Chapter 99: The Bold Technoworks
…
"So, uh… this is new," Link commented. "You know… with the rest of what's-what's new. About this… place."
"Where were these in the other technoworks!?" Irleen declared.
Layna glanced back and forth between them before looking straight ahead. "Nwaki robat max?" she asked.
After their initial shock, Link and Irleen had looked around for an exit. What they had found was a door that only seemed visible once they were right next to it. At least, they supposed it was a door, but it had no knob or handle to grab. Link had already experimented with using the Sorian bracelet to produce a handle, but he had found that not only had the door refused, not even the regular technowork blocks in the walls or floor had responded to the bracelet. The ensuing two minutes had been spent staring at the door while they tried to think of a way to open it. Layna, by virtue of her lack of understanding of the Hylian language, had only recently identified the architectural inconsistency as a possible door.
Link sighed. "So now what?" he asked Irleen.
"Well…" she started. Then she flew in a circle above his head. "There's gotta be a way to open it. I mean, who makes a door that can't be opened?"
"Someone who doesn't want the door to open?" Link suggested.
"You're not helping, Link."
"Nwik robat lwaygoylwanak thiylwoctya max?" Layna asked.
"Neither are you!" Irleen snapped at Layna.
"Irleen," Link said with a soft, chiding tone.
"No, this is ridiculous!" she shouted. "First the technoworks can see us, and now someone puts a door in the way!? Someone is screwing with us, and it's pissing me off!"
"Okay, just… just calm down," Link told her. "Look, the technoworks respond to Sorian things, right?"
"Yeah, but you already used the bracelet."
Link dug into his pocket and produced the blues harp. "What about this?"
Irleen gave an exhausted sigh. "I don't know, maybe. You'd think the bracelet would cause a reaction, but…"
"Well, the blues harp does more, doesn't it?"
Irleen gave another sigh. "Okay, give it a try." Link nodded and released a long breath. Then he put the blues harp to his mouth and pulled on the note that had always caused the technoworks to listen. The note sounded, but nothing else happened. Link held the note for as long as he could before he had to suddenly exhale. There was still no change to the technoworks, although Link, after watching the wall for a moment, nearly convinced himself that the particles had shifted direction again. "Well," Irleen commented, "that didn't work."
Link looked down at the blues harp in his hand and tried to angle it so that light would catch its surface better. "Hang on, Irleen," he told her. "I think I played the wrong note again."
"You couldn't play the note that you've been using to control the technoworks for the past month?" Irleen asked him, sounding irritated.
"I can only remember which one it is by looking at the top," Link told her. "I can't see too well."
"I can see the top just fine, Link," she said.
"Yeah, but I was holding it upside-down."
Irleen was silent for a moment. "What?"
"I've never been good at distinguishing single notes; I always need another note to tell which is which," Link explained. "The guy who taught me to play, he said that he'd help me with it the next time we met."
"You've been playing that thing, and all this time you're tone-deaf?"
"Wh—not entirely," Link defended. "But this blues harp helps. Watch." Link placed the blues harp to his lips again and pulled, producing a different note.
He only had to play for a short moment because the door reacted almost immediately. The particles flowing across the door changed directions, gathering at the middle of the door instead of continuing with the particles moving across the wall. However, what they formed looked like an outline of a picture, not Sorian letters like Link and Irleen had been expecting. Link thought it looked like a picture of a flag waving as if in the wind. But he could not tell what the arrangement of dots or lines or squiggles was meant to be. The left side was a mess of scribbles forming no shape familiar to him, and the area immediately around the picture was littered with what he thought were stray marks.
"Okay," Link said, slowly lowering the blues harp from his lips. "What is it?"
"That's musical notation, Link," Irleen replied. "Please tell me you know how to read it."
Link glanced down at the blues harp. "I don't think I have to," he said, showing her the glowing emeralds on the top.
"Oh. Well, play it then."
The sequence Link had to play was, by far, the simplest piece he had played. It was a series of four notes on an equally-spaced interval. He played it correctly within almost a second.
