Chapter Text
Chapter 4
A study in D minor
Erends cousin, a woman by the name of Gitra, was all smiles and open arms when greeting her guests.
“I hope you’re okay with sharing one room, the only other space I’ve got is in the basement with all the barrels and I don’t trust Erend enough to not drink me dry!”
She was loud, joyous, and slapped Erend on the back as she spoke. Leaving to tend to her bar, the three of them were alone.
“How’re you hanging on Erend?”
Aloy was gentle, but not letting tones of pity leak into her voice when she spoke.
“I- I’m. I’m about as well as I could be. I’ve always had Ersa, through everything. Growing up, I mean my Dad drank too much to keep the clan afloat and used to take that out on us. She protected me, even when we got older and we joined the freebooters. And the war, I almost got captured, and she stopped it. I just don’t know who I am without her.”
“Erend Vanguardsman. That’s who you are. You came up with the idea to find me because you figured out I can track with my focus, you knew in your gut that it wasn’t as cut and dry as it seemed. No matter what happens, you’re doing everything you can”
“I- when did you Nora get so damn smart. Thanks Aloy, seriously. I owe you”
“Believe me, it’s not Nora that’s smart. Get some rest, up first thing”
The room was relatively small, a bunk bed in one wall, a fireplace on the other. Aloy pointed Erend towards the top bunk, rolling her own sleep roll out onto the floor. They had all already stripped into their underclothes, and were ready for bed.
“You gonna be ok on the floor kiddo?”
Aloy smirked.
“Honestly sleeping on a bed feels weird for me. Anyway you’re used to old one beds”
“That’s true. So is it Nora tradition to not sleep on beds?”
“Nah, I think they either sleep in communal huts or family groups. I never really did that though”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what was your childhood like?”
“Uh, I mean, it was nice. Tough, but everyone’s childhoods were tough. I grew up in the embrace, the red raids never really reached us there”
“And what about family?”
“I- there was Rost. He was an ou-“
She cleared her throat.
“He was chosen as my guardian when I was a baby to raise me as well as he could, it was pretty much only us. He taught me to hunt, how to survive in the wilds and how to track machines even if I lost my Focus. We never called each other family but it was always unspoken. He had a family before me, he never spoke about it. They’re gone now. Dead. I heard some of the other tribes-folk call him a ‘death seeker’ but I don’t know what that means.”
“He must be pretty good to have raised you so well”
“Yeah. He- he was. He died recently, in the proving massacre saving my life”
That gave Elisabet pause. This girl had just lost the person who raised her and was still so willing to help others.
“I’m sorry, Aloy. He sounds like he meant a lot to you”
“Yeah. He did. Um, what about you? What was your old one childhood like?”
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Elisabet could still remember home. Sobeck Ranch, the sign on the road and the wooden cabin she shared with her mother.
“I grew up in the suburbs of Carson city, west of here. My Mom owned a ranch, and it was just us too. I once set fire to a tree in our yard, I was playing with a children’s electronics kit, and my Mom took me to see the chicks that were in the tree when it burned down. I said I didn’t care, and the turned to me, too my face in her hands. She said ‘ Elisabet, being smart will count for nothing if you don’t make the world better. You have to use your smarts for something. Serve life, not death’. I guess I took her message to heart with Zero Dawn huh?”
“Your Mom sounds nice”
“Heh, she was. Really, one of the best. Miriam Sobeck, I named my company after her. Never knew my Dad, he left way before I was born. A lotta people called my a child prodigy, I was in college at 13 and had my PHD at 16”
“I’m gonna assume that they are important old one titles”
“Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Education awards, like saying that you’ve learnt about something and know how to use that knowledge. A PHD is like ‘you’re an expert in that field now’. Mine was in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Design.”
“That sounds complicated. The only thing like that I have is a couple of blazing suns from hunting grounds.”
“Blazing suns?”
“The highest award you can get. Taking down 10 machines with logs in under 2 minutes, overriding a ravager to take down a thunderjaw in the same amount of time. I got them first try”
Aloy beamed with pride, and Elisabet couldn’t help but smile too. The girl rarely smiled, but when she did it was the same lopsided grin that Elisabet herself gave.
“That’s impressive Aloy! I couldn’t do half the stuff that you can. I mean I’m no-“
A loud Erend snore interrupted them.
“I think that’s our queue to actually sleep”
Elisabet laughed at that, and tucked herself into bed.
“Night Elisabet”
“Night kiddo”
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Aloy and Erend were both unnatural, Elisabet decided. They were up, at the ass crack of dawn, getting ready before Elisabet had chance to say ‘5 more minutes’.
Years of bad sleeping habits couldn’t be erased by a stay in a habitat suit buried under snow apparently. Aloy just about dragged Lis out of her slumber with a plate of something delicious smelling.
