Chapter 117: Ballade of the Streamways

…

~~Day 97 (Command, Day 60)

~~The evacuation was mostly successful. Some people were hurt, others have gone missing. But I suppose it's better than letting Cunimincus just wipe them off the face of the world. At least that's thousands more people that he can't touch.

~~We departed for Bold Island late this morning because we have a bit of a crazy plan. Since we have a way to do it, we're gonna try changing the Sky Lines or putting Cunimincus' ship on a new Sky Line. Irleen says that we should do it from Bold Island since it's the closest island. She also said that it's crazy because only Greys have the ability to manipulate the Sky Lines like we want to do. But it's something we have to try. If anything, we can alter the Sky Line and buy ourselves some time before Cunimincus reaches Bell Island. It'll give us a little more time to come up with a way to rescue Princess Zelda and deal with Cunimincus. I've been thinking that, once we have the princess and Captain Koroul's crew, North, Luke, and Blair could then go in and sink the ship. Considering we're dealing with a bunch of different creatures, we might have to take a trip to the surface to make sure none of the Stalarmors or Darknuts survive.

~~I just re-read everything I wrote. I can't believe I'm plotting the deaths of another airship crew. I know they're monsters, and I know they've killed people. I don't know what that makes me. Maybe I'm just over-thinking this. Something has to be done about Cunimincus. I may not be comfortable with killing an entire crew, but I'll do what it takes to get Zelda back from them.

…

The Island Symphony docked at Bold Island just an hour and a half later. The island appeared to have recovered a little more since the previous night, the most noticeable change being that more airships were docked in spite of Link having recruited most of the vessels docked here last night. Link decided to have a quick lunch on the ship before he, Leynne, Layna, and Irleen departed, leaving Dubbl in charge. The first stop was a nearby cartographer so that they could buy some maps of the eastern half of the kingdom.

Then they went to the technoworks. The only obstacle they had was the chains that someone had placed on the broken door blocking them from the cave. Leynne was about to go find a pair of steel cutters when Link jammed the Lokomo Sword in between the chains and the door and used the blade to snap the chains apart. Leynne, carrying a pen and some spare paper, scribbled a note and left it with thirty rupees. Link thought it was considerate until Leynne revealed that he jokingly wrote down "Find a stronger chain, please".

Link was glad to see that the technoworks were still the same yellow-and-orange colors that did not have a history of trying to kill him. The garden had restored itself with grass and small shrubs, and some of the trees bore new buds. However, when they came to the rooms with the dead Geozards, the stench was so horrible that Link, Leynne, and Layna decided to bury the Geozards under the technoworks. It was not particularly ceremonious; the moment Link had a large enough hole open in the floor, the bodies were kicked inside so they could be closed as fast as possible. Irleen remarked that they would have to reset the technoworks before attempting to change the Sky Lines. Leynne's remarks fell into complaints about the smell produced by the bodies once the interior of the technoworks started cooking them.

Once they were in the control room, Irleen and Link set up the technoworks to reconnect the blocks they had removed while Leynne made a small space for himself in front of Link. Irleen talked him through the process of selecting the right commands, and then Link was playing a song that had a similar feel to a song he played on Might Island, albeit with a completely different set of notes. He flubbed his first two attempts due to being distracted by Leynne tapping his pen on the floor out of rhythm with the song. On his third attempt, Irleen gave an audible sigh halfway through, and he stopped to give her an annoyed look. His fourth attempt saw success, and he played the song two more times in the usual manner that the technoworks demanded.

When he was finished and the technoworks had returned to their original lighting, he gave a relieved sigh. "And that was the easy part," he commented to Leynne.

"If that looked at all easy," Irleen added.

"I cannot say I was deeply inspihed," Leynne replied, flipping a pen in his hand as he sat cross-legged on the floor. He paused as Link played the note to call the list up on the columns. "How long do you think we will have the option to change the Sky Lines until the technowohks gets bohed? Should we discuss a couhse of action now?"

"I think it can wait," Irleen said. "The technoworks won't revert to their usual state on their own; they have to finish something first. The question is how all this works. I wish Lutock was still around; this sort of job would be candy to him."

