Storm on the Horizon - Shisumo (2024)

Chapter 1: Vertical Rotation

Chapter Text

Aloy opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. It was cut-timber and covered with tiles, slanting down from the peak at the middle of the roof. Several sturdy beams cut across it, most doubling as hanging bars for leathers, furs, or smoking meat. The furs covering her were warm and cozy, and though the gloom suggested there was no fire burning at the moment, a dim red glow and occasional pop! from the hearth told her there had been one recently. It was the same ceiling she’d awoken to for nearly eighteen years.

But it was also wrong. Why was it…

Suddenly, the memory of the previous night blazed into her mind. She’d gone to bed inside the crumbling ruins of Sobeck Ranch, after she’d finished filling in the grave of Elisabet Sobeck. Of… her mother. The experience had been both physically demanding and deeply emotional; tears had blurred her vision throughout the ordeal, but with the pain had come a sense of closure. She had found her mother, at long last, and had had a chance to say goodbye. Something she had been denied for Rost. By the time she finished, she was exhausted in both mind and body.

The ranch was in the high desert, so protection from the weather hadn’t been a concern, but staying out of sight from any wandering machines in the area had seemed wise. The overridden Strider that had carried her to Elisabet’s final resting place was still outside, patiently awaiting her return, and would give warning if such a machine did approach, but caution had been drilled into her by both Rost and painful life experience. So she’d pitched her tent and bedroll inside the half-toppled walls, poked the ceiling a few times to make sure it wasn’t likely to come down on her head, and fallen asleep.

And now, here she was, waking up most of a month’s travel away from where she’d gone to sleep. The shock stripped the remnants of sleep from her mind, and she found herself rolling to her feet and instinctively reaching for the weapons she kept right next to her every night.

They weren’t there.

Stunned, she looked down at the floor (wooden, covered with furs and a rug) and then wildly around the room. It was unmistakably Rost’s cabin, every piece of furniture in its right place, and all displaying every sign of recent occupancy. Her weapons were leaning on the wall next to the door, right where she had always kept them when she had lived here. All appeared undamaged, except… She stepped over, picking them up. The bows and other weapons she’d accumulated during her battles against HADES and the Eclipse were all there, but her spear was gone. In its place was Sylens’s lance, the one he’d had her take from his workshop overlooking the ruins of GAIA Prime.

The one she’d left in HADES’s casing after the Battle of the Alight.

She turned it over in her hands. All the modifications and weapons coils she’d added to it were there, but the Corruptor override unit and the Master Override she’d used against HADES were not.

“What is going on?” Aloy muttered to herself, as usual only half-aware she was talking aloud.

She raised her hand to her temple, and was relieved to find that her Focus was still there - but as she activated it, she was shocked again to learn that seemingly every file she’d uploaded to it since the Proving was gone. Watchers and Striders were the only machines in its catalogue, and every other datapoint she’d recovered along the way had been deleted. The uncorrupted Alpha Registry file was gone too.

The rest of her equipment, including the machine parts, the Shards, and medicinal plants she’d collected, all still seemed to be present. She even still had the globe she’d taken from Elisabet’s body the day before. Aloy looked around the cabin again, seeking more clues, but other than the fact that it looked very much like someone had been living in it (and the violation of her memories of Rost had her anger at a steady burn), she saw nothing to explain what was going on or how she had come to be here.

Had she been taken prisoner somehow? Become ill enough, perhaps with some kind of brain fever, that she’d lost memories? With a rush of paranoia, she pulled out her rations - still there, just as many as she remembered having had the night before - and studied them, searching for any signs of drugs, but there was nothing she could discern. Still, she decided she had to ignore the rumble in her stomach until she knew what was going on.

Having exhausted any possible explanations that might be found in the cabin, she readied the Striker bow she’d acquired during her time in the Cut and opened the door. Golden, early morning sunlight spilled through, and a wave of crisp, sharply cool air hit her. It was the sensation of a mid-spring morning in the Embrace, one she’d felt hundreds of times while she’d lived with Rost. But that too was wrong. It was late autumn - not that you could really tell in the desolate deserts northwest of the Daybrink - and that was a very different smell, even a different quality of light. Had she somehow lost months of time? At least it could explain how she’d gotten back here from the fringes of the Forbidden West. But why? And what had happened? Why couldn’t she remember any of it?

She’d been afraid she might find enemies or guards outside, but the snow-covered field outside the cabin was empty. A quick glance at the curing shed off to her right found more drying furs, leathers, and meat - more evidence of someone living at the cabin. Maybe the person living at the cabin was… her? She couldn’t imagine why she would have returned - every time she saw the building, it wrenched her heart with memories of Rost - but maybe she’d had some reason? Shaking her head, she headed out through the gate, and almost immediately came to a dead stop.

Rost’s grave was gone.

Not just removed, or damaged. Vanished, as though it had never been. She activated her Focus, scanned the ground with it and her own tracking experience. Had her own memories not told her otherwise, she would have sworn the ground had lain undisturbed for years. But… how? And why? What…?

A sudden, wild idea occurred to her. She spun to stare at the cabin, then back to the place where Rost’s grave had been. No. It was impossible. But…

She sprinted down the trail, reaching the bend that led to the zipline down into the Embrace, and her breath was ripped from her lungs by the sight of Rost standing atop the rise. He was half-turned, looking down into the valley in that somber, pensive way he had. For a moment, Aloy couldn’t even move, couldn’t believe what her own eyes were telling her. Then she was running madly down the path, scrambling up the climbing holds to the overlook where Rost waited.

He turned to her as she pulled herself up. “Aloy,” he said in that serious and comforting rumble, “we must speak.” Aloy thought he was about to go on, but whatever it was, she didn’t hear it because she threw herself at him without the slightest hesitation. Rost gave a shout of surprise, stumbling backward as Aloy embraced him tightly, squeezing with every muscle she had.

“Rost! You’re alive! You’re alive! All-Mother, you’re alive! How? How are you alive?” Aloy knew she was babbling and didn’t care in the slightest.

“Stop it, girl!” Rost barked, still stunned. “What’s the meaning of this?” He peeled her arms off of him, moving her back with scant gentleness to keep her at arm’s length.

Aloy and Rost had never been much for physical affection; she had never for a moment doubted that he loved her with his whole heart, but things like warm embraces were just not Rost’s way. Accordingly, they weren’t normally hers either, though that had begun to change as she’d ventured out into the world. Still, this was unprecedented between them, and Aloy knew it. She just didn’t care.

“Rost! You... you’re... But how? I watched you… They… There was…” Try as she might, Aloy couldn’t seem to get her words to form any kind of coherent order.

“Stop this foolishness,” Rost told her sternly. He was still holding her arms, as though unwilling to trust that she wasn’t going to hurl herself at him again. “This is no time for games, Aloy. The Proving is in two days’ time, and you need to be focused and clear-minded.” His eyes studied hers, looking to see if she was paying attention. “You’ve trained for this for many years, and you’ve learned well, but I fear there’s one lesson I failed to teach you. Would you learn it now?”

Two days before the Proving. The morning before her first Sawtooth hunt. A morning that she had believed was more than half a year in the past. Two days before the Proving Massacre, two days before the deaths of Vala and Bast and so many other new braves, two days before she watched Rost die on a mountaintop while saving her life.

Aloy opened her mouth to start explaining, to warn Rost, to tell him what she remembered - what it seemed had not happened yet - but under Rost’s solemn, serious glare, the words evaporated on her tongue. How could she explain? What could she say to make him believe? The idea was insane, even in her own head. Was this a dream? Was the horrifying fate she thought she remembered only some terrifying nightmare she’d constructed in her own mind?

“I’ll… I’ll always learn what you have to teach me,” she said instead. She fought to remember how this conversation had gone, but it had been so long. If she could remember, if she could predict what he was going to say, she could know if her memories were real.

Rost nodded approvingly, letting her go at last. He said, “Go down into the Embrace and hunt until you have gathered the parts for Fire Arrows. Then meet me there.” He pointed, and Aloy followed the gesture with her eyes.

“The northern gate to the Embrace?” she said, disbelieving. Rost grunted his confirmation, and she turned to look at him, wide-eyed. She couldn’t remember the exact words, but this detail she remembered clearly. Rost had never wanted her to venture near any of the gates guarding the valley, which is why it had caught her so off-guard when it had happened. Her memories were real.

So… somehow she’d, what? Had some kind of vision? No, that didn't explain the equipment she carried, equipment unlike anything she could have found in the Embrace. Had she traveled through time? Was that even possible? It seemed ludicrous, even if it was the only explanation she could come up with. How, though? And why? And how could she get Rost to believe it, so she could protect him from Helis?

She’d waited too long to say anything else. Rost nodded, began to turn away. “Wait!” Aloy cried, and he turned back to her, a questioning look on his face. Frantically, Aloy began to cast around for something, some piece of evidence she could offer for her story. She thrust out the Striker bow. “Does this bow look strange to you?”

Rost ran his eyes over the bow, and his eyebrows climbed. Yes! Aloy thought. He sees how strange it is! “Did you get that from Karst?” asked Rost, disapproving. “I hate to think what he charged for a weapon of that make. Aloy, you know that man breaks the law every time he speaks to you.”

Aloy’s jaw dropped as she struggled to respond. “No! I mean, I..” she trailed off. Finally, defeated, she said, “I’m glad he does. He’s the only trader willing to deal with outcasts.” It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but “you bought it from Karst” was clearly a more believable explanation than “you bought it while in the Banuk lands and brought it through time.” The bow wasn’t going to be the proof she needed.

Rost made a disgusted sound, but all he said was, “Then bring it with you when we meet. You’ll have use for that weapon tonight.” He paused before adding, “If you have time, you might check on Odd Grata and see if she needs anything as well.”

Aloy was still staring at him, trying to figure out what to say to make the warnings she was desperate to give him believable, but Rost seemed to take her silence as assent. He nodded, then began climbing down the rocks behind her. Aloy spun, still trying to find something to say, but could only just watch him go.

Even if I can’t convince him, thought Aloy desperately, I can still save him. Can save all of them. I just have to do it myself. Almost mechanically, she pulled the zipline slide from her belt and tossed it over the rope, grabbing each end to begin the descent. Ideas for how to prevent the Massacre were piling up on one another in her head. Should I just not go to the Proving? What if I try stealing Olin’s Focus before he knows I’m there? If I don’t have to take that blasted “shortcut” after Bast breaks my first Grazer trophy, maybe I can reach the finish line fast enough to launch an attack first? With the Shield-Weaver on, I could probably handle the Eclipse fire long enough to get everyone to safety…

She touched down at the lower end of the zipline, tucking into a clean roll and rising back up to her feet without truly being aware she was doing it. Her mind was still on saving Rost and the other braves. She looked back up the mountain toward the cabin. Somehow, some way, she was going to…

A hand touched her shoulder. Reflexively, Aloy leaped away, spinning, her spear coming into her hands, the point aimed directly at… a teenaged girl?

She was both shorter and slighter than Aloy, with pale skin, brown hair cut to just above her shoulders, blue eyes, and a light scattering of freckles across her cheeks. Her clothes were completely inappropriate to the chill alpine morning, consisting of a thin top with a picture of an animal (Aloy thought she recognized from the records of Montana Recreations, something the ancient scholar had called a “mule deer,” though it lacked the horns), some blue-grey pants in a heavier woven fabric Aloy did not know, and a pair of leather-topped shoes bound with a complicated network of ties across the instep. The clothes were unmistakably those of the Old Ones.

The girl dropped her hand back to her side, her eyes glassy. Blood poured from both her nostrils. She opened her mouth as though to say something, but her eyes just rolled up into her head and she pitched face first into the snow.

Chapter 2: Supersaturation

Chapter Text

Aloy reacted on instinct. She leapt forward, trying to catch the girl. She wasn’t fast enough, but even as the stranger hit the snow, Aloy was already starting to kneel next to her. She turned the girl over, brushed away the snow from her face, and touched her fingers to the side of the girl’s throat. She felt a heartbeat, although it was both faint and erratic. The nosebleed had slowed to a trickle, but that was poor comfort: her face was a mask of blood, blood trails leading not just back up to her nose, but also the corners of her eyes and mouth. There was no obvious injury, though. That didn’t leave Aloy with many options.

She knew from Rost’s lessons that it could be dangerous to move someone injured if you did not know what their injury was, but she couldn’t leave the girl lying in the snow. Given what she was wearing, she’d probably freeze to death in a matter of minutes. Pulling a pair of boar skins from her pack, she wrapped the girl in them quickly, then scooped her up. The girl seemed to weigh almost nothing, but Aloy knew that illusion would disappear after she’d carried her a while. That did raise the question though: where was she carrying the girl to ?

The Nora would see her as an outlander, and at best would be unfriendly toward her; at worst, they’d be murderous. The cabin seemed the obvious place to go, but she was at the bottom of the zipline - she’d never be able to carry the girl back up the nearby climb, and the footpath was a quarter of the way around the mountain. Besides, she couldn’t be sure of even Rost’s reaction to this strange apparition. What she needed was someplace both sheltered and isolated, someplace she could be sure the girl wouldn’t be found, even if Aloy had to leave her for a short while.

The answer occurred to her all at once, and she let out a little laugh. “Well,” she said to the girl in her arms, “I hope you don’t mind bats…”

******

She stopped at every bonfire they passed on their way down the mountain and along the valley floor, both needing the break from carrying the unconscious girl and wanting to make sure the girl stayed as warm as possible. She skirted the machine herds and Nora watchtowers alike, and though the trip to the old bunker took longer than she would have liked, they reached it without incident. The girl was still unconscious, which was more than just a little worrying. Getting down the first drop was tricky, but using Sylens’s lance to brace herself - the girl was light enough to carry one-handed, briefly - she managed to get them down safely. Then it was just a matter of finding a space up off the floor to set her down.

Despite the dead body in the middle of the room ( “Happy birthday, Isaac!" whispered her memory. "Daddy sure does love his little big man!” ), Aloy decided to use the space where she’d first found her Focus to lay the girl down. One of the calcified structures actually seemed to have once been a bed, there was real sunlight, and she wanted to use the small opening in the ceiling as a smoke hole for the fire she planned to build. The ankle-deep water covering most of the ground made that last part difficult, but she managed. Once she had heat and light, she turned to giving a better examination to her patient.

After carefully sponging the blood off of her face, Aloy confirmed there was no sign of a wound anywhere on her. Her breathing was shallow, but her heartbeat did feel steadier. Aloy frowned, then started digging through her herbs pouch. Hintergold juice to help clotting, salvebrush berries to resist infection, and some wild ember for any pain. Other than that, there wasn’t much she could do. The girl had lost enough blood that she needed to eat as much meat as Aloy could feed her, but until she woke up, that would be difficult. If she hadn’t regained consciousness by midday, Aloy would try force-feeding her a boar meat broth.

Satisfied that she’d done what she could, though still worried about the girl’s ultimate fate, Aloy turned her attention to trying to figure out what else she could learn about this mysterious stranger. Other than her clothes, the only thing she seemed to be carrying was a large satchel. Aloy had felt a hard, heavy object inside while holding the girl in her arms, so she carefully eased the flap open and pulled out the contents.

They were, in a word, bizarre. The first was the smallest, a flat rectangle thinner than her smallest finger and just longer than her palm. It was a smooth, finished black, polished enough that she could use it for a small mirror. It was definitely some kind of Old Ones device, though she’d never seen its exact like before. The second was a sand-colored boxy thing, just larger than her two fists put together, with three lenses on one side and one on the other. It had the word “Polaroid” etched across the top of the side with the three lenses, along with a rainbow-colored logo. After a bit of experimentation, Aloy discovered she could look through the single lens through to one of the others on the opposite side as though it were a telescope, but it didn’t actually seem to provide any magnification. The third was a thick, leatherbound book, seemingly a hand-written diary, with hundreds of pages filled in blue ink. Drawings and small still pictures, like tiny paintings, made with the kind of technical precision and accuracy she’d come to expect from Old Ones technology, surrounded the writing.

Automatically, Aloy activated her Focus and began flipping through the pages as fast as she could, scanning everything into datapoints for her to read later. It took several moments, much longer than any other writing she’d ever scanned. When she was done, she turned the Focus’s attention to the other items. The small rectangle was, according to the Focus, a “smartphone. Communications and data access device popular from 2007 to 2036.” That made Aloy’s eyebrows go up a little. Those were some of the earliest dates of anything she’d ever scanned from the Old Ones. This little rectangle might have been older than Elisabet herself had been? The description made it seem like some kind of predecessor to a Focus. Handheld, apparently, rather than worn. If it was, it didn’t seem to be working: the Focus couldn’t find any data on it. The boxy device was an “instant camera,” which meant exactly nothing to Aloy, and it also seemed not to have any data.

She replaced the belongings in the satchel and tapped the Focus off, staring at the unconscious young woman. No answers yet, only more questions. It was, frustratingly, an experience she was very familiar with.

She checked the sun through the opening in the ceiling. Still well short of midday, and she didn’t have to meet Rost until late afternoon at the earliest. It had been after midnight when they’d actually started their trek beyond the gate. She still didn’t know what she was going to say to him yet. Hopefully, this girl would have some explanations for her that might give her some help on deciding what to do; it seemed ridiculous to think that two such completely inexplicable events happening so close together were entirely unconnected. At worst, she could go through with the Sawtooth hunt, she was fairly certain. The task itself would be trivial; she’d already idly worked out how she’d handle it if it came to that. A Fire Tripwire across its path, the Ropecaster to tie it down, a Fire Arrow for the Blaze canister on its belly, then Hardpoint arrows at vulnerable spots if it still needed persuading to stop moving. Should be a matter of moments, hardly enough to break a sweat. No, the Sawtooth hunt wouldn’t be an issue; it was tomorrow night that was the key. If she didn’t have a plan and hadn’t managed to convince Rost of what was coming by the time she was to set foot in Mother’s Heart, she was in trouble.

Her Focus sent a small notification across her vision, informing her that it had finished collating the datapoints from the diary. Aloy tapped the device on all the way, opened her datapoint menu, and couldn’t help a small gasp of surprise. There were dozens of entries. In one single book she’d added more datapoints than she had in her entire previous existence. The file names all appeared to be dates, and the descriptions of the contents were all identical: “Handwritten personal narrative supplemented with ink drawings, stickers, and photographs.” “Stickers” and “photographs” were the “tiny paintings” she’d seen before, she guessed, though she had no idea which might be which. The dates themselves were odd too. She thought she had a pretty good grasp by now of the Old Ones’ calendar, but it didn’t line up with what she was seeing. The first one was labeled, “July 10, 2013” and was followed by “August 18, 2013,” “August 25, 2013,” and on up through “October 11 (...I guess),” which was admittedly odd, but at least seemed in order. But the next one after that was “October 7, again” and then “October 9,” followed by “October 15,” but then the next one was “September 4.” Would this prolific diarist have waited almost a year to put another entry in? Eventually the dates started including years again, and they seemed to progress in a fairly linear fashion up to the final entry, “May 17, 2022,” but there were sections where the dates were once more out of order, sometimes by months. Had her Focus rearranged the entries for some reason?

The obvious way to find out was, of course, to start reading. So she did.

“If words could dance this would be a rave. Even though I’ve never been to one. But who cares because I GOT INTO BLACKWELL ACADEMY!”

It went on from there, a young girl’s enthusiastic record of achieving some deeply held dream. She wasn’t sure what an “academy” was, but it seemed like it was an organization dedicated specifically to education. That made sense - she’d gotten the impression Elisabet had studied how to build machines at similar places, one called “Stanford University” and another called “Carnegie-Mellon University.” She wasn’t sure what the difference between an academy and a university might be, but that was the kind of ambiguity with regard to the Old Ones she’d had to learn to live with. This girl was going to study “photography.” Did that mean she’d made some of the images in her diary?

Oddly, despite the many, many cultural references she didn’t understand, Aloy found much of the first few entries surprisingly relatable. She remembered her nerves and mixture of excitement and dread over the Proving the first time, so similar to the way this girl - her name appeared to be Max - felt about arriving at Blackwell Academy. The way Max described another student called Victoria Chase reminded Aloy instantly of Bast, and she recalled with a painful keenness how grateful she had been for Vala’s offer of friendship, just as Max seemed to appreciate the gestures made by Kate Marsh and Warren Graham. Even the way Max seemed semi-infatuated with her photography instructor, Mr. Jefferson, reminded Aloy uncomfortably of how she felt around Talanah at times. She felt her cheeks warm, then shoved that thought firmly away.

Still, nothing seemed to explain what was going on. It certainly looked like she was reading a diary written more than a thousand years ago, by the girl asleep in front of her, but how? How could that be? She remembered Sylens talking about “cryogenic techniques.” She still didn’t really know what that was, but he’d believed it at least theoretically possible that someone could have survived. Was that how Max had come to be there? Sylens had said there were “problems with it,” which might explain the blood loss. Frowning, she kept reading.

“October 7.

“This will be the weirdest diary entry I will ever make. So weird I don't know how or where to start. But it started with the most vivid dream of my life. I was lost in a storm by the lighthouse until I came to the edge of the cliff.

“Then I saw a giant tornado headed for Arcadia Bay. It was so real that I could feel the rain stinging my face. And I was scared sh*tless. Then a boat hit the lighthouse and I swear I actually felt like I was going to die.

“But I woke up in Mr. Jefferson's class and I wasn't even sleeping. I almost fell out of my chair…”

Aloy’s mouth slowly fell open as she read on.

*****

She finally tapped off her Focus and stared down at the unconscious Max Caulfield. She’d just finished the entry for “October 7, again.” The sun shone directly down through the hole in the cavern roof now. Automatically, she checked Max’s pulse and breathing, found both of them stronger and less labored. Carefully, she moved around and pulled herself up onto at the end of the bed, near Max’s feet.

The story seemed utterly incredible, but it seemed to explain so much. Her own experience of “rewind” this morning had so much in common with Max’s power that it seemed nearly as insane to dismiss it as it did to believe it. And what Max had gone through...

Could I do something like that? Could I let Rost die in order to save everyone else? A chilling thought shot through her like a Freeze Arrow. Am I going to have to make that choice before tomorrow night?

Max suddenly stirred, moaning. Her eyelids fluttered. Instantly Aloy was on her feet, moving around to put a hand on the girl’s arm. “Shh,” she murmured soothingly. “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.”

Max’s eyes flew open. “Chloe?” she gasped.

Chapter 3: Pressure Systems

Chapter Text

Of course Chloe Price would be the first thing on Max’s mind. As if Aloy had needed more confirmation of how much Chloe mattered to her. “No,” she said, still trying to be calming. “Chloe isn’t here. My name is Aloy. You’re safe now.” For the moment, at least, she thought. What might happen next, she had no idea.

“Aloy?” repeated Max, confused. She squinted around through the dimness. “Who… where… where am I?” She started to rise, and when she didn’t immediately collapse back down, Aloy moved closer and helped her struggle up to a sitting position.

“You’re…” Aloy paused, thinking quickly, then said, “We’re in the mountains, west of Colorado Springs.” She held the girl for a moment, steadying her, before stepping back. “You showed up right behind me on the mountain slope before passing out. I brought you to a cave so I could try to help you. That was a few hours ago.”

Max frowned. “How did I get to Colorado?” she asked. “And why… why are you dressed like that?”

With a chuckle, Aloy shrugged. “This is how we dress around here. You are a long way from home, Max Caulfield.”

“How do you know my name?” demanded Max. She raised her right hand as though to ward something off. Instantly, though, she grunted in pain, putting her hands to her temple.

“Calm down,” Aloy reassured her, still trying to be soothing. She thought she knew what had just happened, but given where and when Max was, Aloy wasn’t surprised her rewind wasn’t working. If she’d managed to bring herself here across a thousand years… “I told you, you’re safe. I just read some of your diary.”

“You… you did?” Max said, her head snapping up again. She looked angry... and frightened.

Aloy made another shushing sound. “I was trying to figure out who the stranger who collapsed into my arms was,” she explained.

For a moment, their gazes were fixed on one another. Then Max shivered and she broke eye contact, looking around. Her eyes fell on the body in the middle of the room and widened. It clearly gave her some pause, but it seemed as though she’d seen death before. After a moment, her gaze wandered on, taking in the rest of the Old-Ones-workspace-turned-cave, before finally looking back at Aloy again.

“Say ‘hella,’” Max commanded.

“What?”

“Say ‘hella,’” repeated Max. Then, as though hearing herself, she added more quietly, “please.”

Aloy frowned, trying to figure out what this was about. It was an odd word, but one she’d seen a few places in Max’s diary. She had no idea what it meant, but… “Hella,” she said, studying Max’s reaction.

The other girl chewed her lip. “You sound just like her. It’s so weird.” She looked again at Aloy, this time focusing on the brave’s supply of weapons. Her eyes met Aloy’s again, blue looking into hazel. “You read my diary?” Aloy nodded, still studying her. “Why aren’t you acting like I’m crazy?”

Aloy’s brow furrowed. How to say this? “Because,” she said finally, “to the best of my ability to determine, this is the year 3040 in your calendar.”

There was a long pause.

“You’re serious, aren’t you,” said Max dully. Again, Aloy nodded, letting her process. Several long moments passed. Rost always said, “Patience,” Aloy reminded herself. She kept waiting the girl out.

“Wowser,” Max said at last. “I really managed to f*ck this one up.”

There was nothing Aloy could say to that.

“Can we… can we get out of here?” asked Max. “I could use some sunshine. And fresher air.”

Getting out of the ruins was easier than getting in, but Aloy had to do most of the work. Max’s physique was entirely unsuited to be a brave, and even the fairly simple climb up out of the cavern was well beyond her. Fortunately, she was still pretty light, so Aloy had no trouble hauling her up. “You’re... you’re really strong,” Max said, sounding both impressed and worried. “Are you a soldier?”

“I guess you could call me that,” Aloy acknowledged, leading the way up the slope. There was a nice outcropping just above that she shouldn’t have any trouble getting Max up to, and they could sit and talk there easily. “My tribe…” She paused. Calling the Nora that still felt uncomfortable, like wearing an outfit made for someone of a very different size. Explaining that to Max seemed more trouble than it was worth, though, so she just went on, “my tribe call me a brave, but it’s the same basic concept. Braves defend the tribe’s territory and make sure bandits, machines, and other threats can’t harm our noncombatants.” They reached the outcropping, and Aloy turned to help Max up - only to find her already on top of the rock. A thin trickle of blood was visible on her upper lip, and she was grimacing against new pain.

“Max!” Aloy scolded, scrambling up next to her. “You’re clearly not recovered enough to do that yet. What are you thinking?” It was astonishing to see in action, honestly, but Aloy was more worried about Max’s health than watching her work her magic.

“I just needed to be sure I still could,” Max grunted, still looking pained. She wiped the blood away on the back of her hand, seemingly without really noticing. She was apparently too used to it for it to truly register on her any more. She frowned at Aloy again. “No, seriously, why aren’t you more freaked out about this? Everyone always freaks, or gets scared, or calls me a witch. But you - you’re lecturing me about getting a nosebleed?”

Aloy sat down at the edge of the rocks, patting the stone beside her to invite Max down as well. The girl looked cold, so Aloy got out the boar skins she’d wrapped her in before and tucked one underneath Max and draped the other over her shoulders. They were going to have to find her some suitable clothes soon.

"Here," Aloy said, pulling some dried boar meat from her supplies and passing it to Max. "You lost a fair amount of blood. This will help." Slowly, Max started chewing, still staring at her.

“I know what it’s like to be able to do things everyone else thinks are impossible,” Aloy explained, frowning into the distance. “I can’t do anything like what you can, but...” she sighed. “I remember how isolated I felt when everyone tried to worship me. I know what you do, even if I have no idea how, and I accept it. Because everyone I’ve ever been able to be close to was someone who accepted me.” She made a face. “Even if the first thing they did was drag me off to the middle of nowhere to solve a mystery…” Her eyes widened as the thought occurred to her. Erend! She could warn him about Ersa too, somehow! Maybe!

Max seemed to be reassessing her. “Was there a butterfly?” she asked hesitantly.

Aloy glanced over at her, confused for a moment, then realization dawned. “You mean like the one in the bathroom? No, nothing like that. I don’t have any superpowers, Su-” Suddenly Max’s finger was on her lips, cutting off what she’d been about to say.

“Please don’t call me that,” said Max, tension visible in every line of her face and body.

Aloy blinked in surprise. She’d been about to say “Super Max,” since Max had called herself that several times in her diary, but clearly that was not a good idea. A bad enough idea that Max had seemingly rewound just to keep her from doing so. She nodded and Max pulled her finger away.

“Sorry,” Max mumbled. “It’s just… you sound so much like her. And your hair... “ she trailed off, staring down at her lap.

“How about if I change the subject?” offered Aloy. “I’ve got… a lot of questions about the time you come from. So, so many questions. And I’d like to ask them now, before… anyone else starts listening in.”

Max waited a moment, then looked back up and shook her head. “No. You first. You read my diary - and that’s totally karma, Max, so deal with it - but I don’t have any idea who you are or what your story is. Or where I am, really, other than someplace with a gorgeous view of the Rockies.”

It was fair, Aloy acknowledged to herself. Her curiosity could wait. “Okay, sure. But first, just so I know where to start: what year did you come from?”

Max frowned. “I thought you said you read my diary?”

“I started to,” Aloy explained, “but you woke up before I got past…” she trailed off. There was no way that bringing Chloe’s death up wouldn’t be painful. “Before I got past your second time through October 7th,” she said gently. She watched for a reaction, but Max’s jaw just tightened slightly.

“Okay,” she said shortly. “Then start in 2022.”

And Aloy did. In broad strokes she discussed the Great Die-Off, the Claw-Back, the rise of Faro Automated Systems, Elisabet Sobeck and Ted Faro, and then the Faro Plague. Max looked increasingly horrified as she went along, almost panicked. By the time Aloy got to Zero Dawn, she was shaking her head frantically.

“No, no, no, no… It’s Arcadia Bay all over again… I did this… I thought I fixed it, but somehow I did this… I have to go back…” She got to her feet, raised her hand, and then screamed in sudden agony. Blood poured from her nose again as she fell back to her knees. Aloy had to grab her before she fell off the rock entirely, instead pulling her into a tight embrace as Max clung to her and wept with pain and horror.

There were words mixed in among the sobs, but the only ones Aloy could make out were “I did… I did…” repeated over and over.