The door responded with a bright flash of the Sorian musical notation. The notation then disappeared. Almost soundless, the door lifted into the top of its frame. Link, Irleen, and Layna followed it with their eyes and saw that, after the door had disappeared, there was no sort of seam or crack to indicate that the door had existed in the first place. What little bit of a seam they could see just after the door had finished rising merged into a solid surface.
"Irleen?" Link asked.
"Yeah?" was the reply.
"The door disappeared."
"Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that, too. I think… someone must have instructed the technoworks to make the door."
Link glanced down the long corridor ahead of them. "Who but a Sorian knows how to control the technoworks?"
"I don't know, Link."
"Well," Link said, pausing to draw the Lokomo Sword. The motion caught Layna's eye, and she had a blade in one hand in the next instant. Link started down the corridor as he finished his thought. "There's one way to find out."
They walked down the corridor, Layna taking the lead just after entering. The narrow space made looking at the walls a little disorienting, even as they just looked ahead to the other end. Twice, Link had to shake his head and glance around to make sure that the corridor was not actually spinning around him. Layna, to better keep track of her own orientation, brushed her left hand against the nearby wall. Even Irleen had to settle on Link's shoulder for a moment due to nearly turning herself upside-down while flying. All three had a small moment of relief when they emerged into the next room.
Surprise followed. This room was wide and about three stories high. In the middle of the room, leaving only a small amount of clear space to walk unobstructed, was a large mat of almost bare earth. Protruding from this earth were dead trees and shrubs, most of them looking even more twisted in the moving dullness of the surrounding technoworks.
Link had to remember to breathe out. "What's this?" he asked.
"This… well," Irleen replied, "this would have been the garden. Every island at least has this structure. All surface plants have one, maybe two representatives of their variety down here. This is done just in case one species of plant disappears from the surface. Say if a shrub was ever removed from the island, this garden allows it to be reproduced, and the resulting seeds can be sent above."
"Okay…" Link said with an idle nod. "So… what does this do for the surface?"
"Well, whatever caused the plants to die obviously occurred down here, too. My best guess is it has something to do with how the technoworks are now. I don't know, maybe all the plants dying was caused by the change."
"'Imayn Kyabtin," Layna spoke up. "'Inu midhifoymak…" Link glanced at her and found that her head had tilted as she appeared to contemplate something. "'Inu midhifoymak… xuccukw 'ataynli?"
"Does she sound more confused than usual?" Irleen asked.
"She's trying to say something," Link said, placing a hand in his pocket. "I'll give her your ge—…" Link trailed off when Layna, not paying attention to either of them, turned and simply walked away. He watched her round the edge of the garden and nearly fall out of sight through the trees. Link shrugged and said, "Or we might just follow her."
"Yeah, this'll be fun," Irleen commented in a flat voice as they made to catch up to Layna. They spotted her stopped at the far side of the room and looking down at something neither one of them could see right away. Link became aware of the stench of fish nearby, which only got stronger and worse as he approached Layna. By the time he was just about to step around Layna, he was sure something was dead. Then Irleen said, "Oh, I'm gonna be sick!"
It was a body almost devoid of color. Despite Link's first thought, it was not a Sorian. Instead, it looked like someone had left a large fish out to dry and then just sat it up against the wall. It had been clothed in a large tunic and trousers, and it also wore some sturdy-looking boots. Its head was drooping to the left, and it had a vacant expression on its face. In addition, its left leg was twisted in a painful looking direction from about the middle of its shin, and one forearm looked to have been crushed by something while the other was folded behind its back in a way that no arm should bend: backwards at the elbow.
Link turned away. "Wh-what is this thing?" he asked, sheathing the sword. "Is this a Geozard?"
"A dead one," Irleen replied, sounding to be on the verge of vomiting. Layna leaned over and felt around the corpse's neck. "Oh, seriously, Layna!?"