Link shrugged. "We'll just have to try it on our own. Where do we start?"

Irleen sighed. "Give me a moment." She started fluttering down the column on the left side.

Leynne glanced over at Layna, who was sitting with her back against the right column. "Settled youhself in, Layna?" he asked. Layna started from whatever thoughts she had been having and shifted her gaze from Link to Leynne. Leynne expected her to respond, but she just stared at him. So he shook his head. "Neveh mind."

"Try this one, Link," Irleen said. Link moved to the left column and pressed an index finger on the bullet she hovered next to. The Sorian lettering then rearranged itself into a smaller list. "Hmm… maybe not…"

"How many different things can the technowohks do?" Leynne asked, sounding a little impatient.

"Plenty," Irleen said as she hovered next to a word with a hollow bullet. "Hit this to bring up that last list." Link did as she said, and the words reverted to the previous list. "Okay… Hmm…"

"How long?" Leynne asked.

"I don't know," Irleen snapped. "I don't know how Hylian works, but sometimes Sorian just isn't that straight-forward. All I see is one word on each line, and they're pretty vague about what they do."

"Just take it easy, Irleen," Link said in a calming tone.

Irleen sighed and moved to the other column. "I know, I know," she said. "Just… I'll find it in a minute. If I don't, I'll go nuts."

"I'd have assumed you'd already become nuts," Leynne said.

"Why don't you stop talking and let me concentrate?" Irleen said. Leynne shook his head and preoccupied himself with the maps spread around him. "Link, try this one." Link moved over and pushed his thumb against the bullet she indicated. The list changed. "Ah-hah!" she declared, startling Layna out of her thoughts. "It's the second item here. That should get it started."

"This one?" Link asked, one finger hovering over the second item on the list. Irleen made an affirmative sound, so Link pressed his finger against it.

The technoworks did not turn dim right away. Instead, bands of green light started streaming across the columns and on the area of wall directly in front of the columns. All four looked around, but all the activity appeared to be around the columns. The bands shifted to blue. Then, about a minute later, the room dimmed, and the ring of blue light Link always stood in to play a song appeared in its usual spot on the floor. Link glanced down at the blues harp to find that the emeralds were showing him another song. He returned to the circle and began memorizing the notes. He found that the song he had to play came in three parts. The first part was fast-paced with a sequence of notes that Link had a hard time remembering. The second part was slower, with longer notes which Link found just marginally easier to memorize. The third part varied greatly, leaving Link at a loss for how the piece sounded. He had to let it repeat a few times, and it felt to him to have been hours before he finally tried playing.

His first attempt to play ended abruptly when he realized that he was lagging behind in the first part of the song. He had to stop and spend some more time studying the notes for the first part. Then he began his second attempt. He found his way through the piece, but he knew that it had a number of errors in both the first and third parts thanks to some quick note changes that he had not been able to keep up with. Yet again, he watched the pattern on the blues harp, trying to block out everything else in his mind. His third try yielded a better result, but still with errors that the technoworks did not accept. He dreaded failing a fourth time, knowing that he had yet to fail beyond the fourth attempt. This was likely the reason that he failed the fourth attempt, so distracted by trying to perfect his playing that he skipped over the second part of the song into the third part. He paused to breathe and look over the song again. And then he failed the fifth try due to missing the quick changes again. At this point, he was glad for his crew's patience as he figured that Leynne and Irleen were likely getting tired of waiting for him to play the song right.

But as he was trying to play, he had an idea of what the song was like. The first part was wild, free, and maybe a little dangerous. Link was actually surprised that the feelings could be conveyed through a blues harp. The second part was calming and reminded Link of the few times when, without anything better to do, he would relax with a book from the company library. The third part was slightly harder to figure out because it was the one he botched up the most. At best, he felt a sense of acceptance. It was strange because it was like a transition, as if whatever subject simply moved on from its first state onto a second without resistance. It was normal, but new and unfamiliar. Not that Link felt his interpretation was very certain; he was still lacking in sleep and naturally concluded that he still might not be thinking straight.

