The Legend of Zelda, its characters and locations are all property of Nintendo. Any and all OCs and original locations belong to me unless specifically stated to belong to someone else.

The Voice
31 - Hero. Where?

Many miles to the south-east, far away from the Rito Village, a fire burned brightly as the red-clad occupants of the camp gathered to strategize. The mood among them was dour, the repeated failures to accomplish their task weighing heavily on their minds. The Hero was proving to be harder to track than they had anticipated. After slipping through their grasp on Death Mountain, they had (correctly) assumed the Hero's next target would be the flying Divine Beast, Vah Medoh.

They'd incorrectly assumed, however, that the Hero would choose the gentler approach by going around Hyrule Castle to the south, and then go north-east, as the northern route from Death Mountain would take him through the vast forests through which many a Yiga had attempted to go, but never returned. The woods were haunted, the legends said, and surely if the Hero was the nervous wreck their scouts and spies reported him to be, then he would definitely choose to brave the enemies he knew, rather than the unknown that lurked in the forest.

But no, the Hero had surprised them all by making it through the woods, bypassing his pursuers entirely, leaving them to desperately try to catch up with him before he arrived at the Rito Village and made contact with the people there. Too late, of course.

The Yiga at this particular camp were disappointed they'd failed, but also relieved that it was not they who had suggested this particular course of action to begin with, and had been too far away to be of any good in pursuing the Hero once his true course was discovered.

That wouldn't matter to Kohga, of course. The temperamental leader of the Yiga clan was somewhat...indiscriminate when it came to venting his anger—not even fresh bunch of bananas would still his rage when confronted with failures of this magnitude.

And that was why they'd elected to remain in this region for the time being. Ostensibly, they did so in order to spy on the nearby Sheikah village, keeping their former clan-mates under careful surveillance. Utter twaddle, of course. For all their weakness and lack of spines, the Sheikah kept a tight security network in place around their home, and it was only rarely that a Yiga managed to slip through. The last one who had was discovered, and never heard from again.

No, their true goal was to remain out of reach of both the Hero of Hyrule and Master Kohga, and then slink back once things had calmed down, and another plan of attack was formulated. The Yiga didn't dare launch an open attack on the Rito (their warriors were truly terrifying if they were allowed to get airborne), so they would have to wait until either Vah Medoh and its guardian finished the Hero off...or until he moved on.

The Hero would never set foot in the Gerudo Desert, no matter what. It could not be allowed to happen. Master Kohga's missives were very clear on that matter.

"They'll block the pass, and that will be the end of it," the team leader said. "The only other way is over the mountains, and there are no roads to follow or paths to climb. He'll be forced into an ambush, where we will kill him and take the slate and the Master Sword. Ganon will be pleased when Master Kohga presents such prizes to him."

The plan was well-received among the Yiga members in the camp, and the gloom that had fallen over them after their failure slowly began to erode, giving way to careful optimism...and downright elation once the wine and bananas were broken out. They would march in the morning, but tonight they would feast!

All but one Yiga joined in on the festivities. Ralo, his arm still bound in a sling from his previous encounter with the Hero, stared into the fire with a bitter expression on his face, thankfully hidden by his mask. On his belt, Malo's mask hung. Funeral rites said that a Yiga's mask should be burned along with their body, as it was really the mask that contained their soul, and had to be destroyed and purified by the flames in order to truly free them from the mortal coil.

But not Malo. Not yet. Ralo would see the Hero dead, and Malo's mask spattered with his blood. A worthy prize to take into the Great Beyond, where his sacrifice would be truly honoured. It was the least Ralo could do, after convincing his brother to ambush the Hero without any sort of backup. They'd been so close, too. If it hadn't been for a lucky, clumsy stroke of the Hero's sword...and that menacing voice in the slate, which had mocked them with a projection of a Sheikah warrior. If it hadn't been for that, Ralo would have brought the Hero's head with him, and not just Malo's slowly cooling corpse.

"We'll get him, Ralo," the team leader, Kazuo, said from across the fire. His mask was raised, allowing the leader of their five-man team to take deep draughts from his bottle. "I swear to you—Malo's death will be avenged."

Ralo nodded. If Kazuo said it, he was willing to believe it. Kazuo was one of the finest warriors in the entire clan. Absolutely massive, what Kazuo lacked in speed and finesse he made up for with sheer strength and tenacity. One stroke of his sword would surely cleave the Hero in half. Ralo was looking forward to seeing it. He had no delusions about how much use he was of at the moment, with one arm crippled. Really, his presence on this team was probably more out of pity than anything else, and while he could fight somewhat with his non-dominant arm, he was nowhere near as deadly as he used to be. But as long as he got to see the Hero fall, either by his hands or someone else's, he had no objections.