It took several long minutes before Max was even slightly recovered. She still looked entirely too pale, though, and Aloy rolled her mostly-unresisting form onto her back and lifted her feet so she wouldn’t pass out. Max let her do it, staring up at the clouds scudding through the blue skies overhead. She somehow looked even smaller than she had before.

“I can’t do it,” Max said after several minutes more, still staring upward. "I can't picture it. I can’t go back then.”

Aloy lowered Max’s feet to the ground, thinking she was out of immediate danger of unconsciousness. She instead knelt down by Max’s head and started wiping the blood off with a small cloth. “Max,” she said flatly, “you didn’t make the Faro Plague happen.”

“How the f*ck do you know?” Max demanded, pushing the cloth away and struggling to her feet. Aloy rose with her, unsure where this sudden anger was coming from. Max tried to glare into Aloy’s eyes, but the height difference was very much not in her favor.

“Because I read your diary, remember?” Aloy reminded her, calmly but firmly. “I know about the weird snow, and the eclipse, and the dead birds, and the whales, and the two moons. Nothing like any of that shows up in any record I’ve ever found about the Plague. I also know that Elisabet Sobeck looked at the Glitch from every possible angle, and she knew who was responsible: Ted Faro. Not you. The Glitch happened in 2064, Max.” She took the girl’s shoulders. “Not everything is about you.”

“Jesus,” Max said finally. “You really do sound like her.”

Aloy glanced up at the sun. The afternoon was passing quickly. She still had some time before she needed to meet Rost, but this was taking longer than she had hoped it would. She turned back to Max - and her mouth fell open.

Without warning, Max was wearing classic Nora clothes: a simple stitched jerkin and pants, decorated simply but elegantly with bits of machine armor, and a looped necklace of blue and red wires. They weren’t a perfect fit, but they would easily pass inspection by any casual onlooker. She even had some blue face paint. The only weapon she had was a simple belt knife, but that was appropriate for anyone not a brave. As Aloy’s brain scrambled to take it in, Max gave her a wry grin. “You should have told me you had to meet Rost, Aloy. Come on, let’s find somewhere for me to hide.”

It still wasn’t easy for her, but getting down proved to be more within Max’s capacity than getting up would have been. Aloy followed, still trying to process what had just happened. When she dropped the last bit down to the mountainside next to Max, Aloy let out a rueful laugh. “Okay,” she said, “I might have ‘freaked’ just a little there.”

Max laughed. Actually, it was more like a giggle, and it made her seem even younger than she was. Although come to that, Aloy wasn’t really sure how old Max really was, even setting aside the thousand-year time jump. Physically, they actually seemed to be the same age, despite the way Aloy kept thinking of her as a girl. She needed to stop that. And as for mentally… with all the rewinds, that seemed nearly impossible to guess. Older than she looked, for certain.

“Your scar is gone,” Max said casually as they reached the nearest road. She looked a bit out of breath, and Aloy wished she had the override so she could find them a Strider to ride. The gi- the other woman was definitely not used to getting around the way people did these days. The “cars” and “trucks” her diary had described sounded fascinating. Maybe that was what the covered cart-like machines Aloy often found in ruins like Devil’s Grief were?

“What scar?” she asked absently, glancing up and down the road, making sure there weren’t any Nora too close. She didn’t want to test Max’s disguise just yet.

“The one on your neck that Helis gave you.”

Aloy froze. Slowly, she turned to stare at Max, who was giving her a very searching look. After a moment, Aloy broke the staring contest and sighed. “Max,” she said with a small shake of her head, “you don’t have to keep testing me. I told you already that I’m not going to turn on you. If I already told you about Helis, then you must know why I know what you’re dealing with, at least to some degree. And don’t rewind this!” she added, grabbing Max’s right forearm. “I’m not angry with you. Just… relax, okay? Right at this moment, we’re the best allies the other one could have.”

Max looked down, seeming a bit abashed, and lowered her hand. After they had walked on for maybe a minute or so, she asked, perhaps a touch peevishly, “Allies for what? I don’t know what I’m trying to do that I would need an ally for.”

That caught Aloy off guard. She turned to look back at the other woman, who had paused to get a small stone out of her boot. “You don’t know why you’re here?”

Pulling the boot back on, Max let out a frustrated breath. “Not… really, no. I think I know what I was doing that got me here, but I don’t know what went wrong. And I certainly wasn’t trying to get here.”

Frowning, Aloy asked, “Then why haven’t you left? Gone back to 2022 or whenever?”

“I tried, remember? It didn’t work!”

“I thought you were trying to go to 2064! You mean… you can’t go back at all?”

Max stopped again, and this time it was very clearly not for a stone. In a distant monotone, she explained, “No. I have to have a memory of the time I’m trying to go to. I can’t - I shouldn’t be able to go to any time past 2022. I was trying to pull up my… last memory before I made the jump that landed me here. The memory’s not gone, but when I try to focus on it… it feels like my head is on fire. The whole time you were off in Mother’s Cradle getting me these clothes, I was trying to concentrate on the memory, on any memory before I came here, to make the jump, but it just kept getting worse and worse. I… was passed out again when you made it back to me.”

“You’re saying you’re trapped here.”

Max didn’t bother replying, and Aloy reeled. Why isn’t she falling to pieces? she wondered, staring at the other woman. How can she just be quietly following me instead of screaming or raging? Aloy paused on that thought. Maybe she did, then rewound it.

“You… seem to be taking that pretty well,” she said finally, and Max gave a bitter laugh, completely different from the girlish giggle of just a few moments before.

“It doesn’t matter. Here, there, now, then. It’s all the same to me.” She looked into Aloy’s eyes again, and this time the height difference seemed to be no difference at all. “I’m dead no matter where I go.” She pushed past the taller woman, moving on up the path with a grim determination, and Aloy stared after her before giving herself a shake and hurrying to catch up.

Chapter 4: Sublimation

Chapter Text

They reached Aloy’s chosen hiding spot a short while later, though Aloy had had to regain the lead so she could steer Max the proper direction. Max’s sudden dark mood had lightened up again some by the time they got there, though she was still quiet. Just before they arrived, Aloy told Max to give her a moment; at Max’s nod, she pulled out her bow and slipped into the underbrush. Two Hardpoint Arrows dealt with the Watchers quickly, and she called down the path. “It’s clear, you can come on up.”

Brom’s camp looked as she had expected it to: well-maintained but blood-spattered, a serviceable and fairly secure place for Max to hide out until the morning, as long as she had a strong stomach. Aloy harvested the worthwhile materials from the two machines almost by reflex (it still gave her a little thrill to pull a Watcher Heart in perfect condition, even if they didn’t really compare to the Thunderjaw or Stormbird Hearts she’d claimed) as Max stepped into the clearing. She frowned at the blood, but again she didn’t seem as fazed by it as Aloy might have expected. The machines drew her attention much more strongly.

“These are amazing. Brooke would have loved this,” she muttered, crouching down to look closer. She chuckled again, and this time sounded like she actually meant it. “She was so proud of her drone, but this…”

Aloy finished her work and stood up, dusting herself off. “You should be safe here until the morning,” she said. “I don’t like leaving you alone, but until I figure some things out, I think I need to keep doing the same things I-”

“Aloy,” Max broke in, laughing, “you really do not need to explain that to me.” Aloy colored, but Max sobered up as she looked around. “I’ll be fine. I’ll try to spend some time figuring out what happened to you. And I promise I won’t rewind myself into unconsciousness again." Half to herself, she went on in a mutter, “I bet if I had a fancy Focus thing on my head I could at least listen to some music.”

Not sure if she should believe her, Aloy nevertheless nodded slowly. “I’ve got some things to take care of down in the valley before I meet with Rost. One of them is going to bring me and another woman back here - can you rewind and hide when you see us?” Max waved a wordless assent, still poking around the camp. “Thank you. I’ll be back in the morning.” Aloy pulled out some food and a waterskin, setting them down by the tent before turning to go. She’d only taken a couple of steps, though, before she stopped and turned back.

“Max.” Max looked up at her, eyes unreadable. “When I found you this morning, you were… in bad shape. It might take some time for you to fully recover. You might just need to… heal, I guess… before you can go home.”

There was a pause, then Max let out a long breath and nodded. “Maybe.”

Aloy nodded back, stepped over to give the other woman a reassuring squeeze of the arm, and headed back down the trail.

She headed first to Thok, lying where she remembered him near the riverbank and calling for help. She quickly got the story of Arana and her mother’s spear out of him, refreshing herself on the details, before heading off to rescue the headstrong young would-be hunter. Once Arana was safe, she delayed tracking down the Scrapper that held the missing spear to instead go find Olara, who she knew would be nearby, and agreed to help her find Brom. Rather than deny Brom’s sister the chance to accompany her, knowing that she would do it anyway, Aloy allowed Olara to tag along. As promised, when the two of them reached Brom’s camp, Max was nowhere to be seen. They quickly moved on, and in short order the two siblings were reunited. Then it was off to find that Scrapper and return the missing spear. As he had before, Thok offered to try to upgrade Aloy’s spear, but seemed unable to find anything he could do to improve it. “Don’t worry about it,” Aloy reassured him. “You did it perfectly the first time.” Thok looked completely confused, but Aloy just gave him and Arana a friendly smile and nod before heading toward the eastern overlook.

She discovered as she was collecting Odd Grata’s prayer beads that she had come to resent the old woman far less than she had before. Grata, she now realized, was doing as much as she could within what her beliefs would allow. It wasn’t ideal, but really, what was? She was reminded of the Mournful Namman, pushing past the prejudices of the Sun Temple to try to reach out to those from the other tribes who were suffering. Nobody’s perfect , she thought as she rappelled down from the overlook, but so many people are out there doing the best they can .

She delivered the beads and rabbits to Grata (“All-Mother, truly your generosity is boundless, returning to me that which I had not even asked for! As I count off the years of my devotion to you, let your unending blessings shine down upon your most favored children, those who help others but never ask for anything in return!”), then finally began heading for the northern gate. The sun was low over the western peaks, and by the time she reached the bonfire where Rost waited, twilight was already falling.

She stopped in the shadows beyond the firelight and just looked at him. His eyes, so full of care. The arms that had carried her when she was weak, held her when she was frightened, and guided her through years and years of training. He seemed so solid, so unmovable, a rock as enduring as the mountains themselves. No one had ever supported her so entirely, had ever loved her so completely, as he had. As he did, now. Everything she had become was built on his unbreakable foundation. I can’t lose him , she thought desperately. Not again. But then an image flashed through her mind, a tornado sweeping across water toward a defenseless village. She knew all the details were wrong, filled in from her own world rather than from Max’s, but the terror was real. And I can’t rewind if I screw this up. Oh, Rost, what should I do?

She couldn’t ask him, though. Not yet, anyway, not without sealing her course before he even had a chance to answer. Instead, she took a deep breath to steady herself, let it out slowly, then stepped into the light. “Aloy,” he greeted her, and she fought down the urge to hug him again.

“Rost,” she replied, nodding calmly. “I’m here to learn the lesson.” She tilted her head, listening to the explosions beyond the gate, and found herself eager to join the hunt. To get this over with , she admitted to herself. At the same time, though, she found herself wanting the time to stretch out forever, so she did not have to face the prospect of losing him.

Rost gestured to a log opposite him for her to sit. “The lesson will be taught in due time. We must wait until full dark.”

She nodded, stretched, and looked around. For all that she did not want to miss out on any time with him, she knew she was worn out from the day’s many, many events. She needed rest if she was going to hunt safely tonight and think clearly tomorrow. Tomorrow she had to be perfect. No mistakes. “I’ll… get some rest then.”

Rost woke her after midnight, just as she had expected him to, and led her to the gate with a brusque, “Follow.” At the gate proper, Rost gave a sharp whistle, only to be met with long stares from the two guards on either side. Aloy watched Rost get a touch uncertain, one of the few times she’d ever seen such a thing happen, before one nodded slowly. As the gate creaked open, Rost gave the man a nod in return and murmured, “Some reaped honor before disgrace,” and Aloy felt her jaw tighten.

It wasn’t disgrace. It was maybe the most heroic thing I’ve ever heard of anyone doing. You deserve so much more than this, Rost. But she said nothing, only readied her Striker bow and followed him out into the darkness beyond the Embrace.

The hunt itself was anticlimactic, as she’d known it would be. Rost warned her he would not interfere with the hunt - something she was firmly convinced at this point was an absolute lie - but he never had any need. She followed the plan she’d laid out in her mind earlier and the deed was done in less than a minute. It had never come close to landing a blow on her.

She thought Rost was impressed as he approached, but he did his best to hide it. “Aloy,” he said, studying her. “Why did I bring you here?”

For a long time, she didn’t answer. There were so many things she wanted to say, so much she’d come to understand about him, about herself, about her place in the world. Too many were things he couldn’t yet grasp, but finally, she narrowed it down to the essentials.

“You brought me here to show me that being a brave means being willing to stand up for people who can’t. That it’s about sacrifice and pain, knowing that the sacrifices and pain mean something to the rest of the world, and that paying the price is always worth it. That we have to fight against the darkness every moment of every day, because the light is far, far too precious to lose.” Rost’s eyes widened, and he seemed to be at a loss for words. She didn’t wait for him to find them, though. “You’re wrong, though, Rost. You didn’t fail to teach me that lesson. You taught it to me every day with the example you showed me. I could spend a lifetime just telling you all the times you taught it to me. If I become a brave tomorrow morning, it will be because of that lesson more than any other.”

To her astonishment, tears welled up in his eyes. It took him long moments to find his voice, and when he did, it was rough with controlled emotion. “Aloy,” he whispered, just barely loud enough for her to hear. “I am so very, very proud of you.”

And then she did hug him, and when she felt his arms go around her as well, the tears came at last.

*****

They parted at the gate, Rost promising to meet her at the bridge to Mother’s Heart before she went in. As she began to jog down the road back to Brom’s camp, Aloy realized that she hadn’t told Rost about the plan she had originally concocted, to sneak out to his cabin and see him once she was made a brave. Good , she thought. Now he won’t do anything ridiculous like try to run away from me . Except… Suddenly she felt a terrible chill and came to a dead stop in the middle of the path.

She was already changing things.

If she didn’t tell Rost her plan, and he didn’t try to escape her, what did that mean? Was she already too far gone? An image of Mother’s Heart being torn apart by a tornado flashed through her mind. No! I can’t let that happen! She spun around, looking back up the way she’d come for Rost, but he was already gone. With a curse, she turned back and began sprinting toward Brom’s camp.

She found Max sitting on a log, poking idly at the fire and apparently lost in thought. Sitting next to her were the remains of a destroyed Scrapper, one that showed no signs of being harvested. Aloy skidded to a stop in confusion, and Max looked up with a sardonic grin. “How did the hunt go?” she asked, deliberately ignoring the broken machine at her feet.

“What… what happened?” countered Aloy. Max seemed unharmed and in fact was looking increasingly pleased with herself. Kneeling, Aloy looked over the Scrapper more closely. It looked like the connections between the machine’s body and its power cell had been hacked through and the whole thing just torn off. The same thing seemed to have happened to its jaws.

Max giggled, sounding a bit maniacal. She pointed to the Watcher remains at the camp’s edge. “It came for those, I think, and then nearly shot my head off. I barely had enough time to rewind and get out of the way. Then it was just a case of rewinding until I figured out which parts were vulnerable enough to break off with my knife.”

Aloy had to shake herself a couple of times before she could respond. The gir- the woman had taken down a Scrapper with a belt knife ? If she absolutely had to, Aloy thought she might be able to accomplish such a feat, but she didn’t care for the idea in the slightest. Spear-length was the closest she ever wanted to get to an angry machine if she could help it. “I should have warned you,” she said faintly. “Scrappers are drawn to metal. I should have gotten rid of them.”

“It’s fine,” Max waved it away. “I’m fine. Tell me about the hunt.”

“No,” Aloy shook her head. “First I have to ask a question. How do I know if I’m starting something like the tornado at Arcadia Bay? How do I know I’m not going to unleash something terrible for changing things, the way you did?”

For a moment, Max seemed to be looking at something beyond her, something ten thousand paces away, visible only to her. “The way I did,” she whispered, and Aloy felt her stomach twist.

“No, wait, Max, that’s not what I meant-” she tried to explain, but Max cut her off, her gaze abruptly very much here and now.

“You know because I haven’t shown up yet to stop you.”

Aloy blinked.

Of course that would make sense. If Aloy were going to cause some great calamity, Max would rewind to tell her. That she hadn’t meant… But wait, no. That would only be true if Max were going to stay long enough to see the calamity happen. She said as much, and Max just gave a small shrug. “Then I’ll stay until you do what you need to do,” said Max calmly.

For a long time, there was silence but for the sound of birdsong and the crackle of the fire. Neither spoke. Finally, Aloy opened her mouth to say something, and Max looked suddenly both rueful and frustrated. And was sitting at the other end of the log. “You are really stubborn, you know that?”

“What?” asked Aloy, thrown off track.

“Fine. You want to know why I don’t care if I go back? It’s because I have nothing to go back to. I did what I had to do. I saved everybody. And all it cost me was everyone that ever mattered to me.”

Chapter 5: Storm Track

Chapter Text

You said you read my diary up through when I let Chloe die. The story doesn’t stop there. Really, that’s more like the beginning.

She asked me to let her go. Begged me to, told me I was the only one who could make the decision. Me, Max Caulfield, a nerdy photography student who had to decide the fate of hundreds of people. And I’d… I’d already had to kill her once, in that other timeline. She wanted me to do it again.

I could never say no to Chloe.

So I did it. I went back, I hid in that f*cking bathroom, and I let the girl I loved die. David caught Nathan, Nathan confessed to what he was doing with Jefferson, and Jefferson got arrested too. They found the Dark Room. Kate was vindicated, and Victoria was suddenly scrambling to avoid being caught in the blast radius of Nathan’s implosion. Blackwell was turned upside down and a lot of the dirt that had been hiding in the cracks got dumped out. Wells nearly lost his job over his drinking - he only managed to avoid that by pledging to go into treatment. The Vortex Club dissolved.

I had to learn all that later, of course. All I knew at first was that I was sitting up at the lighthouse above an undamaged Arcadia Bay dressed for a funeral. Chloe’s funeral. Welcome back, Max! Don’t get too comfortable.

At least I didn’t have to go to Joyce and David and lie to their faces about how I hadn’t had a chance to reconnect with Chloe before she died. I figured out I’d already talked to them when we saw each other at the graveside. Joyce, of course, was nothing but sweet about it. She’d even given me that box of mementos Chloe had kept of us. I asked if she was going to be okay, and she cried, but said Chloe had been on a path that no one could have changed.

No one, of course, except for me.

So I stood next to Joyce and stared at the box that held what should have been my future. Warren was there, trying his best to be supportive. Victoria showed up, to my great surprise; by that time what Nathan had done to Rachel and the fact that the next binder on Jefferson's shelf in the Dark Room had Victoria’s name on it had gotten out, and I think maybe she realized she and Chloe and Kate had more in common than she knew. Kate said a prayer and then sang. It was lovely.

And then that f*cking butterfly showed up and landed on Chloe's casket and I f*cking lost it.

So I went back again. Found another picture and tried to find a way to save Chloe and save the town. I tried so many times, so many different ways. It never worked. It was Chloe or the town. Chloe or the town. Chloe or Warren, and Kate, and Joyce, and Dana, and Victoria, and Ms. Grant, and Samuel, and… and every time I came back from a photo to find Arcadia Bay still there and Chloe still dead, there would be this memory of Chloe at the lighthouse telling me that there were so many other people who were more worth saving than her.

But she was wrong. She was worth more to me than any of them. That was the problem. She always was the one, and it was my own stupid fault for taking so long to see what was right in front of me. Some photographer I am.

So I kept trying, and I kept failing. I even tried just giving up and letting the town die, but that… also didn’t go well. Chloe still didn’t believe she was worth it and I… I wound up losing her anyway. I couldn’t stop that either.

Until I finally realized that I’d been trying to change everything but the real problem. What was the only thing that stayed the same, no matter what I tried? The only thing that was always there, in every version, every time?

Me, obviously. I’d even more or less told myself that from an imaginary booth at the Two Whales, just before I made the decision to sacrifice her the first time. I just hadn’t listened. Not then, anyway.

I was suicidal, of course. I didn’t really recognize it at the time, but in retrospect, it seems pretty self-evident. Still, it didn’t matter. I had one more thing to try, and if it didn’t work, well… I’d finally be able to rest. No more having to decide everyone else’s fate. No more having to choose to let Chloe die. No more choices at all.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sound like heaven.

So I waited until Christmas break and went home to see my parents in Seattle. I asked Mom to get out the family albums and I flipped through them until I found my 5th birthday party. I’d just started kindergarten, but I wouldn’t really be allowed to play with the older kids at school until first grade. Which was when I met Chloe. So my fifth birthday was perfect.

I went through the photo. Dad was there, lowering his camera, smiling. The party was at one of the local parks - my parents had gambled on good weather for an early fall day in Oregon, but it had paid off - and a couple other parents from our neighborhood were talking to Mom while their kids played. Dad scooped me up and set me down at the little pavilion they’d rented for the food and cake, then turned to call for Mom. I took the opportunity and ran, using my rewind to get as far as I could toward the park edge. I’d almost reached the white space at the border of the memory when I got where I was going: the busiest street I could get to. I watched the cars, rewound until I had just the right moment, and stepped into the traffic.

Just before the car hit me, I saw the world begin to bubble and curl up around the edges the way it always did when my time in a picture was ending. And then I was back. It was Christmas Eve 2013 and I was in Seattle. But my parents didn’t live there. After I died in a car accident on my fifth birthday, they moved to South Carolina. Eventually they had two more kids, both boys. I never met them.

I ran to the nearest library and Googled the Arcadia news. The headline of the Arcadia Bay Beacon was about how the Bigfoots had lost a close game for the Oregon state championship in their league. Then I searched for Chloe. I found her Facebook page, where she’d posted a picture of herself and her family looking at Christmas lights the night before.

I did it. Everybody lived. Everybody except me.

My powers changed a whole lot when I was suddenly supposed to be dead. I think I got… “unstuck,” I guess, like that guy from Slaughterhouse-Five. I stopped being able to travel through pictures into myself. Instead, it was closer to how my rewind works, but just… more. I could just picture a memory and go to it, always appearing as my normal self. My normal, eighteen-year-old self. Yeah, that part was especially weird when I finally realized it. I stopped aging that day. I’ve been “eighteen” for eight years now.

I also figured out I could make changes without causing any kind of supernatural disasters… as long they didn’t bring me directly into contact with Chloe. Any time I tried to interact with her, put myself into her life somehow, even just talk to her, less than a week later an apocalypse would happen if I didn't rewind it. It was like the universe was giving me a direct middle finger. Oh yes, it definitely sucked.

Everyone else was fair game, though, and I used it. Mark Jefferson was killed in an "apparent mugging" the same day he arrived in Arcadia Bay. The sordid details of Sean Prescott’s financial misdeeds were leaked to the Beacon. I even got Nathan and David into treatment programs. William survived, though not because of anything I did; I guess me not being there for pancakes that morning changed things enough that the accident didn’t happen. I did let the air out of the tires of an asshole's SUV to make sure he didn't come anywhere near Chloe’s car, though.

This Chloe was an A student at Blackwell. She and Rachel Amber had a brief but super intense affair that ended when Rachel cheated on her with Frank. I guess that was never meant to last, no matter the timeline, but at least Rachel was alive. This time, though, Chloe had friends and two living parents to support her through it. She even joined the Vortex Club, if you can believe that, though she left it after her breakup with Rachel.

And I watched it all from the shadows of time, like the world’s creepiest Facebook stalker.

Eventually, though, it seemed like I had made all the changes that mattered, and I was reduced to interfering in stuff that was just petty. Like trying to get Warren’s head out of his ass so he’d hook up with Brooke, something I never pulled off, by the way. But it was small-time. And Chloe was still out of my reach.

So I... tried to move on. I’d saved Chloe and saved Arcadia Bay, so my work here is done, right? Super Max could hang up her cape. I left Arcadia Bay, used my rewinds to get a fake identity, and moved to San Francisco. I got my GED. I got into Berkeley, then rewound my way through a scholarship interview so I could pay for it. I got a job as a barista, because I thought it would be bohemian and artsy, but it was just terrible. Customer service is the absolute worst, but I put up with it because I was trying for a normal life. I made some friends. I still had the memory of winning the “Everyday Hero” contest and all the nice things people had said to me when I was at the Zeitgeist, and that gave me the confidence to submit some of my pieces to the galleries in the Bay Area.

I thought I was doing okay. But then I found out Chloe was getting married.

Part of trying to "move on" had involved me dating. It was a very mixed bag. I used to be really uncertain and shy around people I was interested in, but with rewind… The kind of creepy truth is that I could rewind my way into just about anybody’s bed. If I wanted somebody enough to do it, I could find out who they were looking for and basically be that person, at least for a night. But it isn’t worth it. It just makes you feel like sh*t. You can’t really have a relationship that way, and besides, I couldn’t stop comparing them to Chloe.

I could have anybody I wanted except the person I actually wanted.

It definitely felt like a big “f*ck you” from Destiny. And Jesus, the lure of forbidden fruit… of course I couldn’t actually get over her. I never really even stood a chance.

This was in 2017. I was starting my final year at Berkeley, and I was trying to put together enough photos for a show as part of my senior project. By this time I’d pretty much given up on dating, because high schooler drama when you’re a senior in college is absolutely fingernails-on-chalkboard, and dating people in their twenties when you look like you’re barely eighteen has increasingly high odds of getting kinda… skeevy. It was only going to get worse as I got older, I knew. Instead, I tried throwing myself into my art, and for the most part, it was working. But then one night I got drunk and I made some poor life choices. Specifically, checking in on Chloe.

She’d also moved to California, but thankfully for my sanity, she was in the Sacramento area, not San Francisco. She was going to vet school at UC Davis, and she’d been doing as well there as she had at Blackwell. All that I already knew, because this wasn’t the first time I’d stalked her. What was new was that she was engaged.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to go to the wedding. Don’t… ask me how I managed it. I’m not proud of it.

But go I did, and it was one of the worst days of my life. She was so beautiful. She was so happy. She was so in love with this guy. I’d thought it would be hard to see her with Rachel, and it was, but this was so much worse. With Rachel, I’d been kind of prepared. I’d already known how important Rachel had been to Chloe, so I was braced for it.

This? This came out of nowhere. What was even worse was that he seemed like a genuinely decent guy and oh, how I hated him all the more for it. It was just so f*cking unfair.

The next few months were pretty bad. I went on a bender that would have made the entire Vortex Club call for an intervention. I nearly lost my scholarship, nearly flunked out of school entirely. I spent whole weeks either high or locked in my room or both and had to jump back to get my projects turned in on time. By the time I did graduate, I wasn’t even sure I cared anymore.

I wanted to disappear, so I did. The day after I got my diploma, I quit my job, sold almost everything I owned, and put a down payment on a not-terrible RV. I remembered that time Chloe and I daydreamed about stealing Frank’s RV and driving down to Big Sur, and I wanted to just vanish with her ghost in the passenger seat.

The first place I went was Vegas, where I rewound my way through several casinos and I-don’t-know-how-many craps games until I had the money I needed. It took a little bit to figure out how often I could win before they threw me out. Then I just started… driving. For a while, weeks maybe, that was all I did: just drive wherever my whims took me. I didn’t know if I was looking for something or running from it, but I just couldn’t seem to stop moving. Eventually, though, I realized I still had things I needed to say with my photography. As I traveled, I kept shooting, and then faster than I would have thought possible, I had a book. It was a sprawling, ugly portrait of my heartbreak, a selfie on the grandest scale I could manage, but it felt real, and it actually sold.

And that’s weirdly how, a few years later, I wound up “meeting” Kate Marsh.

Kate was a children’s book author with the same publisher, and we ran into each other at a PR event in New York. She had no idea who I was, of course, beyond a slightly-famous photographer, but it was easy enough for me to tell her that I was a huge fan and strike up a conversation, especially since I really was. Her art was so much like I remembered it from Blackwell that it made me ache, but seeing Kate was more than enough to wipe the ache away. She was married, and seemingly thrilled about it, gushing constantly over her “sweet Steven,” who I quickly gathered was a youth minister at the church they both attended. Despite my own sense of being directly crapped on by the universe, I was also somehow touched by her faith, and after talking to her for what seemed like hours, I felt better than I had since before leaving Berkeley. It was really really good to know that this was a relationship I could actually keep across timelines. I’d stayed away from everyone at Blackwell once I’d left Arcadia Bay, since I was trying to put it behind me, but after meeting Kate, I started wondering if that was still a good idea.

Then she excused herself to take a phone call. When she came back, she explained she had a high school friend in California who had just lost her husband, and somehow, somehow, I just knew.

Yeah, logically, it had no business being Chloe. It should have just been one more demonstration that Chloe was still - always - somewhere in my mind. The coincidence was too much. Chloe and Kate hadn’t really even been friends at Blackwell, even though I knew they’d attended it together for a year. It didn’t matter a bit. There was this rock-solid certainty that had just coalesced in my mind. I started rewinding through the conversation, trying to confirm what my instincts were already telling me, and sure enough, after a few tries, I learned the story from her.

Chloe’s husband Neil was an entertainment lawyer in LA, and somehow Chloe had mentioned that she’d been casual acquaintances with a girl at Blackwell who was a successful children’s author. This personal connection had turned into an offer to buy film, TV, and streaming rights, and Neil was the liaison between the production company and Kate. Four days before at the event in New York, Neil’s private jet went down near the Oregon border while en route to a meeting with her. There were no survivors. According to the obituary I found online later, Neil was survived by his wife… and a two-year-old daughter.

I hadn’t had any idea she’d had a child.

I couldn’t help but immediately think of William and how much losing her father had cost Chloe. This Chloe hadn’t had that trauma, but now her daughter would. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

But I knew I had to see her. See them both. I just… had to.

I still don’t really know why.

But I got in the much-newer RV I was driving by then and went to LA. My plan was to just casually “bump into” them when they were out somewhere, stay just long enough to see them both, and then rewind it away. The part of me that was saying I was acting like as bad a junkie as Nathan Prescott ever had I told very firmly to shut up.

