Chapter 17

"It's like a Goddess-forsaken oubliette," said Scarlett, staring down the dark hole with her nose scrunched up at the rank smell that was coming from it.

Toro had found the opening while retrieving the sword he had given Link. The young Goron had been surprised to find the pedestal the weapon was kept on removed a whole ten feet from its usual location, revealing a sizeable hole in the cavern floor. The rotten-egg stink of sulfur rose in hot drafts from the depths of the pit, and the darkness below was so miserably absolute that peering into it too long made one feel dizzy. At the edges of the pit, the dirty stone of the cavern floor was scraped with the marks of Lizalfos claws, making it apparent that their attackers had emerged from somewhere in the stinking darkness below.

"There's no way for us to get down there safely," said Gwen, "and even if we did, who knows what might be at the bottom. Or if there even is a bottom."

"Those lizards didn't just pop out of thin air," said Scarlett, "There's something down there, and I'd wager my good eye on it being that temple."

"So Nyarlath took all the Gorons down that hole?" asked Link, "But I thought that there were thousands of them. How could thousands of Gorons have gone down such a little hole?"

"I don't think they did," said Scarlett, "If the Gorons have been taken anywhere, then it wasn't through here. No, I'm pretty sure this isn't the main entrance. This is a back door. That explains why it was guarded, and it explains why the guards were so few in number. They weren't expecting us to come this way; they didn't think we would know how."

"To be fair, they were right," said Gwen, "We don't know how to follow them. There's no way we can climb down a sheer surface like this."

"There might be something we can do though," said Scarlett, her one-eyed stare falling upon Link. The boy was still peering down at the nothingness below, sniffing the putrid air with morbid interest. He didn't notice the pirate looking at him.

"Boy!" said Scarlett, and Link perked up, "You seem to be capable of making trips in the Dreamworld that we cannot make here in the Waking. Why don't you pop off for a nap and see if you can figure out what's down there for us?"

"We cannot just send him down there!" said Zelda, "We do not know what he might find down there in either world. What if he does not come back safe? How will we know how long to wait for him? We will be sitting blind."

"It's okay Zelda," said Link, "I can do this. If I get into any trouble down there, all I have to do is use the Sleepstone and I can come right back here to you guys in a flash."

"And, in the meantime we shan't be sitting on our hands," said Scarlett, "Zig and Gwen, the two of you take the baby boulders back to the mine and have them show you where to find us some Goron tunics and some bomb bags. I suspect we might end up needing them."

"We can do that," said Toro.

"No problem!" said Doro.

"Alright," conceded Zelda, "But be careful, Link. You must not let anything happen to yourself down there."

"I'll be fine," said Link. He went to the nearest wall and propped himself up with his back against the stone. He pulled the Sleepstone out of his pocket, the sparks of lightning inside glowing blue in the dim light of the cavern torches. He smiled brightly at Zelda before gazing deeply into the stone and uttering the magic word, "Slumber."

He fell asleep immediately. His body went limp, and he collapsed all the way to the floor, snoring loudly. They watched him for a contemplative moment.

"Ms. Gwendolin, don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Aye, Captain," said Gwen, saluting to Scarlett. "Come on, little pebbles," added the pirate, as she and Zig walked away with Toro and Doro at their side.

Zelda went to Link, lifting his head off the cold stone, and sitting with the boy resting in her lap. She brushed the hair away from his face, and watched his eyes flitting fitfully under their lids.

In the Dreamworld, the cave looked completely different.

The walls of the cavern were glistening with vibrant veins of shining gold and electric, fluorescent minerals. The paintings on the wall moved with a life of their own, the different figures mingling in haphazard ways. A growling rumble was in his ears, and suddenly a jet of hot fire came bursting forth from the hole in the floor, lighting up the room with a blinding but momentary flash.

Link stood up. He glanced around and saw the blurry shades of Scarlett and Zelda, the princess holding his sleeping self in her lap like a sick child. Neither of them seemed to notice the fountain of fire which had erupted from the hole, and he guessed it must only exist in the Dreamworld. He went over to the opening, and peered down the blackened shaft of rock.

