The Legend of Zelda: Light and Shadow

Chapter 20: Let It Go

Verona watched Link intently as he tried and failed to execute one of the exercises in reining his magic in that she had tried explaining to him. Not long after their meal, the Queen of Shadows and the hero had taken to a large, rather empty room within the Palace of Twilight to train in, one in which there was relatively little that Link might accidently destroy or harm while trying to gain better control of his powers. At first, Verona gave him relatively simple commands, such as creating a small burst of flame or a light gust of wind. However, even beginner's tasks such as these proved to be difficult for the hero, who had no prior experience with magic whatsoever. Even despite his best efforts at using focus and concentration, he found that he still couldn't get any of it right, for in each attempt he was either unable to conjure up anything at all, or in the rare case that he did, it would quickly spiral out of his control. The Queen of Shadows took notice of this, though for the longest time she made no comment on it, instead taking a more hands off approach as she allowed Link to try and figure it out on his own, largely so she could figure out how his unique powers worked herself. They were quite different from the powers of Twilight and Shadows that Verona was used to, and though she had studied elemental magic in the past, the nature of the powers of the Triforce of Courage was relatively unknown to her. And so, she decided to observe them in action first before giving the hero any proper advice on how to use them, though considering the inconsistency of them, she was having a hard time getting a proper read on exactly how they worked.

At the same time, Link was becoming increasingly frustrated as time wore on into hours, and yet he still wasn't making any progress with honing his powers. Even though he was in a controlled environment, with nothing or no one around to cause his emotions to erupt and cause his powers to go out of control, he found that he still couldn't bend them to his will intentionally. The fact that Verona seemed to only be watching him from afar, only giving small commands or pieces of advice every now and then, only aggravated the hero further. After all, her lack of helpfulness certainly seemed like she was breaking the deal that she had made with him to aid him with his powers, something she had done relatively little of since they started. All of the seemingly good guidance she had given him back in the woods seemed to have vanished, and in its place the only things Link found were irritation and failure once more.

The hero let out another shout of aggravation as he tried once more to conjure up a burst of ice, only to no avail once more. "That's it!" he proclaimed angrily, glaring at Verona, who stood at the far end of the room, while he clenched his fists tightly at his sides, not noticing the soft red glow surrounding them. "I'm done! I can't do this anymore! We've been at this for hours and still nothing's working!"

"Yes, I am aware of that," the Queen of Shadows said calmly, her expression reserved and easy. "I have been watching, contrary to what you might think."

"And that's all you've been doing!" Link exclaimed in annoyance, crossing his arms bitterly. "You haven't taught me anything at all since we got here! If you're not going to help me, then you might as well just stop wasting my time and let me go back to Hyrule."

"So you can do what?" Verona asked, a frown crossing her features. "Try to figure them out on your own and fail? Continue to be pursued by Zelda's guards? Spend the rest of your life alone and on the run, knowing that you'll never truly get your magic under control?"

The hero was silence upon hearing this, knowing that as much as he didn't want to admit it, the Queen of Shadows did have a point. If he were to return to Hyrule now, he might never learn to control his powers and he certainly wouldn't be able to find relief from the suffering that Zelda had put him. If he was going to get even with the queen, Link knew that the only way to do so was to not only control his powers, but master them. And the only way he could possibly even try to do that was with Verona's assistance.