Janni shrugged and said, "Couldn't be any harder than it would've been before. Like I said, nothing's changed."

Link nodded. "Right. And I still have a job to do. You coming?"

"Oh, I just love when you get to business," Janni said with a sly grin and a tone to match.

…

It felt like it had been a while since Link geared up for the technoworks. He had to remind himself a few times that he had only cleared out the mines three days ago. Still, he experienced a strange sense of unfamiliarity as he picked up the rigging knife (which he considered would be better off with his usual equipment; he would have to remember to grab it when he woke up), a few nuts and bolts, and a short coil of rope. He dismissed the feeling with a shake of the head, which prompted Janni to heckle him a bit all the way to the boat deck.

He sailed the Conductor toward the Sorian area of the island. And he noticed something quite out of place in the area with the stumps and the small outdoor market.

About where the entrance to the technoworks should have been, The Night had placed a building. The base was circular with wooden arches supporting the overhang of a veranda completely encompassing the ground floor. And, much to Link's annoyance as he brought the boat toward the market, a familiar sight stood atop the building: a wooden statue of him with his arms crossed, a smug grin permanently carved into its face.

"Goddesses Above, it knows about the statues…?" Link said once the whine of the Conductor's engine settled, his wearied gaze on the statue lit by the steady thrum of light from the ground.

"Something you'd like to share?" Janni said with a grin as she hung in the air behind the pilot's station.

Link heaved a sigh. "Two years ago," he said as he moved about the stern to prepare for disembarkation, "when I first got shot down, I wound up in a small village on the surface. I was pretty wounded at the time, and the village was having problems with Bulblins, so they had me go with the villagers who couldn't fight into the woods. While I was there, me and a couple of the kids went looking for a missing kid, and we accidentally found a tunnel the Bulblins were using to get behind the village. I went back to the village to warn them, and then the fight started."

"Oh, and let me guess," Janni said. "You heroically charged into battle and hacked all of the vicious Bulblins to pieces,"

"We drove them away," Link said after shoving a sandbag over the transom. "I actually climbed onto a Bullbo and… just kinda ran the Bulblins over. Guess I should be glad The Night didn't put that statue up." Janni snorted, causing Link to halt retrieving the net from the deck so he could turn and ask, "What?"

Janni pointed toward the building. Link twisted to see under the pulsing light of the island that the statue had changed. Instead, it was a massive image of Link gripping for his life the reins of a bucking Bullbo.

Link glanced past the statue at the tower in the distance and hollered in indignation with an exasperated arm flap, "Really?!" Janni burst out laughing. "That's-that's just stupid! What are you, five!?"

"Oh, c'mon, Captain, can't you take a little joke?" Janni said before continuing her laughter. Link rolled his eyes and hauled the net onto the transom.

Then Janni stopped laughing. "Uh, Link? Do statues on the surface move?" she asked with concern in her voice.

Link was about to shove the net over the transom. Instead, he glanced toward the statue as he asked, "What are yo—" Br-r-rump br-r-rump br-R-RUMP… "Oh, shit." Link quickly shoved the net off the transom. However, instead of climbing it, he vaulted over the transom and simply dropped to the ground. He landed softly, as if he was simply returning from his usual, feather-augmented jumps.

BR-R-RUMP BR-R-RUMP! He drove himself forward just a few steps before the Conductor was demolished. Ka-WHAHMB-kkkk! Link dropped to the ground in response to the sound. Gr-r-r-r-r-WHAM! He looked toward the sound of the second impact. Pieces of the Conductor's hull were scattered across the ground. Kkkkkk… kh-kkkkkh… Further away, among the Sorian trees (some of which had been smashed aside; those that barely escaped the damage instead sported some of the Conductor's rigging, including the sail), the wooden Bullbo was lying on its back, caught in between some of the trees where it could not roll over.

Link rested his hands on his knees and heaved a large sigh. "Great, now I've gotta fix the Conductor's technoworks again…" he said.

"I think you should get moving before Nester has to fix you," Janni said as she floated down next to him.

Link glanced up to see the Bullbo roll onto its side. "Oh, come on…" he whined.

Link started at a jog into the stalls, thinking that he might be able to find a hiding place should the Bullbo make it to its feet. He quickly discarded the idea when he realized that, on top of The Night knowing where would have been hiding, the Bullbo could easily smash each stall and table to pieces with a few well-aimed charges. He looked back just as the wooden Bullbo rolled onto its short feet. Link thought he might try shooting a flare at it, but, even assuming that he could set the wooden statue on fire, he was sure he would then be chased by a flaming wooden Bullbo before the fire would have any affect. So, once his line of sight on the new building was clear, he dashed straight toward it.

