Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

>DATA INTEGRITY RESTORED. GAIA Log: 3 Feb 2065 R.

Okay, GAIA. Sorry about that. Where was I?

>You were telling a story.

Right. Yeah… so, like I was saying, it was a children’s electronics kit, but I’d hacked the wiring up to an auto battery and solar PV, and the grass caught fire. And so did a tall pine that’d stood there… I don’t know, maybe a hundred years?

>Query: You were how old?

Six. My mother was home, thank god, and she called the fire department, and after, she took me out on the lawn and showed me the dead baby birds. Because there were nests, in the pine tree.

>Query: What did you feel?

I’m not sure? I remember yelling that I didn’t care. And that’s when my mother took my face in her hands and… spoke.

>Query: What did she say?

She said I had to care. She said, “Elisabet, being smart will count for nothing if you don’t make the world better. You have to use your smarts to count for something. To serve life, not death.”

>You often tell stories of your mother, but you are childless.

I never had time. Guess it was for the best.

>If you had had a child, Elisabet, what would you have wished for them?

I guess I would have wanted… her --to be… curious. And wilful. Unstoppable, even. But with enough compassion to… heal the world. Just a little bit.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now, GAIA. Time to tuck in.

>I wish you a pleasant sleep, Elisabet.

Thank you. I’ll catch you tomorrow.

>

>CREATING BACKUP…

.

..

…

Aloy scrabbled at her chest as she woke with a gasp, and her fingers tugged the cord around her neck. Her hand closed around smooth bone, and her lungs stopped constricting, letting her breathe normally. As she ran her thumb over the pendant, she blinked at her surroundings—A Nora lodge?

Not a Nora lodge. The homestead. All of Rost’s things… She reached for Elisabet’s globe and let her hands play with it while she looked around at her old home. There were still embers in the fireplace, somebody’s attempt to keep her warm while she slept. All of her gear was here, organised in the way she used to organise things when she had a home to come to. It was neat and spread out, none of the crammed-together-ness of a pack put together by a Seeker on the move. Her gear was acting too much like… furniture. The globe had been on the table by her head, like an ornament.

How did she get here? Who laid out her stuff like this? She put on her boots (Who took off her boots? She didn’t sleep with her boots off any more, what if she needed to make tracks quick?) and took full inventory. Nothing had been taken.

As she donned her silent hunter gear, she questioned who would bring her back here. The only person she knew who understood the significance of the homestead to her was Teersa. Even Teersa would assume she’d rather be in Mother’s Watch, in the Sacred Mountain. Near her ‘mother’. And maybe she would rather that. This place… it was filled with Rost. Reminders that she didn’t need that he was gone. It was overwhelming when she stood on the doorstep, the memory of the last time she had yawned here in the early morning, confused and alone.

She descended the slope with a lighter pack than she’d had in a while. She didn’t plan on becoming a Banuk Chieftain or a Shadow Carja Kestrel again anytime soon, and leaving these things at the homestead was a nice compromise. It was already a… what was the word? The Old Ones had had them. A collection of ancient and beloved things, not to be touched. Museum. She left a few things that she hardly used behind, and if she found herself needing them, she could take a trip back, and say hello to—

Rost’s grave was gone. She thought it was a trick of the snow, a trick of her eyes, but it wasn’t there and where was it. The memory-pattern had been scoured from the standing stone that marked the spot, and there was no sign of the offerings and candles and the box with the stick dolls that he’d made for her when she was a child. “Rost?” she said, as if he might hear her, beckon her to where he was hiding.

Someone had dismantled his grave. Maybe someone had found out he was a Death-Seeker and what the Matriarchs had done for him… they weren’t going to get away with this. She activated her Focus to try and find the tracks, but it illuminated nothing. She tapped it again. There should be drag marks in the snow, candle wax, at least footprints. How long had it been since she was here? They could have done this weeks ago.

There. Heavy boots, leading down the path. She crossed the bridge at the bottom of the slope and spotted a figure on the ridge. The culprit was still here?

She considered nocking an arrow and shooting them right there, but she needed to know what they thought they were doing and what they had done with the things from the shrine. She climbed to the ridge silently, pulled her spear from her back and readied it—

“Aloy! What are you doing?”

Rost.

A thousand things happened in her brain at once, and she processed none of them, staring dumbly at him. None of the appropriate questions made it to the forefront of her mind, instead his name just repeating on a loop on her mind.

Rost. Rost’s here. Rost. It’s Rost.

“Aloy?”

She steadied herself on his shoulders. She felt the cuff of his machine-plated spaulder with one hand and the boar pelt over his shoulder with the other. The coarse hair of the boar, the careful stitching of the badge that held it in place… It felt real, and she started to sob and she couldn’t stop. When he pulled her in close for a bewildered embrace, she gasped. He smelled of pine nuts and smoke and dried salvebrush. She’d forgotten how it felt to be folded into his arms, was surprised by how quickly the feeling of security overtook her.

“What’s wrong, child?” he murmured. “What’s overcome you? The Proving is a mere two nights away. In that short time, you will finally get the answers you have always wanted.”

The Proving. Two days away. Two days until the Proving. In two days the Proving would take place.

“What in All-Mother’s name are you wearing?” he asked, taking her shoulders and holding her at arms’ length so that he could see. “Did Karst sell that to you? What did you pay for it? Aloy—”

She pushed away. “You can’t be here. I can’t be here. I don’t understand.” She was half-pacing, trying to tease any grain of memory from her mind. “I was with Elisabet… there must have been something in the air, some kind of toxin released by AETHER, maybe… This isn’t real. It can’t be.”

“Slow down,” he said, his brow furrowing. “You’re safe. Feel the wind-chill on your skin, hear my voice in your ears. This is real.”

“No… Rost, please, I can’t explain it, but all of this has already happened,” she told him urgently. “I won the Proving, but that was far from the end of anything. It was attacked by… by worshippers of a machine called HADES—they believe it’s the Buried Shadow of Carja myth—it doesn’t matter. Hundreds of Nora died. I defeated HADES and… and I woke up here…”

He held a hand against her forehead. “Let’s return to the house, come. You can tell me about this dream.”

“I’m not feverish,” she protested. “It wasn’t a dream. All of my stuff is here. This… this must be the dream.” She didn’t want it to be a dream. She wanted more than anything for Rost to really be standing in front of her, but he couldn’t be. She produced Elisabet’s globe from her pocket. “I travelled west, past the Sundom and through the Daunt. I found this in the hands of an Old One who died to protect the world we live in now. Her name was Elisabet Sobeck.”

“I see,” he said, still with creases in his forehead.

Her shoulders sagged. “You don’t believe me, even in dreams. Of course you don’t.”

“You have never left the Embrace, Aloy. How could you find such a thing?”

Exasperated, she said, “Because I was made a Seeker after… The Embrace,” she realised, interrupting herself. “I’ve never left the Embrace. But you… you are planning to take me out, tonight.”

His frown deepened. “What?”

“There are Sawtooths destroying settlements in the hunting lands, and, and you needed to teach me about fighting for the tribe and not just myself, so you’re going to take me out of the Embrace. You’ll, you’ll whistle. And someone on the other side of the gate will whistle back, and they’ll let us through. You’ll say you’re not breaking the rules, technically, because you didn’t speak to anyone.” She smiled to herself and reflected, “I’d never seen you do that before.”

When she looked up, she saw Rost staring at her with eyebrows raised, lips pursed together. She was hit by a wave of grief at her recognition of the expression – the same look he wore whenever she had used her Focus to her advantage. She had missed him so much.

“Do you believe me?” she asked tentatively.

He exhaled, his breath fogging the morning air slightly, and looked into the sky. Searching for All-Mother’s guidance. “I cannot see how you know such things unless you have had these… visions, as you describe,” he conceded.

Visions, she could work with that. She let him take her back up to the house for his ease of mind, so he could poke a fire and brew a basic herbal remedy while she paced. He kept his ear turned to her, and she spent a few minutes collecting her explanation before she began:

“There’s a door inside the Sacred Mountain. The Matriarchs call it All-Mother’s Womb, and that’s where I came from. But its recognition of me was prevented by corruption… in its mind. The Alpha Registry. Teersa and Jezza made me a Seeker so that I could find a way to restore it. I went to Meridian, and allied with Sun-King Avad and the Oseram Vanguard against the Eclipse, a cult of Shadow Carja who worshipped HADES. Eventually I recovered the Alpha Registry and spoke with… with the Goddess. She directed me to an ancient ruin where I could find the Master Override that would defeat HADES.”

“You’ve been inside the Sacred Mountain?”

“That’s what you focus on?” she said, but of course it was. That was so Rost. “Yes, Teersa argued that I should be close to my mother when I died, so I was taken there. Lansra objected. Obviously.”

He reached out to still her pacing, and she let him envelop her hand in his. “Aloy. You saw your death?”

“No. Just… close.”

“I should have been at your side.”

She fidgeted with her hands. “That’s not what you said… tomorrow.”

Even as confusing as this was to him, he seemed to know what she was talking about, and he hung his head before returning his eyes to the fire. “When you were just a little one and you demanded to train for the Proving, I realised I was one day going to have to let you go. I did not know if I could go through with it. But it seems I parted ways with you after all.”

“I wouldn’t have let you. If you hadn’t—I would have found you. No matter what.”

He stirred the pot. “The demon. It plans your destruction even now?”

She blinked, and remembered the glitch, the words SYSTEM THREAT DETECTED running through the Eclipse’s network. “No. No, it doesn’t know I exist yet. HADES only learns about me through Olin’s Focus at the Blessing.”

I can change it. I can save everyone.

“What does it want, this Hades?”

“To destroy the world. All life. It’s not really its fault, it… was separated. From GAI—from All-Mother. It’s lost without her, and the only thing it knows how to do is… destroy. In my… visions there was a massive battle. Carja, Oseram, Nora, and Banuk all fighting to defend the Spire.”

He handed her a cup full of the remedy and said, “But you can stop it.”

“It is what I was made for. Heal the corruption, save the world,” she said, not without a sardonic edge. Some people found the idea of a destiny comforting. Most of them probably didn’t have anything as major on their shoulders as the fate of the entire world. Most of them probably weren’t literally manufactured like a machine for the role. Rost gave her a disapproving look: practical answers only. She sighed and sipped from the cup. “The Master Override is in an ancient ruin at the top of the Bitter Climb, south-west of the Cut.”

“Beyond the Sacred Land.”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Tonight we deal with the Sawtooth outside the Embrace. Tomorrow, the Proving, where you can ask for Seekerdom. And then Hades. Finish your drink. I will meet you at the North Gate.” He picked up his bow from where it was propped and left the homestead.

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s just those three steps,” she rolled her eyes to no-one.

When she left the homestead for the second time that morning, she did it with a clear head. She was geared up for a day in the Embrace, fire arrows and tripcaster ready for their task outside the gates. When she got to the base of the hill, she whistled for a Strider and waited.

…And waited. She whistled a couple more times.

She scanned her spear with her Focus. There should have been a list of Cauldron codes to come up. There should have been—there should have been a database of every machine she’d ever encountered. Oh, no. She scrolled through the Focus menus until she got to the datapoints, and found that they had been stripped clean.

Even without the Cauldron codes, the override she stripped from the Corruptor should have let her summon a Strider. But the component wasn’t attached. Because this wasn’t—Fuck, this wasn’t the lance Sylens had given her. It was nestled in HADES’ heart beneath the Spire, where she had left it when she set off for the Daunt. This was her old spear, before even its improvements by Thok ahead of the Proving. She had picked it up from the homestead without even thinking.

>DATA RETRIEVAL IN PROGRESS…

She expanded the popup – maybe it wasn’t all gone – but found, rather than the Cauldron codes, or the Alpha Registry, or the maps of all the ancient ruins she had explored, a folder full of corrupted files. The repaired ones were the entries of Elisabet’s journal and GAIA’s logs that she had read as she was failing to get to sleep the night before the battle for the Spire. The most recent was GAIA Log: 3 Feb 2065 R. Her Focus was trying to heal all of the files she’d scanned in Zero Dawn and GAIA Prime. It had deleted… everything else.

“Why. Why did you do this?” she lamented, allowing herself a moment to sigh before she pulled the green camouflage netting over her clothes and step-softners over her boots. Then it was time to get on with her day, taking all inconveniences in stride. As she did every day.

Her Focus was beeping every time she scanned something that storage space was insufficient. It was using all of its processing power to heal the GAIA logs, and she didn’t want to stop it. The logs might be important to fixing GAIA later. She switched to one of her spares and left the original to it.

She arrived at the campfire inside the North Gate out of breath just after the sun had slipped behind the mountains for the evening. Navigating the Embrace had taken a lot longer than she remembered without a mount or the ability to override what she came across.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to appear,” Rost remarked.

“Sorry,” she sat down. “I was almost here, and then I remembered I had to go rescue a spear from a Scrapper and stop a girl from being mauled by Watchers. I’m ready.”

Once they were through the gates, she took the Forgefire from her back and loaded it with blaze. Rost squinted at it. “What is that monstrosity? An Old Ones weapon?”

“No, it’s an Oseram Forgefire, made by my friend Varga. I can destroy a Sawtooth in three shots with this thing.”

“Do not show off,” he chastised.

