Work Text:
Link lifted a hand to shield his eyes against the setting sun's glare on the snow. He was in the Hebra Mountains despite an oncoming storm promised by both the Sheikah Towers' data and the weather eyes of the stable workers: a Frost Talus had been seen wandering around a little too close to the Flight Range for comfort, and a storm would only make it more active and dangerous. He had volunteered to climb the trail and slay it, letting the Rito focus on other matters. He had been told to look for the Trailhead Lodge on his way up, and through the smoke of his breath in the frigid mountain air, he could see it, along with what appeared to be a signal fire nearby. He sighed in relief and continued forward, his boots crunching in the snow, and raised a tired hand in greeting to the young man by the fire; the lodge's keeper, presumably.
The lodgekeeper raised a gloved hand back, smiling. He looked maybe a few years older than Link's apparent age, and like most Hylians who made their living around Hebra was dressed in warm Rito-down clothes.
"Good evening, stranger," said the lodgekeeper as Link trudged his way over to the fire. "Here, warm yourself for a minute before we go in. I was just keeping this fire in case anyone came up the trail today - nasty storm coming, it looks like."
Link nodded, squatting with his feet under him to avoid touching the cold, wet ground. "That's what they said at the stable, too. It's probably only going to be me."
The young man chuckled. "You never know with us adventuring types."
Link laughed a little, too.
For a minute or two, they rested in silence, listening to the crackling fire and the wind that was just starting to gust. The lodgekeeper cheerfully straightened his back. "Say, to pass the time, shall I read your fortune?"
Link tilted his head, then nodded.
"Ahh, very good. Now let me see..." The lodgekeeper rose to a kneel, leaning forward to look at Link through the fire. Link looked back. There were all kinds of ways to enter the kind of trance a person needed to glimpse the Goddess of Time's design, or at least make the appearance of doing so.
The lodgekeeper at least sounded like he was going into a trance as he spoke. "I see... red... a crimson... deep and rich... oooh. It's the most beautiful colour I've ever seen..."
Link, however, was not allowing himself to enter a trance. He listened with a slight frown, and from the corner of his eye saw motion that he didn't think about, only processed as danger and sprang backwards to avoid, feeling a sting on his shoulder - as he rolled backwards to his feet, he drew the Master Sword.
The young man lept back from the fire, grinning. In his right hand was a scythe tipped in a dark red, nearly black in the twilight. "Oh, I see! It's the colour of your blood!" Snarling now, the Yiga dropped into an aggressive stance. "I'll take your life!"
He charged at Link, kicking up snow without getting caught in it, and took a swing at him; Link hopped out of the way and swung the Master Sword at him as he passed, not surprised that the blade sliced nothing but air. The Yiga kept running, making a swift set of motions with his off hand, and vanished.
Knowing better than to chase after a teleporting Yiga, Link extended the Master Sword behind himself and waited, waited. The evening was giving way to night now, the snow more blue than white. The wind gusted hard, extinguishing the fire, and he waited, long enough to Link and to his racing heart pumping battle-thrilled blood through him and out his shoulder, but not really that long at all. He waited, until he saw an orange reflection on the snow. He gripped the Master Sword more firmly, shuffled forward...
And spun, hopping backwards at the end of it, coming down facing the Yiga half-crouched, the Master Sword held in a defensive stance.
As the wind started to howl, the Yiga stared at Link, then down at himself. The perfect edge of the Master Sword had completely severed his right hand, flinging it into the snow to be forgotten, and more critically, had opened his abdomen, blood and viscera shining black and tan in the last remnants of the sun. The would-be assassin staggered forward one step, wavered, took another, and collapsed.
Under the howling wind, Link could hear him gasping in agony. A vicious part of him wanted to leave the Yiga there, wanted to let him bleed to death slowly unless the oncoming storm froze him to death or suffocated him under the snow first. Link, after all, could remember the Calamity now. He could remember fleeing Hyrule Castle Town, could remember how the Guardians had swarmed over the land, murdering uncountable thousands of people. He remembered how the Yiga had attacked him and Zelda even back then, remembered uncountable times a friendly hand held out to a stranger turned to snapping it back to his weapon in terror. Fuelled by those memories, that vicious part of Link's heart said a slow death was all some fanatical Ganon-worshipping cultist deserved.
But he took in and released a slow breath, already approaching his downed enemy. The part of Link that controlled his actions recognised those thoughts for what they were. They were cruel and evil, the very kinds of thoughts that malicious spirits and gods could sink their claws into and amplify, twisting a person's virtues into vices.
With the Yiga having fallen on his side, Link raised the Master Sword and stabbed him through the lungs and heart for the surest mercy he could go for short of beheading him. He withdrew the Master Sword, and in the turbulent wind and driving snow, listened to a couple of final gargling breaths, watched a last few jerks of the Yiga's limbs. Link's dying enemy snarled up at him with hatred still burning in his eyes as he succumbed, brave and defiant in the name of his warped cause to the end.
Link glanced at the sword in his hand. The peerless Blade of Evil's Bane did not allow itself to be sullied by blood or gore, as ever. Looking at the sword, he felt a sense of gentle approval and pride from it, and knew it wasn't about his courage in the fight itself. He drew in and released another slow breath as he looked back at the Yiga's body. The snow was already starting to cover it, falling on unblinking eyes and blurring the edges of the dark pool of blood it lay in.
"...Rest peacefully. If we meet again, I hope it's as friends."
It was the only eulogy an enemy like a Yiga would get from him. They deserved that much. No less, and no more.
Link left the corpse behind for the mountain to claim as he made his way to the lodge.