Somewhere deep inside the earth below him something was glowing white-hot like a roasting coal. He couldn't make out what it was, but so bright was the light of this subterranean fire that it lit up the black walls of the tube completely. He could see now that the hole was a roundish opening about twelve feet across which plummeted straight down at least a hundred yards before opening into some kind of fiery chamber below.

There was another rumbling, and Link had to throw himself backwards onto his butt to avoid the jet of fire which came bursting from the hole. He could feel its heat on his face, but it did not burn him. He wondered if heat would affect him the same way in the Dreamworld as it did in the Waking World. He decided he would rather not go out of his way to find out.

Once the fire subsided, he sat for a moment, counting the seconds. Once he got to fifteen the ground began to rumble again and another jet of raging fire came bursting from the hole. Fifteen seconds. He would never be able to climb down that quickly, even if he did have some kind of climbing equipment with which to negotiate the sheer drop. He put his hands on his hips, biting his tongue as he deliberated over the problem.

"Well," said Link, "Looks like I'm gonna have to grow some wings."

He raised his fingers to his lips and whistled sharply, "Here, Boy!"

There was the sound of heavy footsteps scrambling across the stone. The clockwork dragon came bounding into the cavern, sauntering like a happy dog as it answered its master's summons. It leapt the last couple of yards to meet him, sitting up on its hind legs and perking its shiny brass ears, alertly awaiting a command.

"Good boy," said Link, patting the thing on the nose, "Okay, boy, we've got work to do. You see that hole over there?"

The dragon approached the hole, craning its massive metal head over the side so it could peer down.

"Wait, no!" cried Link, but it was too late. The jet of fire came spewing forth from the hole with a seismic rumble. The dragon's head was entirely engulfed by the flame, not even the tips of its ears visible through the roaring inferno. Look watched it in horror.

When the flame subsided, the dragon's head remained on fire, but the creature didn't seem pained by this at all. It turned to Link with its mouth agape, and its head tilted dumbly as if still awaiting a new command, even as the leather straps and canvas sheets which comprised its face and jaw were curling away to ashes.

Yet the dragon was not dissipating. As canvas and wood burned away, and unhooked brass fell to the ground with a clatter, rock and fire were revealed beneath, like lava glowing under a mosaic bed of granite chips. It opened its mouth to yawn, and its tongue was a lick of fire, and its teeth were the jagged embers of long-burning charcoal. Its legs were heavy stone columns, chiseled with the shape of powerful muscle, and injected with primordial magma in place of blood. Its feet were like scale models of distant mountains, its claws razor-lined ice bergs of black obsidian. It spread its wings, and shook off the smoldering canvas. Its new wings were like a bat's, with bones of cobbled quarry granite, and webbing of ever burning sulfur. They were thin sheets of igniting fire, rippling and crackling like the heads of a million matches being struck at once. The horns were obsidian spikes, pointed forward like the fork of an angry bull. The goggle-like glass of its clockwork eyes popped and shattered and became the sulfurous pits of miniature volcanoes. The dragon roared proudly, and flames came licking out the sides of it mouth.

"Woah," said Link, in admiration.

He climbed atop the thing, the dragon stooping down helpfully to allow him to mount. Despite the way that fire seethed beneath the cracks of the creature's stone skin, Link found the beast cool to his touch. He straddled its back, gripping the shoulder blades for stability in his accustomed manner. He reached over his shoulder to check that the short sword Toro had given him was still there. His hand brushed the handle of the blade reassuringly, and he was pleased to see the weapon had made it into the Dreamworld with him.

"Okay," said Link, steering the dragon back to the edge of the fiery pit. "Wait for it this time. Right after the fire dies down, we drop, got it?"

The dragon growled in the affirmative. Link and his pet waited for a few silent seconds for the rumble of the next eruption. There was a roar, and bright whoosh of flames, and then the dragon rolled forward and let itself and Link go dropping down the fiery tube with its wings tucked into its sides.