The Bullbo's charge had left a clear path for him. Once he was close enough, Link slowed down so he could safely jump onto the building's veranda. The walls were made of brick, so they would withstand the Bullbo smashing into it. The problem was the double doors. They were solid wood with brass handles.

And they had been chained shut with a padlock.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding…" Link sighed as he glanced back toward the Bullbo. Br-r-rump br-r-rump… The Bullbo was charging for him, pulverizing the remains of the market. Link did not have the time; the Bullbo would be on top of him before he could get the doors open, even if he tried to smash them. Link gave the brick wall nearby a look.

Then he turned toward the Bullbo and raised the Dreamweaver's Shield. Janni, floating nearby, gave him a curious look. "You're not serious," she told him.

"The hell I am…" Link growled as he braced himself behind the shield.

Br-r-rump br-r-rump br-R-RUMP… There was little more than a second for Link to react. However, that was all Link needed.

Then Link turned and dashed to one side. It was not a clear-cut plan; he had forgotten about the arches holding the roof up and clipped one arm against the support. This caused him to twist as his momentum carried him the rest of the way to safety.

WHAMB-KKK! The Bullbo could not turn nor did it even have the time to acknowledge that Link had moved. It tore the front of veranda apart. Once its legs hit the brick wall, however, the brick wall held fast. Instead, the Bullbo's legs and underbelly were partially sheared off before the Bullbo, thrust upward by the quickly-building pile of debris, sailed over the top of the building and slammed onto its back on the opposite side. As Link was getting up, his arm perfectly fine, he watched the Bullbo roll sideways and onto the hole that had once been its forelegs. He had to step further away from the building to see that, due to the way its body had been broken, its hind legs were prevented from touching the ground by some of the boards on its belly being bent from impact. "Wannngh!" the massive Bullbo growled as it kicked its legs. "Wangh!"

Link let out a breath and said, "I'm glad that worked out…"

"I'm not; I wanted to see you impaled," Janni said, her disappointment prevalent in her voice. Link found her hovering over his left shoulder and gave her an annoyed look. She shrugged in response. "What? It would've been one more death checked off the list. You've already been squashed flat."

"Don't remind me," Link replied as he quickly walked back to the building. The Bullbo had collapsed part of the veranda over the doorway, and the remains of its forelegs were pressed against the wreckage. Fortunately, because Link was small enough, he slipped behind the veranda's timbers. Janni switched to her fairy form to follow, her strange glow providing some light to Link's path.

Link found the doors. The chain had held against the wooden Bullbo smashing into it. However, when Janni came close enough, Link discovered that one of the doors had not fared as well. A beam had busted the door's middle out, leaving the handle connected to just a narrow board still jammed in the doorframe. Link slipped closer to the door and pulled the latch free of the frame. He let it fall away, although he nearly had the piece swing up and jab his leg. He had forgotten about the chain, but he unconsciously saved himself from injury by having his foot against the bottom of the board. His way was still blocked by a section of the door, but Link pushed on it to find that the panel was only attached by a few splinters. He shoved the door aside with a crunch and slipped into the building.

If not for the broken door, the interior would have looked quite nice. Link found himself in a hallway decorated with burgundy carpet, wood-panel walls with framed pictures, and a marble ceiling sporting richly-decorated gold lamps. He spotted a sign on one wall not too far from the entrance.

"'Museum of… Link'?" he asked. He glanced at Janni. "I don't get it."

"This one is 'self' themed, remember?" Janni said.

"Self," Link repeated. "As in… not The Night's self, but the self of whoever's inside?"

"That's right."

Link shook his head. "That doesn't make any sense, though. If this is based on whoever comes in… what 'self' would've been here before me?"

"If I recall right, this spot used to be special in the dream. In addition to being connected to the technoworks, the Dreamweaver used to sort of 'rent' it to people using the living dream. The Dreamweaver would specifically design this space so that people could reflect on their memories, sometimes even interact with themselves to… I don't know, I guess kinda get a perspective on what they've done with their lives."

"So, naturally, The Night twisted it," Link concluded.

"I think the Sorians tried falling back to this spot whenever they were at their limits. Or at least, they thought they were. No one's been in here since no one but myself and The Night exists in these dreams. But, every now and then, The Night would bring someone's memories in and redecorate. You know, in that twisted way it usually does."

"And the Sorians buried it when they realized it wasn't working," Link said.