At first it worked like a charm. I found them at a Starbucks, Chloe stopping for a coffee with a young girl balanced on her hip like the most cliché mother image ever. It was sweet, but she was grieving too. She looked more like the Chloe I’d known when all this started than she ever had in this timeline, harder and more closed off. She’d even dyed a blue streak into her hair. Every time she looked at her little girl, though, all the hardness melted away again. Her daughter’s hair was already the same orange red that Chloe’s was, but her eyes were hazel. I guess she got them from her father. I... I couldn’t take my eyes off of the two of them.

I walked past their table, stopped, turned around, and told her I really liked her boots. She said thanks, and I made a little bit of small talk while trying not to make it obvious how hard I was staring at her. Instead, I alternated between drinking her in with my eyes and being utterly charmed by her amazing little girl. My heart felt like it was being drowned in frozen lava and swallowed by a fiery glacier. I never wanted it to end.

Finally, though, I knew I had to go. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave her, and I felt an incredible sense of protectiveness toward her daughter. I knew how dangerous staying would be, but my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces when I started to rewind.

Except that’s not what happened. Instead, it felt like my brain was being vaporized and my body ripped to shreds, and then I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was waking up with you standing over me.

Chapter 6: Updraft

Chapter Text

Aloy was quiet for several long moments, taking in everything Max had told her. Max seemed not to know if she wanted to be looking into the fire or watching Aloy’s expression; her gaze kept jerking from one to the other and back again. Just as the tension felt like it was about to snap, Aloy said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Max stared. “That’s it?”

It was definitely not “it” ( She actually killed herself to get free of the destructive loop? How desperate was she by then? ) but she thought she’d understood enough of the story to grasp why Max felt like going back to her time wasn’t a priority, and she didn’t have any intention of putting Max through any more talking about it. So she replied, as sympathetically as possible, “That sounded like you had to do some incredibly hard things and make some very painful decisions, and I don’t know enough about your time or your life then to dare to make any kind of judgments or comparisons to where you are now. So yes, ‘okay.’ If you are expecting me to criticize you, Max, I’m just going to have to disappoint you.”

Max was still staring, but flickers of something like relief began to appear in her eyes. As soon as they started to spread to the rest of her face, Aloy frowned slightly and said, “Although, there is one thing I just can’t understand.” Instantly, Max paled again, her whole body tense as though expecting a blow. Aloy tilted her head to one side and asked, “What’s a ‘Facebook?’”

For a long, long moment, the two women just looked at one another. Aloy let a tiny grin slip onto her face. Max saw it, her eyes got even wider, and then she started to chuckle. In moments, she had almost fallen off her log laughing.

Aloy walked around the fire, sitting down next to Max and helping to steady her. The question had been honest as far as it went, but right then, she thought Max needed the break from her memories more. “Look,” she said, “eventually I really am going to have a lot of questions about your time and your culture. I’ve spent most of my life living in the shadow of your civilization and I only barely comprehend the tiny fragments I’ve learned of it, so I will definitely be quizzing you at some point. For right now, though, let me just say thank you for telling me all that. I appreciate it. I know it couldn’t have been easy.” Experimentally, she put an arm around the smaller woman and gave her a quick hug. It felt weird, but nice. Max’s smile back at her made it worth it.

“Do you still want to hear about the hunt? It’s going to be a boring story.”

“I want to hear every detail.”

Storytelling wasn’t really Aloy’s strong suit, but she did her best, and Max seemed genuinely interested. For a moment Aloy felt a pang, thinking about Gildun’s boisterous and, ah, inventive recitation of the events of their delve at the Greycatch, remembering how Talanah had told a rapt Hunting Lodge crowd about the defeat of Redmaw. She missed them both, and so many other people she’d met on her travels. Even knowing that the chance to meet them again still lay in her future, she couldn’t help wishing she had them with her now.

At least Max was a good audience. Despite having had to dredge up so many details from her past, Max seemed to be in general in a better mood than she had the day before, and Aloy found herself really enjoying Max’s attention. Once the story was over she asked Aloy to let her watch as the brave harvested the Scrapper, and that too she seemed truly invested in.

“This is all so strange,” said Max, running her hand along the Scrapper’s flank. “It’s something out of a sci fi movie. To think that these are all over the planet, trying to fix the environment. It’s incredible.”

“What’s strange to me,” replied Aloy, tucking away the lens she’d collected, “is that it’s strange to you. I’ve always assumed that the Old Ones were just used to seeing machines everywhere.”

“Maybe by the time of the… what did you call it? The ‘Claw-Back?’ Cheerful name. Maybe by the time of the Claw-Back they were, but in my time? Totally not. They were still trying to get self-driving cars to work right.”

“Max…” Aloy began, “are you sure you want to commit to staying with me until this is done?”

“You told me the stakes,” Max said, straightening up. “How can I not help?”

It was something very close to what Aloy might have said if their positions were reversed. She couldn’t really argue with it. “Then we need to plan about tonight. If you’re right that you not returning to this time means I can safely make changes to it, then I think I know how I want to proceed. The key to avoiding the Proving Massacre is to keep Olin from seeing me. As long as that doesn’t happen, HADES won't learn about me and will have no reason to send the Eclipse against the Nora. I’m pretty sure that I know where the attackers came from; they’re either in the mountains above Devil’s Thirst or at the Ring of Metal in Devil's Grief, or more likely both. That’s the only way they could have gotten here as fast as they did. Once I’m made a brave, I think I can convince War-Chief Sona to lead an attack against them and we can wipe them out in the Sacred Lands. Helis should be at one of the two, and I will deal with him myself.” Aloy realized she was gripping her spear with white-knuckled fingers, and slowly forced herself to relax them.

Max saw the motion. She put a gentle hand on Aloy’s arm. “I used to really hate violence,” she said quietly. “I was so uncomfortable when Chloe was playing with her guns. But when I finally had a chance at Mark Jefferson... “ She brushed a stray strand of hair away from her cheek. “I killed him. Before that, I hurt him. A lot. I think I rewound it five, maybe six times. It didn’t matter a bit that the man I killed hadn’t done any of the things I was killing him for. I knew what he was.” She let out a breath. “That was one decision I never once regretted.”

“Helis was a monster long before HADES got to him,” replied Aloy. “I hate that I pity him for how his faith was used.”

“It won’t stop you from doing what you have to,” Max said. “That’s not a rewind, I just can already tell that about you.”

“No,” agreed Aloy. “It won’t.” They were both quiet for a moment.

The taller brave was the one to break the silence. “Anyway, the first step in all of that is making sure Olin never sees me tonight. I think I have an idea for how to do that, if you can get inside Mother’s Heart with me…”

*****

Aloy watched Max make her way across the bridge to the gates of Mother’s Heart, where she had a short conversation with one of the guards, who seemed to smile with her and laugh before signaling the gate to open. Aloy tried not to grit her teeth at the difference between that reception and what she knew would be her own. You just let the outlander to put all outlanders to shame into Mother’s Heart without a second thought, but the woman raised within All-Mother’s Embrace itself gets nothing but scorn and abuse. Unbelievable.

Rost was waiting for her near the foot of the bridge, where she’d known he would be. She’d seen Max glance at him on her way past, but Rost merely lowered his eyes the way he always did when there was a non-outcast Nora nearby. Aloy waited a few more minutes, to make sure there was no reason why anyone would associate her with Max or vice versa, before stepping out from the trees and striding up the path to him.

“Are you ready?” he asked her, his gentle eyes searching for any trace of fear he could assuage.

“It’s loud in there,” she said, affecting a nervous laugh. In truth, it wasn’t a stitch on Meridian, but she knew she needed to seem like it was new to her.

“In time you’ll grow accustomed to it, and even grow to love it, as I did, when I was part of the tribe.” Rost placed a hand on her shoulder. “Aloy… this is goodbye. Tomorrow you will be a brave and a part of the Nora, and I will still be an outcast.” Just as he had before, he produced a small carving on a cord, one he'd had her entire life, and offered it to her. She strongly suspected now it had once been his daughter Alana’s necklace, and she could not keep the tears from welling up as she closed her hand around it.

“Thank you, Rost. For everything.” And I will see you in two days’ time, whether you like it or not, she thought fiercely.

His eyes studied her again, then he nodded. She felt him squeeze her arm, the way he always had when she’d done well in some lesson, and then he turned away. She couldn’t have torn her eyes from him if she’d tried.

Only once he’d vanished entirely, swallowed by the forest, did she finally look back up at the gate. “Okay,” she muttered to herself. “Let’s get this over with.”

It was every bit as aggravating the second time. Maybe moreso, because she was so much more confident in her skills, and that made the urge to punch the guard threatening her all the stronger. Still, she kept her temper, waited out the threats until Teersa appeared, and tried not to take too much pleasure in how the feisty High Matriarch dressed the guard down as she ushered Aloy inside.

Last time, Aloy had been nearly overwhelmed by the people, the noise, and the confusion of being told there were both outlanders in the village and a mysterious “old friend” waiting for her. Now, though, she hurried up the path to see Teb again, eager to bask in his quiet, dedicated friendship and loyalty to her.

“Aloy!” he called, and she beamed at him.

“Teb! It’s so good to see you again!”

“You remember me? I thought… it was so long ago. I didn’t know if I should expect…”

“Of course I remember you! You treated me like a human being at a time when I really needed someone to. Thanking me… well, trying to, at any rate, meant more to me than I can say.”

“Wait,” Teb said, half laughing and half embarrassed. “ You saved my life! I’m supposed to be thanking you !”

“Then let’s just call it even between friends,” said Aloy, grinning. “Are you a Stitcher now?”

“I am! Actually, I made you something, as the thanks I tried to give you back then, long overdue.” He produced the same outfit he’d given her last time, and she felt a swell of affection for him. “I hope it fits.”

She knew it would, and wasted no time in trying it on for him. He all but glowed with pride. She wanted to stay and talk more, but she had more business to be about tonight. Instead, she thanked him again and promised to stay in touch before turning toward the road up to the High Matriarchs and the angry crowd yelling at the Carja. After a few steps, Max fell in beside her.

“He’s kinda cute,” she said, giving Teb a glance over her shoulder. “I think he might be into you.”

“Don’t even start with that,” Aloy warned. “Teb is a friend.” Max chuckled to herself.

As they went, Aloy checked in with Karst, reassured him that she didn’t plan to talk about their clandestine transactions, and got his well-wishes for the Proving before moving on. Max kept turning and spinning to take everything in, looking like a child being offered her choice of a dozen different toys. “I wish I could take some pictures without getting burned at the stake,” she muttered, half to herself. “Your people are so fascinating!” They passed a trio of girls singing on a stage, and Max started humming along with them. “God, I miss my guitar.”

In short order they were approaching the mob of people protesting the Carja. Aloy grabbed Max’s arm and pulled her into a gap between two buildings. “Okay, there’s Olin. As soon as Erend starts talking, you…”

“I remember the plan, Aloy. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.” Squaring her shoulders, Max took a breath and then began working through the crowd until she was right behind Olin.

Slowly, Aloy let herself start drifting toward the crowd as well. She wanted to be near enough to the stage to catch Erend’s eye but stay out of Olin’s line of sight.

“It is time to restore our bonds of trade with Meridian!” Teersa was shouting. Boos and angry cries answered her, and only increased when the Radiant Irid replaced her and started trying to read Avad’s apology letter. As the first couple of pieces of fruit started to fly, Aloy felt a sudden surge of anger at the Nora. She couldn’t fault anyone for still being angry over the Red Raids, but the Nora’s xenophobia was just... disgusting. So many people in the world, all of them just trying to live their lives, and the Nora were perfectly happy to condemn every one of them beyond the Sacred Land just for the crime of where they happened to be born. Just as they’d condemned Aloy for the circ*mstances of her birth.

“Hold your fruit!” she heard Erend shout, and turned her attention back to the stage. “Nora faithful, hold your fruit! Now I’m Oseram, not Carja, so I’ll tell it to you straight…”

Across the small plaza, she watched Max step up next to Olin and lean over to whisper to him. He replied, and just a few moments later, she was leading him back down the path they had just come up.

The idea had come to Aloy when Max had mentioned using her rewind to cheat at some kind of betting game to win money for herself. She remembered Erend and even the delver himself describing Olin as a dicer, and that seemed like the best way to draw him off without making it seem like anything was out of the ordinary. She’d given Max some Shards to wager with, and Max had promised her she’d be able to string Olin along as long as it took. So far, it seemed to be working perfectly.

Now that Olin was out of the way, it was safe for her to approach the stage. Erend’s speech was ending, and Irid stepped up to make his second attempt to read out the letter from the Sun-King. She saw Erend glance around, probably looking for Olin, but she gave him a small wave and his eyes locked onto her. With a too-warm smile, he moved to the edge of the stage and hopped down next to her.

“Well hello,” he said, all swaggering bravado. “And just who might you be?”

This part was the least certain of her plan. Dervahl’s designs on Ersa and Meridian didn’t seem to have anything to do with HADES, so she was fairly sure she could work to cut them off without raising any suspicions about her on the part of the rogue AI. The problem had been figuring out a way to warn Erend about the threat to Ersa in a way he would actually believe. Max had been the one with this idea, and none of the other ideas they’d come up with had seemed more likely to work.

“My name is Aloy. Are you Erend?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, surprised. “How’d you know?”

“I was in Hunter’s Gathering two days ago and I met a man there, another Oseram, like you. He gave me some Shards in exchange for a promise to find you here, at the feast, and give you a message.” And let’s hope he doesn’t know enough about the Nora to know how impossible any of that would be for me.

Erend frowned, but nodded slowly. “Okay. What’s the message?”

“‘Dervahl is coming for Ersa. Avoid the Dimmed Bones at any cost.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Erend’s eyes went wide. “Dervahl’s dead. He’s gotta be. Who told this to you? What did he look like?”

Unprepared for the question, Aloy stammered though a description of an Oseram trader she remembered vaguely seeing the last time she’d been at Hunter’s Gathering. “He never told me his name,” she finished awkwardly. “I think he was trying to stay anonymous.”

Fortunately, Erend seemed to be thinking harder about her “message” than about how smoothly she was able to answer his questions. She heard him mutter, “Gotta get back. Marad will know,” before the words became too quiet for her to hear. She felt a thrill of hope and fought to keep it from her face.

Finally he refocused on her. “Thank you,” he said. “You might have done a real good thing here.” He smiled, trying to look winning, and Aloy had to work to keep from rolling her eyes. Erend had become so much less annoying after he finally stopped trying to constantly flirt with her. “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Maybe... let me buy you a drink to say thank you?”

Aloy managed to deflect that offer, but was quite happy to accept his invitation to meet him again in Meridian if she ever found herself out that way. He then excused himself to go look for Olin, and Aloy watched him walk off with a satisfied expression. If he really did tell Marad about her fake message, the canny spymaster of the Sundom would quickly uncover Dervahl’s plot, she had no doubt. It probably meant that Erend would miss out on the sudden maturity his sister’s death had forced on him, but that seemed a small price to pay for keeping Ersa alive.

Having dealt with Erend Vanguardsman as best she could, Aloy next took the chance to speak briefly with Teersa before the Blessing. With her wider perspective on the situation, she found that she wasn’t harboring anything like the same bitterness she’d had when they had first spoken under these circ*mstances. One thing had not changed, however. “I’m going to win tomorrow,” Aloy promised the Matriarch. “And I’m going to demand answers.” They were answers Aloy already had, but winning the right to ask them was key to her plans.

Teersa smiled. “I would expect nothing less.”

They walked down to the Blessing together, and Aloy moved up next to the lantern the Matriarch had prepared for her. She offered Vala a warm smile on her right and shook her head slightly at Bast’s mocking sneer on her left, but quickly dismissed both from her mind as she turned her attention to the lantern. She paused a moment before taking up the flint and metal striker, thinking about what she wanted to say here. Finally she lit the candle, summoning the image of Elisabet to her mind. “From the daughter you never knew, to the mother I never met. I hope you would have been proud of me,” she murmured.

She slipped a hand into her pouch and touched the globe she’d found in Elisabet’s hand as she watched the lantern rise into the twilight sky.

Chapter 7: Cloud Seeding

Chapter Text

Rather than go straight to bed as she had the last time, Aloy decided to let herself enjoy the festival for a while. She talked briefly to Radiant Irid, trying to encourage him to listen more to Mournful Namman; she went to the feast and started trying all the many new foods she'd missed out on before (a few of which she recognized as Carja in origin, presumably as a gesture toward the embassy); she took a couple of turns through the dances, finding the feel of the music and letting it guide her. Unfortunately, too many of the partners who were spun into her path reacted with anger, disgust, or revulsion when she tried to match her steps to theirs, and she quickly gave it up, trying not to let the bitterness consume the good time she was having.

Max appeared by her side again as she finally began making her way toward the lodge assigned to the Proving candidates. The smaller woman was noticeably wobblier than Aloy had seen her last, and she kept trying to skip, although not with great success.

“Are you drunk?” Aloy asked, bemused.

Max tilted her head to one side as though the question had deeper meanings. “I’m pretty sure, yeah,” she said finally. There was a much larger wobble, and Aloy had to grab her before she tripped over a storage crate at the edge of the street. Max eyed the box mistrustfully, then looked back at Aloy. “Thank you,” she said, over-enunciating. She giggled. “Whatever you guys drink around here, it’s hella strong.”

“Why, exactly, did you decide to get drunk?” Aloy whispered fiercely, pulling Max over to a fairly deserted corner next to one of the houses. No one seemed to be paying them any attention, but she pulled Max further into the shadows just to be sure.

“Well, Olin needed to be out of the picture for the whole night, right?” Max replied in a whisper that could have been heard ten paces off. “So I got him drunk. And along the way, I kinda got me drunk. Plus, I’m like a millennium away from everyone I’ve ever known with just my ex-” Abruptly she cut off, jerking upright and backing away from Aloy as though the brave had laid down a tripwire right in her path. Her what? Did she just rewind something?

“That Blessing thing was really pretty,” Max blurted out. “I rewound to watch it and then went back to keep distracting Olin but it was really pretty. And I met Erend. He’s funny and he hit on me and he was not at all subtle about it. They started singing Oseram drinking songs or something. I think maybe some of the Nora were going to start a fight? Ooh, did I miss a bar brawl? I’ve never been in a bar brawl before! I should rewind and find out!”

Aloy took a step back as though battered by the blizzard of words. “Max!” she hissed again. “You have to be quiet!”

“Sorry,” muttered Max, looking abashed. She went to shove her hands in pants pockets that weren’t there, then grunted angrily and settled for tugging on the strap to her satchel instead. “Even in the future nothing has pockets,” she grumbled.

Aloy grimaced, looking around. So far they seemed to still be undiscovered, but that could change at any moment. “You need to sleep this off,” she told Max, trying to keep her anger in check. “Do you know where you’re sleeping?”

“Oh, yeah,” nodded Max emphatically. “There’s a lodge, well a couple lodges really, set aside for visiting Nora from other villages. Someone told me. I had to rewind a couple times but she told me. I think her name was Fia? She’s cute too. All you Nora are cute. Why is everyone cute in the future?”

Aloy took Max’s elbow and steered her out into the street. “Tell me which lodge it is,” she said quietly, and started dragging Max off.

By the time she’d gotten the woman situated and snoring away, she’d completely forgotten about whatever it was Max might have rewound.

*****

Once Max was taken care of, Aloy was long past ready for her own bed. Unfortunately, there were still a couple of obstacles in her way. “Good evening Resh!” she called out with mock enthusiasm as she approached the stairs to the lodge.

The bitter old brave stared at her in shock and fury as she climbed the stairs, stunned that she’d dare address him so. “How do you know-”

Aloy cut him off without breaking stride. “I know you’re still looking for where you’ve left your manners and sense of humor. Have you tried checking up your ass?” Resh goggled, spluttering, and she shoved past him, slamming the door behind her before he could find a response.

That done, it was time for Bast. Here, though, she found her irritation fading as she remembered the Proving Massacre. Resh had never shown her a better side to his nature. Bast, in his last moments, had. As she approached him, he began mocking her, just the way she remembered. “Well, well, look who’s come in from the wilds: the motherless outcast!” he sneered. “Aw, you even try to dress like a real Nora. Not that it fools anyone.”

Aloy waited out his braggadocio with a tired serenity. When he finished, she sighed. “Bast, you’re an insecure, obnoxious, loudmouthed chuff, but you’ve also got courage and skill and I know you’d lay down your life for the Nora without a second’s thought. The tribe is going to need those qualities, and sooner than you probably think. I don’t expect you to like me. I can’t imagine ever liking you. But we’re on the same side here, and I do think I can respect you. So let’s just leave it at that, okay?”

Bast’s mouth dropped open. Aloy nodded as though he’d just agreed with her and turned away, heading toward her bunk. Vala’s eyebrows were near her hairline as she watched Aloy set her gear down near the bed. “Where did that come from?” the War-Chief’s daughter asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bast thrown so entirely off balance.”

“I meant every word,” Aloy answered, turning to Vala. “I’m Aloy.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” Vala grinned. “The competition.” Aloy felt an answering grin appear on her own face as Vala introduced herself and offered her challenge: “I plan to be well-rested when I run you into the ground tomorrow.”

The banter was fun, reassuring. Once again Aloy felt grateful for Vala’s welcoming attitude, along with a new, buzzing hope that she might finally get to learn whether the friendship she’d felt start to take root between them would actually blossom. As she laid back into the bed, Vala leaned up on one elbow of her own bunk and asked, “So. Your first day in Mother’s Heart. What did you think?”

“It’s actually growing on me,” Aloy replied wonderingly. Who would have guessed? Vala smiled and wished her a good night as she lay back down. Finally letting the fatigue in, Aloy was asleep in moments.

The next morning dawned clear and sharply colder, just the way she remembered it. As she stepped out of the lodge with the other Proving candidates, she saw Max among the gathered Nora and gave her a reproachful stare, still displeased by her decision to get drunk during such a delicate phase of their plan. Despite the previous night’s inebriation, though, Max didn’t seem to be having any aftereffects, and she smiled brightly as she worked her way through the crowd to Aloy’s side. “Good luck today,” she said cheerfully. “I have a good feeling about it.” She gave a meaningful wink, and despite her annoyance over last night Aloy couldn’t help smiling back. Max’s smile faded, though, and she caught Aloy’s arm, leaning close to whisper in her ear. “They won’t go for it unless you use your boon. Teersa wants to, but Jezza is too cautious to side against Lansra. If you want to get into the mountain, you can’t help Rost.”

Aloy’s breath caught, and she stared at Max with a mix of shock and frustration. It had only just been over breakfast this morning that she’d had the idea to ask for Rost’s sentence to be commuted as her boon instead of using it to get into All-Mother Mountain. Teersa must have had some kind of plan in case Aloy didn’t actually win the Proving; surely that would still be the case if she won but used her boon for something else. She must have tried it, though, and it hadn’t worked. Max’s expression was pure sympathetic sorrow as the press of the crowd pulled them apart again.

It’s so unjust! To treat him like this after all he did for the Nora! For a moment, Aloy tried to come up with another way to do what she needed to do without actually going into All-Mother Mountain, but nothing came to mind. She needed the door access on the Cradle facility to speak to her or there was no way she’d have the authority to demand and receive the help she was going to need. Fine. His sentence will last a little longer. But if there’s a way to get him back to his people, I am going to find it.

The Proving candidates reached the village edge and left the other Nora behind. Max gave her one last wave, but then the gates closed and only the twenty or so would-be braves and the Proving proctors - including, as before, Resh, much to her disgust - remained to make the trek up the mountainside. Forcing Rost out of her mind, Aloy refocused her attention on the task at hand.

Three arrows launched together at the Blaze canisters mounted on the first Grazer’s back dropped the machine almost as soon as it came into view. Most of the herd was still running past the other candidates while she was kneeling into the snow to collect her trophy. Unlike last time, she just tucked it under her arm and started sprinting onward; to her surprise, though, Bast didn’t seem to have been aiming his bow in her direction in the first place.

Dropping the Grazer as soon as it came into view had been a mistake, she realized. Vala had chosen a nearer one and hadn’t had to run through as much snow to claim her trophy, and even Bast had his in hand before she reached the ladder up to the brave trail. He was right on her heels as they reached the final stretch before the brave trail began, and Vala was actually a few paces ahead of her.

Aloy smiled. She couldn’t have hoped for a better arrangement.

She pretended to stumble, and Bast gave a mocking bark of laughter as he passed her. His eyes were focused on Vala now, clearly having dismissed Aloy as a threat. First Vala and then Bast ran past the old, disused brave trail without a second glance. Grinning like a fox, Aloy suddenly veered and leapt onto the first standing pole leading to the old trail, then onto the second. As it had before, the pole started toppling forward and she leapt clear onto the ledge beyond. Behind her she heard the astonished cries and warnings of the proctor and the shouts of disbelief from the other candidates, but it didn’t matter now. With the poles fallen, crossing to this path was impossible. No one could catch her.

As she ran, she remembered the desperate climb up the Alight to reach HADES, so very like this test. Everything felt like it was moving in circles, looping back on itself, even without time manipulations. She remembered a passage she’d read in the Leaves of the Old Ones, the Carja’s holy book: “As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end; as it was at the end, so shall it be in the new beginning.” Maybe , she thought, but this time some things really will be different.

She reached the final zipline and threw herself onto it, risking a look back as she rode the line down. Vala was 50 or more paces behind her, Bast another 10 or so behind that. It wasn’t even going to be close this time. She reached the end of the line, dropped and rolled, coming smoothly to her feet and beginning the final sprint. With a cry of triumph she slammed the trophy into the altar and smiled up at the Matriarch standing over her. The woman’s face was impassive, but there was a glint in her eye that made Aloy think she was not displeased.

Vala was second and Bast third, just as before. And just as before, Bast immediately accused “the outcast” of cheating.

“An outcast? Win the Proving?” the Matriarch snapped. “Never!” She paused, but then her smile was warm and welcoming. “For she is a brave now. As are you all, as long as you put your trophy on the altar. But it is Aloy, once outcast and now brave, who is first among you.”

For a long moment, Aloy held her breath, waiting for the Fire Arrow that would strike this woman down and signal that all her efforts to change history had failed. It did not come. Instead, Vala gripped her arm and cheered, “You did it!” as behind her, the other newly-raised braves stepped forward to lay their trophies and celebrate their success. Only Bast did not smile, choosing instead to glare relentlessly at her. She returned his look levelly, then deliberately ignored him in favor of congratulating Vala.

One by one they took the zipline back down to Mother’s Heart, where the second day of feasting had already begun. As she started to make her way back to the main stage, where the results of the Proving would be announced, she felt a shock of fear when she saw Erend and Olin in the crowd. Almost as soon as she saw them, though, Max was suddenly just… there, right behind them, and she tugged on their sleeves to get their attention. As they turned to look at her, putting their backs to Aloy, Max gave her a quick thumb’s-up before directing her full attention toward them.

The woman was clever and resourceful. Aloy shook her head in wonder. There was absolutely no way this could have worked without her.

Aloy reached the stage at last and all but stumbled up the stairs to stand behind the three High Matriarchs. The other new braves trailed after her, forming a line across the back of the stage, just as Teersa called for quiet.

“Each of these braves has proved themselves today in the eyes of the Nora and in the eyes of All-Mother!” Jezza shouted to the waiting crowd, her voice strong and resonant despite her years. “Each has earned their place among the warriors of our tribe, to be honored among our heroes! But one has proved herself most of all, demonstrating courage and skill surpassing all her peers. Aloy! Step forward and receive your boon!”

After a quick breath to steady herself, Aloy did so. She saw Erend turn at the mention of her name and smile broadly, but Max still had Olin’s attention, and the Vanguardsman quickly turned back to the conversation as well. Teersa crossed to her, taking one of Aloy’s hands in both of her own. On the far side of the stage, Lansra scowled angrily, but did not dare violate tradition so far as to object. “Aloy,” Teersa said, her voice also pitched to carry to the crowd, “state the boon you desire, that we may grant it to you.”

Here goes. “Take me into All-Mother Mountain,” Aloy called loudly. “It is time for me to meet my mother.”

Chapter 8: Superior Mirage

Chapter Text

Gasps and shouts of surprise, even anger, burst out of the watching Nora. Olin and Erend, still on the crowd’s fringe with Max, started to turn at the sound, but suddenly Max had her hands on both sides of Erend’s head and was pulling him down for a very deep and thorough kiss. Olin’s eyes widened in shock and he turned away, clearly embarrassed by the display. Erend seemed taken by surprise as well, but nothing about his body language suggested he was upset by this turn of events.

Aloy felt an entirely unexpected and unwelcome stab of something that felt a lot like jealousy go through her. Don’t be ridiculous! she scolded herself. Erend is just a friend! He can kiss whoever he wants. The thought didn’t seem to do anything for her suddenly-churning stomach, though.

Fortunately, Lansra quickly provided an excellent distraction. “Impossible!” she snarled, shoving past Teersa to glower at Aloy. “We will never risk exposing All-Mother to your… depredations! Sisters! We cannot allow this!”

“She has the right!” responded Teersa at once, stepping up to meet Lansra glare for glare. “Earned through victory as in every Proving that has come before! Would you truly risk breaking tradition over your unfounded fears?”

Both turned to look at Jezza, who frowned back at both of them, and at Aloy as well for good measure. Her mouth twisted as though she’d tasted something exceptionally bitter, but then she sighed and nodded. “She has the right, Lansra. You know the law.” A new buzz of speculation swept through the crowd as people began to realize the High Matriarchs weren’t disputing what she’d said about her mother.

Lansra hissed in frustration, and Aloy repressed a smile of triumph. Dislike her though she did, there was no need to antagonize the woman. Instead, she just bowed her head slightly in acceptance of the Matriarch’s decision. “With your permission, then, I’ll meet you in Mother’s Watch this afternoon?”

Teersa, however, lacked any such reservations with regard to Lansra’s feelings. She beamed excitedly. “Yes, yes! This afternoon!” Jezza nodded again, though more slowly.

There were a few more words to the crowd, and then the Proving was officially concluded. The instant the last of the formalities were done, Lansra stalked off, glaring everywhere but at Aloy. Aloy she simply pretended was not there at all. As the new braves headed down the stairs, Vala caught up with Aloy, eyes wide. “Aloy! Why did you say your mother is in All-Mother Mountain? Is she a Matriarch?”

Aloy stopped, then pulled Vala off to one side to let the rest of the braves pass. Not all did, though. She saw a few, Bast among them, loitering close enough to eavesdrop. So be it, she thought. They’re all going to hear it soon enough. “No. She’s not a Matriarch. My mother is within the mountain itself, inside the womb of All-Mother.”