He finally managed a flawless playing of the piece. He was about to do it again when the technoworks around him brightened. It reminded him that he was supposed to be doing something, but the sudden revelation of his surroundings caused him to forget for a moment. Irleen, hovering nearby, glanced around, seemingly taken aback by the technoworks' immediate response. She did not say anything, so Link was not sure if he should try repeating the song again. He determined that he was not supposed to play again because the emeralds on the blues harp had stopped glowing.

Then Link and Leynne looked up at the nearby wall. Spots of orange had solidified into brown blotches. The green lines from before had become closed shapes which weaved and ducked in between these blotches, some of them a darker shade of green than the others.

Link glanced between the wall and Irleen before finally asking, "Did it work?"

"Uuh…" was Irleen's immediate response as she glanced back and forth between the wall and the column next to her. Link looked to the column to find that some more Sorian text had appeared, this time green instead of blue. Link then glanced down to find that he was now standing inside a faint, green ring.

Leynne, realizing something, picked up one of his maps and stood. "Yes, it must have," he said, holding up the map so that he could compare it to the wall. "Yes. Yes, this is definitely a map of the sky kingdom." He used a finger to draw an imaginary box. "This area is the whole of the kingdom itself. Which makes these—"

"The rest of the Sky Lines," Link finished. He awed in silence for a moment. "People here always thought they just ended somewhere off the map. But they're just like the Dawn Line; they come full circle."

"So what now?" Leynne asked Irleen.

"Hang on," Irleen said as she examined the column. "Okay, this is just a general view of the Sky Lines; we're not quite there, but we're close." She turned and fluttered to the left column. "Okay, Link? Push this bullet here; this should let us get a better view of the Sky Lines around this island."

Link stepped out of the circle and pushed his fingertips against the column. He watched as the map made the blotch in the middle of the map larger along with the surrounding lines. Now that the image was bigger, Link could definitely distinguish Bold Island and its neighbor, the diminutive Remnant Island. This view made the map more interesting because, along with the larger Sky Lines, he could also small, red dots flowing through them.

Leynne stepped to one side and pointed to one Sky Line which bore two large, red blotches. "Ihleen," he asked, "is this what I think it is?"

"That's gotta be Cunimincus and the storm," Irleen said.

"My wohd…"

"What? What is it?"

"Well…" Leynne paused to look at the map in his hands. Then he glanced down at the maps on the floor. "Accohding to my original predictions based on the stohm's progress through Autumn and Centeh Islands, I had figuhed the stohm to actually be fuhtheh behind than this. But it appeahs as if it has advanced a whole day within the span of half that day."

"What?" Link asked. "You mean… you mean the storm's going faster than it should?"

"Based on my original plots, yes," Leynne replied. He indicated a spot to the left, corresponding to the west, using the blunt end of his pen. "It should be bahely clearing Centeh Island at the moment, but this cleahly shows it is well beyond that point."

Link took in a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "Let's make sure it doesn't reach Bell Island before it's expected. Irleen?"

"Working on it, Link," Irleen replied. She zipped across his vision as she examined the Sorian writing on the columns. "This is bizarre; it's like trying to read a different language. Whatever Greys that set up must have been some pretty horrible talkers."

"Can we safely assume that anything cuhrently on this wall is within the control of these technowohks?" Leynne asked.

"Uuh… shit, that part was over here…" Irleen zipped across Link's vision again. "Yes! Yeah, anything on the map now, we can control. Give me a minute—" She flew back to the other column. "—and I'll figure out how to alter the Sky Line."

"And, if we can alteh it—" Leynne started. He had to stretch his arm in order to indicate an empty area of map far above his head. "—we should put it in this region. That spot on top is Tabletop Island. The neahby area is practically vacant. No islands to botheh, no concehn foh shipping eitheh."

Link nodded. "Agreed."

Leynne nodded and looked back up at the wall. "It's curious. We can cleahly see that the Dawn Line is occupied, but its countehpaht, the Descent Line, doesn't show the same amount of occupation. They'h close enough that the stohm should be affecting the Descent Line as well."

"Maybe it means that Cunimincus really is stuck on the Dawn Line," Link suggested.