“I’m not. I’m making use of the resources at my disposal.”

“What happened to your bow?”

She had seen Rost eyeing her Banuk Champion bow, but he hadn’t said anything. She had planned, if he let her, to show him later how the wheels worked to increase the power of the draw at the expense of slowing it down. What she had interpreted as curiosity might, she now realised, be jealousy. He had crafted her the simple recurve bow that she had used to win the Proving – she sold it in Meridian when the space it took up was more inconvenient than its sentimental value was comforting. She remembered how long it had taken her to make that decision. She remembered crying about it, and then feeling silly. It was just a bow.

Rost did not think it was just a bow.

“It broke,” she lied. “I put it under too much strain and broke it, so I made an investment in a new hunting bow.”

“In order to trust your weapon, it is best if it comes out of your own hands.”

“I didn’t have time to make a bow,” she said, clipped. “Better to invest in the work of a skilled Banuk craftsman than my own rushed, inexperienced attempt.”

He shook his head, and they slipped into the tall grass close to the Nora lodge that was still burning.

“What was this place?” she asked, realising she had never found out.

“I didn’t bring you here to answer questions.”

“Make up your mind!” she snapped. “Am I supposed to be learning to act as part of the tribe or not?”

“Aloy, quiet.”

The Sawtooth barrelled out of the trees with its yellow lights blazing, scanning for the source of the noise it had heard. Aloy didn’t waste any time. She rolled closer, squeezed the blaze sac with her elbow, and watched the Sawtooth’s eyes turn red right before it was blasted with a fireball. She backed off as it flailed and fired another blast, which did a good job surrounding it in flames and a less good job hitting any major components. It pounced at her, and she rolled underneath its belly – one last shot, directly into its blaze canister, and she slid to safety as it exploded. The night air was warm with her kill.

“That was showing off,” Rost said.

“Only a little,” she admitted, putting the Forgefire away.

He had his arms crossed. Would he never be happy? “I suppose now you’re going to produce a… Sandspitter? To put out these fires?”

She looked at the destruction around her. Patches of dirt were smouldering, but a section of tall grass was all-out blazing. “Oh.” Shock wires weren’t a hazard in tall grass, and the ground was wet enough not to take from a handful of fire arrows. She hadn’t had to worry about this the first time. She should have brought the Icerail.

“Come, then,” Rost said, starting to gather wet dirt to stomp over the flames. “We have more to do if we don’t want your defence of the Embrace to raze it to the ground.”

After the fires of her own making were dealt with, Rost whistled. Three Braves came out of the dark to extinguish the lodge, and he took out his bow, watching the trees behind them. Aloy mirrored him, and kept her ears trained on her surroundings – but her eyes were watching the sky become shades lighter.

“This was Mother’s Hand,” Rost said, after a long stretch of silence. “More of an outpost than a village, staffing the gates. The Hand extends to welcome Nora into the Embrace, and keep uninvited outlanders at bay.”

“Will they rebuild it?”

She saw Rost half-shrug in her periphery. “Nora are stubborn people. They will probably build it bigger.”

She wanted to ask about Mother’s Vigil. By the time she was told Rost’s story, the only other person she knew from there was already dead. They must have felt like they were on the edge of the world – what the Carja called the Shivering Watch gate at the top of the valley and Daytower just a stone’s throw from it. Nora Braves and Carja soldiers could have shouted stories at each other and learned of what lay beyond.

Who was she kidding? Nora were too proud to listen to stories about the ‘tainted’ land and its blasphemous people.

Back inside the Embrace, Aloy and Rost parted ways for the time being and she headed towards Mother’s Watch. She gave the village itself a wide berth, deciding she didn’t want to deal with the possibility of spits or stones thrown – it depended who was on the gates today. It was sort of darkly amusing to realise she gave the same treatment to the settlements of the Sundom for the opposite reason. Maybe this time she could avoid being hailed as the Saviour of Meridian and the wretched Anointed One.

Aloy heard the festivities in Mother’s Heart long before it came into view. She found herself nervous – butterflies in her stomach. The way a prowling Scrapper used to make her feel. The way she felt in anticipation of Maker’s End and the possibility that she was going to meet her mother at last. Nothing like the clanging, stone-heavy dread that came before the Sun-Ring or the Spire or the first time she’d faced a Thunderjaw. This feeling almost didn’t belong to her any more.

She’d told Brom and Olara to keep themselves well-hidden in his cave tomorrow. Just in case she couldn’t stop it. Just in case this was the kind of nightmare she couldn’t change to its core.

“Aloy,” Rost said, standing. She meant to say something – anything – but she couldn’t find the words. They just stood in front of each other, grappling with this day that should have been so many things but was now warped like the chassis of a corrupted machine. Failing to come up with anything meaningful to say, he said, “Why are you wearing your scarf over your mouth?”

Aloy looked to the gate of Mother’s Heart and shook her hands out. They felt numb. She felt… not all here. Perhaps a symptom of the dream. “I have to hide my face from Olin,” she stammered out. “If HADES recognises me through his Focus, then it will happen just like before.”

The gentle nod of his head showed his understanding-without-understanding. He had never got to grips with her Focus, and she suspected that he was struggling with the idea that it was in fact dangerous after all, but that she still needed it. She would take it off when she approached the gates – it was too noticeable to Olin and Erend.

“Sit. I will paint your face,” he pointed to the rock he had been sitting on and she watched him uncap a small container filled with dark paste. “My grandmother once told me that our ancestors painted themselves to conceal their faces from demons. It seems they were onto something. I would not like to risk giving you the blue without High Matriarch Teersa’s blessing, but… if you like, I would be happy to mark you with the paint of my family.”

“I would be honoured, Rost,” she said quietly.

He dipped his finger in the pot and held her chin with the other hand. It reminded her of him cleaning her cuts and scrapes when she was a child, tender and comforting. A long-buried memory surfaced of a scraped knee and a sniffly nose. Rost struggled with a raccoon’s carcass, puffing out his cheeks with effort, and asked her if she was strong enough to help him carry it all the way home. She had taken it into her arms with ease and laughed at him.

“Thank you, my little Brave,” he’d said. “I don’t know what I would do without a strong hunter like you to help me.”

“You’ll smudge the paint,” Rost said softly, moving his hand from her chin so he could wipe a tear from her eye.

She sniffed. “Why are you still allowed to wear Nora blue? None of the other outcasts do. And their patterns always go down the face, from what I’ve seen. Never around the eyes.”

He pressed his lips together a moment. “Wearing the paint of your mother ensures that All-Mother can recognise and bless you,” he said. “Outcast paint goes through the eyes in black or white because in the crime they committed, their jealousy, hubris, laziness, or greed blinded them to All-Mother’s blessings. Being an outcast is intended to force you to commune with the Goddess, to make amends. To appreciate the life she provides for us and charges us to care for in the Embrace and beyond.”

“But doesn’t All-Mother provide the Nora with community as well? What’s the point of casting someone out for life when they can never be a part of the tribe again?”

“Aloy…” he began, in his most You must not question these things voice.

“Clearly you agree, or you wouldn’t ask me to help Grata,” she rebutted.

He sighed. “Grata is traditional. She wears the customary paint and prays to All-Mother daily, and she will not speak to tribesmembers or other outcasts directly. But in truth I do not think the Matriarchs would have cast her out if she did not personally insist upon the sentence. She broke the rules, and therefore must be outcast. She believes this truly.”

“And you?”

He closed the paint pot and wiped his fingers on his overcoat. “I believe in the tribe’s rules, but I do not turn down generosity when it is extended to me. My situation is… unconventional. The pigment was gifted to me by a High Matriarch, when I was permitted to live in the Embrace. I believe that I was given it because I am the only surviving member of the family that bears this pattern. Though I cannot know for sure.”

She stood up. “It will stay alive through me,” she said.

He looked away, down into the valley towards the gates. Three Nora walked past them onto the bridge for Mother’s Heart, chatting away jovially and ignoring them. She recognised some of their paint – family members of one of the other aspirants. Rost made a point to keep his face turned away from them until they were out of earshot. “Aloy, you have the opportunity to begin your own design – your own family mark. I would not wish to burden you with my family’s history.”

“It’s not a burden, Rost,” she insisted. “I’m proud to call you my father. I know families are survived by the women in Nora tradition, but I didn’t come from Nora tradition. I came partly from the Old World… and partly from you. I told you I won’t forsake you. I won’t forget everything you’ve done for me, not ever.”

He sighed. “You may not think of yourself as Nora, but you are stubborn enough to be.” He reached into one of the pouches on his belt. “I want you to have this, for good luck.”

He held out his hand with the bone pendant resting in his palm, matching the one tucked underneath her breastplate, and her mouth became dry. She curled his fingers back around it. “I can’t take that, Rost. This… this isn’t goodbye. I want you to keep it, and promise me you’re going to be here when I get back.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Here?”

“Home. In the Embrace, I don’t know. Just don’t… don’t go where I can’t follow,” she said.

He regarded her for a moment, and nodded. “When you need me, I will be by your side. Always. May All-Mother bless you, Aloy.”

“...And you.”

Chapter Text

“Aloy! Over here!” He was grinning and waving. The first Nora ever to look pleased to see her, and he did it before she was a Brave, a Seeker or Anointed. Teb was soft-spoken and flat-footed, but he was brave, and he cared about people. That was what the Nora should have been trying to embody, she thought.

“Hello, Teb,” she said.

“It’s so good to meet you officially!” he put his fist over his heart, a greeting between friends. Then he squinted, bemused, “But… how did you know my name?”

“Uh,” she said, realising she’d been disarmed by his immediate friendliness. “Teersa told me. She described us as old friends.”

He laughed. “Well, I’ve been very excited for today since she told me you would probably be running in the Proving this year.” He cupped his hand around his mouth as if sharing a secret and said, “She’s my great-grandmother. I have insider information.”

She blinked. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, we only just met after all,” he said reasonably, because that was true for him. However Aloy considered Teb one of her dearest friends, and she had never learned anything about his family. Now that she was thinking about it, though…

“Are you related to Karst?”

He glanced down the hill, where Karst was setting up his wares. “He’s my uncle. Why?”

From where he was standing, Teb would probably have seen quite plainly that she talked to him on her way up.  She might not have stopped this time if he hadn’t specifically caught her attention to tell her not to let on that she knew him. She was going to be doing a lot of that, today. “Uhh… no reason,” she said. “You just have the same face paint.”

“Did he try to upcharge you because you’re new to Mother’s Heart?” he said, disgruntled. “I’ll have a word with him.”

She shook her head hastily, “No, no, Teb, that’s fine.”

“Oh. Okay,” he shrugged it off, though he was clearly curious about why Karst had apparently made an impression on her. “Speaking of wares, though… I ended up a Stitcher instead of a Brave, so. I made you this. For the Proving.” He extended the folded up clothes to her, and she noticed the fine craftsmanship all over again; unscuffed, unworn, the stitching was neat and the strips of colour were vibrant. Her older version of the outfit had been patched and repatched, stained and washed repeatedly.

“Thank you,” she said, and then choosing her words carefully, continued, “You’re the first person to give me anything like this.”

He beamed, but she felt dishonest. Even without technically lying, she knew she was omitting enough information for it to count as one. She couldn’t go around telling friends who barely knew her that she was trapped in a dream state reliving the last year of her life. As she looked around Mother’s Heart, the festivities and drunkenness of an unbroken Nora tribe made her question again why she was here. If this was another twist of fate – and it had to be, didn’t it? – was she here to relive her most horrible memories, or to reconcile them?

She remembered Helis on his knees, choking blood under a cloud of ash and smoke that blocked out the sun. She remembered his certainty, even then, that he couldn’t die. That he was chosen by the Sun, and it was not meant to be.

None of this was meant to be, Helis. You made it happen.

She could stop Helis, stop HADES. She would do what she was made for and make the world safe, figure out a way to bring back GAIA. And she would do it without letting half the Nora be wiped out.

She steered clear of Irid’s ‘annunciation of gratitude’ altogether, not wanting to risk being spotted by Olin. Instead she changed into her new clothes, listened to the stories told by Nora Matriarchs, watched the dances. She didn’t get as many stares as she felt she deserved. People were drunk and happy enough to compliment her red hair without realising who she was. She was one of the first to arrive at the Blessing, after only Vala, being fussed over by her mother.

“You remember the words, don’t you?” Sona said.

“Ooh, I’m not sure. Varl and me have only been reciting the Blessing since we were four,” Vala joked.

Her mother scoffed and cracked a smile, “I’d tell you not to act so smart, but you’ll run the tribe with that mind of yours someday. Where is Varl? He was supposed to come off the gate in time to see the ceremony.”

“The ceremony hasn’t started yet. He’ll be here.”

The High Matriarchs all ascended the steps onto the stage together, and Sona took the back of Vala’s head with one hand and kissed her forehead. As she turned to stand in the crowd, she caught Aloy staring. Aloy looked away, feeling embarrassment burn at the back of her neck, and approached the stage.

Before Teersa could open her mouth, Lansra spat, “Uncover your face, girl. Have you no respect?”

She glanced at Teersa and saw from her regret that this was not an argument she was willing to win on her behalf. She took her scarf down and felt the chill start biting her nose right away. Smiling warmly, Teersa said, “Aloy, take your place at the front, second from the right. The prayer lantern is yours – I made it for you.”