Layna stood back up and held out a hand to Link. "'Imayn Kyabtin," she said. "'Inu miyayxwatak zangiyth Cayminnadhiyf Irliyn thib."
"What does she want?" Irleen asked.
"I think I just heard your name in there somewhere," Link said, digging his hand into his pocket again. He produced Irleen's translator gem and handed it over.
"Cayminnadhiyf Irliyn," Layna said, "nwik zhoggix dha' kabd galwnya'ak soykwaltya."
"Soykwaltya?" Irleen asked. "'Oyfzhax dha' dhol naday?"
"'Inu nadlwaymdhaykwizak 'anw 'oyfzhax," Layna replied, shaking her head. She looked down at the body. "'Itab nwaki gidhidhak. Nwik zhoggix dha' zaxib madhifya'ak."
"Gidhidhak taf… mudhfak," Irleen said. She paused for a moment. "Jab Cadhiyl laxmya'ak nwaki max?"
"'Inu lwaymbisiyxak," Layna said.
"Goymothan 'anw thibbak Liynk zanak."
"A'ya, Cayminnadhiyf Irliyn."
"Taf nwoyrotan dhozimot 'cayminnadhiyf'."
"A'ya, 'Afi'il Cayminnadhiyf Irliyn," Layna told her before handing the gem back to Link.
"Okay, now you're just making things up!" Irleen snapped in Hylian. "Are you trying to annoy me!?"
"Irleen?" Link asked.
"What?" Irleen replied, turning to him.
"What did she say?"
"Oh," Irleen grunted when she realized that she was back to speaking to Link only. "She said that the Geozard's neck was broken, so I guess that's how it died. She also said that whatever did this was big and brutal. I asked her if a Stalarmor might've done this, but she doesn't know."
"Why would a Stalarmor do this?" Link asked. "I thought both were part of Cunimincus' crew."
"That's all I can think of," Irleen said. "It doesn't really make sense to me, either."
Link nodded. "How long do you think it's been dead?"
"I can't tell. But it must have been a long time, as dried out as it looks."
Link glanced around and spotted a door through the trees. "There's another door over there," he said, pointing. "Let's move on."
"Sounds good," Irleen said while Layna started walking in the direction Link pointed. "This smell's beginning to make me nauseous."
They rounded the garden again and found a door on the opposite side from where they had entered. Now that they knew how the doors worked, Link triggered the door and then opened it in a short amount of time. He was concerned, though, because the sequence he had to play was double the length of the first door. The next room was about the same size as the garden, although the floor of this one was solid technoworks.
And littered with Geozard bodies in a variety of mangled poses. The smell had tipped them to the presence of the bodies, but the actual sight was more brutal than Link had imagined. Most of the bodies looked like their limbs had been broken. One closer to the door had its chest caved in. But even worse, another one appeared to have been flattened completely. Link looked away for a moment, trying to control the disgusting taste building in his throat. None of them spoke for a while, and even Layna appeared stunned by the scene.
"Irleen," Link croaked.
"Yeah, I see it," Irleen replied with an empty tone.
"What… haahhh… what could've caused this?"
"If it was a Stalarmor," Irleen said, "then it's got a really bad disposition."
Link took a moment to lean back into the garden and breathe in the less-putrid air. "Okay," he said more to himself than Irleen. "Okay, let's try to get through this."
"Door to the left, door to the right," Irleen said. "Which way do we go?"
"Left," Link said after seeing that the door on the right wall was further away.
They crossed the room, which Link was beginning to relate to a battlefield. It reminded him of that evening the Bulblins had attacked Whittleton. It helped him cope with the room a bit, but he found that, since he had not seen the same excitement as what had happened back then, he could not as easily dismiss the bodies. Layna seemed a little distant, not even setting eye on the corpses. Irleen was just quiet. When they reached the door, Link already held the blues harp in his hands and had to take a moment before he used it. He triggered the door. Then he discovered that the notes to open this door were double the length of the previous door, which was probably meant to be indicated by the incredibly messy sight of Sorian musical notation on the door. He let the sequence appear twice before he proceeded. However, with the stench of the corpses distracting him, he missed a note. He continued to play through, wondering if these doors were as finicky as the technoworks' control columns.