"I think he's right," Irleen said. "If what Link told me about their first trip to my home island has anything to do with this, then whatever they used to clear the storm from the Sky Line may have done it by changing the Sky Line itself. But that's just theory at this point."

"If a change has taken place," Leynne said, "why would it have taken so long foh Cunimincus to realize that he can move the stohm?"

"Can't talk. Reading."

"Maybe he just didn't know he could do it until now," Link suggested with a shrug.

"Okay, I think I've got it," Irleen said. "But you're gonna have to experiment with your harmonica a bit."

"All right," Link said as he stepped into the circle. "Where should I start?"

"How should I know? You're the musician."

"Well," Leynne spoke up as he stared at the wall. "The fihst thing to do would be to specify which Sky Line we want to modify."

"Wait, wait," Irleen said as she moved over to Link. "Hold out your harmonica for me."

"Why?" Link asked as he held the blues harp up to her.

"Why do you think?" she replied as she hovered over the blues harp. "So I can read it."

"Oh!" Link said just before she finished her sentence. "Yeah, I forgot you can do that."

She became silent for a moment. Then she said, "Okay. The Sky Lines aren't in any particular order, so you just need to give the harmonica a quick blow. The left side goes one way, the right goes in the opposite order. Make sure you blow into the far ends."

Link placed the blues harp to his mouth and gave the note on the far left a quick blow while his eyes were focused on the map. He missed it at first, but then he spotted one Sky Line on the top-left flashing a brighter shade of green. He made the same note sound, and the flashing left that Sky Line and appeared on a different one. So he continued to give the note a brief blow and watched the flashing shift around.

"Stop!" Leynne suddenly shouted at him after a few minutes of changing Sky Lines. "That's it."

"Now what?" Link asked.

"Use one of the notes in the middle so you can change it," Irleen said. Link blew one note, and the flashing Sky Line changed to white. "Okay, give me a moment." She returned to the blues harp and fell silent. Then she said, "Okay, you see the dark blue thing on the map?"

Link glanced around at the wall. "No."

"Heh, Link," Leynne said, indicating the farthest area to the left. A blue bar covered part of the Sky Line, looking no larger than Link's thumb.

"The same two notes will cause it to move one direction or another," Irleen explained. "Wherever you put the blue thing, that's where the change will start."

"Where should we start it, Leynne?" Link asked.

"Do you see this slight dip between the stohm and Bell Island?" Leynne asked, indicating an area of the Dawn Line where the space between it and the parallel Sky Line was greater. "It would be best to staht from the apex; it should be fah enough away that Cunimincus won't notice the change taking place."

Link nodded and started playing a note. Then he switched from the low note to the high note when the bar would not move. The bar traveled along the Sky Line at a steady pace until it was positioned about in the spot Leynne had indicated. "Okay," Irleen spoke up. "Now, use a middle note to begin changing." Link blew a middle note, and the blue bar switched to purple.

"This is an amazingly ohganized process," Leynne commented while Irleen did her examination of the instrument again. "It must have taken some time foh the Sorian Greys to put this togetheh."

"Yeah," Link agreed with an exhausted voice.

"Whew," Irleen breathed. "Okay, Link, this is where the fun starts. Whatever you do, don't use any of the middle notes until you're sure it's in the right position. The far left and the far right will either change the size of the section of Sky Line you're modifying or rotate it; I think it depends on whether you're blowing or pulling. Halfway between the far notes and the middle notes are notes that will let you move the section of Sky Line you're changing. The left side moves up and left; the right side moves down and right. Again, it depends on whether you're blowing or pulling."

"What do you think, Leynne?" Link asked.

Leynne pondered at the wall for a moment. "I think you should give youhself some moh Sky Line to wohk with. Maybe expand the size of the affected Sky Line just a bit."

Link blew into the far right note on the blues harp. This caused the purple bar to narrow, so he quickly switched to the opposite side. The bar returned to its former size, and then Link expanded it until it was three times its original size. "Okay, you said up toward Tabletop Island, right?" Link asked.

"Yes," Leynne said. He used his pen and outstretched arm to indicate the space again. "Pehhaps just to the south so we don't risk sending the stohm to Jah Island instead."

