Chapter 24: Aloft

"I promise." His mouth was dry, and his voice threatened to crack. It felt as if he'd been talking non-stop since he awoke. "It'll be all right. I'll be right here with everyone – up there, where you can all see me." Link extended an arm, pointing above the heads of the crowd to a low stone building atop the hill, one of the very few in this region of the city. Other than a handful of guardians, he was on his own: everyone well-known enough to be recognisable had been spread out across the areas Hylia had said she was planning to raise.

Word had been sent out before she had begun work on the Gate of Time, and everyone had known for the last four days that this day was coming. Looking at the crowd around him, Link wasn't entirely sure that it had helped at all. The air held as much fear as hope, verging on panic at times: it was as much as he could do to stay visible, looking for panicked expressions, listening for frantic voices; calming people as best he could before their fear could spread. They trusted Hylia, but they had trusted in her Refuge, and now they were running again, this time on their guardian's golden wings.

"But… but what if…" What if she drops us? He'd heard that question a hundred times already, never phrased that directly, never coming so close to outright doubting their saviour aloud, and yet… "Lifting all this…"

"It will be fine," he told the little family, gently yet firmly, trying not to glance at the handcart in their midst carrying all the possessions they'd been able to gather. "Goddess Hylia wouldn't let anyone be here if she wasn't sure she could do it. She just needs to make sure everyone is safely out of the way so we can fight the demons." Link didn't realise it, but his expression darkened in remembered horror. "If they have any chance to attack unarmed people, they will. This is the only way to keep everyone who isn't fighting safe. And we've got to go before the demons get here, or she'll have to split her power, and some of them might get onto the islands, and she might lose her fight against Demise. So you should just sit down, and hang on. I'll be going up with you, and then I'll go back down to help; I wouldn't be here if it wasn't going to be safe. All right?"

They nodded, some more shakily than others, those nearby listening and hanging on his every word. Hylia had asked people to stay out of the buildings, just in case, and the muddy streets were thronged with people from all over the city, gathered into as small an area as possible, as far from the future edges as possible, for safety's sake.

Despite the confidence he projected, Link could only hope that it would work.

My chosen…

Startled, he half-turned, looking over his shoulder at nothing as the goddess' voice sounded softly inside his mind.

"Your Radiance?"

It is time. Everything is in place. Are the people ready?

As ready as they're going to be, Link thought doubtfully.

It will not be much longer, Hylia told him, reassuring. Had she not felt every unspoken doubt? Yet she was a goddess, a protector; it was her lot to bear such things. Not his, and that he had undertaken it anyway warmed her. When you and the others are in place, I will take off.

The others were kindly Edmer, Hylia's foremost priest; Guin, head of her guardians; Tilise mer Danne with her calm air and formidable will; and Findallen, ill-suited for war perhaps, but a fine figure of authority to calm a crowd, especially when that crowd was at least half composed of his own people who had fled their ruined country with him at their head. Link wondered if they felt it was as much of a struggle as he did.

"That was Her Radiance," he said aloud, turning back to the family. "It's time – I have to go. I'll be just over there. Just stay sat down and watch the skies, okay? She'll be flying above us."

They nodded, and one of the children spoke up, shyly. "Thank you."

Link smiled. "You're welcome. Take care."

He turned around and hurried off as they wished him luck, threading his way through the clustered people, some of them already sitting down, some still standing until the last minute. There was nothing to be done now but get into position – and then wait, and trust that Hylia could do what she'd promised.

As he neared the building, the robot waiting outside gave him a little wave. It was one of the miners, Link thought, but couldn't offhand remember who or even if they'd ever been introduced.

"Szzwit! Greetings, Master Link! Would you like assistance ascending?"

"What?" Link blinked, realising the robot meant to lift him to the roof. His first instinct was to find his own way – followed a moment later by the realisation that he should accept. Several of the robots had offered to assist with travel between the islands if it was needed, and if everyone saw him being lifted safely, they'd be a lot more likely to accept the offer of help.

He didn't know whether it was reassuring or worrying that there was a plan that didn't involve everyone coming back to the ground once the battle was over.

"Uh, yes please," he said aloud, a little late. The robot lifted its – his? her? – large hands, and he stepped forward, allowing himself to be grasped around the waist, the sword's sheath and the bundle of cloth strapped to his back bumping against the robot's oversized fingers.

"Then – fwip – let's go!"