The musical notation turned red after he had finished. Then it disappeared. Irleen turned to Link. "What happened?"
"I missed a note," Link replied. "No problem, I'll ju—"
"Kyabtin!" Layna hollered despite being right next to Link. Link glanced over at her. Then he spun around to follow her gaze.
The particles all around the room had turned red just like the musical notation had. They were flowing toward three points halfway up the wall opposite of them. When the particles had finished collecting, they appeared to shake in place. Link placed an uncertain hand on the hilt of the Lokomo Sword, feeling his heartbeat pick up. About then was when he realized that he could feel a subtle shake in the floor.
Crnkk! The foot was only visible after one of the Geozard bodies was crushed underneath. This seemed to break the illusion that the red points were still on the opposite wall. Instead, Link, Irleen, and Layna realized that three statues, each almost as tall as the room, were slowly approaching. Fear gave Link one last thought before his mind went completely blank.
These are the things that killed the Geozards.
The statues looked nothing like a Sorian, or a regular Human for that matter. Their torsos were solid pieces of sharp, chiseled muscle. Each joint was a sphere connecting one block-shaped limb to another or to the torso. They had no heads. Instead, the red "eye" was centered inside a cross-shaped recess that stretched across their torsos. Their whole bodies appeared to be made out of the technoworks they had just walked out of, but there was no corresponding gap in the wall behind them.
"Oh, shit…" Irleen whispered.
Link snapped back to awareness just in time to see the statues passing the opening to the corridor they had just traveled down. They had lost their only means of escape, unless they wanted to dare being flattened by an enormous foot. He pulled the sword and said, "Irleen, get to the doorway. If we can't beat them, we'll at least know where to run."
"I'll get to it in a min-minu—What!?" Irleen replied.
"Layna, let's go!"
Before Irleen could tell what was happening, both of them charged the statues. She only had a moment to scream, "What the hell's wrong with you two!?"
Link was not entirely without logic in the matter. As individuals, both he and Layna were much faster than these statues. And now that the statues were closer, it was easy to see where the technoworks around them ended and the statues began.
Link started by leaping onto the left foot of the statue in the middle and laying a downward strike into the ball serving as the statue's shin. Contrary to what he had been hoping, though, the shin remained intact, and the strike stung his hand due to the fact that there was no glancing to one side afterwards. In response, the statue lifted its foot, and Link had to flail his arms outward to avoid being thrown off. He was thrown anyway after the statue kicked its foot forward. The motion was not very fast, but Link still flew a significant distance before landing on one of the Geozard corpses. He flipped head-over-heels and hit the floor on his stomach, the sword already long thrown out of his hand. After spending a moment feeling the full extent of the ensuing pain, he looked up. Layna, being far more cautious than him, had latched onto the left statue's thigh. The statue had to twist and reach one hand out to grab her, but she had already shifted to a position between its thighs, where it would have a hard time crushing her due to its shape.
Link then realized that the statue on the right was still walking toward him while the center statue turned to help the left statue grab Layna. He immediately returned to his feet and looked around for the Lokomo Sword. The dim light of the room made spotting it impossible, so Link took a couple steps backwards, hoping to see the sword in a change of light. Still, he could not find it. So Link started thinking of another idea. His boomerang would be equally as useless, being made of wood. He could not see the bow being effective, either, since he only had the two arrows and he would be shooting at something as hard as rock.
So he decided on a confusion tactic first and pulled his flare gun. The dark made it hard to tell what he was loading, so he hoped that he was grabbing a flare shell and not one of Biluf's new smoke shells. He loaded it and aimed it upward as the statue towered over him, its red eye lower in its abdomen to stare him down. Link gave it a defiant glare and pulled the trigger.
FZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzz! Being in a closed room made the flare's hiss quite loud. A ball of green light bounced against the statue's rock-solid body, doing absolutely nothing to harm it as it hit the wall next to it. However, the statue had been surprised by the flare and, two seconds after the flare struck it, flinched backwards. It was a very awkward thing for a three-story statue to do, as the sudden movement of mass caused its feet to rise from the floor. It tried to save itself by pressing its left hand into the wall beside it, but it still fell backwards. BOOOM! Link was sure that the fall shook the entire island. He was glad that the flare had worked better than he expected; one more step would have put him into stomping range. The statue in the center turned in response to its fellow falling, and Link glanced around in the new source of light to find the sword again. Still nothing, so he glanced down at his belt.
In the next minute, Link was charging for the statue's left foot with Sello's small hammer in his hand. He remembered how, during the fight with Sello's insane invention Drumstik, the hammer had been the only item in his possession (after taking it from Sello) that had been capable of breaking Drumstik's glass armor. Since then, he had yet to find anything that had the same penetrating power. So he decided to put it to the test by running up to the fallen statue and seeing how much a block of technoworks could stop it.
The answer, he discovered, was very little. Link swung the hammer right as he came into range. The hammer gave a ring as its struck the living stone, but the hammer's pointed head put a hole in the bottom of the statue's foot up to where the head met the handle. The area immediately surrounding the hole suddenly turned bright red, and Link realized what he had done. By penetrating the outer surface, he had triggered the warning sign of necrosis.
The statue lifted its foot, causing Link to release the hammer before he was lifted off the floor. It moved its eye into the area of the groove in between its legs. Link could not be sure, but it felt as if the statue was glaring at him. Link watched the eye disappear back up the groove, and the statue raised a hand to the center statue. The center statue put its hands around the fallen statue's arm, and the fallen statue ground along the floor as it pulled itself into a sitting position. This caused an area of the floor to illuminate with the warning signs of necrosis. By then, the flare had died out, but the red flashing outlined the statues well enough for Link to see. Link watched the fallen statue lift itself to turn one leg around. When he saw that it was the same leg with his hammer jammed into its foot, Link decided to take a chance. He broke into a run, and his boots sped him up. He dashed in between both giants and turned to get behind the fallen statue. The statue had just dropped its knee back to the floor. Link could not reach the hammer due to it now being higher up, so he clambered onto the inside of the statue's knee and moved along its calf. He had to hurry; if the creature stood up, not only would the hammer be crushed under its foot, but he would be sent flying face-first into the floor. It was not easy without any handholds, but Link reached the statue's ankle just as the creature's calf became level. He slid over the edge of the blocky foot and kicked the hammer out of place. Then he dropped back down just as the statue began to rise. He snatched up the hammer and backed off a moment.
The statue had risen back to its full height with help from its fellow. But it did not allow its injured foot to touch the floor, almost as if doing so would cause physical pain. Link wondered if it was possible, given that the technoworks themselves were alive. He watched as the statue leaned on the wall directly over the door.
And he developed a plan.
He jogged up to the statue's other foot, aware that the eyes of both statues had moved lower (the eye of his target following the same cross-shaped groove that wrapped around its back) to watch him. He raised a hand and used a backswing to put the hammer's head into the back of the statue's foot. The statue appeared to jerk in response to the attack, but it could not retaliate too well due to the attacked foot being the only one it wanted to stand on at the moment. Link glanced over in time to see the statue twisting in order to strike him with its opposite foot. He ducked around the side of the foot and placed another blow into the side. Then he quickly moved to the front of the foot and climbed on top of it, secure in the knowledge that he had a little time before the statue tried to kick him as the center one first had. He swung the hammer into the ball serving as the statue's ankle. The mass of statue above him staggered as if about to fall. Link also noticed that, unlike the foot, the ball had formed a long crack across its surface where he had struck. Having worked for so long with wood and seeing how the strain of a stay on an old anchoring surface could cause fractures when some form of tension was added to it, he realized that most of the statue's weight was focused on such a singular area that it was relatively fragile. So Link decided to take advantage of this and placed another hole in the ball. Another crack formed, and Link could hear the rock-like technoworks grinding. He jumped off the foot and moved back as quickly as he could.