Link nodded and gave the area of blues harp Irleen had indicated as moving up and left a brief blow. The bar shifted left, revealing that the purple bar was pulling along a faint, green line. Link let out his breath and pulled on the blues harp, driving the bar north. He gave a few toots to make it shift west away from Bold Island.

"Okay, hold it theh, Link," Leynne spoke up. He looked down to consult his maps again. "That's too fah nohth; it puts them in range of Tabletop Island."

"So, uh…" Link uttered as he worked out the directionality of the opposite side of the blues harp. He gave the blues harp a brief pull, and the purple bar shifted south.

"A little moh," Leynne said. "Give it a behth about the same distance between Bell Island and Skyrideh Poht."

Link had to visually gauge the distance Leynne was indicating before moving the bar again. When he was finished, the northern-most section of the Dawn Line looked almost to be in the middle of nowhere. "How's that?" he asked Leynne.

"Can you shift it west a bit moh?" Leynne asked. "The fuhtheh away we can move it, the moh time we gain." Link nodded and obliged with a brief shift to the left. "Theh. That should do. And, obviously, the green line it's dragging indicates the Sky Line's proposed path."

"That's right," Irleen said. "Okay, Link. Make it happen."

Link gave one of the middle notes of the blues harp a determined blast. The old section of the Sky Line faded out, and the faint, green line filled in white to indicate the change. A flurry of green particles flew across the map, and the island gave a small shudder.

Then, after a moment of silence, Leynne glanced up at the map. "That's it?" he asked.

"That's it," Irleen said. "We changed a Sky Line."

Link pointed and said, "Part of it comes close enough to Bold Island. Let's get back to the ship and go take a look."

…

Half an hour later, they arrived on the outside of the Sky Lines around Bold Island. There, they found the north-bound section of the Dawn Line just as they had altered it. Cheers went up around the deck, and Link decided that they should go south to see if there was any sign of the storm. Leynne plotted their path along the Dawn Line and then onto the Descent Line heading toward Center Island. Leynne indicated that they would have to stop short of encountering the Dawn Line unless they wanted to run into the Undying Storm.

So when the Island Symphony gave a shake characteristic of descending from a Sky Line, he and Irleen immediately stepped out onto the deck. They did not even need to step onto the forecastle to see the storm, although they said nothing to each other or anyone else until they stood next to Leynne and Line.

The storm was white. Instead of the deep black of storm clouds that they had come to associate with the Undying Storm, the clouds had become mostly white. Some dark spots persisted along with the occasional lightning strike. Perhaps the most noticeable of all was that the hole through which the Dawn Line traveled had opened wide enough that they did not need a duoscope to see it.

"Irleen?" Link asked, his voice exuding a small amount of the dread he felt. "Is… is the storm weakening?"

"Oh, man…" Line groaned, resting his forehead on the wheel.

"I think it is," Irleen replied, sounding shocked. "I have never seen the storm like this before."

"Could this explain why the stohm advanced fuhtheh than it should've?" Leynne asked, using a hand to idly indicate the storm.

"It could be," Irleen said. "Without the magic around my home to sustain it… that could be why it's failing."

"How much time?" Link asked.

Irleen shook from side to side. "I can't say. If… if we think about the way it's changed between when we last knew it was around my home island and right now…"

"Assuming it's a steady progression," Leynne said, "I would guess that we have two days. Three if we'h lucky."

"And then what?" Line asked in annoyance. "The storm just disappears?"

"And Cunimincus can attack any island he wants," Irleen said.

"We may have just sent him towahds one of the moh heavily populated regions of Hyrule," Leynne said. He turned around and grabbed the hair on the back of his head. "Damn…"

"What do we do now?" Line asked.

Link took in a deep breath. "Line, bring us about. Get us back to the Port. We're gonna need a plan as soon as we can."

Line turned the wheel to bring the ship about. Link and Irleen returned to Link's cabin, where Link began to pace as he tried to come up with an idea. Either by assault or capture, the knowledge that they now had two days to confront Cunimincus made him silently panic.