There were more gasps, and all the loitering braves stopped pretending to not listen. Vala was staring in open shock. “Are you saying that… All-Mother…” she started, but seemed unable to finish.

“No,” Aloy said firmly. “Not All-Mother. One of her… servants, I suppose you might say.” That’s as good a description of an artificial womb as any, I suppose. She took a deep breath. She was setting herself up for the “Anointed of the Nora” role again, and this time entirely on purpose. It grated on her, but it had to be done. “I believe All-Mother does have a message for me, though. That’s why I have to go into the mountain.”

Vala’s eyes sparkled with excitement. Apparently, “daughter of All-Mother’s servant” was much more palatable to her than “daughter of All-Mother.” As far as Aloy was concerned, that was all to the good. She’d already had more than enough near-worship from Vala’s brother. “This is incredible,” said Vala, almost bouncing on her toes. “I have to go to Mother’s Watch now. There is no way I am going to miss this.” Behind her, Bast was staring at Aloy, and Aloy couldn’t tell if the expression was one of fear or anger. As soon as their gazes met, he spun on his heel and began heading down the street toward the village gate.

“Great,” Aloy told Vala. Through the now-thinning crowd, she saw Max watching their group, with Olin and Erend nowhere in sight. “I’ll see you there. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She clapped Vala on the shoulder and received the same in return, then made her way to Max.

“Congratulations,” Max said, smiling. “I knew you could do it.”

“Thank you,” replied Aloy, a bit frostily. “I saw you weren’t having any trouble getting to know our local Oseram.” She started making her way toward the gate as well, leaving Max scrambling to catch up. When she did, she gave Aloy a puzzled look.

“I thought I was supposed to be keeping Olin distracted from you?”

“How does ‘distract Olin’ translate to ‘kiss Erend in the middle of the street?’”

Max was still having to hurry to match Aloy’s longer stride. “Trust me,” she said, “it wasn’t my first choice. It was just the choice that worked.” She laughed, sounding a bit disbelieving. “How is it that I have yet to see anyone with an undercut but muttonchops survived the actual end of the world?”

Aloy made a face. “Are you going to see him again?” she asked, trying to keep her tone steady.

“What? No,” blinked Max. “I was just… wait a second. Are you jealous?”

Aloy opened her mouth to deny it, but then sighed, slowing her pace to let Max keep up. “I am being ridiculous. I apologize, Max. I’m getting mad at you for helping me just the way you promised you would.”

Max was studying her profile as they walked. They were out of the village proper now, and had started down the road leading to Mother’s Watch. The road was quite busy, Aloy noticed. Apparently Vala wasn’t the only one who wanted to see what happened when she came out of All-Mother Mountain. “Aloy,” Max said slowly. “I didn’t really think you had any interest in Erend, based on how you talked about him.”

“I don’t,” Aloy said, frustrated. “I don’t even know why I’m reacting like this. I’m sorry.” Max didn’t reply, continuing to just frown at her speculatively.

More than ready to change the topic, Aloy cleared her throat. “Yesterday you mentioned going someplace called ‘Vegas.’ Was that Las Vegas, maybe?” she asked.

Max blinked. “Yeah,” she replied, surprised. “I didn’t think you guys still remembered any of the city names from my time. Well, I guess you knew about Colorado Springs, and I think I remember you mentioning Denver at one point too… Is there one of those, um, Vantages there?”

“No,” Aloy shook her head. “I’m pretty sure Bashar never made it out that far. But I’ve been there. There was a sign in the ruins, and my Focus could still read it. Diamond-shaped. It said ‘Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.’ I think it used to be legible to everybody, because the nomads I encountered in the desert called it Lasvega.”

Max frowned. “You never mentioned that before,” she said quietly.

Aloy frowned too. I guess I didn’t tell her about finding Elisabet. She pondered it for a moment, but found she could handle talking about it. “After the Battle of the Alight, I went looking for Elisabet. She’d told the other Alphas that she wanted to go home, and I’d already learned that ‘home’ for her meant a place called Carson City, Nevada. So I did some research in the Sundom’s libraries and got what I thought was a good lead. It was actually the Las Vegas sign that pointed me in the right direction: I found a book on the Forbidden West that spoke of a ruin believed to have once been called Nevada. Maps and information about the Forbidden West are extremely rare in the Sundom, but there are a few, and I put the pieces together to get a direction. So I headed west, past the Daybrink, and followed the river. It turned out that the Daybrink was an artificial lake, created by an Old Ones dam. I think it was called Lake Powell in your time? Anyway, about a day’s Strider ride past the dam, the river entered the most incredible canyon I’ve ever seen. I have no idea how deep it went - it seemed big enough to swallow All-Mother Mountain with room to spare. And it took an entire day for my Strider to ride its length. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Max was smiling slightly, her gaze unfocused. “We just called it the Grand Canyon. We never came up with a better name for it. I think we would have felt foolish trying.” Her hand went to the satchel at her hip. “I was never much for wilderness photography, but I took some amazing shots there. I think I could have used a 15-dollar disposable and gotten incredible pictures, honestly.”

For some reason, the idea that she and Max had shared the same sense of awe and wonder over the same magnificent piece of the world sent a surge of warmth through Aloy. For a moment, they both basked in their shared yet different memories of the place before Aloy finally continued. “The records said that ‘Nevada’ was beyond the… the Grand Canyon, so I kept following the river until it turned south. I went west instead, and soon found Las Vegas. There was a Tallneck there too, and I was able to use its scan data to find Carson City. It was a few more days north, but I… I finally found Sobeck Ranch. I found Elisabet. She’d made it.” Aloy’s voice caught suddenly, and she coughed. She felt the tears then, welling up, and fell silent until they went away. Max didn’t break the quiet. She only waited.

“The day before I woke up back here, back before the Proving, I buried her between the pine trees outside her house,” finished Aloy at last. She produced the globe and showed it to Max. “She had this with her. I... it seemed right to keep it.”

Max touched the globe lightly with a finger, then slowly drew back. She nodded but seemed not to want to speak. After a moment, Aloy replaced the globe and they continued on, wrapped in their own thoughtful silences.

They reached Mother’s Watch at just about noon, and the village was more full than Aloy had ever seen it. On each of her previous visits the small settlement had been either threatened with assault or had just suffered one, but now it was alive and almost bursting with excitement. A pocket of silence and wide-eyed stares surrounded them as they entered the town, followed by furious conversation as soon as they moved on. Aloy was the focus on most of the attention, but Max received a number of stares as well, if only because they were together. Max didn’t seem to much care for the eyes on her, and she all but dragged Aloy over toward one of the buildings at the edge of the central commons. “How about if I just wait here for you?” she said, hunching her shoulders. Aloy glanced around, but it seemed as good a place as any.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be, but I think it will be quick. The rumors will probably beat me back down, though.”

Max did laugh a little at that, and she nodded. Aloy gave her another one-armed hug, and Max leaned into it a bit, seeming to feel at least a touch better.

Aloy gave Max one last squeeze and then started making her way up the mountain. She took most of the stares with her, which she hoped was more relief to Max. As she started the climb, she discovered she was not alone: several Matriarchs had apparently joined the onlookers as well, and were now following her up the path. None of them were willing to meet her eyes when she glanced at them, but she could feel their weighing looks on her back.

Teersa, Lansra, and Jezza were waiting at the cavern entrance when she approached. Teersa hurried forward and took her arm. “This way, my child, this way,” she said, still excited. Jezza and, with bad grace, Lansra followed, and the other Matriarchs fell in behind them as well. In all, there were more than twenty people in their little procession, and Aloy felt the first twinge of real nerves since the Proving began. As they walked, Teersa leaned closer and whispered, “Rost told you who your mother was, did he? I’m surprised. I would have expected him to keep his oath.”

“He kept his promise,” Aloy whispered back. “It was not Rost who told me. It was… It was All-Mother herself, I suppose, at least as you would see it.” Teersa’s eyes widened with both surprise and confusion, but if anything, it only made her hurry them faster.

In short order, the two of them had come to a stop in front of the Cradle facility door. Teersa let go of her arm then, stepping back to form a line with Jezza and Lansra, while the other Matriarchs stood in a rough semicircle beyond. Teersa gave Aloy an encouraging nod, which she returned before turning to face the door directly.

As expected, the door reacted when she approached, just as it had the first time. “Hold for Identiscan,” said the pleasant mechanical voice, and gasps and cries echoed around the chamber. Aloy heard motion, the rustling of robes, and knew that many, if not all, of the Matriarchs behind her were bowing in supplication.

“All-Mother speaks! All-Mother speaks to her!”

With her Focus on, Aloy watched the door try to compare her to Elisabet. It was interesting, she thought, that the door knew who to try to identify her as, even if it was unable to get the job done. The Alpha Registry file must have been at least somewhat intact. Nonetheless, after a brief pause, the door spoke again, as she’d known it would. “Alpha Registry file corrupted. Identity cannot be confirmed. Access denied.”

There were more sharp breaths behind her. Aloy took a moment to ready herself, then turned back around. As she had expected, she was greeted with the sight of nearly twenty women bowing or prostrating themselves, and only the three High Matriarchs were even willing to look at her. “Aloy!” hissed Teersa, eyes shining with awe and fear, “What does it mean?”

“The Goddess has shown me a vision,” replied Aloy, cringing inside. I have to do this. It’s the only way. I feel… dirty doing it though. “There is corruption in the land, and All-Mother’s sight is clouded. This corruption is linked to what the Carja call the Derangement of the Machines, and its source lies in another Metal Devil, one lairing far to the west of here, beyond the Sacred Land. She has tasked me with seeing this corruption cleansed and the Metal Devil destroyed. In order to do this, I must become a Seeker, as must others that I might name in the future. This is not a task I can do alone; in fact, at some point, all the Nora may need to rise up together and oppose this evil. But I know that the corruption can be cleansed. I know the Metal Devil can be defeated. She has shown that to me as well.”

Chapter 9: Limited Visibility

Chapter Text

She’d honestly expected it to be a lot more difficult than that, but the Matriarchs believed every word. Even Lansra seemed overawed by her, and if it was not quite the cringing abasem*nt she’d displayed after Aloy had come out of the Cradle, it was still enough to make Aloy’s stomach turn. Still, it accomplished the goal: Aloy was made a Seeker without any delay, and the power vested in her to name other Seekers as she saw fit. She wasn’t even sure if that last was actually part of Nora law, but since it served her purposes, she didn’t feel much need to question it.

As it turned out, she’d been right about rumors racing ahead of her down the mountain; by the time she got back to Mother’s Watch, it seemed the whole town knew she was a Seeker. Vala all but pounced on her as she re-entered the village proper, and once again Bast was hovering some distance behind. What had gotten into the man?

“Is it true? Did you get your message from All-Mother? Are you a Seeker now?” Aloy tried to answer, but Vala didn’t seem inclined to let her get any words in. “Someone said you’d promised to make all the braves of the Proving Seekers too. Are we all going to fight the Metal Devil together? Do you know where it is?”

“Vala!” Aloy cut in, half laughing, half shouting. “Give me a chance to say something, will you? Yes, I’m a Seeker, and yes, I have All-Mother’s message.” She paused, studying the other woman, then went on, “And yes, I might be giving Seeker status to some of the other braves from the Proving this morning. I’m still trying to make a plan, though, so that’s all I know right now!” Vala deflated a little, but Aloy could still clearly see the excitement and hope in her eyes. “I do have a question though. Is Sona here?”

Vala’s expression fell, and she glanced away for a moment. “No,” she replied slowly, “I think she’s at Mother’s Rise. That’s where she usually coordinates the defenses since Marea took over Mother’s Crown.”

“She wasn’t at your Proving?” blinked Aloy.

“‘The moment we cease to be vigilant is the moment our enemies will strike,’” Vala quoted in an excellent imitation of her mother’s near-monotone drawl. She shrugged, making a visible effort to seem unconcerned. “Her position is vital to the security of our people. That means we all get to make sacrifices. She missed Varl’s Proving too, so at least I can’t accuse her of playing favorites.”

“Is he with her?” Aloy asked, and Vala gave her a penetrating look.

“Oh, not you too,” she muttered, making a disgusted noise. Aloy frowned in confusion, but Vala went on at a more normal volume, “Yes, my overly-handsome and highly-eligible bachelor brother is probably with her.”

“Oh, Vala, I’m not- I mean, I literally haven’t even met him-” Aloy tried to explain, but Vala waved it off.

“Oh, it’s fine. You’re not the first, and if you happen to be the one he finally picks, at least I like you.”

Over Vala’s shoulder, Aloy saw Bast turn suddenly and disappear into the crowd. She shook her head, still lost as to the man’s behavior. First he can only insult me, and now he just hovers around glowering? Absurd. Well, whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t her biggest concern. “Look, just do me a favor, please,” she said, deciding that keeping on the topic of Varl would only make things worse. “Can you meet me at Mother’s Rise in two days? Bring Bast with you too.” Vala’s eyes sparked with hope again, and Aloy did not dissuade her. Instead, she just excused herself and went looking for Max.

She found Teb first, who congratulated her again and thanked her for wearing the outfit he’d made. She knew it was likely the last time she’d do so for awhile, given that she had much better armor in her supplies, but she’d known it would make him happy. For a moment, she remembered his pale face standing over her after the wall collapsed near the Meridian maizelands, and suddenly felt the urge to give him a hug. “You were my very first friend,” she said into his shoulder as she put her arms around him. “I will never forget that. Thank you so much.”

Teb turned several shades of red and pink before spluttering something about never being so honored. “You’re already a hero of the Nora people,” he protested. “I’m just a Stitcher.”

“Well, you’re my favorite Stitcher, and you’re just going to have to accept it,” she laughed before letting him go.

She finally located Max outside the village, looking up at the remains of the Metal Devil frozen atop All-Mother Mountain. Within the town walls, it seemed like the feasting that should have been taking place at Mother’s Heart had been moved in its entirety to Mother’s Watch, and music and dancing were already starting.

“I think it just hit me,” the shorter woman said as Aloy approached her. “Just how bad the Faro Plague actually was. I think I was treating it like the Arcadia Bay storm or the Seattle tsunami or the earthquake in LA that time. Those are the ends of the world I know, you see? Death and destruction, but only for those in its path. Everywhere else, life went on. But this… there wasn’t anywhere that wasn’t in its path, was there? Everywhere. From all the big cities to the tiniest little flyspeck towns in places no one ever went to, it went everywhere. And life didn’t go on.” She was quiet for a moment, then pointed up at the Metal Devil. “What was that one called?”

“The BOR7 Horus.”

“Right, because ‘Faro.’ Christ, what an egomaniac.” Max shook her head. Aloy gave her a questioning glance, but Max either didn’t see it or didn’t respond to it. “We’re going to stop them coming back, right?”

“I did it once,” Aloy answered firmly. “I can do it again.”

“Aloy,” said Max hesitantly, “I think… I think, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to need to learn how to fight. This is going to be a war, and I can’t just take pictures of it.” Her face was a mix of emotions tumbling over one another, and Aloy could only make out a few of them: fear, disgust, determination. After a moment, she forced a grin and added, “On the plus side, I always kinda wanted to be Katniss, and Alicia Vikander is super hot.”

Aloy took a step closer, putting her hands on the shorter woman’s shoulders. “Max, this won’t just be hunting machines. We’re going to be fighting people, too. Killing them. I wish there were another way, but there won’t be. Not… not the way these people believe.”

“I know,” Max said, grin fading and voice hollow. “I get it.” She looked down at the dirt, then back up into Aloy’s face. For a moment, her eyes reminded Aloy terrifyingly of Nil’s. “I have at least as much blood on my hands as you do, you know.” Her words from the day before echoed in Aloy’s memory. I killed him. Before that, I hurt him. A lot. I think I rewound it five, maybe six times… That was one decision I never once regretted. Aloy shuddered, but nodded.

“Okay then,” she said. “So here’s the plan. Tonight, we enjoy the rest of the festival. You’re not getting drunk or kissing Oseram without me this time. Then tomorrow, we start training, and the day after, we’ll find Sona at Mother’s Rise and start going after the Eclipse.”

Max laughed, and if it sounded a little strained, it was still real mirth. “So you’re saying you want to kiss Oseram with me?”

“Oh, Goddess, Max, really?”

*****

In point of fact, there were no Oseram remaining to be kissed, as the Carja embassy had left that morning, just after the end of the Proving ceremony. Instead, they quickly found Vala and Teb and turned their celebration duo into a foursome. When Aloy first went to introduce Max to the other two, she had a sudden moment of panic about how Max could possibly pass for a Nora, but once again, Max handled it with incredible smoothness.

“Honestly,” she lied, “I’m hardly a Nora at all in some ways. I was born in Mother’s Vigil, but when the Carja destroyed it, my parents and I became more like nomads, just making camp wherever seemed like a good place at the time. I… lost them right at the end of the Red Raids, and wound up at Hunter’s Gathering. This is my first time in the Embrace, and my first time attending any of our festivals. I didn’t even know I could have tried to run in the Proving, though I would never have had a chance against either of you,” she finished humbly. Aloy realized her mouth was hanging open and shut it quickly.

“Oh, All-Mother!” cried Vala, throwing her arms around the smaller woman. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m glad you’ve finally come here to your people’s home, Max. Let’s show you what the Nora have to offer!” Teb nodded emphatically, and Max gave them both a grateful grin.

“Thank you both. It’s really good to feel so welcome.”

A few minutes later, Aloy pulled Max off to the side. “What just happened?”

The grin disappeared like it had never been. “Someone once told me that everybody lies, Aloy. No exceptions,” said Max quietly. “I just happen to have had a lot of practice.” She swallowed her drink in one go, then took Aloy’s hand. “Come on, let’s dance.”

It took some time and a couple more drinks, but Max’s smile returned, and if it was still being faked, Aloy couldn’t tell. In sharp contrast to the night before, this time Aloy had more potential partners for the dances than she knew how to handle, and Teb and Max were both kept busy interceding whenever there were suddenly too many at once. Vala’s attentions were almost as sought-after, and Aloy distinctly heard Max mutter “the belles of the ball” at one point with a mix of amusem*nt and derision. To Aloy’s great shock, Bast danced with her twice, though he never said a word either time.

The food and the music were enough to keep Aloy’s spirits high, so she kept her drinking to a comparative minimum. Vala and Max were not so circ*mspect, and when the time came for them to find somewhere to sleep for the night, it was up to Aloy and Teb to see the other two safely to their bedrolls. Both fell asleep instantly, and Aloy gave Teb a warm hug before she sought her own furs. He had friends in the village with whom he would be staying, but he promised to see them off in the morning.

The colder weather was still hanging on when Aloy crawled out of her tent the next morning. The small tent village that had sprung up just outside Mother’s Watch’s gates was just starting to stir, and Aloy exchanged some friendly greetings with some of the nearby Nora. She traded a few of the spices she’d originally bought in Meridian in her previous timeline for some fresh-caught fish, and had breakfast sizzling on a flat stone when Vala poked her own head out of her tent. “Water first,” Aloy commanded, passing over a skin, “then food.” Vala obeyed, using some to rinse out her mouth with a grimace.

Teb came by a short while later and eventually Max appeared from her tent as well; after a quiet but companionable breakfast, Aloy and Max prepared to depart. “Remember,” Aloy reminded Vala, “Mother’s Rise, tomorrow. We’ll probably arrive toward the afternoon, since we have some things to do here in the Embrace before we leave.” Vala nodded, trying to look alert despite her evident hangover, but Aloy had no doubts she’d be there.

It was mid-morning by the time she and Max reached Rost’s cabin. Aloy had been dreading finding the place abandoned despite not tipping Rost off to her plans, but the smoke drifting up from the chimney at once eased the tension that had been squeezing her heart. She put a finger to her lips to signal Max to stay quiet, then crept up to the front door. After a quick breath to ready herself, she pushed the door open and strode quickly in.

Rost was sitting on one of his stools, mending a pair of leggings. As soon as the door opened he was on his feet and reaching for his spear, but he stopped, seemingly frozen, when he saw Aloy. “Good morning, Rost,” Aloy said calmly, just as she had every morning she’d lived here. “It’s good to see you. Rost, this is my friend Max.” Max stepped over the threshold, looking a touch embarrassed by the obvious tension in the room, but she gamely offered Rost a little wave. “Max, this is Rost, the man who raised me.”

“Hello,” Max said, smile just slightly crooked.

Rost looked apoplectic, his anger with Aloy over her actions warring with the law he so cherished that kept him from speaking to a member of the tribe. His rapidly darkening countenance made her quail inside, but she refused to acknowledge it. Instead, she ushered Max the rest of the way in and closed the door behind her. When she turned back, Rost had still not spoken, but he had turned away to face the wall, and Aloy felt a sudden pain at the rejection.

“Rost,” she said, stepping closer and lowering her voice a little, “I know you want me to embrace the tribe and its ways, and believe me, I am doing my best. But you know how much tribal law has taken from me. It took my chance to have friends or peers growing up, it took my chance to feel respected as… as an actual person. If it takes you from me too, then I truly will have no use for it.” She reached out and laid a hand on his back. He didn’t turn, but he didn’t move away either.

“I know you will keep the law and not speak to me. I accept that. But I’m going to keep speaking to you. This is my compromise, my price for taking up the mantle of a Nora. It’s not negotiable. And before you do anything foolish, it’s too late to try to leave me behind now. I’ve already broken the law, the damage is already done. Leaving would accomplish nothing.”

After far, far too many heartbeats, he turned toward her, and it stung her again when he lowered his eyes rather than look directly at her, just as he always had for any member of the tribe. But he slowly took his place back on his stool and picked up the leggings once more, making such a show of focusing on his work that he might as well have just stared directly at her.

It wasn’t what she wanted, but it was the best she was going to get.

She took her own stool opposite him next to the fire, and found some thick furs for Max to sit on. They’d never had any need for a third place to sit, but Max insisted she was fine on the floor. Once they were arranged, Aloy began telling Rost everything that had happened since she’d awakened the morning of the Sawtooth hunt, and then the highlights of her memories of the previous timeline as well. She left out his death, though. She’d also planned to leave as much of Max’s story out of it as possible, but to her surprise, Max cut in and explained the basics of where and when she was from and what she could do. The sheer ridiculousness of all of it was probably what made Rost finally stop pretending to ignore them, but his disbelieving expression was only a minor improvement.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Aloy finished at last, “and it’s definitely still possible that we’ve both just had some vivid hallucinations. I don’t think that’s the case, though, so tomorrow we plan to make our first strike against the Eclipse near Devil’s Thirst. I’m going to take Max outside and see how much I can teach her about the bow in one afternoon, and then we’ll keep working on her skills as we travel.” It wasn’t a perfect solution, but they didn’t have time to wait. HADES was still out there, moving its plans forward.

Max gave a sudden gasp, and then let out a sob and fell onto her side. Aloy and Rost exchanged shocked glances, then Aloy was kneeling over her friend. There was a ragged wound on her shoulder as though something had taken a bite out of it, and there were gaps in her armor as well. And she was wearing armor: not the simple villager’s clothes she’d had on a moment before, but what looked like a light set of Nora Protector gear. Her eyes were vague and bleary, but as Aloy tried to lift her head, she suddenly focused on Aloy’s face.

“Seventy-two days,” she whispered. “We’ve got seventy-two days.”

Chapter 10: Rain Shadow

Chapter Text

Whatever Rost might have felt about speaking to a member of the tribe, he displayed no hesitation in producing bandages and medicinal plants for treating Max’s shoulder. Max continued to lay on the floor, facing up at the ceiling, her breath coming in sharp gasps every time Rost moved to wipe away some blood or smooth a salve into the wound. Her bright blue eyes remained fixed on Aloy’s though.

“The Faro Swarm. The bots activated, all over everywhere, in less than a minute. I was trying to grab my gear to bring back with me when the door burst open and you came in. You were… most of your left arm was gone, and your face…” she shuddered. “The nanites, the biomass conversion nanites you told me about. They were eating you. Eating us. I couldn’t rewind far enough to get clear of them, they were on us so fast. So I had to just jump.”

Wordlessly, Rost turned the cloth he’d been using to clean the injury toward Aloy for her inspection. His face was a blend of worry and confusion, and Aloy could understand why. Mixed into the blood on the cloth was some kind of strange metallic dust, unlike anything Aloy had ever seen before. “Is that… the nanites?” she asked, showing Max the cloth. Max nodded. She looked more pale than Aloy had seen her since she’d first arrived.

“Why were we at the cabin seventy-two days from now?” Aloy demanded. “We should have been well into the Sundom by then.”

Max gritted her teeth, then started trying to lever herself upright. Rost gently but irresistibly pushed her back down. She threw him a frustrated glare, but surrendered to the inevitable and stopped trying to move. “We were training,” she explained, her eyes meeting Aloy’s again. “You were worried about how much you could teach me in the time we had, and I pointed out we could have basically all the time in the world if I just used my powers. So you agreed to train me for three months and then have me jump back; you said that was the longest you felt you could make yourself wait, even knowing what I could do.” She gave a half-grin, despite the pain. “And I cheated by rewinding a bunch of days along the way to give myself more time to practice. You weren’t a particularly forgiving teacher.”

Rost finished his ministrations, checking the bandage once more and giving a satisfied nod. He still looked uncertain, though. He had to be reconsidering his opinion of their delusional state, but given what they’d said and the wound on Max’s shoulder, no doubt believing them to be sane was exceedingly small comfort.

Now Max did force herself upright, and Aloy allowed it, supporting her as she moved the nearer stool over next to the wall and slumped into it. “Wowser,” Max muttered, half to herself. “Whatever that wild ember stuff is, it’s got some kick.” Aloy knew its pain-numbing properties well, and also knew that too much could make you more than just a bit light-headed. Rost had probably not stinted.

Now that the immediacy of Max’s injury wasn’t drawing her entire attention, Aloy was able to note several minor differences in her friend that hadn’t been there when they’d first entered the cabin. Her arms had clear muscle definition, and her hands bore bowstring and climbing calluses. Even the shape of her face was slightly different, a bit less round. Now that the color was coming back into her face, she seemed to actually be more tanned than she had been, though still fair compared to Aloy or Rost. Max caught her looking and actually blushed slightly. “See, teach?” she said, and let out a small giggle. “I’ve put my time in.”

“When you’re feeling more recovered,” Aloy replied, running her fingers down one of Max’s arms to feel how the muscles there had developed, “you can show me what you’ve learned.”

Max had gone very still. In a voice that was suddenly taut, she said slowly, “That’s… very distracting, Aloy.”

Aloy suddenly realized she’d been grabbing at Max like a merchant testing the haunches of a boar up for sale. She colored too, quickly backing away. “Oh, um, sorry. That was rude. I apologize.” What had she been thinking?

Looking for something else to focus on, she spied the weapons Max had been clutching when she’d fallen over, weapons that, like the armor, hadn't been there moments before. She turned to them and picked them up, scrutinizing each. There were three bows, standard Nora versions of the hunter, sharpshot, and war bows she herself carried. They were the best quality one could find in the Sacred Land, but Aloy knew quite well that the other tribes had much superior versions available. All three had been modified with very high-quality coils, though, and Aloy gave an approving nod. “These are the ones you’ve been training with?” she asked. “Where’s your spear?”

Max replied, “I don’t have one. With only three months to train, you wanted to focus on one fighting style, and you said the Scrapper convinced you I could handle myself with a knife.”

It did make sense. Even three months wasn’t enough to master the bow, let alone the spear as well, and beyond basic physical fitness, the two weapons didn’t have much overlap in how you trained for them. “Did we train every day?” Aloy asked.

“Ohhhh, yes,” Max chuckled softly. “You were kinda relentless.” She lifted her uninjured arm and mimed pulling herself up to a ledge. “I can do five chin-ups now though.”

She glanced at Rost, who was now making some stew over at the fireplace, and lowered her voice. “He never talked to me. Not once in the whole time I was here. But he made us breakfast and dinner every day, and he’d come out to the yard sometimes and correct my form, all without a word. He even made me a stool.” She gave Aloy a small smile. “At first I thought he was just made of stone, but I get it now. I see why you love him so much.”

Aloy turned and looked at him, feeling her heart catch as she remembered how close she had come to losing him. She just gave Max a nod, and Max seemed to know what she was feeling as she nodded back. With a deep breath, she turned her attention to Max’s bandages. “It will be a few days before you are going to be ready to travel, let alone shoot,” Aloy said, frowning.

“Yeah,” Max agreed, “but fortunately for you, you won’t have to wait that long.” She gave Aloy a long, careful stare, and then seemed to flicker. Just like that, her armor was repaired and the injury on her shoulder reduced to a vivid white scar. She spread her hands. “Ta-da!”

Aloy shook her head in wonder.

“I gave it a week,” Max explained, then beamed as Rost approached with the stew. “Oh my God, Rost, you have no idea how much I have come to love your stew. I am definitely leaving the 31st century a 5-star Yelp review.” From the look on Rost’s face, Aloy thought he might suddenly be grateful that he wasn’t allowed to respond to her. Max started digging in, but around a mouthful of stew she added, “Those plants you use for healing are just amazing. It would have taken me three times as long to be this healed back home, easy.”

“Okay then,” Aloy said, nodding firmly. “Eat your stew and then show me what you can do.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Of course,” she grumbled, “that’s always the first thing out of your mouth.”

What she could do was genuinely impressive, Aloy had to admit. Though she didn’t have the strength to match Aloy’s draw on the bow, her accuracy, even on the move, left nothing to be desired. It seemed incredibly unlikely that she’d developed that kind of skill in just 72 days, or even twice that. Watching her shoot, Aloy noticed something she’d missed at first: just before she loosed, Max seemed to… blur… for just a moment. It was a subtle thing that she might have overlooked entirely had she not been watching so carefully.

As Max finished putting three arrows within the palm-wide target of her fifth practice dummy and turned proudly toward her, Aloy put up an eyebrow. “Max,” she asked, “are you using your powers to help you shoot?”

Max just shrugged. “‘Use whatever edge you have,’” she replied. “That’s what you told me. One of those first couple of days, you said something about how time seems to sometimes slow down for you when you’re concentrating on a shot. I realized I could make that happen for real.”

There was no sign of a nosebleed or any head pain that Aloy could see, so whatever she was doing, it clearly wasn’t overtaxing her. “All right,” she said. “This is good. I’m very impressed.” Max looked elated. “I have to admit,” Aloy went on, “I didn’t take you for the type to really relish physical effort.”