They lifted smoothly into the air, and though Link's back was to the crowd, he was certain he could feel all eyes on him. As they reached the level of the roof, the robot turned, carrying him onto it, and he could see for himself that he'd been right. Determined to keep up a good show, he waved, somewhat cautiously to avoid rocking the robot.

A few moments later, he felt his feet touch down on the stone tiles, and the robot gently released him, almost as carefully as Reach had back in the desert. Link wondered what the big robot was doing now; he, too, had volunteered to remain on the ground.

"Thank you very much," he said, and the mining robot whistled in reply.

"You're welcome!" It descended back to the ground, leaving him standing alone atop the flat roof… alone except for Fi.

You are apprehensive, Master.

"Is it that obvious?" Link asked quietly.

Fi seemed to consider for a moment. It is clear in your spirit. However, your external physical mannerisms are such that I calculate there is less than a 10% chance that any given human you interact with would observe it.

"That's the important-" He cut off as a seeming sunbeam shone down from above, as a distant radiance fell across them and the crowd responded with a sigh of awe. Tipping his head back, he gazed up, briefly caught in the same wonder at the sight of Hylia soaring above them, a vast and shining bird, her every feather picked out in light. She circled once, twice, three times, and he felt a sense of reassurance and calm wash across him, across everyone.

Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere, high above and beside his ear, almost softly singing the words she spoke.

"Brace yourselves, my people. The first moments will be the hardest. Soon, I promise, you will be safe."

Link knelt, still watching her, as across what would be her flying isles her people did the same, as above them Hylia angled her flight upwards; stalled; hovered, powerful wingbeat seeming to pull not only herself but the very land below her. Everything shuddered; Link dropped both hands to the floor, held on; light sheeted from around the edges of their fragment of land; there was a deep, terrible groaning and snapping that he seemed to feel through knees and palms almost as much as hear, deeper and vaster and harsher than any uprooted tree – and then, suddenly, the shaking stopped, and they were rising. The force of it pressed him to the stone, then began to slacken, as high above them Hylia began to circle again, slowly gaining height, flying as though weighted down by all she was carrying and yet, somehow, still rising.

Link got back to his feet, although he'd have preferred to sit down, gazing around as the horizon fell away from them. Contrary winds ruffled his hair, always seeming to blow partially downwards and veering from one direction to another in moments; a strange pressure in his head made him swallow, ears popping. The horizon shrank, receded, vanished below the newly foreshortened edges of what was now an island, and still they rose, the clouds above no longer seeming so impossibly far away.

"We're flying," he whispered to himself, tasting the impossibility of the words.

That is partially correct, Master Link.

He almost laughed at the emotionless correction, the unending pressure of tension and anxiety and fear and responsibility briefly partially released in the moment of wonder.

"Gliding? Hovering? Uh… levitating?"

The latter is the most accurate description.

As Hylia vanished into the clouds above, her light turned them a brilliant, luminous gold.

"Levitating, then…" Link breathed, and found himself swallowing again, another pair of clicks in his ears reducing the pressure. The crowd before him had fallen almost silent in awe, some people risking standing and peering along the streets in an effort to see the edge of the newly-formed island and the sky beyond, now that the initial shaking seemed unlikely to begin again. From his own vantage point, he could see off the island in three main directions, as well as glimpses between rooftops that he knew were oddly empty only because he remembered how they had looked before. Something grey was rising behind him, and, turning, he realised with surprise that it was the goddess' great statue, torn from its place outside her temple. The temple itself, he knew, would remain on the ground, Hylia's central focus and thus their headquarters, but he hadn't expected her to gift them her magnificent statue in its stead.

Perhaps, he hoped, seeing it nearby would comfort the people left here when he had gone. Seeing it had been unexpectedly reassuring to him. He turned back, intending to point it out to the people below, and as he did a blanket of shining fog descended across them. Link looked around wildly; he couldn't even see the edge of the rooftop, thick and softly golden mist a damp blanket over everything, swirling around him in eddies and streams and descending from above in a seemingly endless torrent.

"What's happening?!"

Fi emerged from the sword, hovering beside him, the tiny droplets of fog sleeting past or perhaps through her lending her a bluish-gold aura.

"We have entered a cloud, Master."

"…Oh." Link ran a hand over his suddenly damp hair, feeling a little sheepish. Though the sound was muted by the fog, by the cloud, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted down to the crowd he could no longer see, hoping his voice would reach them. "It's a cloud! It's all right! We'll be out soon!" I hope.