"Actually, it was the Hylians that did that," Janni corrected. "They found it while they were clearing the trees. When they realized that it was The Night, just like the library, they laid stone over this entrance. This place hasn't seen much in the last few decades; it's kinda hard to spruce up when no one can remember who they are."

"Yeah, I can imagine…" Link said as he started forward. As he passed one of the frames, he glanced at it.

Then he stopped, causing Janni to fly into his hat. "Hey!"

"What the…?" Link started as he reached up to grab his hat.

Janni bounded over his head to look him in the face. "What was that all about?" she asked in a huff.

Link straightened his hat and then indicated the picture. "I was looking at that."

Janni turned to see what looked like a giant insect's head staring back. It was a beetle with a carapace of dented and scuffed iron and jaws so large that they seemed to hug whoever had taken the picture. "Whoa… what is that thing? It looks beautiful!"

Link released an exhausted sigh. "It's a giant bug that attacked me and Cale in the Lost Woods on the surface. The picture doesn't do it justice; that thing is about the size of a galleon."

"You mean you actually met this thing?" Janni asked.

"Met. And, well… killed."

"You—… you actually killed something that big?" Janni hollered in surprise.

"We were… well, Cale fell into a crypt, and I had to go in after him. When we got back out, that thing chased Luggard, our train engineer friend, inside. We were just trying to get back to the train, and I tried to cut its feet up so it couldn't move. It knocked me over with one of its wings, but it left its belly exposed, too, so I went and stabbed into it while I had the chance. I-I didn't mean to kill it; I was just trying to wound it and buy us some time to get back to the train."

"No wonder you don't mind dancing with the big boys," Janni said with an undertone of awe. She bounded to a picture on the other side of the hallway. "What about this one?"

Link stepped over to examine the picture. He grimaced at the sight of the sphere-shaped glass torso, boxy arms, and a lightbulb for a head protruding from a floor with one hand held high in a position to smash the viewer. "That's… that's Drumstick," he confessed.

Janni turned back to him and delivered a flat, "What."

Link pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's one of Sello's batshit contraptions. He lost it in the volcano he lived in, and it showed up when we were trying to escape through the top. I don't know how, but he used a technoworks block to bring it to life."

"You mean the drunk that got farted out of The Night built that?!" Janni asked with a voice full of glee.

"Yeah… That day sucked." He glanced down the hall, taking in the rest of the pictures that were close enough to see. "Are all of these pictures the same? There's the huge Bari I fought in the Ocean Realm… and that looks like the giant Malgyorg from the Sand Realm. I don't get it."

"What, you think these aren't connected to you?" Janni asked. "These are all the large creatures you've defeated."

"Yeah, but… why? I mean, I could see if The Night was gonna make them come out of the pictures and attack me, but they look like just regular pictures."

"That might've been true in a different part of the dream, but it doesn't look like it here," Janni said as they started down the hallway. "Maybe it's trying to tell you that, even though you've killed these things, you're not gonna stop The Night."

Link shrugged. "I don't know, I think it's having the opposite effect. Just looking at these… at all the crap I've been through… it seems more like it's encouraging me."

"Yeah, maybe encouraging you into doing something stupid…"

Almost at the end of the hall, Link stopped when one picture caught his eye. He stared wide-eyed when he recognized the skeleton creature from the library's technoworks, that same, mangled, canine muzzle that had made him first realize what kind of danger he was in.

He leaned forward when he realized that there was a nameplate attached to the bottom of the frame. "'Slayer Spirit'," he read.

"This one has a name, too," Janni said from the opposite side. "'Illusomorph', I think."

Link turned to see her looking at a picture of water formed into arches, one of which sported an ugly, red eye. "Yeah, I remember that, too," Link said. He moved to the next one. The best he could see was a round, black shadow against dark clouds, making it difficult to judge where the creature's body should've been. "'Narka'."

"Hey, Link? Look at this." Link turned back around to find Janni.

He spotted her hovering next to a hole in the wall. It was not a large hole, probably about the size of his fist. As he came closer, he saw that there were scratches on the wall. A smaller hole sat above the first one. Link glanced down the hallway and gauged the smaller hole to be about where a nail had to hang in order to mount a picture. "What is this?" Link asked. "Someone stole a picture?"

"Not just any picture," Janni said. "If we're following the theme that these pictures here are the creatures you fought in the dream, that would make the missing picture the creature at the bottom of this technoworks."

Link indicated the spot with a hand and asked, "Why steal it, though? Why not just hide it so I don't know what it'll be?"