“Oh, I hated P.E. like you would not believe,” admitted Max. She colored then, adding after a moment, “You were just really good at motivating me.”

Oh, Aloy thought, looking at the flush in Max’s cheeks. Whatever I did must have been kind of embarrassing, even if it did work.

“Well, I’m sorry if I was rough on you,” she said sympathetically, “but it was necessary, and the results speak for themselves.”

“It’s fine,” mumbled Max. She looked away, and Aloy decided it was time to move the conversation along.

They went back inside and Aloy reported on Max’s success with her training. Rost kept his eyes on the floor, but she knew he’d heard her. “We’re heading out to Mother’s Rise now. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, but I will see you as soon as I can. Take care of yourself, Rost.” She ignored his silence as she stepped closer and gave him another hug, and her heart almost burst when she felt one of his arms go around her as well. “I love you,” she whispered. Knowing she could come back to him now was the only thing that gave her the strength to leave.

Not for the first time, Aloy missed having her override. On a Strider she and Max could have made it to Mother’s Rise by sunset, but on foot, they’d need the rest of the day and most of tomorrow to reach it. Still, she didn’t waste the time, testing Max’s new skills with her bow on the Watchers and Striders they encountered on their way to the northern gate to the Embrace. Her pupil met every challenge successfully, and Aloy didn’t try to hide her pleasure at the fact.

They made camp at the bonfire just inside the gate, the same place she’d met Rost three days before. As they were getting ready for bed, Aloy looked across the fire to Max. “Max…” she said slowly. “Did you see me… die? To the nanites?”

Silence for several heartbeats. “Can we not talk about that?”

It was answer enough. Aloy shook her head to try to clear the image from her mind. It was not easy. “Sorry. Yeah, sure. Can I ask another question then?” There was no reply, which Aloy decided probably meant she could. “I spent 72 days training you,” she began. “That means you and I had 72 days more to get to know each other than, well, you and I have had now.” Talking about this is so confusing, she complained to herself. The language can’t keep up with the weirdness.

“It was 72 days for you,” Max answered warily. “With all the rewinds I did, it was probably more like six months for me.”

“How did we get along? Was me teaching you a problem for our... “ she paused, suddenly feeling awkward at saying it. “...our friendship?” We are friends, right?

“No,” Max said, still guarded. “No, it wasn’t a problem. We got along well.”

Aloy frowned. “Are you sure? You sound hesitant.”

Again Max didn’t reply for a while. She was quiet long enough that Aloy was about to withdraw the question when she finally spoke. “The more time I jump,” said Max in a low voice, “the more things change by the time I get back to where I jumped from. If I set too many expectations, for me or for anybody else, things can go really wrong if those expectations aren’t met. Sometimes, the expectations are themselves the reason why they don’t wind up coming true. I’ve learned through hard experience to treat every timeline I live through as its own separate thing.” She sighed, rolling over to look up at the stars. Aloy did likewise. Brilliant sparks from the fire sailed up and through her line of sight like tiny versions of the Blessing lanterns.

“If I tell you we became as close as sisters,” Max continued, still speaking at a volume just barely loud enough to be heard, “then the first time we have a disagreement - because of course we will, everyone does - you might start thinking I misled you about how close we got. Then you might start thinking you can’t trust me, or that I’ve been manipulating you somehow. In the end we never get a chance to grow together because that growth got short-circuited and taken for granted.” She paused, letting the crackle of the fire fill the silence for several moments. “I had to figure that out the very hard way.”

She could see the truth in it, Aloy admitted. There were never any shortcuts to doing things that mattered. On the other hand, she noted, she didn’t deny that we’re friends at least. “I understand,” said Aloy. “I’m perfectly happy finding out how our friendship turns out the normal way,”

Max looked over at her and smiled, and Aloy smiled back.

For some reason, the last thing she thought about as she fell asleep was the way the firelight had danced in Max’s eyes.

Chapter 11: Cell Formation

Chapter Text

They reached Mother’s Rise in very good time, the sun just barely past its zenith as they stepped through the gate. Aloy was used to seeing the village inhabited mostly by injured braves recovering from the Eclipse attack and subsequent ambush, so seeing it bustling with activity and not filled with the wounded and dying was something of a revelation. Braves seemed to be everywhere, moving alone or in groups of three or four in and out of the gate. It was the first time she’d ever seen more braves than non-warrior Nora in one place. She wondered why the village wasn’t physically bigger, large enough to comfortably hold all these people, but after a few moments she thought she figured it out: almost none of the warriors were actually from here. They were entering the village, speaking to a few people or collecting supplies, then leaving again.

Somewhere in all this activity they had to find Sona. Also, Aloy wanted to track down Yan and let him know she’d be looking for Nakoa as soon as she reached Daytower. That second part was easier: he was on the outcropping looking over the valley where she’d found him before, making his devotions to All-Mother. As she started to guide Max that way, though, Max called out, “Fia!” making Aloy miss a step in surprise.

The young healer in training was indeed making her way through the hubbub of the street toward them, smiling shyly at Max in that quiet, retiring way she had. Fia’s eyes caught Aloy standing next to Max and she slowed just a moment before resuming her approach. “Max,” she greeted Aloy’s companion, “it’s good to see you again. Did you enjoy the rest of the festival?”

“I did,” Max smiled back. “Thank you for being so nice to me and helping me find the lodge. Fia, this is Aloy.”

Fia nodded her head in Aloy’s direction, still smiling. “Of course. Everyone knows who you are, Seeker. Your win at the Proving and going into All-Mother is all anyone’s talking about.”

“It’s, ah, nice to meet you,” Aloy managed.

“Fia,” asked Max, “we’re looking for War-Chief Sona. Is she here?”

Fia indicated one of the houses toward the village’s north end. “Oh yes. It’s only ever this crowded when she’s in town. You should be able to find her there.”

Max thanked her and seemed to be about to leave, but Aloy hastily asked, “Um, Fia? How’s your supply of dreamwillow holding up?”

Fia frowned, politely confused. “It’s fine,” she replied. “My supplier, Jun, brought some just last week. Are you in some kind of pain, Seeker? I’m still learning, but I could…”

Of course. No Proving Massacre meant no War Party, no War Party meant no ambush in the valley below, and no ambush meant Fia had had no need to use the dreamwillow she had on hand. Kurnst and his fellow outcasts might not have felt the need to steal the painkiller out of the caches either. Aloy shook her head. She was starting to lose track of the changes on top of changes. How did Max manage it?

Fia saw the shake of her head and took it for answer. “Very well. It was nice to meet you, Seeker. Max, you’re welcome to stop by any time.” She gave them both courteous nods before turning up the street again.

“How do you know Fia?” Aloy asked, watching her go.

“She was at the festival the night of the Blessing. She said she was in town, visiting her family… her aunt, I think? It seemed like a good way to ask someone about where I could stay, and she told me about the visitor lodges.”

That sounded faintly familiar to Aloy. “You… said she was cute,” she said, pulling up the memory.

Max nodded. “Way too young for me, though.”

Right. Because, physical appearance notwithstanding, Max was actually 26 years old. Probably at least a few years older, accounting for all the rewinds. Fia was just a year or two younger than Aloy herself was, though. Did Max think of her as a child too? Stop overthinking it, she told herself fiercely. Max said you’re friends, and she’s been following your lead. Clearly, she respects you. Stop it.

With Sona’s location established, Aloy headed off to speak to Yan, who reacted much as he had when she first talked with him. His concern for his sister Nakoa was touching, and she assured him she’d locate the determined warrior as soon as she could. Not least because Zaid still deserves her spear in his throat, she added to herself. To her surprise, though, Yan then asked something new. “When you find her,” he said desperately, “would you be willing to make her a Seeker? I heard you’d been given the power to do that. If you do, the Matriarchs would let her come home, wouldn’t they?”

Her first instinct was to say yes at once, that of course she would. But some new part of her, a part that was growing somewhat accustomed to the deceit she was practicing, warned her not to volunteer the promise so glibly. It’s a sacred responsibility to the Nora, that part reminded her. If you’re seen to be taking it too lightly, you might lose the authority you’ve gained. Aloy found herself grinding her teeth at the thought, both that she’d had it and that she knew it was right. She didn’t like this subterfuge. Dealing openly and honestly with people had usually served her well in the past. How had things gotten so complicated?

Max seemed to have some idea what was in her head, as she was giving Aloy a sympathetic look. Everyone lies, Aloy, she’d said in Mother’s Watch. No exceptions.

Clearly, she’d known what she was talking about.

“Nakoa sounds like a determined person,” Aloy said finally. “If I make her a Seeker, I’ll need to use her for the purpose All-Mother has given me. If she agrees, though, it seems like she could be a lot of help, and I’d be happy to make her a Seeker and bring her home with me.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Seeker!” Yan gushed, grabbing her hand. “I know Nakoa could do so much good alongside you. Thank you!”

As they left, Aloy heard Yan begin his prayers again. Max touched her shoulder in reassurance. “You handled that well,” she murmured. “I know this isn’t easy.”

“I hate it,” Aloy replied. Max looked away and didn’t speak again until after they reached Sona’s house.

Hate it or not, Aloy was about to do more of the same. After knocking and receiving a sharp, “Enter,” they pushed the door open and stepped inside. Despite the building’s exterior, it turned out that it wasn’t a residence at all, instead being more a kind of mini-lodge: just one large room with a hearth at the far end, the space filled primarily by small tables and cut-log stools. Most of the seats were unoccupied, but the tables were covered by large painted maps of various sections of the Sacred Land. A few braves were seated and studying them, but most of the room’s inhabitants were clustered around a single, larger table closest to the hearth. There, War-Chief Sona, her traditional scowl firmly in place, was giving terse orders to a handful of listeners, while in the corner behind her, both Vala and Varl were staying clear of the action and speaking quietly to one another. Bast wasn’t in the room, and Aloy wasn’t sure how to feel about that. His presence was always grating, but she’d wanted his bow and spear with her on this task.

Sona seemed to have noticed them, but waited until she had finished what she was saying to the other braves before gesturing them forward. “Seeker,” Sona said by way of greeting. It sounded like she could not possibly believe Aloy had anything to say that would be worth hearing, but Aloy reminded herself firmly that Sona basically never sounded any other way.

“War-Chief,” Aloy said, stepping forward. “I see you’ve heard some of what happened at the Proving.”

“Vala gave me a report,” Sona acknowledged.

Aloy gestured to her companion for introduction. “This is Max. She just traveled south from Hunter’s Gathering to visit the Proving feast, but she’s told me something that I believe to be connected to the task given me by All-Mother. On her way south, she saw bands of outlanders making their way toward the ruins at Devil’s Thirst and Devil’s Grief.”

More “necessary” lies. She felt her stomach churn.

Sona studied her and Max in turn. Max took an involuntary step back under the sharpness of the War-Chief’s gaze. “Do you have any more details?” she asked.

Max swallowed before replying, “They had machines with them. As though they were working together somehow.” Despite her discomfort being the focus of Sona’s attention, her response was unstudied and flawless, with just the right amount of overawed by Sona mixed in. Aloy couldn’t tell if she was faking any of it, and that made her uncomfortable.

“That’s all you have?” Sona demanded, and Aloy nodded. “If true, it is troubling, but that is cursed ground. I cannot take a report with so few solid facts to the Matriarchs and ask for an exception to the taboo for a War Party.”

“I understand,” agreed Aloy. “That’s not my purpose in bringing this to you. As Vala likely told you, I have been granted the power to nominate additional Seekers. I would like to take a small number of braves with me into the ruins to scout the locations and learn what we can.”

For the first time, Sona seemed to have heard something that caught her interest. “I see,” she said consideringly. “How many are you requesting?”

“Vala, Varl, and Bast,” replied Aloy at once. Vala and Varl’s heads both snapped up in surprise, and Sona frowned dangerously. Aloy didn’t give her a chance to object, hurrying on, “I have seen Vala and Bast in action and I know they can do what will be required. Varl’s reputation precedes him, and if you have trained him as well as Vala, then I know he’s up to the challenge as well.”

“I do not care for flattery,” Sona drawled disapprovingly. She turned to look at Vala and Varl, though, and Vala all but vibrated with excitement. Varl was more restrained, but he did not hesitate in stepping forward.

“War-Chief,” he began, “the Seeker has been given a holy task by All-Mother. If she believes we are the braves best suited to aid her, are we not obligated to accept that responsibility?”

“A War-Chief should be grateful for two arrows so eager to spring from the bow,” observed Sona dryly, but she seemed to be mollified. She turned back to Aloy, eyes narrowed, but it only took a moment for her to give a nod. “Very well. Vala, Varl, you are under Aloy’s command as long as you are Seekers. Locate Bast and tell him the same. I expect reports back as soon as you have any information I can use. If there are outlanders within the Sacred Land and they are allied with this new Metal Devil, then we need to deal with them swiftly.”

“Yes, War-Chief,” her children said in chorus, and Aloy was only slightly slower with her own version. Max didn’t say anything at all, and no one questioned it. Seeing no point in delay, and knowing that Sona would see even less, Aloy gathered the others up with her eyes and led the way back out of the building.

A few minutes of questioning in the street determined that Bast had joined one of the hunting parties to gather food and machine resources for the braves assigned to Mother’s Rise. After a moment’s consideration, Aloy headed for the village’s gate, letting the rest follow behind, until she reached the bonfire just beyond the village proper.

“Your mother is kind of terrifying,” Max told Vala in a low voice, though everyone could hear her. “I understand now why you’re such a badass.”

Vala frowned. “What’s a badass?”

“It means someone who has no fear and takes no sh*t. It’s a compliment, I assure you,” replied Max, and Vala gave a slightly confused chuckle.

Aloy, for her part, was studying Varl, who seemed to be looking everywhere but at her. Oh, no, not this again, she thought wearily. “Varl,” she said, “I’m Aloy. I know what your mother said before, but it wasn’t flattery. I didn’t pick you at random. I know you’ve got the abilities and determination we will need to deal with these outlanders.”

“Thank you, Seeker,” Varl replied, but Aloy held up her hand.

“I said, I’m Aloy, Varl.”

“Sorry, yes! Aloy. Yes. Thank you, Aloy. I won’t let you down.”

Vala was watching the exchange with open interest, and all at once she started to laugh. “Oh, All-Mother be merciful! Do you have a crush, Varl?”

“What?” Varl looked horrified. “No! Of course not! I would never- I mean, I would, obviously, you’re amazing, Seeker, but-”

Vala was laughing so hard she was having trouble breathing, and Max looked like she was torn between mortification on Varl’s behalf and joining Vala in her hysterics. Varl himself looked about to panic, and Aloy… Okay, yes, she was irritated with Vala, because this was not the foot she’d wanted to start off on with Varl, but truthfully... Truthfully, she was envious of their interaction. Vala and Varl, Yan and Nakoa, Erend and Ersa… Had they ever felt alone as children? She glanced at Max, thinking of her power. Is there a timeline out there somewhere where Alana is my older sister?

A ridiculous idea. In any world where Alana survived, Rost would not have been an outcast and would not have been chosen to raise her by the Matriarchs. It still made her sad, though. She dismissed the thought and its accompanying emotion quickly: she didn’t have time for that kind of nonsense. Out loud, all she said was, “That’s enough, Vala. Varl, please ignore her.”

Vala sobered up quickly, though Varl still didn’t seem to have much to say. To Aloy’s surprise, Max went over and touched his arm. “The entire tribe knows you’re one of the best braves we have,” she said quietly. “Aloy only picked the best.”

“Thanks,” he replied, and seemed to be recovering his more usual aplomb. Once again, Max to the rescue. Varl looked at Aloy then, squaring his shoulders. “I meant what I said too, Aloy. I will not let you down.” He gave a glare of murderous fury at his sister, though, and she just smiled brightly back at him.

Aloy took the opportunity to lean closer to Max and whisper, “Thank you. That was very well done.”

Max shrugged. “I felt sorry for him,” she whispered back. “I mean, sure, he’s got a crush, but really: who can blame him?”

Aloy discovered she didn’t really know what to say to that.

Chapter 12: Heat Haze

Chapter Text

Bast appeared a short while later, carrying a pair of boars tied on each end of a pole over his shoulders. As soon as he saw them waiting outside the gates, he handed off his burden to one of the other braves and headed toward their little group, though he scowled as he did it.

“Bast,” Aloy greeted him. “I’m glad you’re here. We’re ready to set out. I’m making you, Varl, Vala, and Max Seekers, and by Sona’s orders, you’re all under my command until we finish at least this first task.”

Bast paused briefly, but gave a curt nod. “I’m with you,” he said shortly. Brusque as the words were, they sounded sincere, and didn’t seem to be carrying any of the acid he’d always spat at her before. Well, a lot less, at any rate. Aloy decided it was probably as good as she was likely to get.

She formally introduced Max to Bast and Varl, adding in the story of her life in Hunter’s Gathering she’d concocted and explaining about the outlanders they’d claimed she’d seen. Bast gave a snort when she was done. “You’re practically an outcast yourself,” he sneered - though to Aloy’s ear, it sounded half-hearted.

Max smiled, stepping closer to Aloy and linking her arm through Aloy’s elbow. “I don’t know,” she said, leaning her head against Aloy’s shoulder in an extremely familiar way. “Being an outcast doesn’t sound so bad. All the popular people are doing it.” Bast’s eyes went wide, and even Varl looked scandalized, but Vala burst out laughing again.

“Oh, Goddess, I do like her,” she told Aloy, chuckling.

Aloy, for her part, was trying to gain control of the sudden, unexpected riot of emotions running through her. Max that close felt… surprisingly good. She found herself wanting to lean into Max the way Max was leaning into her, to increase the contact and the proximity. A flash of insight came to her:

Max was flirting with her.

Oh Goddess, she thought, not Vanasha again.

The dark-skinned Carja spy had played such havoc with Aloy’s emotions every time they’d met. It had been like walking through a dust storm composed of half-realized desires and half-glimpsed fears. The compliments to Aloy’s hair and freckles, the way she’d looked in her Carja armor (Goddess, the muscles on her bare midriff), how’d she’d promised Aloy a “proper thank you” after rescuing Itamen and Nasadi - each one had sent more feelings and sensations racing through her than Aloy had any hope of naming, let alone counting. When Aloy had told Vanasha just before that last battle that she’d like to get to know her better, Vanasha had replied with a smirking, “Usually when people say that they mean something else,” and there had been no small part of Aloy that had wanted to say, no, she meant it exactly that way too. She’d kept the words to herself, but mostly because she just couldn’t make herself believe that Vanasha was serious. She flirted with everyone. She flirted like she breathed. The woman had been flirting with Uthid just moments before!

It had been too much of a gamble. Aloy did not like gambling.

And now she had another friend who liked to flirt. And honestly, just as with Vanasha, Aloy was starting to get some very complicated feelings about it. Here she was teasing Aloy, but she’d kissed Erend, talked about how attractive Fia was, and probably smiled at half the Nora by now. Not to mention Chloe Price, who might have been a thousand years away but never seemed far from Max’s heart.

Well, Aloy had managed Vanasha. She’d handled her crush on Talanah. Both women had remained trusted friends right up until her rewind back to before the Proving. If she was starting to develop some kind of crush on Max, she’d deal with that too. She had too much to do that was far too important to let her emotions distract her, and she wanted Max as a friend too much to risk it on any kind of pointless infatuation.

She carefully extracted her arm from Max’s, who stepped away easily but kept the warm smile. “Max’s past aside,” Aloy said cautiously, “she is an important part of this task. In addition to the information she brought about the outlanders, Max is… an oracle, of sorts. She can see things at times before they happen.” All three of the other Nora paused in surprise, looking at Max as though they had not seen her before. Max’s smile vanished instantly, replaced by the same awkward and almost sickly grin she wore whenever she was the focus of more attention than she wanted.

They had discussed this idea on the way to Mother’s Rise that morning, and Max had been extremely resistant at first. Finally, though, Aloy had persuaded Max to agree by pointing out that not only did she not want to keep lying to her fellow Nora, two of whom she considered her friends, but also it just wouldn’t be feasible to keep Max’s abilities entirely secret from the others. It was too likely there would be times they had to discuss what was coming without the luxury of privacy. Max had not been happy, but ultimately couldn’t deny the truth of Aloy’s argument.

“She is not a brave,” Aloy went on, “but has volunteered to help us nonetheless. She is skilled with a bow, but one of your highest priorities is going to be making sure she never has to use it.” That part had not been something they had discussed, but Aloy wanted to set the expectation right away. She knew Max could take care of herself if she needed to, but she wasn’t a warrior, no matter how much training they had managed to rewind into her in those 72 days. She was under no illusion that Max would actually never have to use her bow. She just wanted to risk her friend as little as possible.

“I had no idea,” Vala said, slinging an arm around Max’s shoulder. “Seems like you’re a badass too.” An honest laugh did manage to break through Max’s awkwardness at that, however briefly. “We’ll keep you safe, Max. Don’t worry.”

Varl nodded, stepping up next to his sister. “That’s an incredible gift, Max. Coming with us shows real courage.”

Bast, for his part, held back for a long moment. Finally, though, he nodded. “Protect Max. Understood.” It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but he still sounded serious. Aloy chose to accept it.

“Okay. I’m not sure if there’s supposed to be some kind of ceremony for this, but if there is, no one told me about it. So, as of right now, you’re Seekers. Done. Are you ready to travel?” There were nods all around. “Then let's move. I want to be on the other side of Devil’s Thirst well before sundown. We have a climb ahead of us.”

It took about half the afternoon to circle around Devil’s Thirst. Aloy would have preferred to go through it and save some time, but she didn’t want to test the faith of her new fellow Seekers too hard just yet. Let them see the Eclipse and the Corrupted machines first. Let them know what it was they were fighting for and why they were chosen. Then they wouldn’t even blink at breaking taboo, as long as they had the protection of the Seeker badge.

The biggest part of the reason Aloy had wanted to take the shorter route was visible directly in front of them when they got to the far edge of ruins. Ahead was a steep cliff topped by a large boulder. It made for an excellent landmark, and it was where the trail Aloy remembered to the Eclipse dig site began. Unfortunately, while the four braves could scale that cliff easily, Max was going to have a lot more trouble. Thanks to Max’s rewind and a couple ideas she had, Aloy was pretty sure they could get her up it, but there was no doubt it would cost time and be easier in daylight.

Max had indeed gone a bit pale when Aloy pointed up at the boulder and said, “The trail we follow starts there.” She looked at Aloy with more than a touch of panic in her eyes, but Aloy simply crossed over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. (It felt nice. Aloy stamped the sensation down.)

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan,” she told the shorter woman. She looked at the others. “Varl, Vala, go on ahead. Bast, you’re the fastest climber here, so you’re going to be keeping Max company on the way up.” She pulled out her grappling hook and line and tied one end of the rope around Max’s waist, then - after a bit of consideration - around each thigh as well. By the time she’d finished, Vala and Varl were already at the top. She turned to Bast. “I’ll be bracing her at the top. I know Max can do this, but she’s never actually run a brave trail before. Give her the best advice you can as she goes.”

“Okay,” he said flatly. He studied Max with an expression of either concentration or disgust. The way his mouth twisted made it very hard to tell.

Aloy nodded anyway, then gave Max’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “See you at the top.”

Max made a noise that could have, by a generous soul, been called agreement.

It took Aloy no longer than it had the two siblings to reach the clifftop. As soon as she had pulled herself up, she unlooped the grappling hook from her belt and found a good place, several paces back from the edge, to bury its hooks in the earth. She stood on it - bending one of the tines out of shape and all but guaranteeing she was going to have to replace it - to get it as far in as possible. Then she took up the rope leading over the cliff edge and looped it around her own waist, taking the rest of the slack up in her hands.

“Vala, Varl,” she said, pointing to spots on either side and just a bit forward of her. As they moved to stand there, she explained, “If Max falls, I’m going to catch her, and you’re going to catch me. Got it?” They nodded. “Max!” Aloy called down, and heard a shout in response. “Start climbing when you’re ready!”

It was not a fast process, and four times during the course of the ascent, Aloy felt a yank on the rope in her hand for just the briefest moment, moving very fast but stopping so quickly it seemed hardly to have happened at all. She tried not to show it on her face, but her stomach twisted every time she felt the odd, miniscule jerk, because she was all but certain that she was feeling times when Max had fallen and had had to rewind it. She couldn’t help but be aware that there were probably more times she couldn’t feel at all.

To the rest of the group, though, it was merely a tense but ultimately boring wait for Max to climb the cliff. As they approached the top, Aloy began hearing Bast speaking quietly to Max. “Not that one, use the hold there. Good. Watch your feet, remember? They should be helping you lift yourself to keep the weight off your hands as much as possible. That’s right. We’re almost there.”

And so indeed they were. Only a minute or so after Aloy heard him, Bast appeared at the top of the cliff, pulling himself up and then kneeling down to pull Max up the last bit of the way. She collapsed on the ground, breathing hard, then grabbed Bast and pulled him down for a hug. “Thank you,” said Max, breathing hard but smiling widely. “Thank you for being there.”

The only person more surprised by the hug than Aloy was Bast.

They rested for a while to let Max get her breath back, but they were once again making better time than Aloy had expected. She frowned at Max, wondering if the woman’s powers were somehow involved, but couldn’t see a way to ask and, for that matter, perhaps no good reason to do so. Once Max felt ready to move on, with still plenty of time left before sunset, Aloy began leading the group north.

The path Aloy remembered didn’t exist in several places, spots where Sona’s forces had placed slackwires or climbing aids as they’d gone. That much Aloy had not counted on, but the extra time they’d already earned meant they could handle the new delays. Vala and Varl had the equipment with them to make new slackwires and clearly Sona had trained them and drilled them on the process many times. Aloy watched them working together, laughing and teasing each other - though Vala dared to make another joke about Varl’s alleged crush on Aloy just once, as even an only child like Aloy could tell she’d crossed a line there - and again felt the pang of missing family.

I know Elisabet never had any children, but I wonder if she had any brothers or sisters. Any nieces or nephews? How much of my family do I not even know about? I don’t even know who her parents were.

Finally, they were at last approaching the overlook where Sona had first shown Aloy the Eclipse dig. To Aloy’s surprise, there were two sentries standing there, where ziplines linked the clifftop to the digging below. Of course, it’s not like Sona’s people were able to put those in place. “Oh, sorry, don’t mind us, you fanatical bunch of murdering monsters, we’re just anchoring some ziplines that we absolutely aren’t planning to use to kill you all in just a few minutes!” No doubt Sona’s forces had already eliminated these two by the time Aloy had arrived.

In the fading afternoon sunlight, the only real cover the group had from the guards was distance and their angle of approach: from behind and to the left of the two men. Silently, Aloy indicated Varl and Vala should take the one on the right, while she and Bast would take the one on the left. All four readied their sharpshot bows and drew them back, but Max suddenly gave a quick inhale and hissed, “No! Don’t shoot.” Aloy immediately gestured for the others to lower their weapons and fall back as she did the same. Then they all looked to Max.

“The guy on the right,” she explained, still whispering, “falls forward when he gets shot, doing a real good Wilhelm scream as he goes. If you want to take him quietly, you need to lure him back.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Aloy said, as the other Nora stared in disbelief. She saw Vala mouth the word “Wilhelm?” and shake her head. Ignoring that, Aloy produced a small stone and handed it to Max.

“Can you throw this past and behind them, so they turn and look away from us?” she asked, and Max nodded. “Okay. When we approach them, same targets as before. Max throws, we wait until they turn and move, then we fire on my signal.” There were more nods all around, and they began to creep forward again.

Watching the guards fall, it was clear that two arrows for each man had been overkill, but Aloy liked certainty. As soon as they dropped, Aloy led the others forward. Max glanced at the corpses and her mouth twisted in distaste, but it was her only visible reaction to the deaths. The Nora quickly stripped the two of anything of value before turning their attention to the dig site below them.

Approaching the edge, Aloy could already tell things were going to be different this time. Much more different than she had expected. A rapid clack-clack-clack echoed up from below, a sound she would have recognized anywhere: the noise of a Corruptor on the move.

Chapter 13: Downburst

Chapter Text

It wasn’t a Corruptor. It was two.

There were also half a dozen Corrupted Redeye Watchers, almost as many Corrupted Scrappers, and a pair of Corrupted Striders lashed to a cart, ready to pull it. Moreover, there were far more Eclipse cultists down there, maybe as much as half again as many as she remembered. The Watchers and Corruptors paced the perimeter, the steady plodding of the Watchers making the Corruptors look as though they were pacing anxiously, while the Scrappers tore into rock and earth alongside the human miners. All left the writhing red tendrils of Corruption behind them as they moved.

For a moment, Aloy scrambled to grasp this change. Where had they all come from? Why were there so many more? It only took asking the question, though, for her mind to provide an answer: the Nora were not the only ones who had suffered casualties during the Proving Massacre and the ambush on the War Party. The additional cultists and machines below would have been among those that had died or been destroyed during those battles, perhaps would even have been among those Aloy herself had defeated before Helis’s arrival or during the fight against the Corruptor at Mother’s Watch.

There was also a lot more Blaze, and it sickened Aloy when she realized why their supply was not as diminished as it had been previously.

“Goddess,” she heard Vala whisper next to her. The five of them were laying flat on the ground, having crept just far enough forward to see what was below. Vala’s expression was one of sheer horror, and it was matched by Varl and Bast, the latter seeming to have lost all his usual ability to hide his emotions. Max looked pale too, and as her eyes followed one of the Watchers along, leaving its trail of Corruption behind it, Aloy saw her unconsciously brush her right hand over her left shoulder, where the still-fresh white scar lay.

Aloy moved her hand in front of their gazes, forcing them to look away and at her. She gestured for them to move away from the edge. Once they had and were crouched in a circle facing her, she looked each one individually in the eyes before beginning to speak quietly. “You see, now, why All-Mother sent me. You see what we have to do.”

Varl’s lip curled in disgust. “Such blasphemy! We will strike them down with all the fury of the Nora!” He kept his voice low, but the light in his eyes was fervent determination.