"He is little more than a boy playing at being a soldier," Ralo said, jaw clenching. "It was sheer luck that saved his life...and claimed my brother's."

"All the more reason to look forward to the day we find him," Kazuo said, grinning. It was an unpleasant sight. At some point in his life, someone had taken a swing at Kazuo with an axe. It had nearly split his jaw in half, and while the healers had been able to save his life, they could do little else but stitch up the skin of his face and hope it healed well. It hadn't, leaving a deep, vertical groove of discoloured flesh and broken teeth across his visage. "He'll be begging for mercy, screaming for it, but we won't show any. The Hero of Hyrule's death will be slow, and as painful as we can make it. Perhaps we'll do it in front of the castle, so that Ganon himself may witness the death of the enemy."

Ralo nodded. "But first we have to catch him," he said.

"First we have to catch him," Kazuo repeated. "Let him feel at ease dealing with Vah Medoh—we'll be waiting for him by the Desert. Hell, maybe we'll get lucky and the Beast itself will finish him off for us."

"If only," Ralo said, secretly wishing the Hero would triumph over the Beast. He wanted to see the Hero's death, wanted to hear his dying screams.

"Then," Kazuo said, "once the Hero is finished, we will go show our cousins just what it means to turn one's back on family." His red eyes lit up. "We'll do away with the Sheikah and leave no trace of their existence behind. It'll be us, the Yiga, who will take the centre stage from now on."

Ralo nodded again. Personally, he could not care less about the Sheikah. Perhaps once, in his younger days, he'd been filled with the same blazing hatred that Kazuo felt, but it had cooled down considerably as he grew older. Truly, the Sheikah were of little consequence. Their numbers had dwindled greatly over the past century, unlike the Yiga who had expanded, and their spies and operatives rarely ventured outside of their established territory. With the Hero's death, their morale would probably be too broken to ever be a threat again to anyone.

"And then, we will—"

It happened too fast for anyone to react. Something flew through the air in an arc and landed squarely in the middle of the fire. Ralo barely saw the object, which appeared to be a pouch of some sort, ignite before it exploded. His ears popped, the roar of the explosion immediately cut off and replaced by a high-pitched whine as he was thrown backwards, crashing into his tent. The frail structure collapsed under his weight, and his world was quickly thrown into darkness as the canvas fell over him.

He struggled, trying to free himself of the cloth prison, but his injured arm refused to cooperate. The fabric had wrapped itself around his legs, too, and all he could do for a minute was wriggle around like a worm, trying to find some exit point to work towards. The whine in his ear slowly gave way to the sounds of fighting around him, and he growled to himself.

I am not useless, he thought, his fingers finally catching on a dagger in his belt. Quickly, he used it to cut himself free, sitting up just in time to be blinded by the massive fire that had torn through the camp after the explosion. The other three Yiga were already dead, lying in broken, bleeding heaps around the site.

Kazuo was fighting one of the enemy... Ralo blinked. The only enemy, in fact. He could easily tell which of them was Kazuo on account of his enormous frame, but the enemy was cloaked by the fire behind him, blotting out any visible features save for a slim build and the pair of weapons they were using. One was a curved blade, the sort favoured by the Sheikah's operatives, and the other was a sickle, presumably taken from one of the dead Yiga.

Ralo tried to stand, but he was overcome by vertigo and forced back to his knees. The whine was still there, still audible under the sounds of clashing blades and roaring flames. Ralo touched his ears. They were bleeding. Clutching his dagger, he made another attempt to stand, but once more his sense of balance failed him, the world tiling completely sideways the moment he stood.

He groaned as he hit the ground, realising he was truly useless here, unable to do anything but watch as Kazuo faced their opponent alone...and was losing.

The enemy was fast. Kazuo's massive two-handed blade cleaved through the air, but the slim figure kept dodging the strikes easily, their movements graceful and dance-like. They didn't attack Kazuo, only waited for him to wear himself out.

"Kaz..." Ralo tried to say something, but his voice sounded so weak, and he couldn't muster up the strength to actually shout, his breathing was so rapid. Was he panicking? Pathetic, what sort of Yiga would let himself panic over this? They'd been bred through death and chaos!

Kazuo didn't hear him, unsurprisingly. He was too busy trying to kill the enemy...unaware that his movements were slowing more and more down for every failed stroke of his blade. His shoulders were heaving from his heavy breathing, hands shaking from the strain swinging the large sword put on his wrists and arms.

Then he made a fatal mistake. He went for an overhead blow, intended to cut the enemy in half vertically, or at the very least split their head. Once more, the enemy simply stepped out of the way, and Kazuo was too tired to abort the stroke as the blade buried itself into the ground...and too slow to pull it out.