She dipped her head gratefully and went to kneel behind her lantern as Lansra muttered about blasphemy. As she did, she noticed that the patterns on all the lanterns were different – the one on her right had broad black oblongs with points at the bottom, and the one on her left had skinny vertical slash-shaped lines. The lantern Teersa had made for her was all interlocking – but not touching – vertical and horizontal strokes, some curved and some straight. Like the paint on her face. She hadn’t noticed that before.

Jezza stepped forward when the snow had stopped crunching under people’s knees. “Aspirants, before you sits a prayer lantern crafted by your mother. In her honour, light its flame!”

As they all struggled to carry a flame to their lantern, Aloy thought about irony. Cast out at birth for being motherless – in reality she had three. In honour of Elisabet, the mother she was made from. GAIA, the one who brought her into being. And Rost, the one who raised her and got her to this point. She raised her lantern into the sky and watched it go.

“All-Mother, hear our prayer,” began the Matriarchs in unison. “What is the child but a mother’s hope that takes flight? A glowing flame that climbs the air, set free to the wind, sailing the sky ‘til it fades and falls.”

Aloy joined in with the last line, “So from one to another passes the chain of love.” Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Bast scowling. She decided to ignore him for as long as possible. The idea of him giving himself facial cramp trying to get her to notice his scowl was immensely satisfying.

She wondered if she could improve on her remarks to Resh as she approached the aspirants’ lodge. Him stammering a rushed curse as she slammed the door in his face remained an inviting option. On her last visit to Mother’s Crown before she headed west to look for the Sobeck Ranch, she was told that Resh had left the tribe in disgrace. Not technically an outcast, but his open disdain for Aloy made him unwelcome virtually everywhere.

“Motherless chuff,” he muttered.

It stung less this time. He was ignorant and petty, taking out his anger on a child that had nothing to do with him, without even the guts to speak his insults to her face. “I was raised by someone who loves me,” she said. “With a temperament like yours, I’d be surprised if you could say the same.”

He scoffed. “Find your bed, outcast, and dream of winning the Proving. That’s the closest you’re ever gonna get.”

What if she was in a cycle of dreams? What if she just kept dreaming, never effecting any change in the world? Endless repeats, glitching and becoming more corrupted each time.

She couldn’t think like that. She was standing on the doorstep of the aspirants’ lodge, and Resh had the last word. “Oh, this is the bed-house?” she managed. “With you standing guard, I figured it was the latrine.”

“Your very presence here mocks what it is to be Nora!”

She slammed the door a little too late to cut him off. Messed that up. Too inside my own head, she criticised. And then there was another greeting for her – Bast, and his repetitive spiel of outcast and real Nora and cherished memory. She wondered how closely he and Resh were related.

Vala told him to cut it out, and then opened the way for Aloy to defend herself knowing that there was at least one person in the room backing her. It was an extremely kind gesture that she continued to appreciate. “You haven’t changed much since you were a snotty little kid, have you?” she asked.

“I branded you that day to mark your shame.”

“Do you see shame?” she asked, stepping closer to him. “Take a good, hard look. Cause all I see is a brat who thinks getting tall is the same as growing a spine.”

He scowled.

“I’d tell you not to strain your one brain cell thinking of ways to insult me, but since you don’t stand a chance of finishing the Proving without it, by all means.”

He opened his mouth to retaliate, and it hung open for a moment before he closed it again. The boy behind him, who had been standing with his arms crossed in silent solidarity, uncrossed his arms and looked embarrassed. She glanced around at the others for a change and saw how uncomfortable they were. Whether it was at the presence of an outcast, the fact that Bast called her out publicly, or just discomfort in anticipation of the Proving, she couldn’t tell. It occurred to her for the first time that they were in a somewhat awkward position, being expected to share a bed-house with somebody it was technically illegal to talk to. Bast’s outright mockery actually broke the rules of shunning, and it seemed like they all knew it.

“Wow,” Vala said emphatically when she came to stand by her. “I have never seen anyone shut up Bast that effectively. Except his mother.”

“Wouldn’t want to take her place. I’m Aloy.”

“Oh, I know who you are; the competition,” she smiled. Not the outcast or the motherless girl, just somebody else in the Proving who was up for first place. “The others, they’ll finish the Proving, most of them. But win it? That’s down to Bast, you, or me. Vala.”

Aloy scoffed. “Be real. There’s no way Bast is coming anywhere close. It’s you and me.”

“I’ll take those odds.”

“So will I.”

They smiled at each other, and as Vala directed her to her bed, Aloy felt that familiar dread clang home – this time tomorrow, in the real world, Vala was dead. Bast was dead. Two thirds of the aspirants in this room – dead.

She lay down on her cot and pulled her Focus from her pocket. She opened the settings on the menu and proceeded to do what Rost had called ‘playing with shapes’ before he had come to conclusion that the Focus was not a toy. The other aspirants may have taken notice, but self-conscious wasn’t her style. They would likely assume it was some outcast eccentricity and ignore it. And if they didn’t… well, it wasn’t really her problem what they thought. They were all dreams anyway, right?

She wanted to find a way to protect her Focus from outside forces. Sylens might know a way – but she doubted he was watching or was willing to instruct, since to him she was just a Nora savage who happened to find an Old Ones trinket. Not that she would have trusted him to mask her Focus’ presence without building himself a “back door” to continue spying on her whenever he chose. He was more-or-less one of the outside forces she wanted the protection from. If she was going to do this, she would have to work it out on her own. If Elisabet could hack a children’s electronics plaything at age six, she could figure out the Faro Focus at age nineteen. As a child she had trained it to mark out targets while she was hunting animals and machines, which – based on what she knew about Focuses now – she had to guess was not part of its original function. It was what Sylens called an “intuitive interface”, which was how it labelled her belongings for her. It had taken a little more prompting for it to understand the difference between a settlement and a sign for a settlement, but she had got there eventually.

She thought disabling location data (“Disabling this feature will also disable ‘Find My Focus’. Are you sure you want to continue?”) would solve some problems, but when she looked at which streams of data stopped flowing when she turned it off, it basically only affected the ‘Maps’ function. Turning her ‘device visibility’ off (“Disabling this feature will also disable Cloud features, ‘Hotspot’, and filesharing. Are you sure you want to continue?”) was a good start, but she had no doubt that Sylens could bypass it if he cared to. Password-protecting the slowly-healing files, likewise.

“Hey, Aloy. Wanna join?”

She sat up and looked over at Vala where she was sat on the floor with some of the other aspirants. They looked apprehensive, but not outright hostile. “What’s the game?” she asked.

Laid out on the floor between them were a few dozen hexagonal tiles painted with crisscrossing coloured lines, some curved and some straight. “It’s called Path. You get ten pieces, and your goal is to make a road from here to here,” she pointed to a piece at one side of the circle, where each colour diverged, and another across from it where they converged, “in as few pieces as possible.”

“Sure,” she said. “What colour am I?”

“You can be blue. I’m red, Wicka’s green, Helah’s black, and Lem is yellow.”

She was dealt her tiles and spread them out in front of her, noticing already how her path might fit together.

Vala nudged her. “You might want to hide your pieces,” she advised. Aloy nodded and stacked them upside down while one of the others told Vala not to help. “Don’t be so mean, Helah,” Vala said. “She’s never played before. A veteran at this like you doesn’t need to cheat to get ahead.”

Actually, Helah did need to cheat to get ahead, which is exactly what he said when Aloy won the fourth round in a row some time later into the evening. The first couple she had come in second or third, but then she had got the hang of it. The group had gained a small crowd that were sat on or around the nearby beds. Wicka had given her spot to Kimcha some time ago, but she wasn’t faring much better. Morlay was flagrantly helping Lem, and they agonised over each piece placed to the point that they were getting groans from the other kids to hurry it up.

“What’s up with them?” Aloy nodded at Bast and his lackey at the back of the lodge, who had been deliberately ignoring the game the entire time. The lackey was doing a less good job of feigning disinterest, and kept sneaking glances at the game.

“They hate fun,” said Vala.

“Cousin loyalty,” said Kimcha. “Ket’s older by half a year, but you wouldn’t know it the way Bast pushes him around. They think they’re untouchable because they’re a High Matriarch’s great-grandsons.”

“So what?” said Helah. “Almost everyone is related to a High Matriarch. If one isn’t your great-grandma, she’s your great-great aunt, or the cousin of your grandmother, or whatever.”

“I’m the great-granddaughter of a High Matriarach and I’m not a jerk,” Vala said, as she finished shuffling the pieces and started dealing again. “Just saying.”

“You can kinda be a jerk, Vala,” Wicka said, and Vala gasped and kicked her playfully – more of a tap with the toe of her foot. “What? I’m your cousin, I’m allowed to be mean to you.”

“Someone should let Ket know,” Lem said.

“Hey, Ket,” Aloy said, and he looked around, startled. The other aspirants shared his surprise. “You think you can beat me at this game? I need fresh challengers.”

“Hey,” said Kimcha, offended, but she didn’t resist the reshuffling of the circle to make room for him.

She saw Bast frown at Ket and hit his shoulder when he turned to join them, but he shrugged him off and sat down opposite her. They rotated their colours again – after a few rounds, Helah had insisted that the blue route was giving Aloy an advantage and they had all swapped colours. It hadn’t helped.

She threw the match for Ket as subtly as she could, and the other aspirants all cheered when he won, laughing and concluding the game – at long last – over. Now that Aloy had finally been beaten, they could all go to bed. Vala nudged her as they dispersed and said, “I know what you did.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said innocently, and Vala smiled at her.

“None of that tomorrow, alright? If I win, I want it fair and square.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll be crossing the finish line first.”

“We’ll see. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

She felt her stomach swirling the same way it had the night before the battle for Meridian. She had a chance, in a few hours’ time, to set everything right. To save everyone. If she had felt the weight of it earlier, now it was crushing. Now she knew their names. Wicka. Dons. Morlay. Ket. Kimcha. Lem. Ruck. Laurel. Russan. Which of them? Which blue paint had become smeared with blood in the snow of the Proving ground, other than Vala and Bast? She didn’t remember. She didn’t know if she really wanted to.

Aloy hadn’t been thinking about tactical advantages when she invited Ket to their game, but it was a pleasant surprise that it turned out to have one.

“Bast, move it!”

“Wha—But--!”

Aloy looked around and saw Ket towing Bast onto the path, arms hooked together and trophies in hands. Bast struggled, intent on shattering Aloy’s trophy with his arrow. Instead, she was able to stay hot on their heels, coming in past the white-haired Proctor – same paint as Resh, perhaps his father, what had happened to him the first time? – well before most of the other aspirants had had time to strip their trophies out of their Grazers.

Taking the conventional path was harder than she expected; it was less dangerous, she was less at risk of sliding off the edge of the Metal Devil’s limbs, but it was more crowded, with Bast pushing and shoving, using all his energy to stay in front, and a finite number of hand and footholds. She was fast, but in her training she had only raced against herself. The others had the advantage of knowing how to get around the competition, literally.

She still stuck her trophy in the snow at the grey-haired Proctor’s feet first, followed almost immediately by Vala and then Bast, who was panting heavily.

“She didn’t win!” he wheezed. “The outcast cheated!”

“An outcast, win the Proving? Never,” said the Proctor, pausing dramatically. “For she is a Brave now.”

“You did it!” Vala exclaimed, beaming, and the aspirants behind them – they cheered too, even Ket. Aloy might have been able to enjoy that if she didn’t feel a wave of dread wash over her as the Proctor continued.

“As are you all, so long as you put your trophy on the altar. But it is Aloy—”

Beneath her words, a horn blew in the distance.

“Everybody get down!” Aloy screamed and slapped Shield-Weaver on her chest. Her Focus’ web extended, but it didn’t illuminate the silhouettes of Eclipse archers. The shrieks of Glinthawks filled the air as they came over the peaks, shimmering with blood-red corruption. She nocked three fire arrows as quickly as she could and shouted, “Find cover!”

She fired at the first Glinthawk and it crashed burning into the snow, writhing around and trying to extinguish itself. She dived out of the way of the barrage of ice that came down and rolled behind a rock alongside Vala. The Proctor had stood her ground and was firing at the Glinthawks herself, but one swooped with its talons and slashed her arm. The corruption burned her, and she was pulled by a new Brave into a more sheltered spot.

“What’s wrong with them?” Vala asked.

“Corruption. A demon has taken over their minds,” she said, used to giving the explanation. But she shouldn’t be giving it this early. “This isn’t right, it’s not how it’s supposed to go…”

She felt Vala’s hand on her shoulder. “How do we beat them?”

“Fire,” she answered. “Arrows, traps, bombs, whatever you’ve got.”

She got blank looks in response, Helah hurriedly counting a meagre quiver of fire arrows. Right, no Carja blast slings in the Sacred Land. No Shadow tripcasters. Hardly anyone used traps inside the Embrace. She slung off her backpack and told Vala to find anything with blaze in it and improvise. She nodded, a War-Chief’s daughter taking command. Aloy sprinted out of cover, nocking an arrow as she did, which she loosed as soon as she had a Glinthawk in her sights.