It was a ways down. Link hugged the back of the dragon as closely as he could, wary of scraping his head on the passing tube of blackened stone. They had cleared almost three quarters of the tunnel's depth when the rumbling started up again.

"We're not gonna make it!" cried Link.

The dragon strained to tuck its wings even further, thrusting forward with its pointed nose like a falling spear. The eruption was seconds away. Ahead of them, Link could see something throbbing like a living ball of liquid magma, its center bubbling tremendously with the pressure of the coming blast. The end of the tube was in sight! The rumbling was coming to an apex, and in less than a second the flames would come flaring up at them, engulfing dragon and rider in a column of absolute immolation.

BOOM!

The jets of fire shot up just as they emerged from the other end of the blackened tube. The dragons wings unfurled and in one powerful beat the currents of superheated air carried them upwards so that they almost smashed into the ceiling. Link could feel the burn of the rising pillar of flame, only inches behind him. They had cleared the jet!

The room around them was mind-boggling.

It was an oblong dome of rock, so dark red and deeply tarnished as to appear maroon, but the surface was imperfect and cracked, and beneath it were glowing veins of molten rock which lit the room with a bright and even hue of angry red. In the center of the chamber, floating unsupported in the air, a liquid globule of glowing magma seethed with the throbbing movement of life. Its surface was a wrinkled plume of fire molded in the shape of something like a big red crown of cauliflower.

"What the heck is that thing?" said Link. The dragon snorted at him, circling the fiery surface patiently. The globule of magma did not touch the sides of the chamber, and Link could not understand what held it up. Flying along the wall, he looked below and saw that there were many other chambers which opened up beneath, but no apparent floor for the suspended ball of fire to be resting on. He clicked his heels on the dragon's side, and it dove down between the magma and the wall to get a better look at what awaited them below.

On the underside of the magma blob, things began to take a morbid shape. Link saw now what it was that supported the impossible platform of writhing lava lumps. At the base of the oblong mass, a kind of tower made of stacked tubes of bone-colored rock was supporting it all the way down to the distant chambers below. In the hollows of these tubes, which were visible through the cracks between them, cords of liquid magma were flowing like little rivers upwards to the globule at the top. He could actually see where they connected at the base, like a twisted rope of burning fibers feeding directly into the stem of the massive object.

Link was not a doctor, and hadn't been subject to anything like an anatomy course in his life, but if he had been he might have noted that the structure, as impossible as it seemed, bore an eerie resemblance to a brain with attached spinal cord.

The flow of the magma seemed to throb to some unheard rhythm, pumping more into the globule with each beat. Every fifteen seconds, that pressure would peak and the mass of magma would send a jet of fire shooting from its top to relieve itself.

"Well, looks like there's nowhere to go but down," said Link. The dragon dove, following the magma filled spine of the structure down to a place where it disappeared into a solid rock floor. Here the chamber was wider, and Link could hear the dull throb of the pumping lava reverberating off the glowing stones. The floor here contained rows of columns and statues, all of apparently Goron design, somewhat resembling an actual temple. Everything was situated in a pattern with the huge stone spine at its center. Beside the point where the spine met the floor, another hollow stone tube led further down into the structure, and beside it a cave mouth gaped out to depths darker, but more horizontal.

Link brought the dragon in for a landing, but he did not dismount. He sat on the creature's back, trying to decide which way to go. Suddenly, the shades of a group of waking Lizalfos came creeping up from the tube in the floor, skittering off into the nearby cave with impressive speed. The shadowy creatures passed right through the dragon as if it weren't even there.

"Where are they going?"

Link willed the dragon to turn around and follow the shades, and it obeyed. The shadows of the Lizalfos had crept into the cavern mouth which gaped at them from the stony wall of the domed chamber. The light which permeated the other walls in the place did not extend into this cavernous opening, and Link squinted to see in the darkness, but nothing was visible.