The enemy was on him immediately, stepping around and behind him. The sword cut a painfully slow, almost lazy arc through the air, and severed the tendons in Kazuo's heels, slicing through the thick leather of his boots like it was nothing. Kazuo screamed, and Ralo winced, unable to believe one of the Yiga's strongest warriors was going down like this—even if Kazuo survived this, he'd never be able to walk again.

Now on his knees, Kazuo refused to simply roll over and die. He let go of his sword and drew the dagger from his belt, throwing his body around with a twist of his torso, lashing out at his enemy. It almost worked, even, as the enemy had to step back to avoid having their throat cut by the clumsy, but still accurate swing.

Problem was, that was about the extent of Kazuo's current repertoire of combat manoeuvres because he had no way of actually maintaining his balance now, and he fell forward...and his face met the hard knee of his opponent with a loud crack even Ralo could hear over the ringing in his ears. Kazuo howled with pain, but the enemy was not done with him. Dropping the sword, but keeping hold of the sickle, the sword hand shot out and grabbed Kazuo by the front of his red suit, easily holding him up despite the difference in their size.

Through his bloody visage, Kazuo still saw an opportunity, and his hands tried to make a grab for his opponent's throat. Faster than Ralo's eyes could see, the sickle moved through the air...and Kazuo's right hand hit the ground, severed at the wrist.

He barely had to time to register his maiming and start screeching, before the curved blade of the sickle was at this throat, and his head joined his hand, his voice silenced mid-scream.

All this, and the enemy hadn't made a single sound. They weren't even breathing heavily, despite the exertion of fighting Kazuo. Ralo realised he was holding his breath, lungs burning, but he couldn't take the chance on the lone warrior, the one that had just killed the rest of the team with barely any effort, noticing him.

It was all for naught, for the enemy immediately turned their attention to him. Their eyes caught Ralo's, and he couldn't contain the gasp of released oxygen if he'd tried. He'd seen those eyes before. As the warrior came closer, and their face was finally revealed by the flickering light, his suspicions were confirmed.

It couldn't be!

"Y-You!" he managed to gasp, his body refusing to cooperate, leaving him kneeling in front of the warrior, whose cold gaze travelled along the blood-slicked blade of the sickle that had ended Kazuo's life. "How? How can this be?!" His throat felt sore, and his voice was barely a croak. He felt the cold steel of the sickle's blade settling around his neck. All it would take to kill him was for the impossible warrior to pull back on the weapon...

"Hero," the warrior said, a strange light emanating from beneath their worn and torn outfit, which looked like it had been pilfered from one of the military ruins that dotted Hyrule. "Where?"

Their voice was strange—it had warbling quality to it, the pronunciation of the words rough and halting, almost unsure of themselves.

"H-Hero?" Ralo asked.

"The Hero. The slate," the warrior said, eyes flashing dangerously. Ralo felt the edge of the sickle cutting into the skin of his neck just a little. "Where?"

"L-Last we heard, the Hero w-was fighting the Rito B-Beast," Ralo said. It couldn't end like this. He was supposed to avenge his brother, to put Malo's spirit to rest with the knowledge that his killer been taken care of. "Please...don't kill me!"

"Rito," the warrior said. "Where?"

"T-To the north-west!"

"Hm..." It sounded more like a hiss than a hum, but the light emanating from within the enemy's clothes seemed to dim a little. Whether that was a good thing or not, Ralo had no idea, but maybe if he—

The Yiga's head fell to the ground, body following shortly after. The vessel only spared a single look at the carnage before turning back to the remains of the camp. It dropped the heavy, ineffective (but definitely intimidating, based on the Yiga's reaction) sickle from its hand and retrieved the curved short sword once more, sliding it into the sheath on its back.

It paused, realising its clothes had been torn during the battle. A quick scan of the bodies revealed that one had a suit that would fit it. Before it could strip the body, however, the voice returned with full force.

Hurtpaindestroyhunthunthuntfoundfoehunt?

The vessel closed its eyes.

Mission accomplished. Target located. Commencing pursuit.

Goodgoodgoodhurryhurryhurryhuntkillkillkillpainhurtshurtshurtshurts!

Acknowledged.

Its master was pleased. Quickly stripping the dead Yiga of his bodysuit, the vessel replaced its old tattered outfit. Little tactical benefit, but less suspicious than going uncovered.

After a moment of hesitation, it also picked up the dead Yiga's mask, putting it on to cover its face. The last Yiga had seen something in its face he had recognised. The less the better. Cover it up.

Its task accomplished, the vessel turned to the north-east. The access to the tower network was blocked, making the task of finding the target much more difficult, but there would always be sources to ask.

The master would be pleased. The vessel would finish its task.

All primary and secondary targets would be eliminated.

Oh dear…