Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Well... no. I don't own anything. Certainly not anything as expensive as, say... Nintendo. So please don't sue me.

Prologue

Lack tried her hardest to tread softly. From what she'd heard, the Gorons were stupid, oafish creatures without enough brains to fill a teaspoon, but she knew that the Gerudo libraries tended to be quite biased. She had been lucky to find anything about the Gorons at all, what with the hundreds of volumes about the exploits of Ganondorf during the Imprisoning War. She knew that if she was going to pull this off successfully, she would have to be prepared for anything.

Lack wasn't an ordinary Gerudo. She was clumsy, weak, and not as good-looking as any of her peers. Her strengths lied in her head, causing her to neglect remedying her weaknesses and instead on improving her knowledge of the outside world. She had succeeded in this, but had been left so far behind in the art of theft and espionage that nobody really noticed her anymore. Lack knew that she would only have one chance at proving herself before she was completely left behind. This Goron temple was it.

She tiptoed down a long stone corridor, stopping to listen at every door to hear if there was somebody behind it. Fortunately for her, Gorons tend to snore quite loudly and this task wasn't terribly difficult. She stopped at a beautifully engraved set of double doors and listened. Nothing. She tried one of the doors and found it to be locked. She reached into her hair (far more convenient for a thief than pockets) and extracted a metal implement about nine inches long and as thin as a clothes hanger. She carefully inserted it into the keyhole and, after several seconds of seemingly erratic hand movement, the doors opened. She stepped slowly inside.

Lack looked around for anything that seemed to be of value. There were a few clay pots, but not much else to comment on. She turned to leave when something caught her eye. It was a huge green gem embedded in some bizarre Goron metal that she had never seen before, just lying on a table. Her eyes lit up. This was a huge find, something the likes of which hadn't been seen by the Gerudo since the Imprisoning War. She was so excited, in fact, that as she walked through the door as she made her exit she tripped over a sleeping Goron. She hit the ground relatively hard. She got up slowly, checking herself for injuries. She guessed that she had a broken nose, but apart from that she might as well have not fallen at all. Except-

The Goron guard sent a fist the size of a ham straight into the back of Lack's head. She was sent flying through the corridor and landed in a heap at the far end, near a staircase. She blacked out for a moment, then was overtaken once again by the brute. One of it's arms wrapped around Lack's waist, binding her arms to her sides. This was it. There would be no ceremony, no great celebration for the hero that had brought home a big one and ensured that her sisters would eat for the next few years. Just a corpse on the floor of a Goron worship hall that would be carefully stepped around until one of the squeamish oafs decided to clean her up...

Wait.

Gorons were pacifists, and even the sight of blood would often be enough to bring one to it's knees (unless it was in a very bad mood). Lack decided to test a theory she had. She swiftly thrust her head back, making contact with the Goron's rock-hard skin. She jerked her head to the left, causing the wound on the back of her head to begin bleeding profusely. Blood splattered all over the guard's chest and down onto his loincloth. The guard's arms opened slightly.

Lack wasn't a witch. Sometimes she would say she was to eke some respect from her peers or to intimidate racist Humans she met while traveling. It didn't really matter, considering since Ganon's brief return in Holodrum had been blamed on Sister Koume and Sister Kotake all Gerudo were considered spawn of evil and demon-worshipers. The Humans were already afraid enough. But though she wasn't truly a witch, Lack had read through the libraries. She could perform a few basic maneuvers, and that was all she would need.

A dazzling flash of white light pierced the Goron's eyes, sending a shudder of pain through it's head. It clutched at it's face, screaming in agony. The liquid that had once been it's eyes rolled down it's cheeks and the screams grew louder. Lack winced, realizing that if she didn't kill it soon, the wailing would wake the whole chamber. This she proceeded to do, thrusting her spear through the brute's heart. The screams stopped, making the thump of the body hitting the floor quite audible. Lack left the spear where it was. She wouldn't need it on her way out.

Though the guard had proven that this wasn't necessary, Lack made sure that she made as little noise as possible. She climbed over a windowsill after climbing down a set of stairs and slid out into the cool night breeze. The cold bit at the open wound at the back of her head, and she realized that if it wasn't treated soon, it would probably kill her. Oh well. Despite increasing poverty, Gerudo doctors were still excellent, and if she didn't dawdle she'd make it back fine.

Lack was climbing down the side of a cliff on Death Mountain when she felt a sudden warmth that seemed to pulsate from the jewel in her pocket. She realized that she had picked up not just a gem that could be sold but a magical artifact, potentially a powerful one. As she descended the slope, her mind showed her more and more of a future in which the Gerudo were the greatest race, a future that was unblemished by the pathetic peoples of Hyrule. Gorons would be crushed, Zoras would be flayed alive, Scrubs would be burned, Hylians would be chained and forced to work. It was beautiful, said a voice in her head, and it was all possible.

The idea that this voice might be something other than her own mind never occurred to Lack. She didn't seem to notice the voice's strange, (and somewhat serpentine) male quality. Had she been somewhat less entwined in it's message of slaughter and destruction, she might have wondered how she proposed to go about this. However, the voice was so compelling that she could do nothing but listen. And so she did.

T

The first scent that reached the noses of the waking Gorons was the rank stench of something dead and rotten. Not something that was to be expected, to be sure. For many of them, the first sight to reach their eyes was the mutilated body of one of their own, with a long Gerudo weapon sticking out of his chest. Few knew what to make of it. Even fewer could have expected what happened next. A deep, yet afraid voice called out from the room at the far end of the hall. It exclaimed something barely audible, yet that everyone understood. "The stone is gone!"