I make no claims to the Legend of Zelda.
The first thing Vehl did was kidnap a little girl. She was to be bait. A lesser assassin might have wasted days learning intimate details about the hero's relationships and who was most precious to them. But Vehl knew better. For a true hero, anyone would do the trick. Anyone at all.
He brought the girl to the top of a waterfall and tied her above the rushing waters, swinging from a single branch. And then he vanished into the bushes with a crossbow and waited in a place that overlooked both the branch and the only path leading up to it.
It didn't take long for something to happen. Maybe an hour later a shadow shot up the waterfall and went against the current. Vehl raised his crossbow but did not shoot. His bolts would not do well at piercing the water. Instead he kept it pointed at the girl.
Two razor-sharp scales emerged from the river. Without thought, Vehl fired his crossbow. The bolt flew straight for the girl's head, but one of the scales met it in mid-air. Cut neatly in two, the projectile represented no further threat. The other scale, meanwhile, cut the girl's bonds, letting her drop towards the swift waters.
In one seamless motion a Zora emerged from the river, diving into the air, grasping the girl and hanging in mid-air just long enough for the dangerous flying scales to reattach themselves, and then plunged into the waterfall, cradling the girl against the Zora body.
Vehl was certainly surprised by the race of his opponent. For one thing, it meant there would be no shooting the hero: the impact with the water's surface tended to leave any projectiles more or less harmless. But he composed himself and shouted over the edge of the cliff.
"There will be more, hero! Follow me and face me, or the next time I will kill someone outright!"
Unlike lesser enemies, Vehl knew that sometimes, if a hero is truly heroic, no one at all would do just as well. So he ran into a maze of stone caves he'd explored in his preparations. Privately he had some hope of not facing the hero at all. The path leading to the cave was filled with deadly traps of his own devising and Zoras, however graceful they might be in the water, were not half so good on dry land.
He was not, however, confident enough to stay out of the caves. Which was really a shame, because otherwise he might have seen a Deku gently floating over his traps. At that point he might have understood the kind of trouble he was in.
Instead he waited behind a corner, wielding a fistful of poisoned needles. Eventually he heard steps and jumped out, jamming them…
…into the rock-hard skin of a Goron, where they broke harmlessly.
Vehl spent just a little too long being shocked by this turn of events. The Goron's fist slammed into Vehl's ribs and threw him across the cave and into the opposite wall, where he slid down, full of agony and broken bones.
Link raised his hand and removed his Goron form. One moment he was a portly stone-like creature; the next he was just a boy in green. It dawned on Vehl that he was paying dearly for failing to do enough research. He had thought that because he understood heroes in general, he could understand any hero in particular. He now knew just how wrong he had been.
Link drew his bow and lodged an arrow in Vehl's chest. Assured of his opponent's death, he left the caves, brooding on the strange attacks of the past days. Once was business as usual, and twice might have been coincidence. Three times in three days was the beginning of a dangerous pattern.
And with his rivals gone, Erliol stood alone. No one knew what it was precisely that Erliol did for the Emperor. But problems had a way of disappearing when Erliol was around, and that's really all that mattered. He achieved results by walking in curves in a world where most others followed straight lines. And so he watched the sunset all alone and in total silence.
He quite enjoyed it.