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“Okay, let me get this straight. You got stuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Under the castle.”
“Wait, you’re on your way? It has taken you SO long to figure this out, Link. Where are you.”
“Under the castle.”
“Hang on, let me just…” Zelda manifested next to Link. He grinned, a sheepish look on his face, and adjusted his grip on the castle wall, hanging on for dear life above a void. “Link, what in Din’s name is this?”
“Well, I figured out a way to use my shield and bow to sorta sink through the floor, and I was trying to skip the whole fighting the blights thing, and I ended up down here.” He looked her up and down. “So uh… you doing okay? I’ll be out once I can just get onto that ledge and then shield clip through the other wall. After that I should be able to get back into the room and do this the old school way.”
“Link, you are lucky that you have amnesia.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Well, think of it this way. Right now, I can’t justify hating you because you are mentally incapable of grasping the gravity of this situation.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So… we’re cool then?”
“No, we’re not. But as far as the year you’ve spent messing around, I’m pretty sure that you’ve saved enough lives to justify it. The town thing could’ve waited though.”
Link reached up and grabbed another handhold, before flinging himself onto a ledge. “They had a wedding, Zelda. Weddings shouldn’t be delayed like that.”
Really. Is that so. “Y’know, for a guy who spent a century in a hot tub, you don’t seem to have been changed by it that much.”
“Whatcha mean?” Link moved a stone against a wall, front flipped onto his shield, and fell on his butt.
“You still care about people. Wayyyy too much.” She walked through the wall as he finally managed to clip through, floating upwards as he climbed.
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
Zelda sighed. “Yes.”
“Great! Hey, could you check and see which blight I was on? I’ve been down here for a hot minute.” Link rolled over a ledge, crouching between the floor and the real floor. Zelda looked at him for a minute, expressionless, and then popped her head through the floor.
“Thunder. You were almost done, Link. Why did you bother with the whole floor shenanigans anyway?”
“Thought you’d be impressed.” She raised an eyebrow. “Okay fine. He’s really scary.”
“Goddesses, Link, you literally have no fear. It’s your whole thing.”
Link stopped pushing against the floor-ceiling and looked her in the eyes, with that serious look he got sometimes. When the real Link showed his face.
“Zels, I’ve said it a thousand times. Courage is not the absence of fear, but its defeat.”
“Well then go get him, courageous one.”
Link smiled, not the goofy grin that he normally wore but a genuine smile, the old smile, the one she knew from when he had taught her to ride, when he had found her writing in her diary and noticed his name, when he had caught her unawares at the shrine up in Akkala. “Of course, highness.”
He leapt through the floor, his physical form passing through that of the stone bricks, and flung a boomerang into thunderblight’s shield. A bow from a lynel was drawn, and moments later, the explosions of fifteen bomb arrows cleared.
“I’ll be honest, that was anticlimactic.”
Zelda smirked. “Don’t worry, I’ve been plotting weak spots on the boar for like thirty-five years, that fight will be eight arrows and a whole lot of horseback riding if you do it right.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll know when you get there.” She smiled, and dissipated. What kind of idiot tried to worm his way between the bricks of the floor anyway?