“What’s happened to them?” Vala asked slowly. “Why are they…”

“You saw the two larger machines that move like spiders?” They all nodded, and Vala looked as though she were about to ask a follow-up question before Aloy could finish answering her first one, but Aloy raised a hand and she subsided. “You don’t recognize them, Vala, because they are ancient machines, dating back to the age of the Metal Devils. Our enemy has resurrected them and plans to use them, not just against the Nora, but against the entire world. They’re called Corruptors. They are the reason for the red putrescence that’s dripping off the other machines. Corruptors spread their Corruption to other machines, taking control of them and making them stronger and more dangerous. It also makes them more vulnerable to flame, so be sure to use Fire Arrows or bombs if you’ve got them. If you can manage to set a Corruptor on fire, it will expose a vent on its top; destroying that will seriously weaken it and could destroy it outright if it’s already taken some damage.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Varl, shaking his head in wonder. He didn’t seem disbelieving, just amazed.

Aloy ignored the question to finish her briefing. “The people down there are Carja zealots who worship the Metal Devil that All-Mother wants us to defeat. It has twisted their faith and presented itself to them as the fulfillment of a prophecy.” She grimaced, still filled with that mix of disgust and pity she felt every time she thought about the Shadow Carja who had been manipulated by HADES. “Much as I wish it were otherwise, the only mercy we can show them is a swift death. Otherwise we will die, and the world with us.”

Max still looked pale, but she’d recovered herself enough to mutter, “But no pressure or anything.”

“Max, you’ll be up here, giving covering fire from above. Almost everyone and everything down there has something they can shoot at you with, so don’t think you’re safe from retaliation. The idea, though, is that we will be giving them something much more important to pay attention to. Stay safe first and foremost, but we’re probably going to need your bow after all.”

“That was a really short ‘never,’ Aloy.”

“The rest of us can take the ziplines down. We’ll take out as many as we can as quietly as we can, so don’t start shooting at all until or unless things get hot. There are canisters of Blaze scattered around down there - you see the barrels leaking green fluid? They’re using them to blast, and we can use our fire weapons to help that process along. Honestly, just setting everything down there on fire is a pretty good idea.”

Vala smirked. “Straightforward. I like it.” Varl gave her a look. She stuck her tongue out at him.

“One last thing. I know the Corruption leaking off of those machines looks dangerous, and you probably didn’t want to get close to it. That’s a very good idea. It will burn you, and keep burning you, if you get it on you. So stay clear.”

Aloy looked around her little War Party of four, and found herself almost pitying the Eclipse below. Almost. “Once we’re down there, use your own initiative, choose your own targets. You know your work. But watch out for each other. We all come back from this, you understand? We come back. They do not.” All four nodded, and for a wonder, she couldn’t spot any traces of fear in any of them.

Moments later, Varl, Vala, and Bast each threw their slides over a zipline and disappeared over the cliff edge. Aloy looked at Max. “Are you going to be okay?” Her friend nodded, seeming steady. “Are we going to win?”

Max chuckled. “I haven’t rewound yet, so…”

Aloy acknowledged that with a nod of her own, then quickly stripped out of her armor overlayer. In just a few moments she had the Shield-Weaver on in its place, and she grinned as the glowing hard-light shield shimmered into existence and Max's eyes went wide. “Guess I didn’t mention this yet either, huh?” She spun, pulling out her own slide, and jumped over the ledge after the others.

She landed in the waist-high grass and immediately went into a crouch, shifting her weight slowly to match the sway of the stalks in the wind. About seven paces to her left, she saw one of the Eclipse suddenly get yanked backward into a similar patch of grass by a blurred, yellow-haired figure, and a spear appeared just long enough to stab downward. No one else seemed to have noticed. On the far side of the open pit, one of the patrolling Corrupted Watchers suddenly sprouted a Precision Arrow in its lens, and it went down, sparking.

The three braves who had preceded her down the line had already cleared out the cultists from the nearest part of the site, but they had either lacked the opportunity or the recklessness to find out whether they could dispatch the Corrupted Watchers and Scrappers up close. It made sense; if they tried an attack that would quietly destroy a regular machine but for some reason didn’t work on a Corrupted one, then they would alert the entire camp. Aloy, however, didn’t have the same concerns. She’d had lots of practice during the six months she’d lived that somehow no longer existed.

She let out a sharp, atonal whistle at one of the Scrappers. It jerked as though startled, then slowly began approaching her hiding spot. Though she’d learned it on her own, she suspected she might have stumbled onto something like what the Banuk shamans did with their machine songs: a sound that happened to trigger a particular programmed response in machines. In this case, a command to approach. Regardless of whether she had the mechanism right or not, though, the whistle served its purpose.

The Scrapper stalked into range.

Aloy rolled forward, reaching out with her left hand to grab the Scrapper right behind its grinding jaw. The Corruption burned her fingers as though she’d shoved them into one of the glaciers up in the Cut without any gloves on, but she yanked hard, pulling the Scrapper forward and off-balance. Its head bent sideways and she spun the lance in her other hand, jamming the point into the now-exposed wiring behind its front sensors with a satisfying crunch. It sparked, twitched, and collapsed. The entire movement had taken less than a heartbeat and there was no sign that anyone or anything else had seen anything. She pulled her hand free, wincing at the Corruption burn, but was already looking for her next target.

Over the next several minutes, almost half of the enemies, both living and machine, fell in silence. Aloy had moved about a third of the way around rim of the pit, focusing on taking out the ground-level foes in hopes of having a higher position against as many of the remaining cultists and machines as possible when things finally-

One of the Watchers opened fire on something to her left.

Varl leapt out his cover, clear of the blasts, but instantly all the machines’ lights flared red, spinning toward him. The cultists started shouting too, but the thing that worried Aloy most was the Corruptors suddenly racing toward him from both sides. With an open pit to his left and Corruptors closing in from in front and behind, Varl was only seconds from dying.

Aloy threw herself out of her own hiding place, snatching out her Ropecaster as she rolled and came up into a shooting crouch. Time seemed to slow as she aimed at the Corruptor and fired. The bolt flew through the air, trailing its anchorwire behind it, and at the same time she saw at least half a dozen Fire Arrows lancing down into the pit in perfect synchronicity. Each made direct contact with a Blaze canister, and just like that, every barrel in the dig site exploded at once.

Most of the cultists died instantly, and nearly every remaining machine was engulfed in flames. The blast hammered at the Shield-Weaver, but it held. Aloy still staggered for a moment before she could regain her feet and regrip the ‘Caster, though. The blast had shattered the anchorwire before she’d even had a chance to plant it, but the Corruptors had been as unbalanced as Aloy was, and she got another bolt off before they could recover. “Varl!” she shouted, hoping he could hear her over the roar of the flames. She couldn’t see him at all at this point with the Corruptor in the way. “I’ve got this one! Move!”

She fired a second bolt and jammed the anchor into the ground next to her. The Corruptor twisted and fought, turning toward her. It slammed its tail into the rock at the edge of the pit and tore a boulder free, throwing it toward her as easily as Max had tossed the tiny stone before. She rolled aside, feeling shattering rock fragments ricocheting from the Shield-Weaver, came up and fired once more. Varl appeared from behind the Corruptor, running hard; she saw blood on one of his legs, but he was still moving. With three lines in it, the Corruptor was nearly down, and she readied a fourth. She didn’t get it off, however, as something crashed into her from behind.

Fire and claws raked at her as the burning Scrapper tried to pin her down. Shield-Weaver failed in a burst of light and she felt one of those claws reach her side, drawing a long line of blood along her ribs. Varl fired a Hardpoint into it, knocking it off of her, and she was able to get back to her feet. She forced herself to ignore it long enough to fire the fourth Ropecaster bolt into the mostly-pinned Corruptor, and was gratified when it toppled onto its side. As soon as she planted the anchorwire, she threw herself backwards, not even bothering to check if the Scrapper was leaping toward her again - she already knew it would be - and it pounced the spot she had been only moments before. She dropped her Ropecaster and snatched for her lance, driving it into the power cell at the machine’s rear, and felt it die as much as she saw it.

There was a whump! of ventral jets from somewhere nearby, but that was her only warning. The unentangled Corruptor had not bothered to go around its bound fellow, instead just jumping over it and coming down almost on top of Aloy, one of its legs missing her shoulder by a hand’s-width at most. The impact of its landing tossed her through the air like a child’s doll and pain shot through her side, followed immediately by a second stab of agony in her shoulder as she hit the ground. Shield-Weaver chose that moment to come back online, though, so when the Corruptor’s tail struck at her, the attack was deflected. The cursed machine was standing almost directly atop her Ropecaster, so she grabbed for her Striker bow instead, hoping against hope that she had enough time to draw and fire before it hit her again.

It wound up not mattering the way she had expected it to. Fire Arrows exploded into it from three directions as Vala and Bast appeared behind Varl. The third arrow had come from above, and Aloy glanced up to see Max already pulling more ammunition from her quiver. The Corruptor began to twist and seize as it caught flame, and Aloy saw the heat vent she’d told the others about emerge from the machine’s casing. A Hardpoint Arrow hit it directly as Varl turned his bow against the Corruptor, and seconds later, three more from Aloy’s bow struck it as well. An explosion ripped through it, then through the Corruptor itself, and it shuddered before falling onto its side.

The remaining Corruptor was nearing freedom, but concentrated fire from five different bows was simply more than it could take. After it collapsed alongside its sibling, Aloy looked around to see that there weren’t any other enemies left alive or functioning; those that survived the Blaze detonation apparently handled by Vala, Bast, or Max. A glance at her allies showed that Vala had an arrow shaft sticking out of her left forearm and Bast had what looked like a cauterized cut on his right cheek, but no one seemed to be in life-threatening danger. Varl shook his head, looking around, and then sat down on the ground right where he stood. Vala started laughing, and even Bast smiled, the first genuine, non-mocking smile Aloy had ever seen from him. “We did it,” he said. “We did it!”

He let out a whoop of joy, and Vala and Varl joined in. Aloy smiled too, suddenly feeling very tired.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, we did.”

Chapter 14: Climate Change

Chapter Text

There was a whizzing sound, and Aloy looked over to see Max ziplining down from the upper cliff. She looked terrified and exhilarated at once, and her landing was anything but graceful, but she scrambled up almost immediately, clearly delighted by the experience. Blood covered much of her mouth and jaw, though, traces of what must have been a very serious nosebleed. Aloy frowned, wondering what she’d done.

She ran around the dig site until she reached the others, first hurling herself into a hug of Aloy that made the injury over the taller woman’s ribs suddenly burn again, then - more carefully - more of the same for the others. “That was epic!” she said, laughing. There was a slight edge of hysteria to the laugh, a reaction Aloy recognized from her own experiences many times: the end-of-battle high, one that could leave you trembling and jittery no matter whether you’d taken any wounds.

“Are you okay?” Aloy asked her, gesturing to her nose, and Max touched a couple of fingers to the blood, looking annoyed rather than hurt. She mouthed “tell you later” at Aloy, but then answered aloud for the others.

“It’s not a big deal. One of those things threw a boulder at me. It hit the edge of the cliff instead of my face, but one of the chunks caught me in the nose anyway. I thought it was broken at first.” Aloy was fairly sure she had been the only one with a clear enough line of sight to know for certain that had never actually happened, and the rest of the group seemed to accept it without question.

They spent several minutes getting themselves patched up as best they could. Varl was particularly fussy about the arrow shaft still in Vala’s arm, and they almost got into an argument over which of their injuries needed tending first. Finally, though, bandages and medicines had been applied everywhere, and Aloy began giving instructions.

“Varl, search the bodies for anything of value. Bast, Vala, you start harvesting the machines. I need to take a look at these Corruptors, and then we’ll see if we can find anything else about these people to tell us where else we can find them.”

The braves trooped obediently off, and Aloy hoped that Vala and Bast wouldn’t notice that she was trying to minimize the time they had to spend dealing with the bodies of those they had killed. Varl had more experience as a brave; let him deal with the staring eyes of the dead. She would have done it herself, but she couldn’t entrust the Corruptors to anyone else.

Max followed her over to the nearest Corruptor as Aloy tapped on her Focus and began scanning its parts. “So what actually happened with your nose?” she asked Max quietly, stripping some braiding out of the machine.

Max sounded distinctly pleased with herself as she answered, “I got the idea when you said we needed to just set everything on fire down here. I didn’t want to do it unless I had to, because I knew it would hurt, but when I saw the trouble Varl was in, I decided to go for it. Remember how I was able to freeze time when Kate was on the roof? I did the same thing here. I stopped everything, then lined up my shots on the barrels and fired. As soon as the arrows came off the bowstring, I let the time stop catch them too. Then when I released everything, they all took off at once. It seems to have worked pretty well.” There was a brief pause before she added, “My head is killing me though.”

Aloy looked up at her at that, hearing a bit of hesitation in the words. Max seemed to be a lot less proud of herself than she had a moment before, eyeing Aloy like she was expecting to be chastised. “It was exactly what we needed at the moment,” Aloy reassured her. “Like you said, I told you to use whatever you’ve got. Just don’t push yourself beyond what you can take. You’re not going to be able to help anybody unconscious.” Or worse, she thought. Honestly, she hated that Max had had to push herself even that hard, but friend or not, crush or not, she wasn’t going to treat Max like a piece of Carja porcelain. (Although, come to that, she could have used the same words to describe Talanah's beauty. Some pieces of Carja porcelain were almost unbreakable.)

In short order, Aloy had found what she was looking for inside the Corruptor: its override unit. At last! Her Focus connected with it smoothly, and she watched the notifications crawl across her vision as to the machines she could override with it now. One of those was of particular interest to her. She looked up, over the edge of the bluff to the west and out across Devil’s Thirst. In its center, from this elevated angle, the Tallneck was clearly visible, making its stately circuit through the buildings.

So much of the data she’d collected during her travels was lost, and it had left her feeling lost too, as though she were trying to see her path through thick fog. She’d only been able to add Scrappers, Grazers, Sawtooths, and the Corruptor back into her machine catalogue so far, and the Focus’s map function still only had the Embrace for the most part. With the Tallneck, though, she could at least do something about the map.

She finished with the first Corruptor, then moved to the second one and stripped it as well, being sure to take its override unit. Anyone wanting to override a machine with the Corruptor part would need a Focus to link to it, but she knew where she could find quite a lot of those once she recovered the Alpha Registry file. She eyed Max, who was now over talking to Vala about the differences between harvesting Scrappers and Striders, and thought she might know someone she’d like to give an override unit to. She pictured riding across the Carja desert with her, hurtling over the sand, seeing that same sparkle in her luminous blue eyes that she’d had when she’d just come off the zipline. Max seemed to carry a shroud of sadness around her, one that thickened or faded with her moods but almost never vanished completely. When she did smile, though…

Aloy caught her thoughts and wrestled them down. This was not the time.

Refocusing on her tasks, she gave the Corruptor one last search for anything she might have missed, then looked around at the rest of her followers. Bast was searching with the toppled remains of the cart that the Corrupted Striders had been lashed to, but Varl was nowhere to be seen. Tapping her Focus back on, she spotted the purple figure tagged with his name down in the dig pit, and started making her way down there herself. Varl, it turned out, had collected quite the haul, including several pieces of Desert Glass, a bunch of Shards, and a handful of the painkilling tonics Carja were so fond of. She gave an approving nod and started to pass on before Varl stopped her.

“I saw what you did in assigning me the Carja bodies,” he said in a low voice, making sure the words would not carry to any listener up at ground level. “Thank you.” Aloy acknowledged the thanks reluctantly, and Varl went back to his work.

A quick scan with her Focus revealed what she’d hoped it would: a datapoint confirming Eclipse presence at the Ring of Metal and a Blaze stockpile she could blow sky-high. “Perfect,” she murmured to herself. It was good enough to take back to Sona and ready a proper War Party for the fight she knew awaited them in Devil’s Grief. “I’m coming for you, Helis,” she promised quietly.

Full night had fallen before everyone was done with their tasks, so they made camp on top of the bluff as far away from the dig itself as possible. Varl made something that he called “camp stew,” which apparently meant a pot full of water and then pretty much whatever rations people had on hand. As they settled in to eat the end result (filling, yes; tasty, not hardly), Aloy spent a brief moment marveling at her current circ*mstances. Only once or twice in her entire life before had she shared a campfire with more than one or two other people, and for almost the entire time she’d been traveling after Rost’s death, she’d eaten and slept alone. Now, though, there were four other people there, talking and laughing and sharing stories of their roles in the battle with one another.

“Bast!” Vala was saying in exasperation. “All-Mother’s memory, snap out of it! You’ve been a lard for days now. It’s insufferable! What is your problem?”

Bast was frowning down at the dirt where he sat cross-legged on the ground. After a moment, he scowled across the fire at Vala, then sighed. “I know. You’re right.” Then, while Aloy was still recovering from that shock, he looked straight at her and added, “I’m sorry for the things I said about you the other night. I was exactly what Vala said, a lard. You have my apologies.” He was still scowling, but it seemed directed somewhere else than at her or Vala. Maybe himself? Was that possible?

“Thank you!” Vala cried, throwing up her hands. “Why was that so difficult?” She turned to Aloy and Max, adding, “Trust me, you have not been seeing Bast at his best.” She sounded less like she was defending him and more like she was chastising him, and from the color rising in his face, he knew it.

“No, I've been terrible,” Bast nodded glumly. “It’s Avina. She really, really expected me to win. I was supposed to ask the Matriarchs to find labor for us to build a bigger house in Mother’s Cradle.” Vala and Varl looked surprisingly sympathetic, but Aloy just felt confused.

“Who’s Avina?”

Bast gave another sigh, even longer. “My mother.”

“That’s no excuse, Bast,” Vala said, more gently. “Especially after the way Aloy treated you the night of the Blessing. Given what you said, she’d have been justified in just skinning you and leaving the hide out to cure.” She gave him a narrow-eyed stare, but it was a lot softer than the looks she’d been using before. “Goddess, sometimes I honestly can’t figure out why I ever let you near me.”

Varl started coughing, but Bast just laughed - and for a wonder, it sounded warm. “I think it was because no one else would even give you the time of day.”

Vala made a mock-offended noise. “I was the one who broke it off with you, remember!”

“Right, for who again?”

“Bek, from Mother’s Crown.” Vala got a dreamy look in her eyes. “Ohhhh, those arms...”

“And how long did that last?”

The look vanished and was replaced by a glare. “...You don’t have to rub it in.” She leaned over and punched Bast’s arm, hard enough to draw a wince.

“Perhaps we could talk about literally anything else than my sister’s love life?” said Varl, sounding desperate.

Aloy shook her head in amazement. How little she had known about these two before their deaths. How much she had judged them, thought she’d known who they were. The idea that they’d been lovers? That they were still somehow affectionate to one another? She would never have imagined it. She glanced at Max. Her friend was watching the byplay with undisguised amusem*nt, and she gave Aloy a quick wink when she caught Aloy looking.

“Anyway,” Bast said, refocusing on Aloy. “Vala is right, as usual. There was no excuse. I was desperate and trying to get under your skin. I figured it was my only chance to meet Avina’s expectations. But I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

Aloy tilted her head to one side. “Your only chance?” she repeated, and Bast gave a short bark of a laugh.

“Aloy, you knocked a stone from my hand at twenty paces when we were six. Of course I knew you were going to win.” He frowned again. “It’s far too late, but I’m sorry for that too. I didn’t really understand what you being mothe- I mean, what you being an outcast at that age really meant.” Aloy felt her eyes narrow just a bit as she realized he’d been about to call her “motherless.” He was trying, but the word was still a serious slur among the Nora, and he knew it. She decided to give him credit for cutting himself off in the middle.

Vala gave a rueful chuckle. “I knew the moment she took down that Grazer that we were all outclassed,” she agreed. “Three arrows on the string at once? Might as well have just wrapped it up then. I don’t have any idea how you do it, and as long as it’s not some ‘gift of All-Mother’ or something, you have got to teach me.”

It had taken her weeks of training while traveling to master two arrows at once, and weeks more to figure out how to manage three. No reason not to spare someone else the trial-and-error process she’d had to use to learn it. “I can teach you,” she smiled at Vala, then turned back to Bast. “So why have you just been glaring at me every time you’ve seen me since then?” she asked. Bast looked away.

“Part of it was that Avina was coming down hard on me for losing and I was taking some of it out on you. Also inexcusable, and again, I’m sorry. Mostly, though, it was guilt. Here I was, calling you… all sorts of things… while you were working to carry out All-Mother’s will. I kept wanting to ask you to take me with you on your journey so I could make it up to you, but every time I thought about saying something, I just remembered how I behaved and was just too ashamed to speak to you. Even when you asked Vala to bring me to Mother’s Rise I was mostly expecting you to report me to Sona.”

Aloy considered him for several moments. “It’s behind us now,” she said. Everybody gets one chance for redemption. Well, maybe not Helis. She really didn’t think there was any way she could have ever forgiven the man for killing Rost. But for someone like Bast? He wants to show he’s better than that? Fine. Let’s see if he is. “We have a fresh start, you and I. Are you with me?”

He smiled. “I’m with you.”

Vala nodded in satisfaction, then more mischief sparked in her eyes and she turned toward Max. Max, though, suddenly spoke up, cutting short whatever Vala had been about to say. “I’m really sorry about ruining your grappling hook this afternoon, Aloy. I have some Shards I can give you for another one?”

Varl snapped his fingers as though reminded of something. “No need,” he said, reaching into his pack. He produced an undamaged hook with a bit of a flourish, then suddenly looked flustered, unsure if he’d overdone it. Vala laughed aloud, but immediately cut it off with a look of entirely-feigned innocence when Varl glared at her again.

“Thanks, Varl,” Aloy said, taking it from him and giving Vala a reproachful look of her own. “You had an extra?” she asked him.

“No,” replied Varl, now deliberately ignoring his sister. She leaned back, looking very smug. “I found it on… one of them. I thought you could use it.” Aloy made a face at the idea of using anything Eclipse-made, but Varl was absolutely right. She thanked him again and tucked it away.

Given the intensity of the day’s events, it wasn’t too surprising when everyone started turning in early. Varl was first, then Bast and Vala close behind, wishing the others good night. Aloy herself was well aware that she’d been traveling since daybreak and fought an intense battle at the end of it, and was about to follow their lead when she noticed Max watching her. There was something in her eyes that made Aloy suddenly feel a bit light-headed.

Reaching into her satchel, Max pulled out the instant camera she’d been carrying there since she’d arrived in Aloy’s time. Aloy had never seen her holding it, but she felt an odd sense of recognition with it in Max’s hands: somehow, the other woman looked more like herself than she ever had before, just holding it.

“Got a minute?” Max asked.

Chapter 15: Heat Index

Chapter Text

Slowly, Aloy sat back down. Max got up and circled the fire, sitting down right next to her. Aloy found herself incredibly aware of their proximity, and more still as Max leaned closer, resting her head against Aloy’s collarbone, and lifted the camera out at arm’s length.

“Look right in the center of the camera and smile,” she murmured, and Aloy forced a confused frown from her face, trying to comply.

There was a brilliant flash of light and a sharp clicking noise, followed by a machine-like hum. It was impossible to see what was making the noise or the hum, though, as Aloy’s night vision was utterly ruined, leaving her only able to see painful green spots everywhere. She managed not to actually cry out, but the unexpected blindness was not doing her sense of tension any favors and she could not suppress a hiss or a sudden jerk away, nearly knocking both of them over. Max scrambled and Aloy started rubbing at her eyes, trying to banish the afterglare.

“Oh, sh*t, Aloy,” Max whispered, “I didn’t think about… f*ck, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Aloy nodded, still squeezing her eyes shut. “You just startled me,” she replied, also keeping her voice down. “It’s nothing that hasn’t happened before, it’s just usually a machine doing it.” There had been one very memorable moment when she’d been sneaking up on a Redeye Watcher on a moonless night, almost unable to see but for the vision enhancements her Focus supplied, when she’d discovered a small hole hidden in the high grass. Her foot had gone in, she’d tripped, and the Watcher had spun around to shine its angry red eye directly into her face. Everything had become a blinding haze and she’d had to spend far too many breathless moments dodging wildly, entirely on instinct, while she heard - but couldn’t see - the energy blasts roaring past her in every direction.

The pain and the glare were both starting to fade, and after a few more minutes passed, Aloy could mostly see again. The spots were still there, but Max and the campfire were visible, the tents of the other Nora light brown shapes in the encroaching darkness. Max was blinking more often than usual as well; it seemed she hadn’t realized what it would do to her night vision either.

“Okay,” demanded Aloy, keeping her voice low to avoid disturbing the others, “can you please explain why you just blinded us?”

For answer, Max held out something that Aloy had initially taken as a small piece of paper. It was in reality another picture, like the ones Aloy had scanned in Max’s journal. There was an off-white border, thicker on the bottom than the other three sides, and it had a glossy, almost polished finish. It was unmistakably herself and Max, their faces crowded close together, both smiling. Aloy thought she looked a bit awkward, but Max looked relaxed, happy, and all together beautiful. She raised her eyes to Max, whose smile now was every bit the match of the one in the picture.

“I’m going to run out of film eventually,” Max explained, taking the image back, “but some things are worth it. And the batteries in the camera and flash are going to die eventually too, so I might as well take what I can take while I can.”

“Why now?”

“Because today… this moment… I want to remember them. I want to remember us.” Max ran a fingertip along the edge of the picture. “That’s what photography does. It captures moments. Slices of time a twenty-fifth of a second wide. Painting and sculpture take longer to make and can evolve as you go. You can add things, you can take them away, you can move them around. Unless you get into Photoshop - which, no shame there, but that’s just not me - photography doesn’t let you do any of that. You have to be present. Right there. The emotions, the narrative, the light: whatever it is you’re trying to nail down, you have to have it right then, or it's gone and you can’t get it back.” She lifted the picture, showing it to Aloy. “But if it is there… You get to hold onto it forever.”

“You can get them back,” Aloy pointed out. “You can rewind to them as much as you want.”

Max shook her head. “No, not really. I used to think that and I was really struggling with shooting because of it. I kept trying to force those moments to happen the way I wanted them. Eventually, though, I realized it wasn’t possible. Even if everything else is the same, when I rewind, I’m different. I’ve moved forward. My own personal timeline only ever moves in one direction.”

They were both quiet a moment, then Max shifted to move back closer to Aloy, leaning her head against the other woman’s shoulder. Aloy felt her skin prickle all along her side at the contact. “Is this okay?” Max asked, and Aloy found she had to make two tries before she could say it was.

Once she was settled, Max pulled out her journal, flipped through it, pulling out several more photos. These were nearly all landscape or wilderness pictures, images of the indescribably beautiful mountains and trees around Rost’s house. At least some of them were clearly from the timeline she and Aloy had spent training, as they showed the Embrace in the full flush of summer as well as the spring they were in now. A couple were of Max herself, an arm extending out of the frame in a way that suggested she’d been holding the camera when it was taken, aiming it back toward her the way she’d just done with the two of them. The last one, though, was of Aloy, and she found herself staring at it in wonder. She was on the eastern Overlook, where Odd Grata had left her prayer beads, looking out into a still-pink dawn. Wind had caught her hair and sent it flying behind her like a banner, and the looping coils of the Horus atop All-Mother Mountain were just barely visible, fuzzy and distant, behind her. It made her look heroic, determined, visionary. How in the world had Max managed it?

Max saw her reaction and smiled before collecting the photos and replacing them in her diary. More silence followed, with only the crackle of the fire to fill it. Aloy was trying not to move and also not to freeze in place like a rabbit, but wasn’t doing an especially good job of either. She kept switching from anxious readjustment to almost motionless and back again. If Max noticed, she generously didn’t say anything about it.

“Do you know what the word ‘gay’ means?” Max suddenly asked, breaking the stillness again.

Aloy frowned, confused by the apparent non sequitur. “No? I don’t think so, anyway. It doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Originally it meant something like ‘happy and carefree,’ but by my time, it was usually used to refer to someone who is romantically or, um, sexually interested in people of their own gender.”

“Only their own gender?”

“Well, that depended on who you asked, but most of the time, yeah.”

“You had a word for that?”

That actually seemed to catch Max off-guard. She sat up, turning to look at Aloy in surprise. “You mean you don’t?”

Aloy shrugged. “Not that I’ve ever heard. Everyone just seems to flirt with whoever they like, mostly get shot down, and eventually maybe find someone who likes them too.”

“Wow,” breathed Max, “it’s like a Pride Utopia, except for how it makes me feel really weird.” Aloy gave her a questioning look, and she explained, “Being gay, or really, being queer in general, which is a really big umbrella term for anybody who doesn’t follow society’s default for sexual or romantic attraction and gender identity, was a pretty big part of a lot of people’s lives and how they saw themselves. It was for me at least, especially during college. San Francisco was… well, that’s not especially important anymore, is it.

“Anyway, being queer came with a lot of baggage.” Her voice tightened. “In the wrong place, at the wrong time… it could get you killed. Most people didn’t out themselves - uh, that means publicly declare your queerness - on a whim. It had to matter to you. I went to Pride every year I was at Berkeley. I always said I wanted us to finally get to a place where my sexuality didn’t matter to anyone, but hearing you say that..” She shook her head. “I feel like I just lost something.”

“You were in love with Chloe,” Aloy said, working through it, “so you’re gay?”

“That wasn’t the label I used,” Max replied. “I went with 'pansexual,' which for me at least meant gender didn’t matter to my attractions. Or queer, in situations where the specifics weren’t anybody’s business.”

“Oh,” said Aloy. “Then why ask me about ‘gay?’”

“Because I've been… wondering if you were,” replied Max, biting her lip and blushing faintly.

The implications of that took a moment to hit her, but when they did, Aloy discovered she was right back in that sandstorm of desire and fear. She wanted things she could not quite name, but the want burned like lungs in need of air. Instinctively she also knew that those wants could not be sated without changing her relationship with Max - possibly forever, possibly into something unrecognizable. She wanted those changes too, some of them, but others terrified her, and she couldn’t quite see any of them clearly.

For a moment, all the emotions raged through her, uncontrolled, and she just let them. She probably didn’t have a choice, but this way, after the initial shockwave, she was able to take a breath and get a grip on herself once more. “I guess I am,” she said at last, still a bit breathless. It was true enough. Every time she could remember being attracted to someone, they’d been a woman. It hadn’t occurred to her to think about it like that before, but the pattern did fit.

Max moved closer, a distance of less than a hand’s-width that seemed to cover a vast gulf larger than the Grand Canyon. “Can I kiss you?” she asked.

Aloy found she was nodding before she even fully processed the question.