There was a Brave – Ket – on the ground, frozen stiff from the icefall, but Aloy could hear his teeth chattering when the Glinthawks stopped shrieking for a moment. The second her hands were free, she grabbed him under the armpit and slid him as far as she could along the snow to a cover spot. Hands reached out from safety to drag him closer. “Someone needs to get down the mountain to warn Mother’s Watch,” she shouted, hoping that somebody could hear her, and then she had to roll out of the way of another ice attack. “There’s more on the way!”

The last Glinthawk went down, and she saw two people dash for the zipline – fire arrows stuck into the snow and extinguished themselves at their heels. She heard, “Go, go, go!”

“Archers incoming!” she said as she slid back to a covered spot. She could see Vala, Helah, Lem, and Bast across from her.

“Who are they?” Vala shouted. “What do they want?”

“They’re here for me.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how they found me, I… I was so careful.”

“Did you hear that? They’re here for the outcast. Let’s just leave her and go.”

“Shut up, Bast,” Lem said.

“They’ll kill all of you. No witnesses,” she echoed the memory. It was all going wrong. This wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare. A honey trap that says come closer, you can fix your mistakes and then makes you watch them burn. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re not dead yet,” Vala said. “Are we Braves or not? Bast, stop wasting your breath and keep us alive. It’s what you’re good at. Aloy, we’ll cover you. Get to the zipwire.”

Don’t. Don’t go, don’t fight, don’t make me watch you die a second time. I’m sorry, and I’m sorry to Sona and Varl and everybody else who loves you, but I can’t save you.

Interpreting Aloy’s shaking head and quivering lips as a refusal to leave and save herself, she said, “You said they were after you, and I’m gonna assume it’s not for anything good. Just go!” She turned her attention back to the fight, and Aloy couldn’t do anything but watch.

A corrupted Sawtooth leapt into the clearing with a snarl, and it was being pelted with blaze before Aloy could have nocked an arrow. The grey-haired Proctor rallied the Braves with her, and the Eclipse started to regret thinking they were just helpless savages. But the corrupted machines – they usually just retraced their old patterns once they’d been overridden, so there must be a Corruptor nearby—

“Aloy, get out of here! We’ve got this!”

“Look out!” she screamed.

It happened in slow motion. Aloy thumped her breastplate to make Shield-Weaver pack itself away as she dove towards Vala. Vala’s gaze was locked onto the Corruptor scuttling towards them with deadly intent when Aloy pushed the power armour into her chest and watched the shimmering hexagons of light close around her. The smell of burning metal overwhelmed her nose, heat washed over her arms, and Vala’s eyes slid to hers, wide, with her lips parted in the start of a gasp that she wouldn’t finish.

The world turned white.

Chapter Text

Teersa found Rost standing on the ridge of All-Mother Mountain where he had announced Aloy’s name. He was looking down below, to the Proving grounds, where hours ago she had urged him to let Aloy out of his arms so that she could be taken inside the Mountain. She had thought he might stay frozen to that spot forever, clutching his daughter, and turn to stone. It must have been difficult for him, to imagine that both his children might die without his embrace around them, but he had to understand if Aloy was to die, Goddess forbid, she should do it as close to All-Mother as possible. The Goddess’ grief if it were otherwise would be… insurmountable.

Rost spoke over the edge of the Mountain, with his back to Teersa. “All-Mother, I stand here in the light of Your devotion, where You gave Your blessings to the one I hold dearest in Your whole Embrace and beyond. Please, bless her once more and bring me good news.”

“You may speak to me, Rost,” she said, but he only hung his head, keeping their eyes apart.

“All-Mother, I know that I chose to forsake Your embrace long ago, but I beg of You to grant Aloy Your protection. I Seek Death so that she may be spared from it.”

Teersa leaned to the side and caught a glimpse of Rost’s cheek before he turned it away. Her heart sank on his behalf at the sight of the red and black paints scoring through his eyes that he had long ago put to rest. She took a moment to consider her words before speaking an answering prayer. “All-Mother, in Your infinite patience and wisdom, please lend Your ears to those lips which have lost Your favour as we, the faithful, too beg Your mercy in this time of great need for the Nora. The child that emerged from Your Womb has Your breath in her lungs, but she has need of Your guidance. Please see that she has those by her side that keep her on the right path to saving Your great and bountiful lands from those who would do us all harm.”

She heard a shuttering breath, like a death rattle, escape from Rost as his shoulders drooped. “All-Mother… I regret that my words do not make the air shake, and the rocks and stones weep, for that is the enormity of my gratitude for all You have provided.”

“She will wake soon,” she said, dropping the pretence again. “You should at least say goodbye.”

He did not speak.

“May All-Mother bless you,” she said.

He sighed and shook his head. “And you.”

>

>DATA INTEGRITY RESTORED. GAIA Log: 24 May 2065 R.

>You do not speak of your father often, Elisabet.

He died while I was studying for my Bachelor’s degree .

>I am sorry.

Thank you. There never seemed to be enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Between university , the constant eco- socia l  activist commitments, and anything that passed for down-time, I hardly seemed to get the chance to go home and see my family. The last time I was with both of my parents was protesting a pipeline proposal on Thanksgiving, five months before he died.

>Do you have a photograph?

Of the protest?

>Of your father.

Oh. [laughter] Both, I think. Hang on... Here. That’s him, on the horse. And I’m holding the sign.

>You look very young.

I suppose I was. Fifteen . I felt old at the time. Weight of the world on my shoulders, climate catastrophe all around us. I feel young now, thirty years later. As the world’s torn apart. Is that strange?

>You are forty-six years old. Modern medicine should have allowed you to live a long life, likely to almost three times the age you are now. I do not think it is strange to feel robbed of your future.

No. No, I suppose it isn’t. But… thanks to you, GAIA, the Earth won’t be robbed of its whole future. We’re doing a remarkable thing.

>I exist because of you, Elisabet. Through you, all things are possible.

>

>CREATING BACKUP…

.

..

…

The black and red threads of HADES’ essence swirled together with the snow. She felt numb as waves of corruption washed through her fingers.

“ENTITY IS foolish. Outcast! Rotten curse. Child of the Metal Devil! ENTITY WILL NOT PREVENT CORE FUNCTION. ENTITY MUST BE cut—down! Not this time! ENTITY WILL turn your face to the Sun, child.”

There were distant voices bickering, in the depths of the blizzard. Somebody was dying.

“To take her there is blasphemy!” cried one voice.

“She should be near her mother!” rebutted another.

She was on All-Mother Mountain in the clearing where the Proving ended. She heard the thrum of Rost’s voice. “Aloy. I’m so sorry.” Screaming, burning. The limbs of the Metal Devil twisted around her. Her tiny body tumbled down the ravine into the ruins at Mother’s Watch and she felt the heat of an explosion on her face. She broke the surface of cold, dark water and jolted awake to a bed covered in furs, a room bathed in candlelight.

Nora lodge. No. Homestead. No… All-Mother Mountain.

“Rost?” she called – or tried to. It came out as a rasp, and she felt for her neck, expecting the dressings that sealed the slice on her throat where Helis tried to slit it. Instead she felt the healed slug of a scar she’d had for almost a year. She felt for her Focus and found it gone, and then saw the bandages on her arms, wrapped all the way up and down.

Is this another dream? She tried to get out of bed, and found herself aching and sensitive. It look her a few tries to stand, and when she had to lean against the wall for balance, it stung like nettles. She called for Teersa as best she could, and after a few moments she heard hurried footsteps.

“Aloy!” she exclaimed. “You’re awake!” She tried to take her arms.

“Where’s Rost?” she demanded, leaning on her shoulders. “Is he alive? Which dream is this?”

“It’s no dream, Aloy,” she said severely, wrapping an arm around her waist to prop her up. She pushed off, using the wall instead, and Teersa looked concerned but unwilling to argue about the subject. “Come now, quickly. Follow,” she said, walking into the next chamber.

“Just tell me he’s alive.” Teersa didn’t acknowledge the question, looking uncomfortable as she led on. Aloy was past patience, and she planted her feet, pressing, “Is he alive or isn’t he?”

She looked distressed, not maintaining more than a glance at her before she bent down to the pile of Aloy’s things and extracted her spear. She passed it to her, and she felt the immediate relief of putting some of her weight on it. Teersa shook her head and started to walk again. “It is… not that simple…”

“What do you… Do you mean about him being a Death-Seeker?”

She stopped and looked around, a mix of shock and curiosity alighting her face. “How do you know about that?”

“Where is he?” she repeated.

“I have to take you to the place you were born,” Teersa said, probably hoping that the prospect was enough of a distraction.

“I don’t have time for this,” she protested, and when she was ignored yet again, she growled and scooped her pack off the floor – heavier than she remembered, heavier than her arms wanted to take – and took the door towards the ramp that led out of the Mountain. She didn’t know how she was going to find the strength and energy to climb the stairs back into the open air, but raw determination was going to have to cut it. She was the former chieftain of the Sharp Bones werak, after all. If she couldn’t do this—

“Sorry,” said a Brave, blocking the exit. “High Matriarch Teersa told me not to let you leave without her.”

“Get out of my way,” she said, intending to sound more threatening than she did. The heavy breathing and trembling knees weren’t helping. She tried to point her spear at him, and her legs buckled entirely. The Brave caught her and came down to the ground with her, resulting in them both sitting on the steps that descended into All-Mother Mountain, their limbs tangled up.

“I’m Jarm,” he said, as if it were a normal way to introduce yourself to someone. “You saved my cousin at the attack on the Proving. I’m very grateful to you.”

“Grateful enough to let me leave?”

“No.”

She sighed and studied his face paint. “Who’s your cousin? Morlay?” she guessed.

He nodded and smiled. They sat in silence for a while, until Aloy’s breathing returned to normal. “If I help you up, will you promise to go back inside?”

“I’m not a child,” she scowled, struggling to her feet with her spear as a staff. Based on recent data, she was pretty sure she couldn’t make a break for it into Mother’s Watch – the gates were too far from here. She started to descend down the steps again, and told Jarm without turning around to stop smiling.

Teersa was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, and said nothing as they started walking to the centre of the mountain again. It was only as they approached the door to the Great Chamber that she said, “I expected you to have a thousand questions. Is this not why you ran in the Proving?”

“Originally,” she said. “But I won’t get answers behind that door. Only more questions.”

The door opened, and while Teersa told her about the Great Chamber and the ancient battle between All-Mother and the Metal Devil, she wandered towards the middle. The enormous drill on the end of one of the Horus’ front tentacles was pointed towards the door to ELEUTHIA-9, frozen in place. She imagined it new, black and razor-sharp, spinning faster than the naked eye could see, reaching for GAIA’s vulnerable spots. She had stopped the Metal Devils from being resurrected by HADES, stopped this arm from tearing up the inside of All-Mother Mountain where the surviving Nora slept.

“Why was I brought back?” she murmured.

“Why?” Teersa echoed, shocked. “You are All-Mother’s blessed, Aloy. You are destined for something great, I have always believed so. Others disagreed…”

“That’s not what I mean,” she cut her off. “I’ve had… visions. Of a war against a demon named HADES. The attack on the Proving, the War Party Massacre, the invasion of the Embrace, the Battle for the Spire… I thought I could stop it all from happening, but I’m here again. And nothing’s changed. I can’t do anything.”

“The War Party Massacre,” Teersa repeated.

“I knew it was coming, and I thought I could stop it on my own, but I couldn’t, and now…”

“The new Braves who proved themselves alongside you – they live, almost all. You say you saw the War Party Massacre while you slept? These visions you had, gifts from All-Mother, meant to spare us unimaginable pain. I must bring the other High Matriarchs. Wait here.”

Aloy’s knees were shaking again. She gripped her spear and sat down with a graceless thump, her head spinning. Alive. They’re alive. She remembered Shield-Weaver closing around Vala, and the way Sona kissed her forehead before the Blessing with a tender expression that Aloy had never seen on her before. She remembered sliding Ket over the snow, his grin at winning a game of Path, the way her fellow Braves’ hands emerged from cover to pull him close. She remembered the Proctor buying time for the Braves to get to safety, and Helah and Morlay sprinting to the zipline to warn Mother’s Watch of the attack.

They’re alive.

The three High Matriarchs’ approach was marked by the clattering of beads and wires in amongst their footsteps. Teersa leading, Lansra scowling, Jezza following neutrally behind. Before Lansra could jump in first with something pointed and derogatory, Teersa asked, “What happened to the War Party in your visions, Aloy?”

She didn’t like sitting so far below them. She thought she should probably stand up, but she couldn’t be sure of her knees. She didn’t want to try and fail in front of them, so she stayed seated. “After… after the Proving, they went after the killers. But they were attacked by a stampede of corrupted machines, and they took massive losses. War-Chief Sona is missing, but she… she lives, I think. She has continued the pursuit.”

Teersa looked to her sisters on either side, nodding. “While you healed, you warned of these machines. Murmurings in your sleep. I regret, it was not enough to persuade the War-Chief to stay her hand for long. Some among us—” she gave Lansra a pointed look “—believed you were trying to sabotage us.”