The cracks on the ball expanded and increased until the ball snapped in half. The top half slid off the bottom half, and the statue fell backwards again. BOOOM! The whole room shook again. The whole ball turned red, and its flashing looked more severe than the damage to the floor underneath the fallen statue. Link decided to take advantage of its position and dashed in between its legs. He stopped short of running into the area of torso that served as the statue's groin. The eye had moved into the area of slot between its legs. It seemed like an opportunity, so Link raised the hammer and aimed for the eye. He struck it dead-center, and the eye simply shattered into particles once more as the necrosis warning replaced it. These particles spread out across the statue's body, and the statue assumed the same flowing pattern of the room around it.
CRSH! Link was lucky to be short, or else the fist of the center statue might have struck his head after bashing the downed statue's thighs trying to reach him. It caused Link to duck lower, and he dashed away from the fallen statue in case the other statue tried striking again. When he was in the clear, he turned to find that the center statue was taking longer strides to catch up to him. He was not sure how to approach this statue since he had yet to wound it. He was certain that it had watched how he had taken down the other, so attacking the feet might be trickier. Crashing sounded from the statue Layna was still attacking, although Link could not take his eyes away from his new attacker to see what was happening.
So Link decided to chance being flattened and dashed closer to the statue. With his boots speeding him up, he turned left and came to a stop just behind the statue's right. The statue had to finish its step before it could move its eye into the groove under its right arm to find him. It closed its stance and leaned over to swat Link with its hand. Link immediately dashed to a spot right behind it, opening the distance between him and it so he was just out of reach. The statue turned to follow Link, so Link ran to get behind the statue again. The statue paused, its eye, although lagging behind compared to the speed Link was now using, following him with each burst of movement. It shifted and corrected its stance so that it could turn in the opposite direction. Link ran to get behind it again, so the statue resolved to take a large step backwards in order to close distance with Link. So Link moved to its right side while it was in mid-step, and the statue had to raise its arm in order to spot him. It turned on its heels so that its torso was squared up with Link's position. Link then moved to its left, which nearly resulted in him slamming into the wall due to the lack of space between it and the statue's leading foot.
The statue now had a problem. Its stance was too wide for it to move its foot and kick Link, and it was too close to the wall to bring its other foot forward to hit Link. Link took advantage of this by climbing onto its foot. He raised the hammer and gave the statue's heel three solid strikes, all penetrating and causing fractures to form across the ball. Then he retreated, and the ball broke apart under the strain of holding up the statue in a very awkward position. Its broken ankle caused its foot to roll, and the statue's legs were so far extended that the bottom-most part of its torso impacted the floor. The hit knocked the torso off balance, and it fell onto its back away from Link. BAM!
Link quickly dashed in between its legs as the statue, anticipating Link's next move, tried to shut them. Link made it through just as its knees slammed together. He took aim and put the hammer into the eye. Just as the first statue, the eye shattered into particles that returned to their usual flow. He turned back to find the path blocked by the statue's knees, so he tucked the hammer into his belt and climbed up the knees.
He found that the third statue sported a number of places where necrosis was starting, particularly along the arms, shoulders, and upper back. The fact that the wall behind it was also glowing red told Link that the statue must have been bashing up against it. The statue's arms moved about its back, and Link could see Layna dangling from one shoulder with her legs wrapped about halfway around the ball. How she was able to hold on like that amazed Link, especially since any other person might have slipped and fallen on their head with as much moving as the statue was doing. But, as much damage as the statue was doing to itself, Link saw that its eye was wandering around its slot in an attempt to find her. It finally seemed to spot her from under its arm, and it tried to crush her in its armpit. Layna pressed her hand into the groove before she allowed herself to fall from its shoulder. She used her hands to grab the top of the statue's thigh, correcting her orientation before she landed on the floor. The sight left Link impressed by her preservation of grace in spite of the pressing matter of being attacked by a three-story statue.