He could hear no response, but the cold wind told him they were still rising – that, and the need to yet again swallow to remove the pressure on his ears. How high were they? How high were they going to go? Hylia had said she would take them above the clouds…

The light above him seemed to brighten, gradually at first and then more swiftly, until suddenly the deluge of fog faltered and ceased, and they emerged glittering with dew into an almost blindingly brilliant blue sky, the sun shining down upon them. Link gasped, and below him the crowd exclaimed in relief and awe.

As the clouds fell away below them, Link turned slowly, taking in everything he could. After the long minutes spent inside the cloud, everything seemed almost too bright, unreal, fantastical, the sparkle of dew dusting everything. Even the hastily and sometimes shoddily constructed wooden buildings looked a little like something out of a fairytale. The goddess' statue almost shimmered with it, gazing down benevolently upon them, so near to 'his' island that it had to almost be touching it. In the distance, he could see dark shapes that he realised now were other chunks of land, further away than he thought they could possibly have been before, as if Hylia's islands were spreading out as they rose. He looked up, seeing her still circling above, a radiant shape occasionally passing too near the sun to see.

Though the motion of the island had been smooth ever since those first couple of minutes, the descending wind told him they were still climbing, as did the cold and thinning air. Everyone had been warned this would happen, not least by Ivae's largely mountain-dwelling people, and he could only hope they'd all remembered. There at least seemed to be less panic in the crowd than there had been earlier, subsumed in the same wonder he couldn't help but feel, despite all that awaited him.

Eventually, slowly, it happened. He felt the slightest lurch, felt strangely lighter on his feet: felt the island slowing down, until the wind blew strong and cold from his right and his weight was what it always had been and he realised they had stopped moments ahead of Hylia gifting them all the same realisation: they had arrived.

To his surprise, the people below him cheered, somewhat raggedly as the thin air stole their breath, but wholeheartedly, and Link joined in, raising his hand high. Impossibly, incredibly, they and their land were flying. They and their land were safe.

Though Hylia was still circling high above, he felt her gaze fall upon him. Link lowered his hand, taking a deep breath.

"I guess this is it."

He walked to the edge of the roof, standing less than a pace from a two-storey drop, and raised his hands to shout to everyone below as best he could.

"We've made it! You'll all be safe here!" He breathed as deep as he could, battling the thin air. "I have to go now, to help Hylia!" He drew the goddess' sword and raised it high, Fi still watching from behind him, far enough back that she was likely hidden from those below. "Be careful while I'm gone! The robots can travel to the other islands for you if you need anything!"

To his surprise, another ragged but utterly wholehearted cheer rose from the people below, saluting him, applauding him. Link swallowed past a lump in his throat, bowing with hand to his heart and a flourish of his sword, and stepped back, turning only once he was out of sight to look for the stairs.

As he lifted the trapdoor and hurried down, Fi returning to the sword when he sheathed it, he thought over the next stage, oddly enough almost the least frightening of all despite its immediacy.

"But how will I get back?" They'd been going through last-minute preparations, and it was all too clear how frightened Hylia's people were. With the Refuge so comparatively new, swollen to unbelievable size by refugees from miles around, there were very few established, trusted faces to calm them. Despite how much he knew he was needed on the ground, Link had been pressed into service as someone who everyone in the city had seen at the ceremony; someone who everyone knew Hylia both favoured and trusted.

"That shouldn't be a problem," Saina had said, unpleasantly brightly, although he was fairly sure she was just pleased to have finally encountered a problem she could easily solve. "We'll make you a… bother, you don't have a word for it. A kind of sail, that will let you drift back down from the sky safely. We'll just need a large amount of cloth…"

She'd frowned, looking to Hylia, the mortal and goddess seeming somehow closer and more casually comfortable with one another since whatever they had done, locked in seclusion, to finish the Gate of Time.

"There will be enough," Hylia had confirmed. "It will be simple to bind it together… indeed, I shall do so now, and gift it to you."

Saina's smile, though warm, had felt strangely distant to Link. Her suddenly increased closeness to Hylia made it seem almost as though she had drawn away. It was foolish – he didn't think anything had really changed between them. And yet, even though he knew the goddess favoured him… or maybe because she did…

Hylia had presented him with what, for lack of whatever word Saina hadn't had, she had ended up terming a 'sailcloth'. Although she'd said she'd bind pieces of fabric, and though it was definitely shaped, it was woven together so cleanly that it looked like a simple piece of cloth. The last traces of her power had lingered on it like the aftermath of a subtle benediction. Saina had helped him to lay it out and fold it up again, instructing him – or emphasising Para's instructions – on how to use it.