Max leaned in further, her pale blue gaze flicking from Aloy’s lips up to her eyes and back down again. When their lips finally touched, Aloy’s eyes closed of their own accord as every other sense was overwhelmed by the feel of Max’s mouth on hers.

It was soft, and wet, and somehow filled with a bonfire of heat. That heat seared Aloy’s breath away and seemed to freeze her bones in place, robbing her of any power to move. Years passed between one heartbeat and the second, but then Max pulled away again and Aloy opened her eyes.

“First kiss?” Max asked, and Aloy nodded again. She couldn’t have spoken if her life had hung on uttering even a single word. “Did you like it?”

Aloy answered by sliding her hands into the other woman’s hair and pulling her close again. When Max had moved away, it had been as though the bonfire had vanished and left her in the freezing cold, willing to do anything for more warmth. Their lips met again, and Aloy realized she was still closing the distance between their bodies, moving nearer to Max even as she pulled Max to her. Max’s arms went around her neck and suddenly her lips were opening, pressing Aloy’s open as well. Max’s tongue slid into her mouth, sending a wave of new sensations through her. She felt Max move, lifting herself up to straddle Aloy, pressing their bodies together, and one of Aloy’s arms went around Max’s waist to bring her closer still.

They fell, Aloy tumbling backward, still kissing one another hungrily. One of Max’s hands moved, grabbing Aloy’s and moving it to Max’s hip. Aloy’s other hand mirrored the movement automatically, then both slid around to cup Max’s ass. Once they’d started moving, Aloy couldn’t seem to stop them: her hands roamed fearlessly down Max’s thighs, up her back, along the slight curve of her waist. Max’s hands were cupping Aloy’s face now, but then one shifted to her neck, moving further downward, and Aloy’s breath quickened even further.

She could feel somehow a tension building, a tipping point coming. Things she wanted and things she feared both rushing toward her, toward them both. Abruptly Aloy broke the kiss, leaning back against the ground, and she gripped Max’s shoulders, keeping some space between them. She was panting and her skin ached with need, but she was also shaking like a leaf in a high wind. Max, also breathing hard, flushed, and with her hair thoroughly mussed, put her hands on either side of Aloy’s shoulders and looked down at her with concern.

“Too much,” Aloy whispered, and Max bit her lip, chagrined.

“Yeah, we were going kinda fast there, weren’t we,” she said, rolling off of Aloy and laying down next to her. “Did I rush you? I’m sorry.”

Going fast barely seemed to cover it - Aloy felt like she’d sprinted all the way across Meridian. But rush her? “No,” said Aloy quickly, and took Max’s hand. “No, if anything, I was rushing me. Rushing us. I wanted all of that and so, so much more, but I… I have no idea what I’m doing. Until six months ago, I’d only ever had conversations with two other people. Plus one woman who just kind of prayed in my general direction. Even with all that’s happened since then, it’s… it’s a lot. But I do very much want this.”

Max lifted their clasped hands and scooted herself underneath them, laying her head on Aloy’s chest and pulling Aloy’s arm around her like a blanket. “We can go at any speed you want,” she murmured, snuggling closer. “Is this okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” Aloy murmured, and a smile she could not hide crept over her face as she felt Max place a gentle kiss on the side of her neck.

For several minutes, they just lay there, enjoying the closeness. “Tell me about ‘Pride?’” Aloy asked at last. “It sounded important.”

Max went through the history, starting with Stonewall (“Oh, see, ‘trans’ is a useful word. If I’d had trans in my vocabulary, I could have talked to Janeva without risking my arm getting broken.”) and moving on up through the modern, for her anyway, experience of it. “It gave me a sense of community. Something outside Blackwell, outside everything Chloe, to connect with people over,” she finished. “It was one of the first things I did after I moved to the Bay Area, just to get myself out of the apartment.”

Prejudice. Oppression. Callousness. The Nora with outcasts, the Carja and their Sun-Ring, the Oseram and owning wives… even the way the White Teeth would have just walked away from Ikrie and Mailen, leaving them to die on the glacier. So many people out there trying to do their best, and so many others who just aren’t trying at all. “I’m starting to think our times aren’t all that different after all,” Aloy murmured, and Max let out a frustrated sigh.

“Well, this was a real mood killer,” she muttered, but Aloy looked down at her, lifted her chin, and gave her a slow kiss.

“Learning more about what makes you you is anything but a mood killer.”

Max blushed furiously, and Aloy heard herself giggle. Goddess, what is happening to me? I don’t giggle.

There were more kisses after that. Not the raging inferno that had nearly consumed her before, but a slower, more languorous heat, a Carja sauna seeping through her skin and into her core. Unlike that first, fierce combustion of desire, Aloy didn’t feel like they were rushing toward anything; they were soaking in one another, letting arousal wash over them in slow wave after slow wave. It peaked long before any clothes came off. Aloy was relieved by that, then was surprised at being relieved. She realized that some of her earlier desperate lust had been driven by fear that this night was somehow her only opportunity to have this with Max. That fear seemed to be entirely gone, and with it, the headlong frenzy, if not the desire behind it. This, she decided, was better. She could savor it.

There was more conversation too, as Max shared more about the Old Ones and Aloy allowed herself to be bullied into talking about Talanah and Vanasha (“Oh, come on, you read my diary about Chloe, you owe me at least two of yours!”), along with some of the other people she’d met and hoped to meet again during her travels. Hours passed, and midnight was long, long gone before she and Max finally drew apart. “Good night,” she murmured, and Max gave her a surprisingly chaste kiss on the cheek before heading to her tent. Even so, it was a long time still before Aloy slept, and she couldn’t stop smiling the entire time.

When morning came, it brought with it a chill, windy rainstorm, and Aloy was all too eager to get herself and her people (and her… girlfriend? Oh, no, not the time to start worrying about that) off the exposed bluff and back down to Devil’s Thirst. Even the gaping, rusted hulks of metal provided more cover from the weather than being out in the open then, and she didn’t hesitate in leading her people straight into the ruins. As she’d predicted, none of the Nora hesitated to follow her either, simply moving onward with a solemn determination.

They were surprised, however, when she announced that she had something to take care of within the ruins themselves. Picturing their reactions to seeing her override the Tallneck, Aloy grinned and refused to explain herself further. “Come on,” she said, and led them toward the tower where the Tallneck circled.

Chapter 16: Thermal Inversion

Chapter Text

Max moved quickly to the middle of the ruined skyscraper’s hollow ground floor so as to keep out of the way of the others while they harvested the Watchers. Well, out of the way of Vala, Varl, and Bast, anyway. Aloy had approached one of the walls opposite where they’d come in and was studying it intently. Max watched her, frowning, and then had to gasp a little when Aloy just leapt straight up, grabbed a piece of broken concrete, and began free-climbing the f*cking wall.

There were some things about Nora brave training that Max was simply never going to get used to.

Aloy went up maybe two floors - with no actual interior to the remnants of the skyscraper’s metal shell, it was seriously difficult to judge - as though she were a gecko and then edged around through what had once been a window onto a jutting chunk of rubble sticking out of the building’s exterior, settling into a crouch like she was waiting for something. Despite the sharply cold rain still sheeting down, she seemed content to stay there for as long as she needed to. Max held her breath the entire time, ready to rewind the instant she fell, but it never happened. Aloy didn’t even act as though the possibility of falling had occurred to her.

Max shook her head in wonder. Did Aloy have some kind of neurological condition where she just didn’t feel fear? That was a thing, right? Max thought she'd heard that was a thing. Maybe it was because she was a clone?

Still, Aloy wasn’t falling at the moment and didn’t seem likely to while she was just crouched there, so Max went back to looking around her, trying to take it all in. Colorado Springs, she decided, looked distinctly worse for wear.

She’d visited Colorado before - hell, in the four years she’d spent driving her RV around, she’d been to nearly every state in the Lower 48, plus a fair amount of southern Canada and northern Mexico - and she’d really liked it. The sheer natural beauty of the place was enough to make her understand why the Nora thought their All-Mother lived here. Even back in her time they’d known it: there had been an actual place called “Garden of the Gods” just about ten miles west of where she was standing.

Now they called it Mother’s Rise and it was basically the Nora equivalent of a military base. Max didn’t even know what to do with that.

When she’d first left Vegas with her extremely ill-gotten gains, she'd just driven up and down the West Coast over and over as though picking at a scab. Seattle, Arcadia Bay, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, then back again, all the places where she'd given up a piece of her soul. Finally, though, she felt an itch to go somewhere else, see something else. Her camera was dragging at her, and she decided to let it. One of the first places she'd gone after finally leaving California had been Colorado, and it had been exactly the kind of inspiring she’d needed right then. She’d burned through an outrageous amount of film shooting all over the state. There had been this one tiny mining town she’d stumbled across in the mountains halfway between Grand Junction and Denver that had been so absurdly picturesque that she’d just stopped for two whole days to take shots. (And, if she was being honest, to ogle the local radio DJ/manager of the record store, who definitely had... a vibe.) In some ways, that little town had felt so much like Arcadia Bay that it was uncanny.

Which is why she’d wound up driving out of it on the second night, fighting something just short of a panic attack. Anything that felt like “home” was… unsafe. Dangerous. Time to move on. The only safety was in solitude. For her and for everyone else.

But she couldn’t move on from here, could she? No RV. No anything, really, except what Aloy had so generously shared with her.

Max stared at the ground. Aloy gives. All you do is take, something whispered inside her. She felt her mouth twist, but she couldn’t have denied it if she’d tried. She’d already taken so much from Aloy. More than the other woman knew. More than Max hoped she ever found out.

Of course, that means lying to her. More lies. Lies on top of lies on top of lies on top of lies on top of-

“Stop it,” she muttered angrily. "I'm not… lying. I'm just not telling her everything." She looked up quickly, checking to see if anyone was close enough to hear, but the braves were still busy dissecting the machines, and Aloy was still up on her perch. She was on her feet, though, looking as though she were readying herself to do something. The voice inside, the one wearing her face and sneering at her from the booth inside the Two Whales, seemed to laugh at her.

Think she'll buy that, do you? Think she'd agree? "They were only lies of omission, Aloy. Lies about my history, about the woman you think of as your mother, about who we were to each other… That's okay, right?"

Max found it so hard not to look at her. Not to stare at her, memorize her, take picture after picture after picture of her in her mind. There were so many already, but she couldn’t stop wanting more. She'd long since lost count of how many times across how many timelines she had imagined herself raising her camera, pressing the button, and...

*****

FLASH (Aloy is naked in the firelight, her skin almost glowing with the heat. One arm is around Max’s waist, the other digs fingernails into Max’s shoulder. Her mouth is open in a gasp of pleasure and her eyes half-closed, but she’s still holding eye contact with Max as she comes against her lover’s hand-)

“Rost won’t be back from hunting until the day after tomorrow.”

“God, I’ve created a monster.”

"Your fault for being so incredibly sexy.”

“We trained for like ten hours today! You already wore me out!”

“I certainly did. And I’m going to do it again tomorrow. But that’s then. Right now all I’m interested in is tonight…”

*****

FLASH (A late-summer squall catches the sunlight and sends flickers of gold through the air over the training area. Max is sitting behind Aloy on the porch under a cloak, arms wrapped around her girlfriend’s torso, chin on her shoulder, her face buried in the red-orange braids of Aloy’s hair. Aloy is staring out into the storm, the tears on her cheeks glittering just the way the raindrops do-)

“Max?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want this to end.”

“It won’t. When I get back-”

“Don’t patronize me, Max. How many times have you told me ‘every timeline is different?’ You don’t know any more than I do whether you and that other me will be together. And even if you do, it will be with her, not with me. Are all these versions of me really so… interchangeable to you?”

“Aloy, I… it’s still you. It’s always just you.”

“Really? Then why am I so jealous of her right now I want to scream?”

*****

FLASH (The cabin door has slammed open, framing Aloy on the threshold. Flickering motes of dust like angry red fireflies swarm around her. Her left arm hangs limp, muscle and skin stripped away to the bone. Her left eye dangles from its socket, and her mandible and teeth are visible through the gaping hole in her face. The fireflies flicker on the edges of the wound, widening it, ripping tiny slice after tiny slice away-)

“Max! You have to go! Now!”

“Aloy? No, no, no, f*ck, Aloy-”

“Max.” Gasp. “Go.” Choking gasp. “Please.”

“ALOY!”

*****

Max squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to refocus on the here and now. That hadn’t happened. None of it had, not the good or the bad. She and Aloy were working desperately to make certain that some of it never would. The rest…

Two months as lovers in one timeline. One night of pretty intense making out in another. And Max the liar in both.

You spend eight years trying to find some way to get over Chloe, and the first person who actually might help you do that is Elisabet’s clone. Jesus, Caulfield, how f*cked up are you?

Aloy wasn’t Chloe. That much was simple reality, and Max still had enough sense of perspective to recognize it. Chloe had been a punk badass, true, but Aloy was some kind of combination Spider-Man/Furiosa/Kate Bishop superhero. Chloe or not, though, Max had known she’d be staying in this time the exact instant she’d realized who and what Aloy was. She’d still kept trying to go back in hopes of being able to stop the Faro Plague, kept trying until she’d finally had no choice but to admit it wasn’t possible, but deep down she’d known the whole time it was wasted effort, that she was here because Aloy was here. Instead she’d apparently decided to seduce her in two realities, and she could not seem to stop hating herself for it.

Not for the first time, nor the hundredth, she thought about breaking things off before they went any further. She didn’t deserve Aloy, and Aloy had done nothing to deserve her. That had even been the plan at first, after her jump back. It had lasted approximately five minutes, right up until she felt the other woman’s fingers caressing the skin of her arm.

Looking back, there’d actually been a glimmer of connection as soon as she’d laid eyes on the other woman, back in that bunker near Mother’s Cradle, even before she’d heard the name “Elisabet Sobeck” in Aloy’s future history. Years spent traveling back in time, making changes, and then traveling forward again without knowing what she’d find had given Max lots of practice in how to adapt to surroundings she didn’t understand, but skipping a millennium in defiance of everything she knew about her abilities had still been more than just a shock. She’d been reeling, trying to wrap her head around the idea, but for some reason, she’d instinctively trusted Aloy to help and take care of her. That hadn’t been her habit for a long, long time, but it had happened with Aloy automatically, requiring no thought at all. And when her hard-won suspicious reflexes had finally kicked back in, it had been because Aloy had trusted her, her words and her truth, and she was so entirely unused to that from anyone that it automatically made her paranoid.

Some of that trust and connection had probably been her voice, come to think of it. Aloy sounded so much like Chloe it was uncanny. But then, she was Elisabet’s clone. It made sense.

There was movement overhead, and Max looked up to see Aloy was running for the edge of her little perch. The massive form of the Tallneck loomed over her, taking steady step after steady step, and Aloy glanced at it once, twice, judging its pace against her own. Max felt her mouth go dry. No. No f*cking way. She wasn’t about to…

Aloy reached the end of the ledge and hurled herself out into the void. The Tallneck took one more step, directly into her path, and she threw out her hands. They caught one of the feather-like flanges extending out from the machine’s long neck and Aloy swung forward, then back, using the momentum to swing herself up and land in a crouch atop the flange. Max saw the others standing next to her now from the corner of her eye, but her gaze was riveted to Aloy. She seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

For a moment, Aloy just paused there, as though her entire insane plan was to get onto the Tallneck’s neck and just ride it around the building for a while. The delay had just been to steady her balance, though, because she suddenly jumped forward, catching a flange on the opposite side of its neck, roughly her own height above her. She swung up to it, paused to balance, then jumped again.

Step by step, she climbed the f*cking Tallneck. All the way up to its head.

Finally, she pulled herself up onto the machine’s upper disc and disappeared from view. Max took a step forward, though what she planned to do she couldn’t have said if held at gunpoint. At first there didn't appear to be anything to do. Nothing seemed to happen for several seconds. The Tallneck took another step, then another, then another, apparently completely unconcerned with and unaffected by the tiny human that had madly tried to conquer it. Then Max saw a surge of electricity run around the edge of the disc, and small components all along the machine’s upper chassis began to shift and rearrange themselves.

“Blessed All-Mother,” she heard Varl murmur, and found she couldn’t really argue with him just then. Because at that moment, Aloy appeared at the forward edge of the disc. It was 10 stories if it was an inch, and

she

just

jumped.

Max rewound without thinking.

The electricity sparked around the disc’s edge. Little bits of metal or plastic or carbon fiber moved and folded outward. Aloy jumped. The world froze. Max’s hand was out in front of her, trembling, as she stared at the falling figure.

f*ck. f*ck. No no no no no nononon-.

It was Kate all over again. Why? Why was Aloy doing this? She’d seemed perfectly normal just a couple minutes ago. Had she been hiding this? It had to be something Max had done. It had to. Aloy hadn’t… hadn’t ki-… she hadn’t done this in any of the previous timelines. Never! Was it last night, somehow? Where had this come from? What had Max done?

Isn't it obvious? She knows, Caulfield. This is her punishment for you.

She rewound again, desperate to not see Aloy hit the ground. As soon as she finished, she pictured the exact same image in her head and flung herself through it.

She was standing on the rainswept disc of the Tallneck, slick and shifting as the machine kept up its walk. The top of the disc was covered with thick blue-black cabling radiating out from the center, seeming ready to trip her as soon as she moved. Aloy’s back was to her as she prepared to jump off the edge, and Max screamed desperately, “Aloy! Don’t!”

Aloy spun around in shock. “Max? How did you get up here? What are you doing?”

Max took a careful step closer, fighting wind and rain and moving disc beneath her feet. “Aloy! Please, whatever’s going on, don’t do this!” She took another step. She was almost halfway across now.

“Max! You can’t be up here!” Aloy shouted back over the rain. She looked panicked, pleading. “It’s not safe!”

“Whatever’s wrong, we can work it out! Talk about it! I’ll tell you everything! There has to be another way!”

“What are you talking about, Max? Tell me everything about what?” Aloy was frowning now, confused, and the very thing Max had so desperately feared to see flickered in her eyes: mistrust.

“Look, I’ll explain it all,” Max begged, getting closer still. “Just don’t jump! Please, Aloy, please! Whatever you think of me, don’t jump!” She was almost there. Almost there.

“Jump?” repeated Aloy, confused. She reached behind her, unhooked her grappling hook and line, and held them out for Max to see. “Max, I was going to use these. I’ve done this hundreds of times.”

Max stared, dumbfounded, at the hook and line. But she had… she’d… There hadn’t been a hook set, had there? Max hadn’t seen a line. “No,” she shook her head. “You fell! I saw it!”

For a moment, Aloy actually looked embarrassed. “I jump and then throw the hook back up after,” she muttered, barely audible over the rain. “Rost hates it. He says I’m going to break my neck someday. But it’s just so much more fun, and I really have done it a hundred times or more, Max. I’ve never fallen, not once. I promise!”

“Why would you…?” Jump and set the hook afterward? From midair? No, really, there had to be something wrong with her.

“Max…” Aloy said, now the one closing the distance, “what did you mean, you’ll tell me everything? What haven’t you told me?”

Oh. Oh sh*t. Aloy wasn’t trying to kill herself and Max had opened her mouth without thinking and oh, she had f*cked this one up big time. Time to get out of here. She lifted her right hand, ready to rewind, and agony suddenly speared through her skull like a lightning bolt. She screamed - she thought she screamed, anyway - and staggered, pain taking away any other sensation, overwhelming all her senses. Her nerves were on fire, her skin cut into millions of pieces, her bones cracking and freezing.

For a moment, her vision swam, doubled, swam again. As through a thickly tinted window, she thought she saw Aloy shouting her name, reaching toward her at an odd, steeply tilted angle. At the same time, though, she could almost see some kind of dim, cavernous room, with a shadowed figure turned away from her, standing at a table. Her heart seized. Jefferson. She was in the Dark Room, and Jefferson had her again.

Her foot came down on empty air. Something hit her in the side, wind roared, and blackness took her.

Chapter 17: Polar Vortex

Chapter Text

In several ways, it was oddly quite similar to how Aloy and Max had first met. Max had appeared unexpectedly, her eyes had rolled up in her head, her nose gushed blood, and then she’d fallen before Aloy could manage to catch her. On the other hand, there were also several meaningful differences. The first was that Aloy had caught her as she was falling. The second was that Aloy was falling too. The third was that they were both quite probably about to die.

As soon as Max had lurched sideways toward the disc edge, Aloy had leapt for her, knowing immediately it was too late to stop her from the drop. She slammed into the smaller woman right as they went over, and then gravity reached out and claimed them both.

Time got very slow.

If she hadn’t already been holding the grapple out to show Max, they would have died for certain. With the hook in one hand and the line in the other, she’d basically wound up wrapping the rope around Max’s torso when she’d caught her. She’d had just enough foresight to shift the bulk of the rope to the same hand as the hook as she’d hurled herself at Max, and now she closed her arms around the smaller woman so she could grab the slack with her left hand again and try to hurl the grapple back up to the Tallneck’s antenna. It wasn’t easy. They were tumbling as they fell, not the carefully practiced half-roll she usually did, but a wild spin through the air. The ground was coming up very fast and she was out of time. Relying on a mixture of years of training, wild hope, and simple desperation, she launched the grapple upward as hard as she could. She tumbled facedown again before she saw whether it landed.

There was an extremely painful jerk. It nearly wrenched her arm from its socket, nearly tore Max free of her grasp, but she managed to hold on. Not entirely, but that was the point - she started to slide down the rope at a much more reasonable speed, keeping Max held tightly to her. “Controlled falling,” Gildun had called it, and maybe never moreso than in that moment. Overhead, she heard the low, droning roar of the Tallneck’s defensive shock pulse activate, but her attention was entirely on reaching the ground with both her and Max alive.

They hit faster and harder than she would have liked, sending both of them sprawling. Holding Max, Aloy had been basically incapable of her usual roll to absorb the impact, but she had managed to angle the worst of it to herself, cushioning the still-unconscious Max as best she could. Shield-Weaver flared, the hard light plates taking the hit, and she wound up dazed on her back, staring upward as the Tallneck lumbered onward over her, her grappling line still dangling as it strode away. She was breathing hard and her shoulder felt like she’d injected Blaze directly into it, but otherwise, she was unhurt.

As soon as she could move, she forced herself to her feet. Varl and Vala were already there, bending over Max, while Bast was heading toward her, but she waved him off, all her attention on Max. Vala looked up as she approached. “She’s unconscious and lost a lot of blood. Aloy, what happened up there?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Aloy answered grimly. “Come on, let’s get her out of the rain. Varl, get a camp set up inside the ruin, please. We’ll need a fire quickly.” Varl nodded and ran ahead, while she and Vala carefully lifted Max between them and followed. Bast reappeared a few moments later, Aloy’s grappling hook and line in hand.

In short order they had a fire and tents, and Max was tucked into hers, furs wrapped around her for warmth while she dried. They’d put her in feet first so her head was near the opening and they could easily check on her. Studying her, Aloy shook her head. It really did seem like this was the same thing that had happened to her on the day she’d first arrived.

“Is she going to be okay?” Vala asked, kneeling nearby. Bast had gone hunting without being asked and Varl was watching the perimeter, but Vala had wanted to stay with Max and Aloy had allowed it.

“I hope so,” said Aloy. “The last time something like this happened, she was unconscious for a few hours but then seemed to recover on her own.” She looked over at the other woman. “What exactly did you see down here?”

“You started climbing the Tallneck and the rest of us had gathered to watch. You got to the top, there were a few moments where nothing seemed to happen, then we saw sparks around its head. And then Max just… vanished. One moment she was right next to Varl, the next, she wasn’t. I have no idea how it happened. Then a couple more moments passed while we tried to figure where she went, and then we saw the both of you fall. Did it… do something to her? Take her up to its head somehow?”

Aloy shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think she did that herself. She seemed to think I was going to jump to my death.”

“You nearly did,” noted Vala, and Aloy couldn’t quite suppress a shudder at the truth of it. Her shoulder was still aching, though she’d taken some wild ember to help with the pain and a bit of crushed grey omen to keep the swelling down. So far she didn’t seem to have lost any range of movement, at least. “Why did you even go up there in the first place?”

“As soon as we get a chance, we’ll find a herd of Striders and I’ll show you,” Aloy replied distractedly. She saw a notification at the edge of her vision, her Focus informing her of a new datapoint. She ignored it; it was the Tallneck’s observer log, she was sure, and it was entirely unimportant right now.

Over the next couple of hours, Aloy had similar conversations with Bast and Varl, learning no new information but verifying that all three had seen Max just vanish from the space next to them, only to reappear as she and Aloy plummeted from the Tallneck’s disc. Finally, though, Max began to stir and moan in her sleep. Aloy looked at the other three and quietly murmured, “I need to talk to her alone when she wakes up. Can you check the perimeter again?” They all nodded and headed off in different directions, though Vala did glance back worriedly over her shoulder.

After a few more minutes, Max did wake up, and Aloy leaned in to help her to a sitting position. With Bast’s hunting and a better idea of what was happening, she already had a bowl of warm boar broth ready to hand, and she passed it over to Max, who took it gratefully. She wasn’t quite meeting Aloy’s eye, however.

“Are you okay?” Aloy asked, and Max nodded.

“My head hurts, but I’ve survived worse.”

“So. How exactly did you get up there anyway?”

Max looked at her sharply, clearly having expected a different question, but she answered quick enough. “When I go into a memory, I can choose where inside that memory I appear. If I’m looking at something, it’s really easy to ‘remember’ it and go through it to someplace else I can see.”

Aloy nodded thoughtfully. “That first day,” she said, thinking back, “when you got to the top of the rocks. I thought I’d helped you up and then you rewound from there, but you did… whatever this was, didn’t you?” At Max’s confirmation, she went on, “And that whole entire project of getting you up the cliffside yesterday, with the grapple and the rope and Bast helping you…?”

“Just to keep the others from knowing everything I can do.”

“Right,” Aloy chuckled. “Well, we’re never doing that again.” Max chuckled with her, a bit of tension easing in her. More seriously, Aloy went on, “I’m sorry I frightened you so much. I should have warned you what I was doing. I thought it would be fun to surprise you all. I didn’t think about what it would be like for you.”

Max looked away. “Do you remember Kate Marsh, from my diary?” It took her a moment, but Aloy did. She inhaled sharply, seeing the comparison.

“Of course,” she murmured. “No wonder.” She reached out and took Max’s hand. “Thank you for caring that much about me. I’m not built to deal with things that way, but it means a lot that you would go through all this to try to help me if I were.” Max squeezed her hand and nodded. Still holding her hand, Aloy took a breath and went on, “Max? What did you mean up there about telling me everything?”

Max froze. She looked like a cornered rabbit, trying to find a way past the fox closing in, but Aloy gave her no chance. “Max. Answer me. What have you been keeping from me?” Still no answer. Aloy let go of Max’s hand and the other woman flinched. “Max! Come on! I thought we were past this! I thought you trusted me! After all of this, after… after last night… I thought we were in this together!” Silence. “Max. I have to… I have to know I can trust you. If I can’t, I don’t know how we-”

“In my time,” Max broke in, “there was a tradition of women changing their last names to their husband’s when they got married.” Her voice was quiet, soft, and in an emotionless tone that spoke of feelings being tightly held back. She was talking to a spot about half a step to Aloy’s right. “It was slowly going out of fashion, but when I left, it was still more common than not.”

Aloy frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Max continued, hardly seeming to notice that Aloy had spoken. “When Chloe got married, she surprised me by doing it. She was always so edgy and punk, I didn’t expect her to go the traditional route, but, well, she always did find ways to catch me off guard.” She finally met Aloy’s eyes now, met them directly, even as her voice got even quieter. “The man she married was named Neil Sobeck.”

The world fell out from beneath Aloy’s feet.

She stared at Max, speechless, utterly stunned, while the smaller woman continued in that same, flat tone. “The daughter I mentioned, the one I saw when she was two? Her name was Elisabet.” Max smiled a little at that, her eyes going unfocused for a moment. “They shared a birthday, did you know that? March 11. Kind of sweet, I thought.”

“...why didn’t you tell me?” Aloy whispered, and Max was suddenly staring right at her again.

“Because you were wrong before. Don’t you get it? I did cause the Plague. I had to have. I talked to Chloe and I didn’t rewind it - I came here instead. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that I was standing five feet away from Elisabet when that happened, and then she’s the one who ended up right in the middle of Zero Dawn?”

Aloy shook her head. “No, you said the apocalypses happened within days, not 42 years later.”

“I don’t know why it waited so long this time, but it obviously did! I did it and I can’t fix it and I… I couldn’t take knowing that. Not at first. And then I couldn’t take you knowing that.”

“Or maybe,” shot back Aloy, and she wasn’t whispering in the slightest now, “it was a coincidence and has nothing to do with you and honestly it doesn’t even matter because you should have told me! She was my mother, Max. My mother! You should have told me.” On the far side of the ruin she saw Varl turn and look curiously back toward them; she didn’t think he could make out what they were saying, but he’d obviously heard her. She forced her voice back down. “Is that… is that what last night was? Goddess, am I just a Chloe substitute for you? It was, wasn’t it! It took a thousand years and a clone but you finally found a way to be with her!”

Max was shaking her head frantically, tears rolling freely. “No, no, f*ck, no, Aloy, please, please don’t think that-”

“How can I not?” Aloy snapped. “Why else would you hide this from me? You know how much finding Elisabet meant to me, Max! You know what I went through for it!” She stood up, trembling with rage. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t.” She turned to leave, but Max’s voice stopped her.

“Wait! Aloy, there’s something else you have to know.”

For a moment, Aloy considered just walking away regardless. Did she really want to hear about even more lies Max had told her? But curiosity was an old and familiar weakness, so she spun back around. “What else have you somehow failed to tell me, Max? What else could there possibly be?”

Tears still streamed down Max’s face, but her reply was immediate. “I didn’t hide this from you, Aloy, I only just realized it. I don’t know what happened up there on the Tallneck, but whatever it was… I can’t go back before it anymore. Just like when I first got here, when I try, all I get is pain. It’s like there’s a wall.”

Aloy felt her lip curl. “I’m guessing you know this because you tried to jump back and make sure this conversation never happened,” she snarled, and Max wisely did not deny it.

“That’s not my point right now,” she said instead. “Remember I told you it was safe to change things because I would go back and stop you if it went wrong?”

That finally managed to freeze Aloy’s anger in place for a moment. “If you can’t go back…” she said, and Max nodded, wiping at her face.

“I can’t warn the earlier versions of us if something goes wrong later.”