Lansra pah’d and swept her gaze broadly around the chamber, as if surveying a waiting audience. “Does our own wisdom, our own tradition, have no meaning? While you listen to the false prophesies of a Metal Child, the twisted souls that attacked our children run amok in the Sacred Land. Are we to do nothing?”

“Not nothing,” Aloy said. “Make me a Seeker, and I can go after them. They’re hiding in Devil’s Grief, where they know the Nora can’t go. After I’ve dealt with them, I can travel to Meridian, and… start to heal the corruption. Gather allies for the fight against the Metal Devil.”

“A Seeker?” Teersa’s eyebrows raised, but she nodded. “Very well.”

“You would make this thing a Seeker?!” Lansra sneered.

“Sister,” Jezza admonished, but then turned to Teersa with doubt. “A Seeker, though…”

“I don’t have to prove what I am to you,” Aloy said, holding her head high and – fuelled mostly by spite – got to her feet. “Withholding your blessing won’t stop me from doing what I need to do to protect everyone.” She stepped onto the dais, and the censor lit up inside the door.

The synthetic voice of the interface instructed her to hold still, and two of three High Matriarchs prostrated themselves against the ground immediately. “The Goddess speaks!”

“Error. Alpha Registry corrupted. Identity cannot be confirmed. Entry denied.”

As the light died, Jezza and Teersa raised their heads, and Lansra huffed again, this time triumphantly. “You see? She is not recognised as the Goddess’ own.”

“Because of corruption,” added Teersa, and Jezza nodded in agreement as Aloy stepped down from the dais. She had hoped the Alpha Registry copy might have survived on her Focus, and the door would open. Foolish. But not ineffective, regardless. “We must send Aloy away if we are to help the Goddess see clearly and end the demon’s threat.”

“You see, Lansra?” Jezza said, teasingly. Aloy had never seen her smile like that before. She’d had no idea she had a sense of humour. “You will get what you want after all. Aloy will leave the Sacred Lands.”

Lansra shook her head and walked past Aloy to kneel directly in front of the door, asking forgiveness on Teersa and Jezza’s behalf for the sins they were committing. While the Seeker blessing was being recited with the other Matriarchs’ hands on each of her shoulders, all Aloy heard was her prayer. “All-Mother, I implore You to bless my sisters with Your light so that they may see the danger in front of their eyes. I am grateful for Your grace and tranquillity every day as the grass is grateful for the dew. I pray for the safe return of our valiant Braves as they pursue the forces of evil and purge Your land of evil…”

“Here,” Teersa said, taking Aloy aside. Jezza had moved away, heading to another of the chambers to get ready for the Hymn of Atonement. She unstoppered a paint pot on her belt. The tip of her finger came out Nora-blue, and she traced over the lines of Rost’s family paint with it. “The mark of the Nora. So that all who see you know that you act in their aid. And…” she clipped an embroidered brooch onto her belt. “The token of the Seeker, so that you may prove your status to any who question you.”

“Where is Rost?” she asked as quietly as she could.

“I believe he will have tracked the attackers to Devil’s Grief, if they have made their camps there as you say. But you did not hear this from me, do you understand?” When Aloy nodded, she sighed. “He had hoped to spare you from any further involvement with this demon, I think. Always he takes on the burdens of others as his own.”

“He can’t do this alone.”

“Nor can you. Remember, Aloy, All-Mother is with you. Call on Her when you need Her, and I am sure She will provide.”

For a moment there, she almost thought Teersa was going to say something about letting other people help her. But no. Only All-Mother, the silent protector of the Nora. As she walked down the hill towards the gates of Mother’s Watch, she thought that if she had actually had GAIA for company, she would have been alright with that. GAIA was at least somebody to talk to, and she knew all sorts of things about the Old Ones and Elisabet that she was dying to know. But GAIA was gone. All-Mother was an absent god, and the Nora didn’t even know it.

As the gate for Mother’s Watch came into sight, so did a small party of Braves. It took her a few moments longer to recognise them than it did for them to recognise her, and Vala was already running towards her by the time she realised they were her fellow aspirants.

Vala almost knocked her clean over with a hug as shouts of “Aloy!” and “All-Mother be praised!” came from the rest of the group. A short way away, she could see Teb smiling at the reunion. She longed to escape to him as she was overwhelmed with questions and thanks, until Vala quelled them.

“Let the woman breathe,” she said, with a short laugh as she stepped back. She reached around her back to unclip something and presented her with the packed-away version of Shield-Weaver. “I believe this belongs to you,” she said. “We figured out how to dispel it… eventually.”

“Yeah, only half a day after you realised you needed to go to the latrine,” Bast retorted.

Aloy regarded him for the first time. A black eye and a few colourful bruises up and down his arms, a splint on his leg, but otherwise unharmed as far as she could see. “Good to see this experience hasn’t humbled you at all,” she said.

He rolled a shoulder and looked away. “Why should it?”

“I’m glad you’re alright,” she said, and it came out softer than she intended. If she intended to say it at all.

Disarmed, he looked at her again and nodded.

“Get back to your posts,” called a harsh voice, and Aloy recognised Resh on the battlements above the gate, scowling down at them.

“Ugh,” Vala said, making a disgusted face, but keeping her back to Resh. “Ignore him. He’s acting War-Chief while Sona is missing, but he’s bitter that the Matriarchs have ordered him to defend Mother’s Watch. To defend you. He thinks he’s babysitting us, won’t even let us patrol outside the gates. And then he has the nerve to admonish us for not staying stock still at the pointless positions he assigns us."

“We should be out hunting that demon, the Corruptor,” Bast agreed. “We’re the ones who have experience fighting those machines.”

“It might not be a problem for long. I have a feeling it’ll come to us," Aloy told him.

“I don’t see how that could be. A group of Braves drove it out of the Embrace Gate with fire, while you were recovering. It’s been causing havoc out there, though, no one can predict its movements.”

“Teb says you can see the paths machines walk - is that true?” Helah asked. He seemed filled with curiosity more than disbelieving, which was a nice change of pace.

“It is. I can take down the Corruptor, on my way to Devil’s Grief.” She tapped the Seeker token, prompting more murmurings.

“You can’t go across the Sacred Land all by yourself,” objected Vala. “Let me come with you. It’ll be safer with two of us.” She was already towing them towards the gate, where Resh was berating some poor Brave about the groups that had already arrived for the Hymn of Atonement. “War-Chief!” she interrupted, with sardonic venom. “We need to get through the gate. I am escorting the Seeker Aloy to the demons’ lair.”

Resh sneered at the token when she held it up. “Have Teersa and Jezza gone insane?”

“Resh,” the Brave beside him said sharply.

He did not look at Aloy, speaking only to Vala. “You may conduct the girl to the Main Embrace Gate, but you are not to leave the Embrace yourself, as per your mother’s instructions,” he said. It struck Aloy as odd. He didn’t seem to care about Sona’s wishes in respect to being the War-Chief, and the way Vala groaned at him, she realised that they were family. Perhaps not by blood, but in some fashion - he felt a responsibility over her. “If you are not back here by sundown, I will send Dran after you.”

Vala made another noise of frustration and turned her back on the conversation. She went to a supply box and grabbed some last-minute supplies while the gate was opened.

Aloy went to Teb, standing nearby. He brightened when she did, as if he had been unsure whether she would approach. “I’m so happy to see you alive,” he said. “There were rumours… both ways. I didn’t know what to believe until I saw you coming down the hill just now. And with the mark of a Seeker, too… I take it this means I—we—won’t be seeing you for some time.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be back. But I hope I see you again, Teb.”

“You do me great honour. And wearing the clothes I stitched for you, as well.”

She looked down at the Proving garb he’d given her, and saw that it was even more battered than the original set. “All your hard work…” she lamented.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It served its purpose, I think. I’ll have something more robust for you next time you visit.”

“I’ve got extra blaze,” Vala said, hoisting her pack over her shoulder as she appeared at her side. “Ready to go?”

Aloy nodded, and they set off. There were Striders in the glade ahead, and she wished she had the part to override one now. She wouldn’t make good time walking at this pace, but picking it up seemed almost impossible. Vala glanced at her more than once, and she ignored it each time, gritting her teeth. Show the way, Seeker. Survive and prevail.

To take her mind off it, Aloy asked Vala to recount the attack on the Proving. The corruption spike that had downed her was the first of a barrage of attacks, but by pelting it with blaze under Shield-Weaver’s protection, Vala had managed to keep it on the defensive until the reinforcements from Mother’s Watch arrived. Lookouts took out cultists from behind while they stayed out of the Corruptor’s way, thinning out their numbers before they could realise what was going on. Some of them escaped down into the valley, where they were pushed back out of the gates. Others retreated back the way they had come, through the mountains, and a gigantic explosion had caused a landslide and avalanche, blocking the path. Aloy remembered the cart full of blaze barrels and Helis’ order to burn it all. He had escaped – she knew it without trying to ask.

As for the Braves, Ket was being cared for up in Mother’s Heart. He was expected to lose a few digits from frostbite, but overall to live. The Proctor that had met them at the finish line was recovering, but the other, the one who might have been Resh’s father, had been ambushed roughly when the attack began, and he had been killed. An aspirant, the one who kept to herself in the lodge and not spoken to anyone, had died. There were two more Braves that Aloy didn’t know who had been killed by corrupted machines. That didn’t count anybody from the War Party. Dran was the only one of them who had turned up alive.

When they were almost there, the fog cleared to the north-west, and she saw the hillside where Rost had raised her clearly across the valley. There was an impulse to climb it and stop at his grave before she left, as she did every time she left the Embrace. Sit and talk to him about every crazy thing that had happened to her.

There was no need. He was still alive, with a listening ear. Why did she feel so alone?

Vala made a tch sound as they approached the main gate.

“What?” she came out of her thoughts abruptly.

She seemed indignant. “Does he distrust me that much?” She pointed at the tower atop the gate. “Dran is already here. Just waiting for me to cross the boundary out of the Embrace, so he can tell Resh and my mother I was going to follow you out…”

“Were you?”

“Absolutely,” she said, as if it were a silly question, and it didn’t justify her mother’s precautions in any way. Aloy recognised Varl’s back as he descended the ladder, and they met him at its base. Before he could say anything, Vala began, “You have to show Aloy the way to Devil’s Grief.” When he opened his mouth with his brow furrowed, she cut him off, “Don’t give me that face, you know you owe me after our trip to Mother’s Crown—”

“Will you calm down?” Varl said. “The acting War-Chief already asked me to go.”

Whatever argument she was about to start died in her throat. “He did?”

“Yeah, that’s why Dran was here,” he gestured to the watchtower, where Dran had apparently replaced him at his post. “He also said you’re not allowed out of the Embrace. In case you were thinking of trying something stupid.”

“You’re the worst brother. Can’t you go with it, just this once?”

“Nope. Come on, let’s go. If we can make it to Mother’s Crown by nightfall, we’ll easily get to Devil’s Grief by midday tomorrow.”

“Why do I feel like a heavy pack being passed around?” Aloy said, disgruntled.

“Sorry about my rude imbecile of a brother,” Vala said. “Aloy, this is Varl. Varl—”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m grateful for what you did at the Proving, but I don’t want to be caught in the dark by that huge scuttling machine that’s been prowling.”

“Well, that’s fine then,” she said. “Because I need to take down that huge scuttling machine that’s been prowling as soon as possible.”

“I don’t care what Dran says about it,” said Vala, “I have to see that.”

Chapter Text

“Easy as a pebble in a stream,” Aloy murmured, laying the last trap along the illuminated arrows of the Corruptor’s route. She crouched into the tall grass and got comfortable. The route was long and snaking, more complicated than a machine’s usual, which accounted for why the Nora hadn’t been able to predict its movements. She’d found it scuttling along upstream and tagged it, then backtracked and chosen this glade for its distance from other machines that the Corruptor could slave to its network.

She heard it approaching and readied the sling in her hands. She had done this enough now to have it down to a science – fire trap, then fire bombs, and once it regained its senses it would run right towards her and into a fire wire, where more bombs or arrows would do the trick.

The first part of the plan went off without a hitch – it spotted her after the second bomb, but by that time it was already flailing about as its skeleton burned. It recovered quicker than she anticipated, and jabbed at her with its stinger. She rolled out of the way, but now the angles were wrong, and it stepped over the wire instead of tripping it.

It fired a spread of its own fire bombs back at her, and she heard Shield-Weaver complain of the heat before she hopped out of the smouldering patches of grass, where she immediately had to leap over the sweeping arm of the Corruptor. She could still back it into the wire – she loaded and loosed bombs in quick succession, emptying her pouch. She could swear that Corruptors and their slaved machines were usually more flammable than this—

A spike of corruption shot from the Corruptor’s stinger, and she wasn’t quick enough on her feet to dodge it. It soaked through Shield-Weaver and her clothes, right to her skin, and made it burn. She had stumbled back from the impact, and was quickly losing the feeling in her arms and legs, steeping herself further in the splash of corruption that was writhing on the grass. She had been hit by corruption before, felt the irritation of it on her skin when she rammed her spear into a corrupted Watcher, but never with this intensity. She wanted to tear the skin off her bones.

“Aloy!”

“Finish it!”

“No!” she managed through gritted teeth, but Vala and Varl were already out of cover. Vala was lighting three fire arrows and loading them all onto her bow at once, and Varl was loosening the top of a canister of blaze, getting ready to throw it.