“Breakfast, Oseram style” was Erends proud shout. And from the look of the food she could understand why.
Fried goose eggs, some battered vegetables and… was that bacon?!
“Boar meat. Us Oseram tend to work a lot so they need fatty foods to keep up their energy”
“It’s really good Erend. Give your cousin my regards”
“Will do. Best start getting moving, if the map is right we’ve got some ground to cover and we’re gonna be on foot thanks to how rocky it is”
Aloy was bartering with a trader when they joined her, holding hunks of metal and glass. The trader passed her a bow and a leather quiver.
“Here,”
She said, passing the items to Elisabet.
“You oughta at least have a weapon on hand, you know how to use one?”
“Not a clue”
“Leave the fighting to me then. You can learn how to use it in our down time. But now we’ve gotta go… east. North east. You need to grab anything Erend?”
He gave a thumbs up and pointed towards the exit.
“Great. Let’s go Dervahl hunting”
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Elisabet wanted answers. Answers that Aloy couldn’t give her. Luckily for the both of them, they had Erend.
“So, what was this war you talked about last night. I never got a chance to look through those history books Marad gave me”
“Oh, right. So a while ago, maybe 20 years back, the machines were all pretty peaceful. I don’t remember it myself, but they never really outright attacked for no reason. Something changed though, I don’t know what, but we call it the derangement. Machines attacking people, left right and centre. That’s where the Carja come in. See back then a guy called Jiran was Sun King, Avads’ dad, and he had inherited a massive army from his dad. Originally he only used that army to defend his people, but he went mad. Started believing he was the incarnation of the Carja sun god.”
“Sounds like… well sounds kinda like a guy I used to know.”
“Jiran started mistreating his people, flogged anyone from the underclasses who disobeyed the orders of a higher class person. His dad had brought slavery to the Carja, and they only suffered worse under Jiran. And he definitely didn’t stop there. He convinced himself that the derangement was the suns will, that it could be stopped by sacrifice. So he orders his armies to attack other tribes, take prisoners back to Meridian to be killed by deranged machines in the sun ring. Those were the red raids, and no tribe came out unscathed. Oseram, Nora, even the tribes from the forbidden west like the Utaru. They lasted 10 years.”
“Oh my god”
“Yeah, it got to the point where even high ranking Carja were sacrificed. There was the breaking point though, Avad. See Avad wasn’t the heir to the throne, he was the younger brother to Prince Kadaman. Except when Kadaman spoke up Jiran didn’t even blink, he sent his son and heir to the sun ring. Avad decided that Jiran was too far gone and escaped Meridian. He was removed as heir again, that went to Itamen his baby brother who can’t be more than 5 nowadays.”
“So how did Avad come to power?”
It was Aloy asking this time.
“Ersa! Avad met Ersa in The Claim, she had been captured a while back and was a slave in the palace. She became friendly with old Prince Avad, he even helped her escape. Not that she couldn’t have done it on her own mind you. Anyway, so Avad meets Ersa in the claim and goes ‘well I gotta overthrow my Dad, can you help’, and being a freebooter Ersa agrees. Ersa and Avad formed a big alliance of Oseram and Avads honour guard. I helped some too”
Aloy and Elisabet motioned for him to continue.
“Alright hold your striders, I’ll tell you how it went down. So, you two know Marad right?”
They nodded.
“Well back then he was Jirans advisor, but none too loyal. He got us info, moved possible dissident Carja to the borders so that when we charged through they’d join us. All while keeping Jiran from getting suspicious. We must’ve gotten a couple towns from Meridian before he realised, but of course he would just surrender. We had to invade Meridian. Apparently Jiran thought he’d hand off his youngest son to his commander, as well as his wife, to take to the summer palace at Sunfall. Anyway so we all come busting through the Meridian streets, Ersa takes down maybe 20-30 soldiers on her own, and she and Avad get to Jiran. Technically, Avad pled him to surrender and reluctantly landed the killing blow. But in reality Avad couldn’t kill his pops so Ersa did it, as she told me over one too many drinks.”
“That, Erend my boy, is fucking cool. You took down a dictator?!”
Elisabet grinned, and Erend made a mental note to never let her fire Oseram cannons.
“I don’t know what fucking is but yeah it was.”
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Dervahls camp was in their sights when Aloy told Elisabet to hide behind a tree.
“I’m serious this time. Erend will call for you when the camp is cleared. Stay put, even if it sounds like we’re in trouble. If no one calls for you in say, an hour, go back to the claim and send word to Meridian”
“I don’t like this”
“I know, but if everything goes wrong it’s better that we’ve got backup”
Elisabet nodded, and Aloy and Erend set off sneaking towards Dervahls camp. There were machines tied with chains, clearly not overridden however. Aloy motioned for Erend to make a move, and she lined up a shot at the chains holding down a ravager.
The camp exploded into action.
