Eventually, all the Freezards are dead, though not as dead as Twink’s soul, and he moves on to the next room, after slashing through some phallic stalagmites with his sword and trying not to feel too guilty about it. This area prominently features a huge propeller made of ice, rotating with a deadly whooshing noise over another frozen floor. Spoiler alert: this thing will stab Twink in the ass about eight dozen times. Arrayed around the GGI custom-made ice propeller are five lovely solid silver Rupees. As he grabs each one, the Disembodied Flautist plays a jaunty little tune to encourage Twink in his tawdry bauble collection. The fifth one, hidden behind some more penis stalagmites along with a Gold-Assed Spider, opens the next set of gates so he can plunge further into the cavern. Hee.

This place is plummeting to the bottom of Twink’s list of favorite caverns.

Past some more Freezards, blade traps, icicle dildos, and ice bats, Twink finds himself in a much larger room than the first two, dominated by snowy platforms jutting up from the floor. He finds the usual suspects–see the above list–up here too, but he also finds a brazier alight with blue flame. He can scoop up this fire in a bottle like he’s Hermione Granger. The Disembodied Item Describer calls this blue fire a “cool flame,” which is not what blue fire actually is, but let’s not worry about it. He fills up his three bottles with this stuff and dumps one of them near a chest covered in red ice. The blue fire pours out of the bottle and spreads–I’m still trying not to think too hard about this–and the ice melts away, netting Twink the dungeon map. Oh come on, this place has its own map and Comp Ass? Is this really necessary? Even I probably couldn’t get lost in here.

I hope those weren’t famous last words, but seriously, it’s really not that big a dungeon. It just seems that way because ice dungeons are literally always spirit-obliterating exercises in frustration. Anyway, this room is a dead end so now all Twink has to do is backtrack to the other rooms and melt any of the red ice he finds. There happened to be a wall of it in the propeller room, blocking the entrance to another hallway, so he giddily sprays his blue flames around from crotch level. He shortly finds himself in what I will call the penis freezer: this small room is covered in penis stalagmites and stalactites, so of course Twink is going to ruin all of them one way or another within about 30 seconds. Most of the stalagmites are blocking small alcoves, which contain another blue fire brazier, a Piece of Ass frozen in red ice, the chest with the Comp Ass frozen in red ice, and another Gold-Assed Spider. Well, that was fascinating. Twink takes a quick breather to get beat up and frozen by ice bats, fills up his bottles again, and returns to the propeller room.

Down another corridor previously blocked by red ice, Twink enters the largest room yet. This one also has an ice floor and more silver Rupees to collect, but instead of floating above the propeller of ass-shredding doom, they are arrayed around platforms that Twink can only reach with–sigh–a motherfucking goddamn sliding block puzzle.

Oh hell no

I really, really hate slider puzzles. I skip them whenever possible the many, many times they show up in the Professor Layton series, because pretty much every puzzle guide provides the amazingly helpful advice, “there is no walkthrough for this puzzle–you have to figure it out on your own!” I’d like to issue a personal and vehement “Fuck you” to anyone who has ever written that for GameFAQs. No, I will not figure it out on my own, because I am a moron who lacks spatial reasoning, and fuck you one more time. Bonus asshole points for any slider puzzle–this one, and several in the ice mansion in Twinklight Princess–that are on top of an ice floor, just so Twink has to slip and slide around like a moron to get to the correct side of the block to push, oh but it’s not the correct side because I’m terrible at this. For real, if I knew who invented slider puzzles, and I acquired a time machine, their assassination would take priority over Hitler’s. It’s not even close.

Fortunately, the person who wrote the Cockarina walkthrough is not a festering ass blister, and provided simple, direct instructions for getting through this. Bless you, good sir or madam. Life is too short for me to dick around with this, when Twink and I have so many more fun things to do today. Meanwhile, as I’ve been ranting about slider puzzles, guess what Twink has been doing? You get no prize if you said, “Pushing a stupid block around like a chump.” After what must be several hours of Twink pumping his betighted legs in futility, Twink has gathered all the silver Rupees, killed another Gold-Assed Spider, flailed helplessly at like a hundred goddamn ice bats, and is now standing in a corridor off the west side of the puzzle room. He melts some more red ice to get to pots containing hearts–hint hint!–and then enters the snow-covered door at the end of the hall.

Well, what have we here? The final room in this frozen hellhole turns out to be a fabulous snowy dance floor. Suggestive blue crystals poke out of the snow, as if several abominable snowmen are very excited to see him. And the walls feature a starry optical illusion that looks like it came out of a Tron-themed nightclub. Twink is barred in–like he wants to leave!–and attacked by a wintery white Wolfos. Okay, this gay wolf’s presence tears it–this must have been called the Glitter Cavern, and it was Hyrule’s hottest gay club during Twink’s childhood. It’s pretty sneaky to hide something this wonderful so close to Ruto’s bedroom. Did they not want Twink to show up? Was he not ready? Did they think his four girlfriends were real?

I think Olivia Newton-John shot a music video in here.

After the Wolfos has gone to that roller disco in the sky, a chest materializes in front of Twink. He opens it eagerly, expecting a white sequined tunic to match his leggings, or perhaps a pile of cocaine and some Abba records. Instead, he finds his Wind Wanker descendant’s least favorite shoes, the Iron Boots. “So heavy, you can’t run. So heavy, you can’t float,” the DID says, forgoing the anvil and just throwing the goddamn Iron Boots at Twink’s head.