“Low!” he shouted, and the canister arced over Aloy’s head, smashing at the Corruptor’s feet. The machine’s lens shone red after flashing yellow briefly, identifying a new threat.

Vala loosed her arrows, and the blaze ignited, causing the Corruptor to flail and Aloy’s eyes to smart. She had sunk to her knees in the grass, the corruption leaping like giant fleas around her until it slowly faded and dispersed, leaving only the screaming numbness in her limbs behind. Before she knew it, Varl was at her side, his arm around her shoulder as he tried to bring her to her feet. She watched the Corruptor keel over, arms going limp.

“Aloy, are you okay?”

“I need that part,” she said, trying to step towards the machine carcass.

The needles of numbness renewed themselves, her leg buckled, and Varl said, “Okay,” as he was forced to take a knee with her. “There’ll be time for that. Are you injured?” He was clearly uncertain about Shield-Weaver – his hands had slipped beneath its barrier as it recharged, and it was beeping in her ear about the obstruction. She pressed her chest to pack it away.

Aloy fumbled with her belt, searching for the corruption antidote. She didn’t have many vials of it – she preferred to keep her distance from corrupted machines, and the itching usually wore off too quickly for her to even think of drinking the antidote. She unstoppered the bottle and felt the solution slide down her throat, trying not to taste it. Her head shivered at the bitterness that found its way to her tongue despite her efforts, but already the irritation on her arms was less. She scratched at the bandages on her arms until she found the end and started unwinding them.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” warned Vala, who was ignored.

Under the bandages, her skin was red and irritated. Shaky red lines were burned in up and down her arms, like the shifting tides of corruption over the land.

“It looks better,” Vala remarked to herself, as Aloy plopped down in the grass and held her arm in front of her eyes. Like she doubted it was real. Like it would fade in a few moments, with the cool rain against it. It didn’t.

“Better,” she echoed. She imagined the burns new, bloody and smoking. She felt her face, and looked to Vala with a fearful question. She wasn’t vain, and truth be told all of the comments about her looks were more exhausting than flattering, but… the idea that her face had changed. That it had changed without her wanting it to, not through paint or ink or piercing, scared her.

“You have a scar, here,” Vala indicated with her fingers flat against her cheek, covering her right cheekbone down to her jaw. “But you hit the snow after. It’s lighter there.”

It felt like a blow to her chest. She shook her head and tried not to let her breathing change, pushing herself to her feet on her spear and stumbling over to the Corruptor’s body. She stuck the point of her spear into the seam of the metalburned casing and pried it apart. The control node glowed blue close to its heart, and she tugged it out, pulling the wires with it. The insides spilled like guts on the grass, leaving the core and the heart behind.

She sat down on the Corruptor’s leg and rooted through her pack, searching for some robust lengths of wire to tie the node to her spear. Vala and Varl stood over her, exchanging a glance as she wrapped her arm back up.

“Aloy… are you alright?” Vala asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be getting back into the Embrace? You don’t want Dran ratting you out.”

“He’s basically family. We’ll work something out.” Vala replaced the pack on her shoulder with her bow, leaving the extra resources in Varl’s care. She gave her brother a glare that Aloy was sure meant something very specific, and then she turned and started to walk back towards the gate, which was still just about in sight. Aloy exhaled. She was safe in the Embrace. No Eclipse cultist with a Deathbringer gun in-hand was going to get to her now, not if she could help it.

Varl leaned to pick up the pack, and she held out a hand and shook her head, telling him it wasn’t necessary. “You can’t carry all of that by yourself,” he protested.

Aloy put her fingers to her mouth and whistled, and a few moments later she heard the clops of a Strider approaching the glade. Varl readied his spear, and she held out her hand again. “It’s alright. It’s with me.” She ran her hands over the glowing blue cables along its neck, and it shook its head, air venting out of its face with a hmph. She unscrewed the blaze canister from its port and started strapping her packs up. The machines she overrode hardly ever tried to return to their original functions, and having a blaze canister exposed in close contact with her other things was a recipe for disaster.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

She tapped the end of her spear where the override node lived. “The same thing that the Corruptors use to slave things to their network, I can use to make machines non-hostile to me. Not only that, but if anyone tries to touch my stuff without me there, they get trampled,” she smirked, remembering an altercation at Meridian Gate. She hoisted herself up on the Strider’s back and settled in. “Okay. Thanks for your help, Varl. You can go home, now.”

Just as she was about to jog the cables and dig her heels in to get going, he said, “No, wait.” She tugged the cables again and the Strider huffed unhappily at her conflicted instructions. “You can’t go alone. I’m supposed to take you—”

“I know the way to Devil’s Grief, and there isn’t room on this Strider for two. You’ll just slow me down. No offence,” she added.

“Struggling not to take offence,” he said flatly. “Look, you might think that since the Matriarchs made you a Seeker, you can do whatever you want. But a Seeker is supposed to help the tribe. Not blow us off. The War-Chief instructed me to conduct you safely to Devil’s Grief, and that’s what I’ll do.”

“I didn’t ask to be a Seeker,” she told him. “I’d have gone with or without their blessing.”

He frowned, and she felt a pang of regret. She felt an impulse rising to spur her Strider on and abandon this interaction, cut her losses with this dream-Varl who didn’t know her, who didn’t like her. What did it matter? As long as he was safe, and Vala was safe, and soon Sona would be safe and he’d have no reason to care that the outcast girl was a little mean, because everything else was right in the world.

She hopped off the Strider when the grazing machines came into view and crouched low. She whistled a lure call, and the closest Strider came to investigate until it was close enough for her to hold the override key to its face. When it glowed all blue again, she led it away, out of range of the hostile machines’ sensors. Her original Strider huffed again, and she said, “Don’t get jealous. This one’s for Varl.”

He did a double take. “You want me to ride that?” he asked, alarmed but in a low tone, as if worried that he was going to cause the Strider offence.

“What did you think I was getting it for?” Aloy said. He spread his palms, eyes wide, as if he couldn’t be expected to have had the faintest idea what she was doing anything for. She smiled and patted the Strider, “Don’t worry, it’s safe. And much faster than walking to Devil’s Grief on foot.”

She started to doubt that last assertion when she eventually persuaded Varl up onto his mount – although perfectly docile, his Strider didn’t appear particularly cooperative. Aloy coached him through it as best she could, telling him when he was pulling on the cables too hard or clutching its midriff too tightly with his feet, and confusing it. She explained to him the basics of when to lean forward and back, how to sit so that you didn’t ache too hard at the end of a ride, but every time he tried to bring the Strider to more than a trot, it skipped ‘canter’ and went straight for ‘gallop’, careening wildly out of control. Varl insisted his Strider was defective, but they swapped for about five minutes before he gave up that idea, and they switched back.

His Strider bucked, making him slide off its back and hit the ground with a thump. Aloy suppressed a laugh as he groaned in the mud. “How did you learn to do this?” Varl asked, when he took the hand she offered. “You never did it inside the Embrace. People would have talked about it.”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

He brushed some of the dirt off his behind. “At this rate, we probably have time for a long story,” he prompted. When she didn’t respond, he nodded at the sunset and said, “Actually, at this rate, we had better find somewhere to camp for the night. We’re not far from Mother’s Rise.”

“Mother’s Rise is in the wrong direction,” she objected. “We’re supposed to be heading north-east.”

He shook his head, “No, we’re not going through Devil’s Thirst. Stop trying to get rid of me, would you? We have to go around it to the north-west anyway. Mother’s Rise is practically on-route.”

She sighed, and as they set off at their trot that felt barely faster than walking, she said, “You’re lucky I like you, Varl.”

“This is how you talk to people you like?” he scoffed.

She didn't answer. She had been rude. Unnecessarily, selfishly. The kind of rude that made her snap when other people did it. They rode in silence for some time, skirting around the blue lights of the Grazer herd in the valley below Mother’s Rise. As the sky darkened and the orange glow of the village became more inviting, she said, “What would you say if I told you I was from the future, where the two of us are great friends?”

Varl was quiet for a moment. Then he said with a slight smile, “Ah, I’d say you were full of shit.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

They took their Striders up into Mother’s Rise. It was a little strange, but nobody barred them from entering, possibly partly due to Varl’s charm and the fact that he didn’t really seem to know how to get off his mount – it was the first time he’d come to a complete stop on purpose, she hadn’t had to teach him yet.

As he started negotiating a place for them to park their Striders and get some rest, explaining that he was escorting a Seeker to Devil’s Grief, Aloy found a quiet corner to dismount. She had hoped that her feet would be less sore after resting while they rode, but the pain returned almost instantly. She let the pain come out in grunts and winces and leaning heavily on the Strider’s back while no one was looking.

Most of the people here seemed to know Varl, and she recollected vaguely that Mother’s Rise was where young Braves usually stopped when they left the Embrace for the first time. They asked after Vala and his mother, and various other Braves who were presumably commonly found at the gates. A Brave with a patchy beard and two simple lines of paint under his eyes offered Varl his bed, and said he could probably convince his cousin to give up his for the Seeker, too.

When Varl led his Strider over to where she had left hers, she said, “We’re not sleeping here.”

“Yes, we are. I’m not going to let you charge into Devil’s Grief without proper rest, and neither of us are going to get it if we’re trying to defend a campfire from machines all night. We’re not in the Embrace anymore.”

“I can just as easily go on my own,” she said.

He looked at her for a moment, as if surprised she was bringing it up. “You won’t though.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m saying please,” he smiled sweetly. “Just let me do what’s been asked of me, okay? If I fail to protect you, I don’t just let down you, I also let down my mother and the entire tribe.”

“Fine.”

“We’ll leave at first light. I promise,” he said.

Varl’s friend fetched some meat he had been saving and stuck it over a spit, inviting him to take a seat. “You too, Seeker. I’d hardly be a good host if I didn’t offer to feed you as well.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said.

“I never said it was,” he smiled, “But you’re Nora now. And a friend of Varl’s, which makes you family. So take a seat.”

Reluctantly, she sat down and started warming her hands on the fire. “So is everyone in the Nora tribe related?” she said dryly, not meaning it as a remark that required answer.

However, Varl’s friend – Lon – began a long and involved explanation of exactly how he and Varl were related. The actual connection didn’t amount to much, since it was only their fathers that linked them, but the two of them had been in the same Proving year. They were taught together and played together as children, and thought of each other like brothers. In what she suspected was an attempt to ask her about being an outcast, he began telling a story about a cousin’s cousin who was outcast some years ago and seemingly decided to exile himself, abandoning the Sacred Lands to travel the Sundom with a band of killers who had also been outcast. There was a pause after he told her this, expecting her to contribute something.

“When everyone who loves you turns their back on you, you might not feel so kindly about the traditions they tried to teach you,” she said, because they were sounding a little disbelieving that this group would disavow the sacred rites of shunning by speaking to one another.

“But surely they know that they are forsaking All-Mother this way, and with it, all hope of ever being redeemed in her eyes,” Lon said.

“You know, I think they just can’t bring themselves to give a shit what All-Mother thinks, if she would let everyone who loves them turn them out.”

Lon didn’t try to talk to her again. Eventually, she got bored of being avoided and glanced at from a distance, so she asked him to show her where she was sleeping. He led her to the empty cot in one of the huts, and bid her a pleasant sleep with some awkwardness. The cot wasn’t particularly comfortable, which was fine, but the constant noise, even in a small settlement like Mother’s Rise, made it impossible to settle. Occasionally, she heard laughter from outside, and her petty irritation at Varl and Lon lingered for a while before she admitted to herself how childish it was.

Aloy didn’t think she would ever get comfortable, but eventually one of the many times she started out of slumber there was a significant shift in the atmosphere, suggesting that she had in fact fallen asleep. It was darker, and the main campfire had been reduced to embers outside. There were no candles lit inside the hut, and she heard Varl snort in his sleep in one of the other cots.

After her eyes had got used to the dark and her nose had time to parse out the different smells around her, she noticed that someone had left some of the meat for her, next to her cot, and she scarfed it down. She realised she had left her canteen with her Strider, and went to fetch it. The water was night-air cold, and refreshing. As she drank, she recognised some vaguely distressed noises coming from somewhere else in the village. Her sleepy mind had put it down to animal noises or the general ambience of civilisation, but now that she was properly paying attention, she thought it was definitely distress.

The hut at the opposite side of the village was still pouring light, and she was surprised when she teased open the door to feel warm air. Fia looked around from where she was crouched as Aloy closed the door behind her.

“I’m sorry. Did we wake you?” she said. She was dabbing the injured Brave’s forehead with a wet cloth, and he was groaning, only half-conscious.

“I’m a light sleeper,” she said. “Anything I can do?”

“Produce some dreamwillow from thin air?” she suggested, then sighed. “We’re running low, and the Brave I sent to fetch some from the emergency supplies says the caches are empty.”

She remembered this. A group of outcasts had taken the dreamwillow to care for their own wounded, leaving behind shards as the best payment they could manage without being allowed to talk to any merchants. But she couldn’t just charge up the mountain without any directions, or the tribe at large would start believing she had divine powers. More divine powers than they already thought she had. “Could I… forage some?”

