The moonless night is a familiar comfort to her as she slinks from one shadow to the next. This is her element. The night belongs to her people, as it always has, and it lends her the cover to patiently stalk her quarry.

They're fast, these twisted beasts doing the Twilight King's bidding. As far as she's been able to see, they don't eat, they don't sleep, and they've shown no signs of slowing. Something has them agitated. She's had to endure their screeching racket for days as they've searched around the base of the mountain. She's patiently stalked them from Kakariko Village, and by now she's certain they're searching for an entrance to Goron City.

Why are the forges lit, though? By what order has Darbus moved his people to shape armour and weapons? They gird themselves for war against a foe they can't hope to beat. Maybe, if her people weren't so few...

She inches closer as the beasts mill around at the pass. They test rocks and boulders at crevasse mouths; they stamp and screech when they don't find what they're looking for. Ears ringing, she permits herself a nasty little smile. Be keeping yourselves busy, she thinks to herself, tightening her grip on a throwing knife. You will not be finding it. Not today.

One passes close by. The angle is ideal. She flattens herself against the stone and eases an arm back, tipping a throwing knife into position. The beast crumples as her blade buries itself behind the metallic disk of its face. The other immediately snaps alert, shrieking an alarm.

She flattens herself against the stone. Good. They're looking for her, now, but they won't be looking in the right places. Edging further out, she eases three knives between the fingers of her right hand.

Time slows to a crawl. She hurls all three blades in a single practised snap of the wrist. At the same time, something huge tackles her off her feet, from the side. Her strangled yelp of alarm bounces off the cliff walls.

Thrashing, she struggles to free her other weapon. She brings the carved wooden staff down in a savage blow on the face-plate of the next Messenger; two more slither down from the heights. Another slashes at her with its claws, gouging her arm and shoulder. She batters at it with the staff. It's all she can do to force the beast toward the cliff's edge.

There are three of them. She can see the shadows of more in the pass above. Grim odds, even by her measure. In the span of a heartbeat she makes a decision.

She flings her staff at the cliff wall with as much strength as she can muster. It catches in a crevasse, quivering, forgotten by the beasts. Nayru willing, a sign for others to be discovering--

There's only time enough for a satisfied grunt before one of the beasts tackles her to the ground again. The impact knocks the wind from her. Her world shrinks to thrashing limbs, stone, and the cold steel of her last knife. She snarls in satisfaction as one of them shrieks in pain as the blade plunges home. Jerking the ichor-stained blade back for another blow, she starts to bring it down, but a Messenger's clawed hand swats it aside.

Her last knife spins down into the abyss.

"For Hyrule--!"

In the same breath she screeches a war-cry, piercing voice ululating as it bounces from distant cliffs. The sudden sound startles the beasts for an instant, enough for her to lash out with fists and feet. One drops with the audible snap of bone. Another flows in to take its place like water. She whirls, lashing out with a kick at the one she sees swarming in from the periphery--

Something strikes the back of her head, painfully.

She remembers nothing more.