But before Twink can hunt around in the chest for a gift receipt, he hears someone else in the room. Naggy, of course, floats right on over to Sheik, standing in the doorway, practically gushing, “Check out the amazing boots I got Twink for his birthday! Aren’t they haute couture?” Jesus. “We meet again, Twink…” Sheik murmurs. As Twink comes closer, trying to teleport Naggy out of the room with his mind, he goes on, “If you came here to meet the Zoras, you wasted your time… This is all there is…” OH NO, HE WON’T MEET ANY ZORAS? God, that is just the worst news. Wouldn’t it just be terrible if they all died, including Ruto? So sad. But no, Twink is not allowed to have nice things. “With one exception,” Sheik continues, “the Zoras are now sealed under this thick ice sheet…” Dogs, and Naggy, know who that one exception is, and King Zora doesn’t count, even if he was technically frozen above ground.

Sure enough, Sheik says, “I managed to rescue the Zora princess from under the ice, but…she left to head for the Water Temple…” What the fuck, Sheik? He barely drops in on Twink to make sweet music and fuck-me eyes at all anymore, and now he’s off saving Ruto from death? Did he find out about Twink Jr.? Oh God, he did, didn’t he? Sheik does not seem like the devoted stepdad type. It’s all over!

So now Twink is barely listening as Sheik tells him that a monster in the Water Temple is creating all this cursed ice and that it will never melt until it dies. Just like Twink’s heart! Frozen in despair forever! But Sheik plows on, because I guess he has a busy schedule of rescuing ladies to keep. “If you have courage enough to confront the danger and save the Zoras,” he says, trying to appeal to Twink’s bravado, even though he’s breathing into a paper bag and crying, “I will teach you the melody that leads to the temple.”

Jeez, a guy admires his dick in the Great Fairy Fountain’s reflection one time…

Twink doesn’t agree to any of this, but, Sheik decides, Twink is going to play this fucking song and it’s going to be all romantic and shit, and he’s going to like it. “Time passes, people move… Like a river’s flow, it never ends…” Sheik recites. “A childish mind will turn to noble ambition… Young love will become deep affection… The clear water’s surface reflects growth…” Twink is just going to ignore how this sounds like it’s about Ruto. He said love! SHEIK LOVES HIM! Everything is fixed forever! “Now listen to the Serenade of Water to reflect upon yourself….”

The aforementioned Serenade of Water is only five notes, which throws me a little, but it’s a very nice, and romantic, melody. Twink wishes someone else could play it so he and Sheik could slow dance. He should get Naggy a tiny boombox as long as he’s stuck with her anyway. As Twink and Sheik play together, the camera pans over the glowing star patterns on the walls, possibly giving our two lovebirds a little time to rub their instruments together. But like always, Sheik tosses a ninja smoke bomb on the ground and disappears as soon as the song has wormed its way into the Cockarina of Time, and Twink is left alone once more. Only it’s worse, because Naggy is still with him.

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The one feature of this room I did not mention before is the tiny square hole in the floor, filled with water. Of course, Twink is meant to throw on his Iron Boots and jump into the water, because suicide is the only option if your boyfriend has seen you with these things. By the way–and this is going to become so, so relevant shortly–these Iron Boots are distinctly worse than the Wind Wanker pair, because they can’t be assigned to a C button and easily slipped on and off. No, every time Twink needs to equip or unequip them, I have to open the menu, tab over to the equipment screen, scroll down to the shoe tree at the bottom, and select which boots he wants to wear. This is even clunkier than the boots themselves are.

But Twink doesn’t find the sweet embrace of death at the bottom of this hole–just a door that shortcuts back to the first room of the cavern. He first backtracks to refill his bottles with blue fire before heading out the way he came. A minute later he’s back in Zora’s Domain, thawing out King Zora. Now, you’d think King Zora would be ecstatic to be out of his stasis and would immediately thank or at least address his rescuer, but no–Twink still can’t talk to the frog royal unless he stands on the platform immediately below him and petitions him as a subordinate. Twink is really not in the mood to suck up to this asshole who is responsible for Ruto’s existence, but he already used the blue fire to get him out so he may as well talk to him. “Oh–I’ve come back to life!” the king croaks. “Was it you who saved me? Don’t be nervous!” Yeah, Twink is really nervous in the majestic presence of this bloated sack of Ruto sperm. Right. But, at least, King Zora wants to reward Twink for saving his life. “It looks like you have a hard time breathing underwater,” he goes on. “As an expression of my gratitude, I grant you this tunic. With this, you won’t choke underwater.” Will it keep him from choking in…other situations? That would be really helpful. Anyway, this is, of course, the “Zora Tunic,” a tunic otherwise identical to his other two outfits, but in a lovely shade of cerulean. The DID fills in the details: “This diving suit is adult size, so it won’t fit a kid. Wear it, and you won’t drown underwater.” Do all the non-Hylian races of Hyrule have a wardrobe full of clothing that would fit a svelte male teenage Hylian? Just in case? I mean, it’s not like the Zoras would need this tunic.