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
Chapter 46 - Death

Luta was drawing in the sand.

That's how bored he was.

Absolutely nothing of note had happened for weeks, and he was now forced to entertain himself like a child. At first, he'd just done random shapes—definitely not a penis, as Rayla had suggested, thank you very much—but those had quickly lost his interest. He'd then gone for flat landscapes, with little details made out of rocks thrown in for good measure.

There were only so many times drawing the damn canyon could be amusing, so he'd moved on to portraits. Lacking in detail at first, he'd eventually figured out various ways of adding more and more features that made them stand out a bit—little tricks of light and shadow to give the crude image some depth. The moonlight, in particular, was good for this, he'd found.

Soon enough, he found himself taking a little pride in just how...well, not lifelike, they were just flat images made out of lines drawn in the sand. He wasn't sure what they were, really, only that he was proud of them, to the point where he scowled when a shadow suddenly fell over his latest portrait, completely obscuring it in the darkness of the night.

"You're getting pretty good at those," Rayla said, dropping a banana into his lap. "Here, it's midnight snack time."

"Bananas?" Luta asked, grimacing beneath his mask. "Again?"

"Best fruit," Rayla simply said, dropping to the sit beside him on the ground, putting her mask up. Her hair was caught in the rays of the moon, turning it into a silver waterfall that cascaded down her back, a striking contrast to her blood-red suit, which matched her eyes perfectly.

"What I wouldn't give for a damn apple," Luta murmured, peeling the banana and biting into the soft texture that he absolutely despised. The taste was even worse—it'd taken him months to train his stomach not to roil at the mere smell.

Next to him, Rayla wolfed down her own banana with like a woman starved.

"Don't let Master Kohga hear you say that," she said, talking with her mouth full like the barbarian she was. "He'll have you flayed alive."

"Hmph," he scoffed, finishing his snack off in as few bites as possible, swallowing it down before the taste could settle in his mouth—he had no interest in having such a tenant in his taste buds. "I will never understand his obsession."

Rayla hummed, actually savouring the yellow fruit from hell, like it was something that could conceivably be enjoyable in any way. Damn things had probably been conjured up by Ganon; malice given edible form.

"Anything interesting happening back there?" he asked hopefully, looking towards the mouth of the canyon, where they were, apparently, expecting the Hero of Hyrule to appear.

Any second now.

Or so they'd been told three weeks ago.

"Nah," Rayla replied, taking a deep draught from her hip flask, offering it to him afterwards. He took it and drank as well, wincing at the taste of strong spirits. "No sign of Gerudo; guess they've given up on breaking through the blockade."

"Figures," Luta said disappointed, handing the flask back to her. "We're going to die here, Rayla. The others will come to relieve us and find us all having turned into pillars of salt from the sheer boredom of it all."

"Can't wait," she said, sighing happily. "So salty."

He gave her a sidelong glance. "Are you drunk?" he asked. The contents of her flask would suggest so, but...

"Pfft, like half a bottle would even put a dent in me," she told him, punching his shoulder a lot harder than necessary. "Give me some credit, Luta."

He groaned. "Now where have I heard that before?"

"Fuck you, the stable fire wasn't my fault!"

"Never mind," he said, not willing to start yet another fight about this.

"Oh, and you'll be interested to hear that Reno and Cor finally got it on," she said, grinning widely.

"Really?" he asked, blinking. "When?"

"This afternoon."

"That's what those noises were?" He took a moment to recall the unspeakable horrors he'd heard. "I thought you'd finally given into your eldritch hunger and was eating someone's soul."

"I feast on hopes and dreams, not souls," she said with an offended sniff. "Oh! And guess what else?"

"What?" he asked, with a due sense of apprehension.

"Turns out Cor is the, how do I put it delicately, accepting one!"

Luta had to take a moment to analyse the image that put in his brain, finding it extremely difficult to reconcile it with the impression he had of Cor to begin with. It simply did not fit.

"Really?" he said. "But Cor is so...he's a mountain!"

"Yup!"

"And Reno is...is..."

"Small enough to fit in your pocket, I know," she said, shit-eating grin growing wider. "I'm going to give Cor so much shit for this, you have no idea!"

Luta shook his head, wondering why he couldn't have been assigned to a blockade filled with sane individuals. Then he remembered that, as a whole, the Yiga were a bunch of nutters on the genetic level. It was a trait they shared with the Sheikah, really...though their northern cousins did a much better job of hiding it.

The Hylians made the mistake of believing the Sheikah weren't also off their collective rocker, failing to see that their particular brand of madness was reflected in the machines they built.

