For as long as she had lived, Yorda had never known what strength felt like. She had only known passivity, weakness, and hopelessness. From birth, she had learned to accept her eventual fate as a vessel, an empty shell of herself for her mother to live in, so she had no idea of any other way of life.
How sad it was, then, that even after everything that had happened, she mostly felt the same way as before.
As the castle crumbled about her, her mother's power being the only thing upholding the ancient fortress, Yorda carried the boy in her arms. Evidently, he had managed to defeat the queen, ironically using her own sword; the battle had cost him both of his horns, though. Yorda wished there was something she could do about his wounds, but there was no time for that. She needed to get the boy out of the castle. Yorda reached the elevator and began her descent down to the docks below, giving her a brief moment of reflection.
It had quickly become evident to her, as she journeyed with the horned boy, that his efforts with her to escape had nothing but a sincere and altruistic motivation. He took her with him not solely to act as a key, but because he genuinely cared about her, as a person, a feeling Yorda had never known before. In fact, she suspected he didn't even know she could open the doors until he went to investigate them with her in tow. And she saw no better proof of his concern for her than when she saw her mother's sword embedded in her throne.
Because if he wanted to, he could have simply left the castle.
She knew that the sword was just as effective as a key as she was, if not more so. The horned boy could have taken it back to the gate and reopened it, allowing him to escape. But he didn't. He came back for her.
So naturally, it tore her heart that she was essentially undoing all of his hard work.
Yorda wanted so desperately to go with him. After all that they had been through together, to not go would render all of his efforts to escape with her pointless, and she herself wanted to leave the confines of the castle, to taste freedom. But…
"You cannot survive in the outside world."
Yorda wasn't sure if her mother was being literal, or was referring to how her cloistered lifestyle would render her chances of survival to almost nothing, but in the end, the result would be the same. She would either soon be dead…or continue being a burden on the horned boy.
She was painfully aware of her own weakness, and it only became worse the longer she and the boy were together. There was also the language barrier; as far as she knew (which she admitted was very little, as the queen made no effort to educate her), no one besides her mother spoke her tongue. And then there was her current shadowy form. What kind of problems might it cause? How would the outside world react?
How would her rescuer react?
The elevator arrived at its destination. The once ghostly pale girl stepped out and saw the boat waiting in the flooded docks, and gently placed her hero inside the wooden vessel. It suddenly occurred to her that he might not have even needed the sword; he could have just as easily escaped in the very boat he was now lying in.
Having no time to reconsider her decision, she pushed the boat out towards the mouth of the cave and watched the only outside contact she had ever had drift away with the current, unaffected by the falling debris around him.
So this was it.
This was the end.
Yorda sat down in the rising waters to wait for her inevitable demise, much like how she had done in her suspended cage. Several large chunks of the falling ceiling came close to killing her, but she didn't so much as flinch. She wasn't even angry about her situation. She was just happy that she could at least return the favor and give her rescuer hope, a chance to gain freedom, something she couldn't have. "You cannot survive in the outside world." Guess she was right after all-
No.
The queen was actually wrong after all.
From the very outset, the odds were stacked against the unusual pair of princess and would-be sacrifice. The castle, the queen and her army of shadows all stood in the way of their escape, but the boy never let that faze him, even after encountering the queen herself. He had defied her… and won.
So if she was now dead, what was stopping Yorda from leaving the castle?
As if in response to her question, countless doubts immediately flooded her mind, the chief one being her weakness, but she pushed them aside. The horned boy had inspired her too much to let such thoughts cloud her judgment. She had to at least try; if nothing else, Yorda would spend her last moments honoring his efforts and, for the first time in her life, defying her mother. With her mind set, Yorda immediately began her trek across the seaway, diving into the rising tide… and immediately began flailing about in the water.
She figured trying to imitate something she had only seen her rescuer do a scant few times, especially when the very concept of it was foreign to her, would be difficult. Even still, swimming was apparently more complex than she thought. Her head often dipped beneath the waves, forcing the unpleasant taste of salt water into her mouth and threatening to keep her under if she did not use all of her strength. However, after paddling for some time, she managed to finally move forward, if awkwardly, and pressed on towards the shoreline.
As the pale princess slowly made her way across the seaway, she anxiously scanned the waters for the boat containing her only friend, hoping to catch up with him. But she only saw the waves and the shore—wait! Was that him!? Yorda saw a brown object vaguely resembling a boat close to the beach. Surely, it was!
She started paddling with all her might, but her progress was mostly slow and exhausting, only helped along by the occasional wave made by the collapsing fortress that had been her prison. She would have stopped to rest, if she had something to cling to, but none of the debris had floated out far enough to reach her… and she had no intention of going back.
But Yorda's determination could only take her so far, as exhaustion began to overtake her. Her treading became weaker and weaker, and the sea began to engulf her completely. Yorda desperately tried to break free of its grasp, but once again, she was helpless. The longer she stayed underneath, the darker her vision grew, reminding her all too well of the terrifying blackness she had at times been dragged into.
Would he be there to pull her out?
She sank deeper under the rolling waves, futilely flailing about until her strength left her, and all she could do was stretch out her hand towards the surface, hoping that somehow he would save her, that perhaps he would reach down and grab her hand as he had done many times before.
As the blackness became darker still and her lungs lost air, Yorda could swear she saw a shadowy shape resembling the horned boy grabbing her hand. Its single glowing eye gave it away as some imposter, but before she could resist, her consciousness faded away.