"C'mon, Link. The Night, remember?" Link was about to express concession of the point.

Karssssssshk!

Then he immediately whipped toward the source of glass breaking, left hand on his sword. However, other than a doorway at the end of the hall, nothing caught his eye. "Think our thief is still here?" he asked.

"If he is, he isn't very subtle about it," Janni pointed out.

Link's eyes darted in her direction. "Trap?" he asked as he pulled the sword out.

"When is it not?" Janni said.

Link stepped toward the door carefully, his ears waiting for noise other than his own breathing and Janni's wings jingling. He held the shield up to intercept anything he might not see. Once he was close enough, he saw a panel on the nearby wall with an arrow pointing at the room, indicating the "Reflection Room". Link paused just in front of the doorway, keenly aware that walking into a dark place was not something he was prepared to do. He replaced the Sorian sword and reached around his back for his flare gun. After popping open the breach to check if he had already loaded a flare into it, which he had, he used his thigh to slap the breach shut and took aim around the bottom corner of the shield.

FZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Link had braced himself for the sound. ZZZZZZ—Thunk—ZZZZZ! He was puzzled by the sound of the flare hitting something not far into the room. Then the flare sparked to life, casting blue light into the room.

About a dozen of them. Mirrors inside, appearing to be at least as tall as the room, reflected the flare that had been otherwise knocked aside. Link set foot inside to see that there were more mirrors against the wall on either side of the door. At the same time, a blue-cast image of him also appeared in those mirrors, each one showing Link a confused look as he glanced at each face.

Then, to one Link, he showed a disappointed half-grin. "'Reflection Room'," he said. "I get it."

"Give him a break," Janni said as her black-green light bounced into the room. "It's not his best material."

Link scraped a boot against the floor. "Feels like concrete."

"So?" Janni asked.

Link shrugged. "I don't know. It's nice to have a normal floor for once?" He glanced around. "See anything broken?"

"I probably would if this stupid room wasn't messing with my head."

Link replaced his flare gun and pulled out the Sorian sword again. "Let me know if you do."

He strode around trying to find a gap between the mirrors. It was quite difficult; every time he thought he saw an opening, he would have to stop in his tracks before he smacked into a mirror. Once, twice, he saw his reflection a lot smaller and approached it to find what he was looking for. It was not long before he was surrounded by his reflection and quite unable to navigate. He could not see the door anymore, and he had to prepare another flare when he lost sight and the reflection of the first one. This forced him to replace his sword once more and pull out his flare gun. He dropped the spent shell and loaded another.

Then his whole body shivered upon realizing that something was not right. He looked to his left, aware of something in his peripheral vision.

There was no mirror there. Instead, Link was looking into the black eyes of some large, red-furred rodent that stood at about the same height as him. And its eyes suddenly gave off a yellow glow.

"Whoa!" Link hollered as he spun and dove out of the way. He felt heat graze his shins. KARSH-KARSH! A pair of mirrors broke nearby, causing Link to withdraw his legs so the shards of glass did not slice into his trousers.

Then he sprang back to his feet. He leaned around the mirror with the flare gun raised. The rodent's head came back into view, looking as if it had ducked out of the way as well. Its hand was also raised, but Link was not was not paying attention to whether it was holding anything or not. He just fired at the creature's face.

FZZZZZZZZZZZ! "GYAAAAH!" The creature gave a human-like scream, the echoes of which sent a chill up Link's spine. He fumbled trying to put the flare gun away. But, as he went for his sword, he watched the creature writhe on the ground, clawing at its empty eye socket. The flare continued to hiss until—

Pah! The pop of green light in its face caused the creature to flatten itself against the floor. For a while, Link just stood and looked at its unmoving form.

"Uh, Link?" Janni spoke up. "I… I think you killed it."

"Yeah…" Link croaked with acid in his gorge. He stepped forward as if to be sure, his boots giving a noticeable crunch. The green flare continued to hiss where it had burst open in the creature's eye, showing a fist-sized cavity of bone and tissue blackened by fire. Link had to back away. "What was it?"

"Looks like a Goriya," Janni said. "Like a giant rat, but… nasty."

"I think I'm gonna be sick…" Link said as he looked away. He glanced left toward the back of the space where the creature had been hiding. He saw a doorway to what looked to be a staircase leading down. His eyes wandered to his feet, and he raised one foot to see that he was stepping on broken shards of glass. He was certain that those shards did not come from the mirrors the Goriya had blasted, so he said, "I think our thief went this way."

"Well, it does seem to be a hideaway for rats…"