Link then saw what she had been doing as she almost danced away from the statue while it flailed about, trying to find her. He noticed that, as the eye looked around, every now and then it would blink out of existence for a split second. And it would always blink out in the same spots on the front of its torso. Layna, ever resourceful, had been blinding it with some substance that was not visible at this distance. She must have smeared enough of it to blind its right side underneath the arm since it did not seem to notice her watching it from its right. She glanced over at Link and finally seemed to take notice of the other two statues. At this distance and in the red flashing of injured technoworks, it was hard to tell if she even had a reaction to it.
Then she jerked her head in the direction of the remaining statue, a gesture which Link took to mean she was letting him in on the last fight. Link nodded and slid off the second downed statue's knee. He pulled the hammer from his belt and dashed across the room at high speed. With the statue trying to find Layna crawling around somewhere on its torso, it had no idea that Link had stopped next to its left foot. Link climbed onto the foot and put three holes in the ankle joint. The statue raised its foot in response, and Link slid off without warning. He landed on his back and watched as the eye located him instead.
Layna suddenly leapt onto its other foot, jumped up to grab the top of its shin, and swung her body upside down to wrap her legs around the statue's thigh. Again, Link could not understand how she did that, but she rose to a sitting position and grabbed the top of the statue's thigh. She removed something from a pocket and smeared it on top of the eye, blacking it out. Link rolled out of the way and recovered just in time to avoid having the statue's injured foot crush him. The statue brought its right fist down to smash her against its thigh, but Layna leaned backwards and allowed herself to slip enough that, when the fist made contact, the top of the thigh and the groin lit up bright red from injury with Layna just out of range. The statue nearly doubled over in response, but Layna remained out of reach. She made eye contact with Link and held out a hand. Link could not interpret the gesture in any other way, so, without thinking about it, he dared to step closer to the statue. Then he lofted the hammer up to her. She caught it by the head and placed the handle in her mouth. Then she sat up again and caught hold of the fist still covering the statue's injured groin. She pulled herself onto the forearm and swung a leg up for a better position to reach the shoulder again. The statue straightened up and found her standing on its forearm with a hand to its shoulder for support. Layna opened her mouth to drop the hammer into her hand. And, with what little space there was between her and the groove in the chest, she struck the pointed end of the head into the statue's eye.
Although Layna's strike did not have the same penetrating power as Link's, the small hole was enough for the eye to shatter back into particles. The statue froze in its current position, still able to stand despite the damage to its left ankle.
For a moment, everything was silent. Both Link and Layna looked around to see if any more statues would be attacking. Instead, Link found that the room had returned to the same as before, with the white particles moving over the walls, floor, and ceiling as if nothing had happened.
"Whoo!" Link hollered, a large grin on his face. "Glad we survived that!" He heard something land on the floor next to him and turned to discover Layna there. "How about it, huh?" he asked her.
"'Imayn Kyabtin," she replied as she held out the hammer to him, her face revealing no sort of emotion in response to him.
"Oh, right," he said, accepting the hammer. He tucked it into his belt. "Thanks. Nice work out there, too." She tilted her head in response, her illusion of impassiveness lost to confusion. Unsure of how else to convey the idea, Link held up a thumb and said, "Good work, Layna."
Layna still appeared confused. Then, to Link's amazement, she managed to give a small smile. "A'ya, 'Imayn Kyabtin," she said with a nod.
"Wow, Link!" Irleen cried out as she approached. "It's nice to know there are now two of you to take out things larger than yourselves."
Link chuckled as he surveyed the other two statues. "No kidding," he said. "What were these things?"
"Technomos," Irleen answered.
"Tech-Technomos?" Link asked. "What are those?"
"Uh… I don't know," Irleen told him. "I just made it up."
Link turned back to her with a worried expression on his face. "You what?"