Fia smiled at her. “Kind of you to offer, but it takes days of careful attention to brew, and I don’t think either of us have that kind of time.” She paused slightly before continuing, “There’s a herbalist living in the mountains north-west of here, Jun. He should have some. But…”

That’s what she was looking for. “Perfect. I’ll give him a visit.”

“It’s over half a day’s hike from here, and the road’s filled with dangerous machines. There’s no way—”

“I’ll be back before the sun’s up,” she promised, already backing out of the door.

When she got to the slope that the outcasts were fleeing down, she took out the Watchers before nocking a hardpoint arrow and loosing it at the Sawtooth’s leg. It collapsed, and she slid the remaining distance down the slope to stick her spear in its underbelly. The blue light faded from it, and since she was already there, she reached through the hole she had made and tried to pull out the heart. As she was scavenging from the machine, she heard boots crunching closer in the snow.

“You have our thanks, if the gratitude of outcasts means anything to you,” he said.

She looked up at him and said, “It does.” Before he could express his surprise, she said, “The Nora cast me out at birth. I don’t trouble myself with their laws. The best part about being a Seeker now is that if someone runs away from me yelling ‘stay away, motherless chuff!’ they’re the one who gets in trouble for it. Not me.”

“A Seeker,” he said. He looked like he was starting to regret talking to her instead of making a run for it with his takings. “I suppose you’re seeking dreamwillow.”

“I know you have people to look after too,” she said, using the Sawtooth’s chassis to get to her feet. “I don’t want to leave you with nothing. But there are others who need dreamwillow.”

He nodded. “Perhaps… we have more than we need. With everything going on in the Embrace – we panicked. I know outcasts aren’t supposed to talk, but we’d die if we didn’t protect one another. I…” He swallowed. “I shouldn’t ask this. You have more important things to do, I’m sure. But as a Seeker… you can venture into the forsaken places, can’t you? Like Devil’s Thirst?”

“Yes. Why?”

“My partner. Jom. A group of bandits slipped across the border while the War Party was occupied with defending the Embrace, and—well, they tried to rob us on the road, but when they realised we were outcasts with nothing, they took captives and went to find a place to build a camp among the ruins.”

“That’s what the dreamwillow was for, wasn’t it?”

“We really do have wounded,” he winced, “but for the excess, yes. I was going to try and barter with them for my friends’ release.”

“What’s your name?”

“Kurnst.”

“Never bargain with bandits, Kurnst. I’ll see what I can do about Jom.”

She returned to Jun, still nursing exaggerated wounds on his front step, and told him to take the recovered dreamwillow to Fia in Mother’s Rise. She almost had to chase him to get him on his way, but eventually she was left alone on the ridge. The sky was starting to become light again, but the sun was a long way from rising over the valley. In the distance, she could see the blinking lights of the Devil’s Thirst Tallneck, walking its circuit among the ruins. She checked her Focus, and it beeped at her that her storage space was low, encouraging her to enable Cloud Sharing. She didn’t think she had room on the device to store a map of even this corner of the Sacred Land. That was fine. With how unreliable her arm and leg muscles seemed to be lately, she didn’t like the prospect of dangling from the Tallneck’s spines very much.

But if she took her Strider and rode to the bandit camp on the far side of Devil’s Thirst – that wasn’t an activity that strained her much. There was a lot of waiting in tall grass and whistling, but it shouldn’t take too long. She’d probably be back in Mother’s Rise before Varl stopped snoring.

She crunched into the snow at the bottom of the last zipline down the hill and whistled for her Strider. Hopping onto its back, she rode north-east, avoiding the bulk of Devil’s Thirst and cutting directly to the ruin where the bandits made their camp.

As she drew closer, she dismounted, not wanting her Strider’s blue light to alert the lookouts of her presence. While watching the movements of the bandits and trying to memorise their routes, Aloy caught sight of a crouched shape creeping towards one of the lookouts, and when she turned ‘Focus Mode’ off, she recognised the full-body paints and tattoos of a Tenakth warrior as a blade was jammed into the lookout’s jaw and they were pushed off their perch, into the tall grass below. For a few minutes, she watched the warrior methodically pick through the bandits – and then he was spotted. He carved through all of the enemies he could see and then slid into cover while someone sounded the alarm.

The bandits searched, but didn’t find him. Aloy lost track of him multiple times, and had to open Focus Mode again to re-illuminate his silhouette. When the commotion died down, but much sooner than Aloy would have broken cover, he slipped out of hiding and towards the nearest patrolling bandit, impatient for the kill. As he crept up on his target, Aloy spotted a bandit archer in the ruins who was on the verge of seeing the attacker, and she swiftly nocked an arrow. She couldn’t hear from this distance, but her mind summoned with clarity the sound of the archer drawing a breath, and then dropping dead, an arrow through their eye. There weren’t many bandits remaining, so Aloy took a chance and stole into the camp, heading towards the captives.

Jom gasped when he saw her, and she shushed him. Not because he was in danger of giving her away, but because she was trying to keep track of the warrior with her ears, and didn’t want any distractions. As she helped the outcasts to their feet, she heard casual footsteps behind her, that suddenly ground to a halt.

“You’re not Nil,” he said.

“I agree,” said Aloy.

He grinned. “I didn’t know the Nora had their own bandit-killer.”

“They don’t,” she said, feeling a familiar scowl coming on. She could see why he and Nil were partners. “Don’t presume to know what I am.”

“My humblest apologies,” he said, in an elaborate bow that she was fairly sure was reserved for Carja royals. “But you did kill a bandit. And you wear Nora paint. It seemed fair enough to me. I’ll be going now,” he said wistfully. “No more blood left to spill on this battleground.”

“Nil wishes you wouldn’t run ahead so much,” she said, recalling his languid sigh when he discovered this his partner had got himself killed. That was about the range of emotion that Nil liked to express – though he’d probably scoff at a word like grief.

“Does he,” the warrior mused.

“If I were you, I’d head north. The Nora don’t take kindly to outlanders so close to the Sacred Land. Plus, I heard there’s more bandits at the edge of the Longroam.” She shrugged, “I’m sure Nil will sniff you out soon enough. All that blood on your teeth.”

“I don’t drink the blood of bandits,” he said. “Their stories aren’t worth telling.”

Aloy was still thinking of the Tenakth bandit-killer when Jom asked to speak with her, and she permitted him and his band to stay in the camp that the bandits had made out of the ruins. She told him that she would send Kurnst to him if she met him again while she was in the Sacred Land, and he thanked her over and over and over again.

She should have asked the bandit-killer his name.

Chapter Text

She planned to cut across the eastern spur of the mountains that divided Devil’s Thirst from Devil’s Grief, but she was so startled to see Varl on his Strider waiting by the path exiting the Thirst that she dug her heels in and her Strider ground to a halt with a harrumph.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get torn apart by Scrappers in there,” he said with a scowl, and she realised with some regret that she had never seen him this angry. There was the cool-headed, vengeful anger he’d had in the Ring of Metal, but this was more… scathing.“I thought I could get back before you woke up,” she said apologetically, prompting her Strider to trot alongside his, and his next glance told her that it was the wrong thing to say.

“You shouldn’t have gone at all. What if something had happened to you? What would I have told High Matriarch Teersa, or your guardian? I took my eyes off you and you ran headlong into a nest of machines?”

“Rost wouldn’t doubt it,” she said, and sighed under the withering look he gave her next. “I’m fine, Varl. I can handle myself.”

“I believe you believe that,” he said, “but pure belief doesn’t change reality. You have limitations now. And I get it, okay? Every Brave I’ve ever met who was injured as bad as you felt the same way. And then they got hurt worse when they didn’t ask their friends for help.”

She wanted to argue that point. She wasn't as limited as all that. But she caught his eye, and saw in their reflection the Corruptor incident from yesterday. He was worried. “I’m sorry, Varl,” she said.

“Say sorry by changing your behaviour. You say we’re friends. So how about you try listening to me?”

Sometimes she forgot that he was the son of the War-Chief.

They rode on in silence towards Devil’s Grief, and if Varl were in a better mood, Aloy might have commented on how much better he’d got at handling his Strider. They raced through a group of machines on the path and were gone before they could lift their heads – but more impressively, he managed to slow down once they were clear. She picked herbs from the side of the road when she spotted them, keeping a particular eye out for the glaze root that she made the corruption antidote from.

As they neared the outskirts of Devil’s Grief, they dismounted from their Striders, not wanting to attract machines or bandits with their light and the sound of their hooves. The ruins themselves were a stone’s throw away when she resolved to tell Varl he had fulfilled his obligations, but as she turned to say as much her eyes skimmed something on the ground. Before she consciously understood what it was, she planted her feet and whipped out her arm to put Varl to a halt.

“What?” he asked.

She indicated the trap. It was a much sturdier length of rope, but it was the same principle Rost sometimes used to trap game back home. Varl looked around, but Aloy knew he wouldn’t see anyone. It was the first thing he ever taught her – how to hide. How to be invisible. She gave a whistling signal, two short chirps and one long. After a moment, an answering whistle came from one of the crumbling buildings, and she followed the sound.

His face was streaked with blood, and he had weary shadows under his eyes. His expression was lifted by hope and relief when he saw her, but he didn’t sweep her into an embrace or let a smile cross his lips. He looked severe, and she stepped towards him with her hand going to her medicine pouch automatically. He was injured--

No. She stopped short as she realised the deliberate pattern of the colours. It was outcast paint, red and black instead of white and grey. As far from Nora blue as he could be. A Death-Seeker.

When she collided with him and clamped her arms around his chest in a hug, it was a demand, not a request. He sounded almost winded by the impact, and he was rigid as a tree trunk. Though it was muffled by her face being in his clavicle, she said, “I told you not to go where I can’t follow.”

At first, he said nothing and stayed motionless. She felt his hands settle cautiously, and then firmly, on her back. “And here you are,” he rumbled, sending vibrations through his chest. “You are the one who was taken into the Mountain, where I can never go.” She squeezed him tighter, and for a moment he just pressed his lips to the crown of her head.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Varl reappeared in the world, and Rost noticed him for the first time, stood in the doorway. After soaking in his words, he looked back to her with a frown and said calmly, “Aloy, you must tell your friend not to speak to me.”

She didn’t bother with that, but she did turn to Varl and say, “He’s allowed in the ruins, same as me.” What was that expression on his face? It was not blank, exactly – more stiff. For a man who had broken his tribe’s taboos to enter the ruins of the Old World without complaint, he was strangely hung-up on the presence of an outcast.

“Not the same as you,” he protested, face crumpling with revile. “You are a Seeker, with the blessing of the Matriarchs to travel wherever you please. He…” Even gesturing at Rost seemed to cause him physical pain. He couldn’t look directly at him. “…is death. The enemy of All-Mother and the life she brings.”

“Death is not All-Mother’s enemy,” she snapped. “People die, their remains fertilise the soil, life springs from the earth anew. What HADES wants is not death… it’s desolation. The absence of life. Sometimes in order to preserve life from people who want to destroy it, their deaths are necessary. I thought Braves understood that.”

“Aloy. Enough,” Rost said, measured. “The tracks I followed become confused here. What does your device say of the trail ahead?”

Numerous human shapes illuminated on her Focus, and corrupted Watchers patrolled between them. She knew Rost was trying to distract her, but they were here for a reason; she let herself be distracted.

“They’re close. Follow.” She turned away from Varl to lead the way through the ruins, and said without turning around, “You can return to your post now, Varl. You’ve done what you came to do.”

“But I—”

“What would your mother say if she knew you’d followed me into Devil’s Grief? Go.”

She could sense him hesitating from the sound of his motionless feet. She waited until she heard him walking away. Aloy dismantled Rost’s trap that they had stumbled on earlier. “The corruption will weaken the rope. Fire traps are better,” she advised.

“You were harsh on him.”

“He was harsh on you.” She didn’t miss a beat. They slipped into the tall grass together.

“This paint I wear marks me as an abomination, Aloy. It is what he knows.”

She indicated for quiet as a Watcher patrolled close. She let it turn around and walk back the way it had come without engaging. Her skin was itchy just at the thought of ramming her spear into its heart like she usually would, and she set a fire trap in its path instead. Returning to the grass and moving within it towards the Eclipse camp, she said, “I was marked as an abomination too. If he shuns you, he shuns both of us.”

A few discrete, well-placed fire arrows to their blaze stores and a scattering of fire traps that confused and split them up, and then it was only a matter of driving spears into hearts and arrows into eyes.

“We could have questioned one of them about the War Party,” Rost said, when the last bloody breath was wheezed.

“They should be lying in wait outside one of the camps. We’ll meet up with them.”

She was wrong. It was the War Party that found them – a tiny fraction of it. One injured Brave, one corpse, and Varl. The corpse and the injured one were on the back of Varl’s Strider, but instead of leading them back out towards Mother’s Crown, they were even further in the ruins. “You were supposed to go back,” Aloy hissed.

“The War-Chief’s been captured,” Varl shot back. “Tadda and Hem can’t make it by themselves, but I can’t leave either.”

“We must go to the aid of the War-Chief,” Tadda said weakly. She was paler than snow, even with her wounds bandaged as they were.

