His feet sunk deep into the sands. The Gerudo Desert was vast, expanding well past the Gerudo and Yiga territories. No outposts, no stables, no travelers, nothing but sand this far out. The sandstorms in the region were often far too severe for any of that. Monsters tended to stay away as well, which made it a perfect location for something out of sight.

The area had once been a sanctuary for the early Yiga. Deep within the tempest, they were safe from Hyrule's persecution for their technology. It was well before they claimed Gerudo ruins as their own in the Highlands. Half-buried buildings, a large complex ruined by storms and lack of use, burial mounds. The last one was more recently used.

After defeating Calamity Ganon and reclaiming Hyrule, the Yiga gathered what dead they could and brought them out here into the tempest. There wasn't much left to them other than desiccated husks after what Astor had done to them.

Kohga had chosen the location for their final resting place. It was a start and an end to the Yiga's hatred of the rest of Hyrule. Despite their searches, they hadn't found anything of Sooga's but Kohga had left a pair of blades there symbolically.

When Impa had shown Kohga the video of the blip, he knew the location right away. There was no reason anything should be out here. No one knew what was here, the society that once existed this far in the desert. It had been abandoned thousands of years ago for a more favorable location. Only a few elites of the clan knew of its existence, and only Kohga and Sooga understood how to navigate the shifting storms.

So what was the blip doing out here? What had shown up?

It had Kohga concerned. While his foot soldiers were spread out clandestine across a number of regions in Hyrule, Kohga had come out here himself. He had to guess where exactly the blip had shown up as it was appearing at the far edge of the Sheikah Slate's map. It could be near the edge of the Gerudo settlements, it could be deep within the tempest where the Yiga once sought refuge.

The tempest raged on the horizon, obscuring the buildings deeper in the desert. It was terribly hot, and even with the amount of safflina he'd chewed on, he could feel it bearing down on him. Whatever had been out here had to be particularly hardy.

He could hear the tempest shifting behind him. If something had been here, finding any evidence would be difficult with the shifting sands. He took a few steps forward, stopping as he heard the familiar sound of Yiga teleportation arts. He turned, finding Sooga standing behind him.

He stared. This was absolutely impossible. Knocking himself several times in the side of the head, he berated himself. "Get it together, Kohga! It's just a mirage!"

"It's not, Master Kohga."

He stopped with his hand on his head. Mirages didn't usually speak unless somehow he'd collapsed from the heat. He checked his pockets. Still plenty of safflina, more than enough to handle the day temperatures. "Sooga?" Everything about this felt impossible. He saw Astor strike him right through the midsection. There was no way that Sooga survived, no matter how much he wished it.

Right?

"But how?!" Kohga questioned, choking back the uncertainty and pain. "I saw you get skewered like a roasted banana on a stick! And I…" can't get that image out of my mind. He curled his toes in his boots. His mind was screaming at him. He knew what he saw back in Hyrule Field when Astor turned against them. And yet there Sooga was, standing before him. A Sooga he knew and recognized.

"Does it truly matter when I have returned to your side?" Sooga countered.

"Of course it does!" Kohga fussed. "You've had me worried sick and left me with a ton of accounting! How can I be lazy with accounting?!"

Sooga seemed unfazed by the shouting. "I'm not here for accounting. We should consider the true path of-"

"Who the hell are you?"

Sooga took a step back. "What?"

Kohga jabbed a finger at him. "You heard me, imposter! Who the hell do you think you are, impersonating Sooga and can't even get that fact right!"

Of all the things to determine real from fake. "You do not understand what you are doing, Master Kohga."

"Oh I understand alright!" Kohga drew the demon carver from his hip, brandishing it at the imposter. "I'm gonna kill you right here and now, blip! You'll be buried within the tempest forever!"

"You could truly have everything you wanted," the fake Sooga proclaimed. "You would forsake it by breaking a promise so quickly?"

What he wanted? What he truly wanted?! That was impossible. He knew it. He couldn't return Sooga or his fallen Yiga to life again. Even Kohga wouldn't touch that one and he practically lived in the darker arts. But would it truly be living if their souls had been sacrificed? It would be like turning his own into stalkoblin. It wasn't going to happen.

He dodged backwards, his hands sinking into the sands as he backflipped away from the attack. This imposter certainly had Sooga's speed, but it wouldn't work well for him in the long run. Kohga was much more familiar with the tempest than some imposter. He could use this to his advantage as the sandstorm came closer. He stepped backwards, the sand obscuring him from view as he folded his hands into various signs.

The imposter scoffed. It was a clever trick but it wouldn't work for long. He crossed the dual swords in front of him, launching a dark purple attack where Kohga had disappeared.

The Yiga leader dodged to the side. That was not Sooga's art at all but someone else's entirely. Even so, the imposter was no slouch. The stronger arts would take more time to prepare and the imposter was on him like a peel on a banana. He blocked the dual swords with the demon carver.

"I thought you were going to kill me, Master Kohga," the imposter taunted.

"Oh yeah?" Kohga snorted. "You really take me for a fool, don't you?" He'd clasped his hands over the demon carver's hilt, forming the appropriate hand sign around it. It wasn't the strongest attack, but at point blank range, the imposter likely wouldn't survive. Quickly he teleported backwards as the small bombs careened forward, smashing into the imposter.

The imposter dissolved into sand, fading away in the tempest. Kohga wanted to laugh at his plight, but all he felt was pain. To think he would have to face some blip in Sooga's clothing. His voice and his build were correct. The rest was all false.

He rubbed a hand on his head. It was giving him a headache. Just how did an imposter even know about this place? He considered the thought he was a rogue from the Yiga clan, or that he was from some splinter clan that neither the Yiga or Sheikah knew. But the way that imposter disappeared had him concerned something else was going on. It almost felt like he was trapped in some illusionary arts.

Was he?

He stared down at his feet as pain radiated up his leg. He coughed up sand as he jarred awake, the roar of the tempest filling his ears and banging against his already pounding headache. Without looking at his leg buried in the sand, he slapped a spell paper on it, binding whatever caught him as he sliced cleanly through it with the demon carver. Something slithered away just beneath the shifting sands.

He pulled himself out, uncertain how long he'd been trapped in the storm. His right leg was torn up. Wrapped around it was a rather large vine with purple-tipped thorns jabbing into his ankle. He'd heard of some strange mediums for dark arts but this was ridiculous. A thorn vine deep within the desert. He wanted to laugh, but the illusion he saw left him empty. The location, the imposter, the words still clinging to his mind. He didn't like where this was going.

He placed his hands together, disappearing from the tempest and leaving the shifting sands behind.

….

Author's musings

When I first played BotW, I accidentally found myself in the sandstorms at the edge of the Gerudo Desert while exploring. As one does, of course. I wanted to explore that far out into the desert, but obviously that's not possible since it's the end of the game's world map.

But what if something really was out there? A hidden city, an ancient secret, something no one else knew about. And since the lorebook says that the Yiga fled directly to the desert 10,000 years ago, what's to say they didn't flee into the sandstorm tempest before finding their current home? It's a very good location to hide, after all.

A very good place for a strange vine and a troubling hallucination to show up, too.