No one of sound mind would take a look at the Guardian designs and sign off on them, much less encourage them to be built!

So many legs...like a land-borne, monocular octopus with a severe eye infection.

Luta shuddered at the thought.

"Well," he said weakly after a moment of recalibration, "good for them...and thank the fucking gods I don't have to watch them dance around each other for one more day. I was seriously considering knocking their heads together and saying, 'Now kiss'."

"Aw, you were rooting for them all along," Rayla said, patting his head gently.

"What can I say? I love love."

"Speaking of love," she said, sliding closer until their shoulders were touching. "Listening to the two of them going at it gave me a little itch." Her fingers traced the inside of his thigh. "Care to help me scratch it?"

He sighed. "Well, I haven't got anything better to do."

"Such a romantic," she said, voice flat.

"As if you ever cared about romance," he countered, leaning forward to kiss her...and he would have, if he didn't spot the dark shape coming through the canyon. "Contact," he said, rising to his feet and dropping his mask in place. Rayla was beside him in an instant, face covered and sword drawn. "Contact!" he announced a little louder, rousing the rest of the Yiga assigned to the blockade, who quickly took their positions on the barricade and along the cliffs.

"Lone traveller," Rayla said as the shape continued along the path, seemingly unaware of the massive barricade in their way...and the numerous weapons drawn at it. "The Hero?"

"Hard to say," Luta replied, studying the shape as it cleared the covered part of the canyon, the moonlight doing its best to illuminate it. There wasn't much to see—the figure was slightly hunched over, and wore a big, threadbare travelling cloak with a hood, obscuring most of their shape. "Let them get closer," he told the others. "Let's see what they want."

Their steps were even and deliberate, reminding Luta of one of those ancient wind-up soldier toys—the sort that marched along to an unheard beat, unheeding of anything in their path.

Something flashed beneath their cloak—the metal of some sort of blade, most likely. Armed, possibly dangerous.

The figure paused momentarily when they seemed to notice the barricade and the people manning it, but it continued on its path soon after, like they were heading for a minor inconvenience rather than certain death.

None will pass the blockade; kill those that try. Those were Luta's orders.

And he intended to follow them now, as he had before.

"You there, halt!" he called. "This road is closed on the orders of Master Kohga, on behalf of the Great Lord Ganon! Identify yourself!"

The figure stopped, about fifteen paces away. Their head remained bowed, face invisible. "Hero..." they said.

Luta's eyes narrowed. Something was off about their voice—almost like several people were speaking at once, but slightly muffled. But they had said what he'd hoped to hear.

"Did I hear that right?" Rayla said quietly, gripping her sword tighter.

"I think so," Luta said, shaking his head to rid himself of the high-pitched whine that had started whistling in his ears.

"Where...?" the figure continued. "...is he...?"

"N-Not here?" Luta said, wincing as the whine grew louder. At his side, Rayla had stuck a finger into her ear, wiggling it intensely. "Who are you?!" he demanded.

The figure raised his head, and Luta saw the wild, spinning blue of one eye, and heard one last word:

"Death."

Luta's vision turned blue, and an intense heat passed right by his face. Behind him, the barricade went up in a massive fireball, and he felt himself get lifted from the ground and thrown through the air, spinning wildly until he hit something. The air was knocked out of his lungs, and it took him a good minute to recover, breathing rapidly as his vision slowly returned.

All around him was fire—the barricade was gone, a smoking crater and burning fragments of wood all that remained of it.

All he could hear was the ringing in his ears—he touched one of them, and his fingers came away bloody. Why wouldn't his legs move? In his blurry vision, he saw red shapes advancing on the figure, only to stumble away shortly after, falling to the ground.

If only he could move his legs, he'd join them, his comrades, in taking down whoever the hell this was! With monumental effort, he craned his neck downwards, trying to spot the fault in his legs and...

Oh.

They weren't there. Nor was the rest of his lower half, for that matter.

Where had it gone?

He supposed it didn't matter, his vision was already darkening in the corners. That meant he was dying, didn't it? He'd heard warriors describing it like that, at least.

Glancing back at the figure, he saw that only one Yiga remained to opposite it—Rayla. He recognised her hair, the way it billowed around her as she dodged and struck at the figure, actually forcing it on the defensive and back several steps.

It couldn't last, though. She overstepped, lost her balance. The figure spun and lashed out with its blade. Rayla fell, her head hitting the ground a moment after her body.

"R...Rayla..."

The ringing never stopped, and as Luta's world went dark, the last thing he saw was the figure continuing its even, measured pace southwards, into the desert.

And I thought we were the insane ones, was the last coherent thought that passed through his mind.