As if responding to his thought, the dragon's eyes flared with a brighter fire, and their light shone like bright sun lamps into the gloom ahead. The cave lit up. It was less like the foyer of a great temple, and more like the inside of a smiling mouth. The floor was one smooth stone, polished to a near liquid sheen, and dipped down in the center in a shallow valley. It touched the edges of conical blocks of obsidian, which had been carved into the jagged shape of evil-looking teeth. The corners both floor and ceiling were dominated by giant black fangs. The ceiling overhead was arched and ribbed, a stone uvula dangling like the pendulum of a grandfather clock just above where Link stood. Beyond the walls, which Link couldn't help but think had the shape of curled lips held slightly ajar, was a natural cavern of rough stone, rife with the same glowing veins of luminescent minerals as he had seen in the mural cave. It was as though Link were staring out of the throat of an ancient stone giant.

"Let's turn back," said Link, trying to shake off the ominous feeling the carved black teeth had given him, "This looks like it leads outside. No sense in leaving just yet."

The dragon turned around and brought them back into the room where the massive spinal cord suspended the magma brain impossibly overhead. No path was left to try aside from the hole in floor ahead of them, which link had trouble not associating with an open windpipe now that he had seen the undeniable mouth.

"Alright, boy," said Link, "No turning back now. Down we go."

The dragon slid off the edge, its wings tucked once again, and the pair of them fell silently into the unknown depths. The air only grew hotter and more stifling as they descended. From the chamber they were to emerge in, the slow and steady beat of the pumping magma rang louder in Link's ears, and he guessed that ahead they would find its source. After a plummeting descent, the dragon beat its wings once more, and now they were in a cavern even larger than those which had come before.

This chamber was large and open, like the Goron Mining hall, but slightly smaller. There was a heavy, stifling quality in the air, and bright fires glowed and seethed all around. From the ceiling of this room, the massive stone spine continued its descent, but here there were bony, horizontal arches, like humongous ribs which ran the circumference of the room, giving stability to the walls, but never quite touching each other in the center. Their only real support was the bony spine which they protruded from. The most fantastic and dominating aspect of the room lay appropriately at its near exact center. The throbbing mass was suspended by cords of liquid magma from a spot on the mammoth spinal column. The grotesque organ of rock and molten fire throbbed with a visible pulsation to the tribal beat of a living drum. It pumped magma through tubes of glowing hot rock in an endless rhythm. The heart of the temple was an actual living, beating thing.

A platform of rock, like a stony diaphragm suspended between the jutting ribs, was below the beating organ. Upon this platform, Link saw what he at first mistook to be a moving field of black grass or a mess of wriggling black snakes, but as he looked closer he saw that it was in fact the jumbled mess of shades of more than a thousand Gorons. The lot of them was crowded into the space, struggling to keep from plummeting off the ledge into the temple below.

At the center of this platform, there was a dais which was raised up above the rest, and upon it stood two shades which looked like Lizalfos, but in between them was the vibrant shape of a figure Link had not expected to encounter. The wizard Nyarlath stood there, his robes glowing midnight purple, and his head the skull of the fiery bull Link had first seen in the Temple of Life.

The boy felt instinctual horror at the sight of the old wizard, but he realized quickly that Nyarlath didn't seem to be paying him any mind. Whatever the limits of the wizard's power were, he did not seem to be capable of sensing Link's presence in the room without hearing or seeing him directly. The boy decided to take advantage of this, willing the dragon to fly to the spinal cord and perch there with claws dug in so that Link could have a listen to what the wizard was saying.

"It's nearly working," said Nyarlath, "Quickly, fetch me another."

One of the shades descended from the raised platform, and went among the Goron shades. It returned a moment later, leading a Goron along by the arm. The rocky creature made no protest as the Lizalfos brought it up to stand in front of Nyarlath. The wizard towered over the Goron, nearly twice the height of the rocky beast, and much taller than the last time Link had seen him. He thought about the giant octopus at the Temple of the Mind, and wondered just how malleable Nyarlath's shape could be.

The Lizalfos held the Goron down to the ground. The rock-man did not struggle. Nyarlath raised his right arm, and in his hand Link spotted a shining object made of silvery metal. The wizard swung the thing down on the helpless Goron, and the Dreamworld shade exploded into a million shards of glowing light. Link was horror struck as he imagined what must have become of the poor Goron in the Waking World.