The Oseram that were on Dervahls side fought back ferociously, but with Erends hammer and Aloys spear they fell fast, while Elisabet watched from the tree, silently both horrified and impressed. They worked in quiet efficiency, Aloy pivoting to shoot down a guard who was aiming at Erend.
It was a flurry of blues and oranges and gleaming metal, the machines only making it more chaotic by focusing on neither group. Erend bashed a watcher while another jumped at an enemy Oseram, and in the same second Aloy was firing arrows into the camp proper. They continued their attack deeper into the camp, until Elisabet couldn’t see them.
A few moments later, quiet descended, the music of battle in a lul. No one called for her yet, but she inched closer regardless.
The lul ended soon after, what could only be described as loud came from the camp. There were the sounds of struggle, then only the noise remained before that too was cut off.
Those two. They were warriors unabashed. It scared Elisabet how easily they took down fellow man, but she supposed that this strange new world had little place for her outdated views on the value of human life. She shook her head. Those people would have killed them otherwise, and god knows what else they have planned. She thought back on Erends tale about the war, how his hands shook and his face paled slightly. She thought about how Aloy did the same when she spoke about Rost, and how she stopped herself halfway through sentences as if to change her words.
Some things never change, the human condition was one. Erend called for her, deep voice booming as loud as the noise, desperate, so she ran as fast as fatigued legs could carry her.
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Aloy met her halfway through the camp, face red from exertion, and showed her the way to a door. They ran down the stairs, and were met with a horrible sight.
A woman, who looked an awful lot like Erend, laying in his arms. Bloodied, bruised and swollen from what could have only been beatings. Erend looked up at Elisabet, and she strung into action.
She had never studied medicine beyond a fascination when she was younger, but during Zero Dawn all of the Alphas had gone through first aid training. Incase some armed lunatic got into the base, Herres had said. She never thought she’d be so glad about three days of boring seminars and awkward practice.
Her hands worked faster than her mind, checking pulse, checking breathing, asking the woman to talk to her while she worked.
“Internal bleeding. She’s going into shock, do we have anything to stop pain?”
Aloy handed her a bag of powder, and a flask of something that smelt like meat. Tipping the contents into Ersas mouth, she continued her checklist.
“Are there any doctors? Surgeons?”
“There’s one in Pitchcliff”
“Alright. Aloy, pass me that fabric and some string I’m gonna have to make a neck brace.”
“On it”
Fashioning an admittedly primitive neck brace, she motioned towards Aloy.
“How fast can you run to Pitchcliff?”
“Fast. Faster on a mount”
“Good, go and get the doctor. We don’t wanna move her too much incase she has back injuries. Be quick but be careful”
Aloy left, sprinting out the door. Elisabet kept checking Ersas vitals while they waited.
Erend was getting nervous, so Elisabet sat him down and placed his fingers on Ersas pulse.
“Keep your hand there, tell me if it stops.”
“Right”
The wait was torture, Ersa groaned every few moments, in pain and in confusion. It took what felt like hours for Aloy to come back with the doctor, a confused man who looked half asleep with his bag handing off one shoulder. Giving Erend instructions, he lifted Ersa onto a table.
The doctor asked Aloy and Erend to leave the room, but told Elisabet to stay.
“Just incase”
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Erend was recovering from a panic attack when they emerged from the basement, Aloy running circles on his back with her hand and nursing a flask of something hot.
He shot up the second they were out, eyes brimming with tears and hope.
“Is- is she…”
“She’s gonna be ok Erend”
Was Elisabets warm reply.
“She’s got a long road to recovery, but she’s alive. We’re lucky we got here when we did, she was pretty roughed up”
“But she’ll be ok? She-she’s gonna live?”
“Yeah. The Oseram from Pitchcliff are gonna come with a wagon to take her back to Meridian, but she’s awake enough to see you now if you want”
Erend looked between Elisabet and Aloy wildly.
“Go, stay with her. Take whatever information back to Avad and Marad”
He ran into the basement with tears streaming down his face once more. Elisabet walked to beside Aloy, patting her back in a fond manner.
“You did good kiddo, I saw that tourniquet on her thigh, damn fast thinking. It saved her life”
“Oh. That was all from the Focus. Is she really gonna be ok?”
“Yeah. A tough one that girl, but it seems like all Oseram are. She had some information about a possible attack on Meridian, Dervahl”
“Yeah, heard about that. I know it’s a long shot but could we swing by some place before we head back to Meridian?”
“Rockwreath right? Course. You think you’ll need my help right?”
“Yeah. And the people there might have Focuses. At least Olin will. But I don’t know what kinda danger we’ll be in so you’re gonna have to hang back again”
“While you do all the work? You sure kiddo?”
“Yep. Maybe on the way I’ll teach you how to use that bow”
“Hah. Fat chance”
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