With a dryness in her mouth, Aloy realised that neither of the Braves knew that Hem’s slumped body on the back of the Strider was dead. “Look, just… just get them to safety,” she said, finding that she didn’t have the heart to inform them like this. “I will liberate the War Party, including your mother. I promise. Once you’ve done that, if you’re still hell-bent on helping, meet us at the Ring of Metal. That’s where the last of the bandits are camped.”

“The word of a Seeker better mean something.”

The Strider released a huff from its vents as he swung it around, back towards the edge of the ruins. She watched them go, the silent bobbing of Hem at the back. Another dead Brave. Another Nora she’d failed to save.

“He tamed that machine,” Rost murmured.

She glanced at him, snapping out of her reflection. He had an expression of wonder and disbelief on his face. “That was me,” she said, tapping the module on her spear. “I stripped it out of a Corruptor. It’s pretty useful.”

They advanced through Devil’s Grief, taking out Eclipse patrols and corrupted machines as they went. As they wound closer to the Ring of Metal, Rost’s agitation grew. To anyone else, he might have appeared as focused and calm as any hunter. He was silent and grim. She saw him measuring the shadows with his eyes.

“It’s going to be alright, Rost. We’ll get them back.”

He looked at her levelly. He gave her one firm nod.

The day was well on its way to dusk by the time they were surveying the Eclipse camp within the Ring of Metal. Crouched atop the stands of the ancient stadium, Aloy pointed out the cluster of shapes huddled together, surrounded by Blaze canisters and patrolled by machines. Rost squinted through the gloaming light, and she realised how little he could see without a Focus. Turning off the interface for a moment, all she could see was the flickering glow of corrupted machine lights in an unfathomable labyrinth down below. The cultists’ torches offered so little light they seemed almost redundant. Without the machine-paths and human outlines illuminated, they might as well have been standing on the shore of a vast lake.

She bit the inside of her cheek and ran her fingers over one of her spare Focuses in her pouch, pondering. He would say no. He always said no. ...There was no harm in offering, though, was there?

She held out the Focus to him. She watched his eyes land on it, revulsion crossing over his face. “Aloy,” he said. Was that reproach? It didn’t sound quite to much like reproach as she expected.

“You’re already a Death-Seeker, Rost,” she said. She didn’t expect that to be any more persuasive than the argument she’d had with him at twelve; that they were already outcasts. If she was going to be outcast for being born, what were they going to do to her for using Old Ones’ technology? Exile her? Why should she want to stay in the Sacred Land of a goddess who abandoned her to the wilds anyway?

Slowly, he picked up the Focus and turned it around in his hands. She was so surprised, she was afraid to breathe in case she scared him off. He carefully raised the device to his temple and let it attach. He startled slightly as the world lit up around him – she could see him gazing around at all of the degraded holograms around the stadium, and then the lights in the camp below. He looked at her, and exhaled in a way that was cousin to a laugh.

She found that she was smiling.

“I see why the Old World captivates you so,” he admitted under his breath.

“You see the Nora?”

He frowned, concentrating on the silhouettes. “I see them.”

“If we get caught on the approach, they might detonate the blaze around them. We need to clear a path to them without raising the alarm.”

“Can you use your spear to tame the cultists’ machines?”

“No,” she answered. “They’ve already been corrupted.”

“A pity.” He was silent for a long moment. “Do these cultists have…” he gestured to the Focus, apparently deciding not to call it a plaything. “These?”

Aloy shook her head. “Probably just the group leader. Let’s see.” She navigated to the network menu and searched for other nearby devices. Since Sylens had been responsible for repairing all the Focuses for the Eclipse to use, they were left on discoverable mode. As long as she didn’t try to interface directly, it wouldn’t give her away. Except probably to Sylens, but that was bound to happen sooner or later. There was only one Focus in the Ring of Metal besides her own, and she highlighted it to Rost. “There.”

“Then everyone else is in the dark.” He nodded. “I shall kill this one,” he indicated the leader with the Focus. “You concentrate on getting to the War-Party and leading them to safety.”

“I can’t lift those blaze barrels,” she objected.

“They will trust a Seeker to liberate them,” he countered, leaving off the obvious second half of that statement. “They are strong Braves, and can manage the barricade, I’m sure.”

She bit her lip. “Then we should trust Sona to lead them out when we provide an opportunity. There’s only so long one person can distract them. They’ll have a better chance if we both attack from different sides.”

He weighed this with obvious reluctance, appraising the arena again. He sighed, and moved his eyes to rest on her with the same surveying gaze. She did, she supposed, still look an awful lot like that naïve girl who thought only of running the Proving for herself. “You are right,” he said. “Very well.”

She linked their Focuses with a communication channel so that they could stay in contact as she climbed to a different part of the stands. She chose a spot with a spar that would be easy to grapple down from quickly if she needed to get into the mix herself, but also gave her a decent perch to fire arrows from. She was right above where the Focus-wearer was pacing. Rost, meanwhile, inched his way through the long grass at ground level.

“On my mark,” Aloy said under her breath. She sent her arrow into the back of the section leader’s skull, and the force of it practically pinned him to the ground.

Rost took out a couple of sentries who each wandered a little too far from the rest of the group. In the dark and quiet, she could smell clearly the blaze on her arrows as she drew the thrice-nocked string back to her cheek. All three arrows lodged in the Watcher’s body, and it shuddered to its end, sinking into the grass. Any cultists likely to immediately notice its lights extinguishing had hardpoint arrows in them before they could cry out.

She wasn’t sure whose kill the first shout came in response to. More fire arrows went into corrupted Watchers, more sharp points went into the Eclipse, but the Bellowback was still to be dealt with, and cultists were starting to brace their weapons and organise. Her eyes kept darting to the Nora, who were more or less all on their feet now, clustered together and looking around at the chaos. As she silently urged Sona to seize her moment, Aloy loosed a fire bomb onto one of the Eclipse with a blaze pack, trying to keep them scattered and confused. She started having to duck away from arrows fired in her direction.

Being the only person in the Ring of Metal with a Focus, she was probably the only one who was able to see Rost pick up a blaze barrel, making an opening in the barricade, and then hurl it with incredible strength into the legs of a Freeze Bellowback. Aloy took advantage of the distracting explosion to send arrows into the eyes and hearts of several more cultists. The machine’s chassis was blazing, giving the Nora – but also the Eclipse – light to see by. She prioritised the cultists with flames licking the ends of their arrows.

Rost was tearing something out of the Bellowback’s carcass – what was he doing? He needed to be working on the blaze barricade, downing fire archers—

He tossed a bulging chillwater sac to Sona and shouted an instruction before taking up his spear again. Aloy had to tear her gaze away to loose several more arrows into cultists emerging from their foxholes, but when she looked back, she saw that the War-Chief was dousing the blaze barrels in chillwater. Braves were spilling from the gap Rost had made and taking up arms of their own, wrenching weapons from the fists of dead cultists.

It was a tangible feeling when the tide turned irreversibly in their favour. The cultists were stuck in the Ring of Metal with the Nora, not the other way around. Aloy descended the stands as the dying breaths of the last cultists sighed into the night air. There was a lot more light in the Ring with so much of the grass blazing, but to be safe, she raised the token Teersa had given her in otherwise empty hands. The War Party was regrouping, and Rost was standing to the side, getting occasional lightning-fast nervous glances from the Braves. They all looked to her as she approached.

“Seeker,” Sona remarked. She sounded amused, somehow.

“War-Chief,” she answered stiffly, unsure if she was being mocked. Maybe Sona thought she was too young. A fresh Brave, a lifelong outcast, made into a Seeker?

“I am glad you survived your injuries,” Sona said.

“I bet you are. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to come to your rescue,” she said, and she felt Rost look at her sharply in her peripheral vision.

“Hmf,” she said. To her Braves, she instructed them to begin a caravan to get the wounded back to Mother’s Crown. Neither of the Seekers were seemingly expected to participate.

“We can help,” she said.

This was met with uncomfortable silence. One Brave jerked her chin towards Rost and said, “That will taint the wounded with its deathly presence. It is not welcome.”

Whatever she said next – something about how welcome she was in comparison – was drowned out by her own words. “He saved your lives!” she objected. “And he has done more for this tribe outcast from it than—”

Rost’s hand on her shoulder quieted her. For now.

Sona seemed to be contemplating them seriously, and Aloy wanted to blaze at her, too, for not punishing this disrespectful, ungrateful soldier in her care. For not even looking at the transgressor to memorise her face paint. She remained calm, almost passive, in her contemplation of the Seeker and the Death-Seeker. She took half a step closer, leaning in. The busyness of the War-Party afforded them a little privacy from eavesdropping when she said, “I see the fire in your hair extends to your heart. That is good. But be warned, girl, now that you are no longer an outcast, people are going to hear what you have to say, and they don’t have to ignore it.”

Rost only looked at Aloy when he said, “That is good advice.” As if it had been offered by the wind, or the trees, and not another person standing within arm’s reach of him.

“Rost,” Sona said, turning fully to face him.

He looked at her, surprise all over his face.

“Humour me. The High Matriarchs cannot hold the War Party at fault for being dragged into forbidden lands by invaders. We are not breaking taboo by standing on these grounds, tainted as they are. We are also not in the Sacred Land. We are not bound by Nora law here. Do you agree?”

“The tribe is a creed, not a plot of turf,” Rost grumbled, “but I ought have expected one of the sharpest minds in the Embrace to skirt the laws so deftly.”

“Only so that I can thank you.”

“Your rescue was Aloy’s doing,” he said humbly.

“Then I must thank you twice, for you have raised a fine warrior and a good daughter. Will you accompany us to Mother’s Crown?”

“We’re not welcome,” mumbled Aloy, scowling.

“No,” Rost answered, more diplomatically. “I do not wish to cause strife in the War Party. It cannot be afforded.”

Sona nodded. Straightening, she held a fist over her heart, and turned to continue corralling her Braves.

Left alone, Rost extended his closed fist to her, and she frowned at it, unsure what he would be giving her. When she opened her hand to take it, he dropped his Focus into her palm. 

“You should keep it,” she said. “It might be useful.”

He only shook his head.

On the way out of the Ring of Metal, the War-Party raised its weapons to the sound of Strider hooves on the earth, only to be met with a winded and dishevelled Varl. He had clearly ridden back to Devil's Grief as fast as his Strider would carry him; all of its vents were on full blast. There was no tearful reunion between mother and son. After the relief passed over his face, he just announced confidently, "This way. I've cleared a path through the Scrappers." He only looked briefly to Aloy and Rost hanging back from the group before he turned around to lead the War-Party onwards. He had lost some of the anger and revulsion that previously fuelled him. Now it was neutral, almost distant.

Braves were murmuring and pointing at the Strider, tame and close enough to touch. When they began to move away, Aloy summoned her own Strider with a bitter whistle. She hoped some of the Braves looked back and saw that she was the machine-tamer, and Varl was just borrowing.

They camped in the ruins. It was obvious Rost didn’t like it, but being the area they had just cleared of machines and cultists, it was a much safer place to camp than the road running along the edge of the tainted lands. They did not make their camp in the Ring of Metal itself, littered as it was with corpses and metalburned machines that would surely attract scavengers. Instead they made a nest in the concrete bones of the Old Ones, and she wondered if Elisabet had ever visited this city, when it and she were alive.

He broke the silence as they were watching the last licks of the campfire turn to embers. “Aloy… I must ask. Earlier, you expressed a reassurance to me. In all the years I have raised you, I have not known you to be sensitive to my inner thoughts and feelings. Then you alluded to what I have done for the tribe.”

“Is there a question in there?”

“How much of my past,” he said, “have you learned?” He sounded grave, but not angry.

The night at her back felt colder, suddenly. She stared into the fire, and after a long moment, she took her Focus off and closed it in the palm of her hand. Before she spoke, she looked up, between the crumbled spires of Devil’s Grief, to the stars. “Bandits raided the forsaken village in Valleymeet, where you used to live. Your daughter and your partner were killed, and the High Matriarchs made you a Death-Seeker to avenge the tribe. A Brave broke taboo to drag you half-dead back across the border.” She looked down to him. “That was Grata, wasn’t it?”

Rost nodded, slowly rubbing his hands together in front of the dwindling flames. “She had lost her family, too. She believed saving me was the right thing to do, as ardently as she believed that the Matriarchs were right to cast her out. She had always been odd, Grata,” he finally met her eyes with ruefulness. “Those weeks were difficult, while she tended to me. I got the impression half the Matriarchs were pressuring her to let me die. As was I.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. I owe that to High Matriarch Pemma. Teersa’s sister. She said, “Is caring for the dead not a sacred rite? Does All-Mother not tend even withered plants, so that they may fertilise the saplings?” A generous comparison. Others called me a blight to be purged from the forest lest it spoil the grove, but Pemma’s word counted for a great deal. She argued against casting Grata out, as well, but she went voluntarily. She did much for me. Debts I will never be able to repay. Debts… she would never have asked me to repay.”

“She sounds formidable. I’m sorry I never got the chance to know her.” She felt a lump in her throat. “And… I know you would never have come to raise me if your family… I just wish I could have known them, too.”

“Ah,” Rost said, his voice choked. “I cannot speak of this any more tonight. Please.”

“Of course.”

The embers glowed softly in the bed they had made for them, cloaking their faces in shadows. Hot, quiet tears filled the night.