Nyarlath was unfazed by the murder. He kicked the rubble that had once been the Goron aside, sifting through for a singular, shining gem which sparkled at the center of the crumbled mass. He picked up the fist-sized stone and held it up over his head.

"A fine heart in this one," said the Wizard, "With more like this we shall be done here quickly. Bring me another."

Nyarlath crushed the shining stone in his fist, and let the dust fall through his fingers. It fluttered upward in a streaming cloud, as if carried on a breeze. The dust swirled into a little miniature tornado, its whirling essence floating upwards toward the beating magma heart. As the dust touched the surface of the heart, it shook and crackled like a fire that had been peppered with gunpowder. The brightness of the glowing magma within increased marginally, and the thunderous beat of the massive stone organ quickened ever so imperceptibly in its pace.

"He's harvesting the Gorons," said Link, "He's feeding them to that heart. But why?"

Link's dragon crept up the tall column of bones, the scraping of its gripping claws unheard over the booming of the massive stone heart. They came nearer to the thing, and Link could feel that the waves of heat coming off of it felt very real. What startled him more, however, were the intricate designs of carved runes which traced the edges of every corner and every gasket of the massive pump. They shone feebly in the light, and as Link looked upon them he could catch their meaning, although he could not read them.

"The shard," gasped Link, "Its in the heart!"

He saw what needed to be done, but could not grasp how to do it. There it was, inches from him, the container, which housed their goal, but there was no way to reach it safely with the waves of intense heat coming off its baking surface. Perhaps in the Waking World? But then how would he get by all the Lizalfos guarding the thing, or the watchful eye of Nyarlath? He would have to find another way. Right at that moment, he needed to return to his friends and tell them of the fate of the captured Gorons.

"Leaving so soon, Hero of Dreams?"

The wizard's voice gripped him like an icy wind. The dragon rounded from the wall reflexively, hovering in the open air. The wizard was facing them now, and Link knew when he met the evil man's eyes that he had known they were there the entire time.

"I wanted you to have a glimpse of it," said Nyarlath, floating up to meet the boy face to face, "I wanted you to see how powerless you are to accomplish the task set out for you. It is too late. The prophecy which guides you has been broken for a hundred years, did you know that? It has been over since the start. But heroes like you never bother to learn the story first, do they? They just pick it up as they go along. Like it wasn't even important."

Link said nothing to the wizard. His left hand went to his shoulder and he drew the little short sword. He swung it experimentally, feeling its weight in his grip. With his right hand he braced himself upon the dragon.

"Oh, you're going to fight me, are you?" said Nyarlath, "How pathetic. Don't think you've had the privilege to defeat me of your own volition, boy. If you've ever walked away from a fight with me alive its because I allowed it to be so. You're nothing but an ant, I can squash you any time I see fit."

Link gritted his teeth. He thought about charging the sorcerer, but he resisted the temptation. The old magician was crafty, and likely wouldn't succumb to a frontal assault. He maintained his hover, but said nothing, biding his time.

"Don't believe me? Well, that doesn't change things in the slightest. That's how insignificant you are. Why don't you just quit now? Just give up and submit to me and I will make sure you and your precious princess can live peaceful lives somewhere far away until I bring this miserable world of yours to an end."

Link thought about the Sleepstone in his pocket. One quick grab and he could be back with Zelda and Scarlett in the caves. He had to risk it. If he didn't warn the princess and the pirates about Nyarlath then it wouldn't matter what happened. There was no way he could defeat the wizard on his own.

"Thinking of running away?" said Nyarlath, smugly, "I don't blame you. You don't stand a chance. Go ahead. I won't try to stop you. Go run and tell your princess that the big scary wizard is coming to get her. All you're doing is prolonging your own suffering."

How had he known what Link had been thinking? The boy's blue eyes widened. He fumbled for the Sleepstone in his pocket, and brought it up to his face in a fevered panic. The evil sorcerer was smiling at him, smiling a devilish smile with the curled corners of his sickly mouth.

"Run, little hero."

"Awaken!"