Broadly speaking, it was easy enough. Jump off the island holding the cloth, let it unfold, and the air itself would do the rest.

As he emerged from the back door and hurried to the nearest edge, just beyond the hilltop and facing the huge statue, he felt Hylia's gaze shift from him. Link looked up just in time to see her stop circling, to see her fold her wings and dive, bright and swift as a falling star. He ran to the edge, stopping barely a pace from it and gazing down as her light plummeted through the clouds and was gone, only a swirl left to mark her passage. Here and there between the clouds he could see patches of land, so impossibly small and far away that it didn't quite seem real.

Link took the cloth bundle from his back, carefully folded, strong and thick straps outermost for him to hold onto. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the instructions: like this, here…

"Is this right, Fi?"

That is correct, the spirit of the sword confirmed. Are you ready to dive?

"Not really," Link answered honestly. "But I don't think I'm going to be." With his arms through the straps, he clutched both hand loops and the folded cloth, holding it tight to stop it from opening too early. Taking a too-deep breath, he stepped forward, and then, eyes firmly fixed on the statue of the goddess rather than on where he knew the ground ended, leapt.

The instinctive terror of falling welled up in his throat, choking, almost overpowering as he tumbled and… kept tumbling. He felt almost weightless, buffeted by the wind now striking from below: the air he was falling through. There was no impact. There was no ground to hit.

He opened his eyes, the sky and the clouds and the rapidly receding island spinning around him, and whooped in mad exhilaration as the instinctive fear of falling found itself false and faded away.

"Try to arrest your spin, Master," Fi said, appearing beside him – he assumed it was beside him – upside-down as if she was diving and as impossibly calm as ever. "Extend your limbs to increase air resistance."

"Right!" Link did as he was bid, feeling and seeing his tumbling slow, experimenting with shifting his weight. He was in control! Despite the horror he knew awaited him below, he laughed, almost giddy with the thrill of it. "Isn't this incredible?"

"I understand that you perceive it to be, Master." Fi righted herself, unaffected by the rushing wind, still moving at exactly the same speed he was with the same flawless ease with which she hovered over solid ground or the long drop of the city walls. "However, I reiterate that I do not possess such emotions."

It struck him as almost sad. Perhaps she couldn't be afraid, or lonely, or sad, but she also couldn't be happy, or excited, or awed.

"Well, can you feel mine?"

"I am aware of your experience, yes."

Link grinned. "Then I hope it's good!"

Fi said nothing, neither denying nor acknowledging, perhaps – he wondered – thinking it over. The clouds below them were rushing closer at an astonishing rate, and Link released the cloth – but not the straps – that he had clutched so tightly.

The fabric billowed open above him, and all at once he felt as though he was yanked upwards by an incredible force, jolting his arms far harder than he'd expected, the shock of it nearly taking his breath away. He was still descending, the clouds still growing closer, only much slower now, and he had another minute to enjoy the view before the world once again became blanketed in damp and white, almost featureless and with no way of marking his passage. Even Fi, beside him, was faintly obscured by it, upward-trailing wreaths of mist tangling between them. It felt as though they were drifting, timeless, almost weightless…

The clouds below his feet began to darken, and the skeins of fog parted to reveal the lush, green lands below, rolling hills and open plains, light reflecting bright off shimmering water, lakes looking scarcely bigger than a few tiny drips of water and river like runnels across stone: a landscape vaster than he had ever before seen, and almost delicate, like a velvet-covered sculpture that could be dented with the press of an incautious fingernail. Spread out directly below him, a darker blot ringed by a pale circle and pockmarked with brown, brown in places spilt into by shimmering blue, was, he suddenly realised, the sight of Hylia's Refuge, all wood and stone and more than half abandoned; surrounded by grass where the trees had been ruthlessly cleared to build with and to deny any attackers cover as they approached the walls. The scale of it against the tiny trees took his breath away again. All those people… all the people Hylia had protected, had flung into the sky to still protect, had cut ruthlessly into the forest to shelter and feed though he knew she valued the natural order…

"We're going to do this," he said aloud, the emptied city growing steadily larger beneath his feet. "We've got to win, for everyone." For all the people, for Hylia, and for all the wide and fragile world.

I didn't think I'd get this one done in time to post this week, but here we are!

I now have a Mastodon presence! Check me out via the link on my profile (fandom. ink / at Ardil) to find out whether or not you'll be getting your usually-weekly chapter, plus other miscellaneous but mostly fandom-related thoughts.