For a moment, they just stared at one another, then Aloy shook her head dismissively. “We’ve changed too much,” she said flatly. “We’re committed now.” It had already been three days since Rost and Vala and Bast and the others had not died “on schedule,” and so far there were no strange phenomena signaling some impending doom. That had to be enough: there was only one way forward at this point. Seventy days remained, seventy days she could be sure of at any rate. In seventy days she intended to have the Master Override firmly embedded in HADES’ casing once more.

“Do you want me to leave?” Max asked.

Aloy thought about it briefly, but there was only one possible answer. “No,” she said. “Whether there’s a wall between you and yesterday or not, you’re still my best hope for pulling this off. I need you with me.” She turned to go again, but once more Max spoke up.

“And what about us?”

She looked over her shoulder. “What do you think?” she replied and walked away.

As she went, she saw the others throw worried looks between her and Max’s tent, then all three of the Nora went to check on the injured woman. Aloy let them. Furious as she was at Max, it also hurt her deeply to see her so heartbroken. Maybe the others could help. She would need them too, would need every bit of help she could find. She couldn’t let this… this betrayal tear everything apart.

She clambered up onto one of the pieces of rubble high enough she could have used it to jump onto the Tallneck and let the rain wash over her. If there were tears on her face, this would wash them away too. Tears were something else she didn’t have time for.

Her Focus was still pinging her about the unread datapoint, and she irritatedly tapped it awake so she could turn the notification off. To her surprise, though, there were two new datapoints, not one. One of them was exactly what she’d expected, “OBSERVER LOG US-W-17,” the Tallneck’s data logs, but the other was an image file, simply labeled “Photo (1).” The timestamp on it was just about a minute after the Tallneck log. Aloy frowned. That was more or less exactly when Max had had her seizure. She tried to tap it open, and frowned again when it refused to do so, instead giving her a bizarre error message she’d never seen before:

“ERROR: File encrypted. Provide access key to open. @$|< |V|4X”

Aloy stared in confusion. What did that mean? What was going on?

Chapter 18: Wind Chill

Chapter Text

Between the sh*tty weather and giving Max time for recovery, they wound up spending the rest of the day in the ruins of Colorado Springs. Max had only a few moments to get herself together before Bast, Varl, and Vala showed up to check on her; afterward she honestly had no idea what she’d told them, but whatever it was, apparently it had worked. They seemed satisfied that she would be all right. They did know now that she could basically teleport, but apparently it wasn’t any weirder than her ability to seemingly tell the future, so they were okay with it. Max thought Vala might have a slightly better idea what had happened between her and Aloy than the other two, but she didn’t seem to want to push too hard. The woman was entirely too perceptive - although come to that, neither she nor Aloy had been particularly subtle, Max admitted to herself ruefully.

Aloy didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day. She spent most of it outside, perched on her rubble outcropping like a post-apocalyptic Batman above Gotham City; when the rain finally seemed to be too much for her she came back inside and sat by the fire to dry out but remained completely withdrawn. She honestly wasn’t really talking to anybody, staying quiet and pensive all afternoon, but she did at least exchange a few words with everyone else. Max, though, got nothing but the silent treatment.

It was everything she’d been afraid of and more.

Karma, Caulfield. That’s what they call it.

For something she was absolutely convinced she deserved, it hurt a whole lot more than she’d expected. Somehow, it was even worse because Aloy didn’t seem to have accepted Max’s responsibility for the Glitch. None of her anger was over a side effect of Max’s powers, no matter that it had cost billions of people their lives. No, her fury was aimed directly at what Max herself had done. Had chosen to do.

On the other hand, at least it was all out now. All except their relationship in the other timeline, and, well, that didn’t exactly seem relevant anymore. This had to be as bad as it could get, and Aloy hadn’t made her leave. She still had a chance to help. Maybe a chance to find a way to make things right.

Good thing too, since we have literally nowhere else to go if she had tossed us out on our ass, sneered that other Max in her head. She told the voice to shut the f*ck up, but the other Max just laughed.

For the first time in years, Max found herself wishing she had a joint. She hadn’t smoked since Berkeley, at least partly because the smell reminded her too much of Chloe, but right then, getting high sounded just lovely. Anything to blunt the edge of the pain. Nothing doing, of course, and she didn’t think they even had any booze with them, but maybe that was for the best. She needed a clear head if she was going to find a way out of this. Not to mention, of course, that she was more or less a soldier now, and she couldn’t imagine that trying not to die to an Eclipse arrow or one of those Sawtooth things would be any easier buzzed.

The memory of the barrels exploding at the dig site, the men dying to hungry tongues of flame, suddenly flashed through her mind. She hadn’t aimed an arrow at anything but objects, but she’d killed them all the same. She’d had to remember what Aloy had looked like as she died to the nanites in order to make herself draw the string the first time, and she still wanted to vomit thinking about it. She’d thought it would be like killing Mark Jefferson had been. She’d been very wrong.

Killing Jefferson had been icy, a frozen lake cracking every time the knife went in. A stab to the kidney for Rachel. A slash across the throat for Kate. A thrust to the stomach for Victoria. Another for herself. And then the point buried in his eye for Chloe. She’d rewound, then done it again. The third time she just rewound to before she’d stabbed him in the eye and simply stood over him, watching him choke on his blood for several long moments before ending it. The fourth, she’d started with kidney and throat, then pushed him to the ground and cut him across both wrists, right where she could still sometimes feel the tape on her own arms. Every time she rewound, the blood spattering her came with her. By the time she finished, she probably looked like Carrie at the prom. It barely registered on her. The last time was the cleanest, really: one cut across his neck, then carefully removing his wallet and watch after he collapsed to the ground. She’d jumped to the night she and Chloe had gone swimming in the Blackwell pool so she could shower off in the locker room, then skipped ahead to the next day to make sure no one had managed to save him before he bled out on the sidewalk. Once she’d seen his Wikipedia entry (“Mark Andrew Jefferson [April 11, 1975 - July 14, 2011], American photographer”), she’d felt nothing but relief.

The Eclipse… that had been different. When the battle was over, the first thing Max felt was giddy. Adrenaline bubbling through her veins, screaming joy that she was alive. Even knowing she could do a straight-armed hang for almost five minutes these days, she wasn’t sure she’d have risked the zipline if she hadn’t felt almost invincible. Then, as they started the cleanup afterward, she started really seeing the dead. In death, they didn't look like dangerous or evil monsters, they just looked like people. People who'd died because of something she'd done. Try as she had to avoid it, she couldn't help thinking of Kate lying on the ground in front of the dorms. She knew that memory had been at least part of why she'd reacted so badly to Aloy jumping off the Tallneck.

It was a bullsh*t comparison, of course. Kate had been one of the kindest, gentlest people on the planet. These assholes were fighting desperately to restore a regime that had literally practiced slavery and blood sacrifice, even without knowing what HADES was really up to or what the things they were doing would lead to. If anybody could be said to deserve death, surely they did.

But Max hadn’t hated them. She’d had to reason her way to ending their lives, and it had been hard. At the same time, it felt like it should have been harder. She kind of hated that she'd managed it. She kind of hated that she was going to do it again - assuming Aloy didn’t change her mind and make Max leave after all.

And there we are, back again. Have fun distracting yourself with other guilt, did you? Did it help, or was it just one more waste of time by Max Caulfield to try to hide from the consequences of her own actions?

The rain finally trailed off to a fine mist just before sunset, and Aloy announced that they would be heading out the next morning. “Vala, you’re the fastest of us. You’ll be heading back to Mother’s Rise to give Sona her report. Make sure you tell her about the outlanders in the Ring of Metal, and ask her to meet the rest of us at Mother’s Watch so we can petition the Matriarchs for permission to enter Devil’s Grief and end them.” Vala nodded. “I have something else I want to check on north of here before we follow you; hopefully we’ll only be half a day or so behind.”

Everyone agreed, but the air was thick with tension and unasked questions. Bast’s scowl had come back and was beginning to focus more directly on Max; Varl kept staring at Aloy and doing a bad job of hiding it, seeming as though he were trying to psych himself up for something; Vala chewed her lip and kept glancing between the both of them. Aloy was well aware of it, Max was sure, and seemed to be deliberately ignoring it. Instead, she announced she was going to bed early and that she expected everyone else to be ready to move at sunrise.

Vala was the first to move once Aloy had retired. She got up almost at once, then slowly approached Max as though afraid she'd run. Max just sighed and waved her to a seat. Bast, Max noted, was still scowling at them both. He’d lightened up so much yesterday, but he really seemed to fall into that expression easily. Apparently RBF had survived into the 31st century. Tom Felton would definitely play him in the movie.

“Max,” said Vala carefully, “I don’t want to pry, but Aloy seems…”

“We had a fight,” Max interrupted tiredly. “I can’t tell you what about because it’s Aloy’s business, but she has every right to be mad at me. I betrayed her trust and I’m going to have to do everything I can to win it back again.”

Vala studied her before asking, “Does it have anything to do with her mission from All-Mother?” Max shook her head and Vala sighed with relief. “Good. I like you, Max. I wasn’t looking forward to you having to leave us.”

Max gave a weary half-smile. “Thanks, Vala. You’ve been great this whole time.”

“Maybe this isn’t my business either, but… I’ve been teasing Varl, but you and Aloy seemed to be getting pretty close. Are you okay?”

That should not have been a difficult question, nor one that sent Max into a whirlwind of regrets and frustrations, but well, here she was. Was she okay? Better question: had she ever been okay? When was the last time “okay” might have described her? That morning making pancakes with William and Chloe, maybe? That time at the Troll with Kristen and Fernando, if only because she’d completely forgotten how bad a friend she’d been to Chloe? Certainly not since she’d had the vision of the tornado in Jefferson’s class.

“No,” she said, “but I hope that I will be. Maybe I haven’t destroyed any chance we… that I had.” She wasn’t sure if she was lying or just saying what she wanted to believe. Vala gave her a sympathetic look and gripped her hand reassuringly before returning to her spot on the other side of the fire. A brief conversation occurred between her and the two men, after which Varl looked at Max as though seeing her for the first time and was uncertain as to whether he liked what he saw. Whatever Vala had told him, though, it seemed to change his mind about approaching Aloy. To Max’s surprise, Bast’s scowl actually seemed to lessen somewhat. Maybe after what he’d admitted to last night he could sympathize with someone who had done Aloy wrong and needed to try to earn some forgiveness. Tired of judging eyes on her, Max crawled back into her tent and stared at the hide canopy overhead, waiting to fall asleep.

She waited a long time.

*****

They left the next morning as early as Aloy had promised, moving out into the overgrown streets of Colorado Springs while the sun was still just a pink glow over the eastern mountains. Max had never been a morning person, and the fitful couple of hours of sleep she’d managed had not helped. Her eyes felt gritty and raw and she wasn’t sure how much of that was exhaustion and how much left over from her tears the day before. Aloy still hadn’t spoken to her, but she’d been watching Max off and on all morning, and a couple times Max thought she’d been about to say something but stopped. At least the cold rage had left her eyes. Regret seemed to have replaced it and that cut Max just as deeply in its own way, but she thought she could hold up under it better.

Not that she had much choice.

They walked through the ruins of the city for a couple of hours, stopping twice to handle some machines. The first was a group of Watchers and Scrappers that the Nora made quick work of. Even without Vala, the three braves worked efficiently and effectively, taking down the five robots without taking any injuries.

The second, though, was a pair of Sawtooths, and that caused a bit of a stir. Aloy had been occasionally tapping her Focus on as they walked, glancing around quickly before turning it off again, and it was during one of those moments that she suddenly raised a hand and signaled the others to stop.

“Sawtooths,” she murmured, dropping into a crouch and readying her bow. “Two of them, in the building ahead.”

Max couldn’t see anything except for piles of brick and steel, and from their expressions neither could Varl or Bast, but they followed Aloy’s lead without hesitation. “Do we try to take them?” Bast asked, fingering his bowstring. His expression said he didn’t like the idea, but his voice was steady and calm. Varl looked determined, a Fire Arrow already nocked.

For a moment, Aloy fingered the Corruptor component she’d lashed to the end of her spear with a look of frustration, then shook her head. “No,” she said firmly, “too risky. We can circle around.” She scanned the block ahead, then pointed. “One of them will come out from there and circle the building toward us. As soon as it turns the corner, we move. Stay low and quiet.”

Varl and Bast exchanged disbelieving glances, and even Max couldn’t help but wonder how she knew. It was the Focus, obviously, but what was it showing her? Max had been assuming it was basically just a smartphone the size of a Bluetooth headset: impressive, certainly, and all kinds of futuristic, but able to predict a machine’s entire behavior pattern? For the first time, Max actually felt a pang of disappointment that she would never actually get to see all these technologies be developed back in her own time.

They waited, and sure enough, about a minute later, the Sawtooth stalked out into the street. Safely hidden in cover with the rest of them, Max still felt a thrill of fear when it looked their way and began to clank down the street. The thing was massive, lean and feline, glowing blue eyes glaring about in every direction. Each footstep was accompanied by the sound of whirring motors and a thud Max could feel through her boots. It was a robotic sabertooth tiger the size of an SUV, and every primitive instinct in her was screaming that this was a predator and she was prey. She was frozen.

It reached the corner of the building it had come from, spun as though it had heard something behind it, then shook itself and began to stalk away down the side street. Aloy signaled them to go.

They were entirely in the open as they crossed the intersection. “What if it turns back and sees us?” Varl asked, but Aloy shook her head dismissively.

“It won’t. Just stay quiet and we’ll be fine.”

Again, her prediction proved true. The Sawtooth reached another gap in the wall and turned into it, disappearing into the ruin once more. It never glanced their way again. In moments they were past the building and headed further up the street.

“Aloy,” Varl breathed, “that was incredible. How did you know?”

“What,” she replied with a half-grin, “you don’t think it was just luck?” She chuckled, then gestured toward the Focus. “It’s this, Varl. Just this. Not magic and not a gift from All-Mother. It’s an Old Ones device.” She sobered, giving him a direct look. “It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Varl shook his head as though unable to come up with an answer to that. Bast seemed to be thinking hard and not liking the thoughts.

The ruins were thinning out toward the north edge of town when they finally reached what seemed to be their destination: some kind of fortification, wooden walls and spikes liberally decorated in red and black and covered with machine parts for extra menace. The aesthetic seemed to be unironic Death Metal Album Cover, which - just as it always had when she'd seen it in her own time - made Max suspect whoever was using it was trying too hard. It was difficult to tell, but Max thought the fort had been built around a ruin with a single tower or spire at the front, almost like a church. It looked to be deserted, something that Aloy confirmed after she checked with her Focus. Varl had his bow out again as he growled, “Outlander bandits.”

“Not anymore,” Aloy said consideringly. “Come on, let’s take a look around.”

Inside, the smell was atrocious. Dead men and women lay everywhere, arrows piercing torsos, heads, throats. The flies were thick around the corpses, but Max was startled not to see any crows or vultures. Shouldn’t there be some animals scavenging the dead? The answer, it turned out, was that there were: foxes. More than a dozen scattered away from the bodies when they approached, and she saw others skulking toward their edge of her vision.

Seeing these people was easier than the Eclipse had been. She still felt a bit green, but knowing that none had died by her hand helped. The Nora seemed to be reacting as though it were all perfectly ordinary. Aloy had her Focus on again as she looked around. Varl pulled an arrow from one of the bodies and examined it. “Carja,” he said, tossing it aside. “More of these Eclipse?”

“They don’t seem like the bandit-killing sort,” Aloy shook her head. “No, I think this is the Voice of Our Teeth at work.”

Bast blinked. “The what of our what?”

Aloy didn’t answer, trotting instead off through the ruin until she led them to what were unmistakably a pair of cages. Cut cords were piled in each. “There were prisoners here,” Aloy said, pointing at the cords. “Someone freed them.” She squinted, kneeling, then pointed off to the east. “The captives went that way, but whoever set them free went west, toward the bridge.”

Apparently Aloy’s cryptic revelations were starting to become commonplace: Varl and Bast both just nodded. “Do you want to follow them?” Bast asked.

“I think we need to. I don’t mind someone killing bandits in Nora land, but I think we need to be sure that he- er, they stay on task.”

Varl sighed, glancing around as they readied themselves to follow Aloy’s path. “It’s a shame this is cursed ground,” he mused. “We could have settled Nora here. The Matriarchs have been saying that the tribe’s grown enough that we might need to return to the Forsaken Village again soon, but this would be much safer than the Valleymeet.”

Max heard Aloy laugh to herself. “Yeah,” she agreed, “you’d have to be an outcast to live here.” Varl looked chagrined and Bast a bit scandalized; Bast might have remembered Max’s joke about the "popular people'' too, though, because he glanced her way and gave a brief but wry smile.

Somehow Aloy was able to follow the trail she saw at a run, even if the pace she actually chose was more like a quick jog. Everyone else was able to keep up, though Max knew she was going to feel it soon. Fortunately, she didn’t have to - they caught up to the people Aloy was following after only maybe half a mile, at a crossroad where the bridge path met another one going north and south.

There were two of them, both wearing outfits unlike any Max had so far seen in this time. It was still armor built out of plating taken off of machines, but it had a stylized aesthetic that made it seem… the only word Max could think of was “fashionable.” The kind of armor Courtney Wagner would have worn. The colors were much more intense than Nora designs, including reds and yellows on the vest of one and a royal purple in the pants of the other, and their headdresses - they couldn’t really be called helmets - had flared accents that looked like nothing so much as plexiglass feathers.

The shorter man was deeply tanned, with short topknot of dark hair and a sneering twist of his lips that made Bast’s usual scowl look downright friendly. He was carrying something that looked like a single-bladed axe, but it was as tall as he was. There was a bow on his back and a long-bladed knife - or maybe a short sword - on his hip.

The other man was… Max found herself inhaling sharply through her teeth. He looked like he’d been chiseled from his native desert sandstone by a very gay Pygmalion, with a perfect jaw, haunting grey eyes, and a sculpted bare chest that she instantly wanted to run her hands over. A short, scruffy beard added just enough of a roguish edge to make her mouth dry. Everything about him screamed “bad boy” and oh wow was she glad that Aloy wasn’t looking at her right then. She was afraid she might be drooling.

The two men rose to face them as they approached. The shorter one tightened his grip on his weapon, but the taller looked completely at ease, almost bored. “Hello,” he said a voice that almost purred. “The deadly Nora braves I’ve heard so much about. Have you come to try to kill us?”

Chapter 19: Jet Streams

Chapter Text

“We followed your trail from the bandit camp,” Aloy explained. “You’re not supposed to be here, outlanders.”

“Yes, yes, trespass is forbidden on pain of death,” Nil replied evenly. “Strange phrase, pain of death. Those bandits you found? They’re in no pain at all.”

Behind her, she could feel Varl and Bast’s tension, their readiness to attack the Carja faithless daring to stand on Nora land. Varl, if Aloy remembered correctly, had fought in the last few years of the Red Raids, and she could only imagine what he was thinking right then.

“We’re not here to fight you,” she said, raising her voice just slightly so that the Nora would understand she meant them to hear. “I just want to know who you are and why you’re killing bandits on our land.”

“I’m Nil, and this is my partner Apeph. As for killing bandits? Well, where there’s killing to be done, that’s where we go. They weren’t coming to us, so we went to them instead. We just assumed you wouldn’t miss them.”

Aloy studied the shorter man, Apeph, who was offering her a very unpleasant grin. She’d never really thought about the sort of person who would join up with Nil on a permanent basis, and found she wasn’t surprised to be taking an instant dislike to him. This might have been the first person her rewind had saved she wasn’t happy about.

“Well, my name is Aloy, and if it’s bandits you’re looking for, I can give them to you. There are two more camps I know of on this side of the Carja border: one overlooking the pass leading to Daytower, and one on the north side of Devil’s Grief. If you want to try getting rid of them, be my guest.”

Nil’s eyes slid over the rest of her group, and to Aloy’s surprise, came to rest on Max. “Perhaps you’d like to meet us there? I’m sure there will be enough that no one will have to go unsatisfied. A moment for each of us to share with them before the blood finishes filling their lungs?”

Max looked shocked and horrified, but there was also a blush to her cheeks that Aloy found she did not like at all. “No one is joining you, Nil,” Aloy said firmly, stepping directly between them. “I’ve told you where you can find your blood. Now do us both a favor and go get it. There is likely to be a Nora War Party coming right through here in the next day or two, and you won’t want to still be here when it does.”

Apeph was also looking at Max, and at Aloy too, though he was trying to hide that part. “I’m sure we could have all sorts of fun together,” he murmured, and Aloy found her grip tightening on her spear. Before she could say anything, however, Nil had drawn his knife and placed it against his partner’s throat in a single, liquid movement. Apeph’s eyes were wide and he went stone-still.

“Don’t be crass, Apeph,” Nil said disapprovingly. “Don’t spoil this with your animal debauchery. We’ve offered, and the lady has refused. If she changes her mind, she’ll know where to find us.” He refocused on first Max, then Aloy, giving each a polite nod. “We’ll see each other again, I’m sure,” he went on, resheathing his knife. With his usual bland smile, he gave slight bows to Varl and Bast as well, then turned Apeph toward the northern road and all but shoved the man along.

They weren’t even quite out of sight before Varl hissed, “Seeker! Are we really just letting them walk away from us? Faithless befouling All-Mother’s sight with every step?”

Aloy sighed and turned to face him. Bast, every bit as incensed, put in, “The embassy had the Matriarch’s blessings to keep them from tainting the Sacred Land, but those? Death is the law!”

“And what do you think they’re going to find if they try to kill every bandit in two more camps on their own?” asked Aloy sharply. Bast’s eyes widened, and Varl made a grunt of surprise. He shouldn’t have been, she thought irritably. By now they should have figured out she knew what she was doing. “Either they’re going to kill some of the outlander bandits and die, or they’re actually good enough to clear out both places. Either way, they’re the bandits’ problem, not ours, and there will be fewer outlanders in our lands afterward than when they started.” She made a sharp gesture and they fell into step behind her. “I’m not interested in risking braves to deal with those camps until we’ve cleared the Eclipse from the Sacred Land. I have one enemy right now, and it’s not Nil and Apeph.”

There was a long moment of silence from behind her. At last, Varl said, “As you command, Seeker.” He didn’t sound happy, but she didn’t hear any rebellion in his voice either. Bast didn’t join in, but when she glanced back, his anger appeared to have transmuted into something more like a general frustration. She saw him glance a couple of times at Max, though she had no idea what he might be thinking when he did so.

Max. Max was a problem that was only getting bigger as things went along, and she still didn’t know how to deal with it. That flash of jealousy earlier over Max and Nil was out of line, and moreso because it had lingered long enough to have been part of why she’d just snapped at Varl. Intellectually, she knew that, if she meant it when she said she and Max weren’t going to be together, then Max really wasn’t her business. She didn’t have the right to be getting jealous over anything Max did at this point. And yet there had been just the briefest moment when she’d kind of wanted to knock Nil’s teeth in.

It wasn’t only jealousy, of course. It was a lot of leftover heartbreak too. The simple, rotten, selfish truth was that Aloy didn’t think Max deserved to find someone she might be happy with after making Aloy so desolate. That truth both shamed and angered her. It was childish and cruel, and she had no interest in being the kind of person who felt that way about anyone or anything. Except that neither shame nor anger seemed to be making the feelings go away.

Somehow Vala and Bast had remained friends after they broke up. Even if friends was too much to ask after what Max had done, Aloy knew she needed to find a way to be able to work with the woman. She needed what Max could do. Maybe Vala would have some suggestions? She could ask Bast, but… She eyed the blond man again. No, their newly-fledged understanding was still a bit too new to involve relationship advice.

So far she hadn’t even managed to make herself talk to Max about the weird file that had appeared in her Focus, and that she definitely had to do sooner rather than later. For one thing, she refused to be a hypocrite and Max needed to be kept in the loop as much as possible, and for another, trying to figure out what the file was, how to access it, and how it had gotten into her Focus on her own had only produced a lot of failure and frustration.

It seemed obvious that Sylens had, for some reason, sent it to her. He’d had no trouble just adding files to her Focus before, after all, and she couldn’t think of anyone else who would either want to or be able to. But why do so in a way that kept her from reading it? And what was it supposed to mean to her? It must have been some kind of message, but what? She’d spent most of the previous afternoon keeping well clear of the others and calling out to Sylens, trying to get him to answer her through her Focus as he had before, but as had always been true, he refused to be summoned. She shouted herself almost hoarse over the rain and had gotten only her own echoes for reply.

She had to talk to Max. The trouble was, that meant… talking to Max.

For a moment, memories of lips on skin and a slow-building heat flashed through her. Aloy grabbed hold of them and shoved them away, jaw tight. She shook herself. She needed a distraction, something to clear her head.

An opportunity to do just that presented itself shortly thereafter. A Nora merchant, lounging comfortably on a rock next to the flag of her profession, smiled welcomingly as Aloy led her group over. After a quick negotiation, Aloy had lost several Shards but acquired four new Ropecasters. Three she handed out to Varl, Bast, and Max, none of whom regularly carried the weapon. The fourth she stuffed into her satchel for Vala later. As she passed them to the others, all three gave her questioning looks, but she didn’t bother explaining. It would be much easier to do it than to talk about it.

A quick glance at her Focus’s newly-upgraded map showed her what she wanted: a Strider herd. It wasn’t far, especially if they hurried a little, so Aloy turned that direction and set out at a quick jog. In just a double handful of minutes the four of them were approaching the herd.

“Each of you pick a Strider and get ready to tie it down,” she whispered to the others. “Try to signal the others so no one doubles up. As soon as I fire, take yours as well. Remember, we’re trying to capture here, not destroy. Tie it down and keep it tied, but don’t attack it otherwise. I’ll take care of the rest.” Max’s face was open confusion, but the braves were used to taking orders, so they only nodded acceptance. “Good. Now go.”

They scattered, each taking up a different position around the herd, using distance from one another as their primary means of assuring that they weren’t going to be aiming at the same machine as someone else. Once her Focus showed all three of them were in place, Aloy readied her ‘Caster, took aim at her chosen Strider, and fired.

As soon as the anchorline was in and set, she heard other weapons firing as well. Her Strider had fallen immediately, thanks to the strength of the lines her Shadow Ropecaster could handle; the others would need multiple lines even for a comparatively weak machine like a Strider. Still, even one line was enough to keep them from running away, and a second pinned them down fast enough. As soon as her target fell, all the Striders’ lights flared red, but most turned and fled instead of charging, leaving only the four that Aloy and her team had captured.

Now to show off a little. She grinned.

Ignoring her own Strider for the moment, knowing that the stronger line would hold the longest, she instead ran toward Max’s (and refused to think about why she’d picked Max’s first). Once she was close she went into a slide, ending right next to the Strider’s armor and firmly planting the override there. She watched with satisfaction as the blue-black cabling snaked free and bound the machine to her. It stopped struggling, instead just standing calmly as Aloy turned her attention toward Varl’s machine.

She’d needed the Ropecasters to keep the Striders from running off while her override recharged, but the plan was solid and went off without a hitch. Bast’s Strider almost broke free before Aloy could get it overridden, but one more line made sure the anchor held long enough for her to start the override process, and then it didn’t matter. In short order, each of them had a docile, patient Strider standing next to them. Varl and Bast looked like they were about to jump out of their skins.

Max, on the other hand, having had some idea what was coming (once she saw the override process begin, anyway) and without a lifetime of assumptions about machine behavior to overcome, handled it much better. It took her more effort to mount up than it would have Aloy, but she was on its back almost as soon as the Strider was overridden, figuring out how to use the cabling around its neck to guide and steer it. Once she had, she dismounted again and led the Strider over to the rest of them, smiling as brightly as Aloy had seen her since their night together. Aloy found herself reflexively starting to smile back, pleased to have made Max happy, but again she forced the feeling back.

Yes, Max was a problem she needed to address soon.

Seeing Max had her machine under control, Aloy turned her attention to the others. “The idea here is to be able to travel faster and cover more ground quickly,” she explained. “We have to get to Mother’s Watch and Devil’s Grief as fast as possible, and the Striders can help us do that. I won’t be able to find Striders for the entire War Party, but we can use the extra speed to scout ahead, clear dangers from the War Party’s path, and perform some reconnaissance inside Devil’s Grief itself before the rest of the braves arrive. Understand?”

The two braves exchanged visibly nervous glances, but almost as one they replied, ‘Yes, Seeker!” Aloy made a face; that “Yes, Seeker” thing was happening more and more as she’d had to give more and more orders. She’d wanted to keep this as a group of equals working together, but that didn’t seem to be working out the way she’d hoped. Her friendship with Varl in particular had been important to her, but it was struggling under the weight of this hierarchy before it truly had had a chance to solidify. Aloy was starting to understand what Max had meant about needing to manage her own expectations in every new timeline.

Well, even if change was inevitable, she could still try to make it as small as possible. Varl’s friendship was worth the effort.

She helped the two men get up on their machines and start trying to guide them around. With Max for an example and Aloy’s teaching, they figured it out quickly enough, though neither seemed especially comfortable. They’d get used to it. They’d have to. She needed the speed the Striders could provide.

Once she was sure they had the basics down, Aloy had them all dismount so she could spend a few minutes repairing the damage they’d done to each machine with their Ropecasters. It was inevitable they’d need to replace them at some point, but Aloy had managed to keep her Strider intact and working from Brightmarket all the way to Sobeck Ranch, and not having to track another one down every time she wanted to move on had made the entire trip a great deal easier. Ideally, they could make these last a while too.

When she was satisfied, they remounted and she pointed her Strider south. “And now,” she told the others, “the Embrace. Try to keep up, and watch each other to make sure no one falls behind. Ready? Let’s move.”

Chapter 20: Variable Winds

Chapter Text

It had taken her and Max about a day to travel from Rost’s cabin to Mother’s Rise, and Aloy and the others were considerably further north than Mother’s Rise at this point. Despite the extra distance, though, they actually caught up with Vala and Sona just inside the Embrace gates not long before nightfall. There were shouts and cries of alarm from Sona’s escort as they came pounding up, but the sight of humans on the backs of the approaching machines kept arrows on bowstrings instead of loosed. Aloy slid off her machine without bothering to bring it to a halt first, offering Sona a nod of the head in acknowledgement as the War-Chief turned to meet her. At Sona’s side, Vala goggled at the machines and at her brother dismounting from one alike, and her face could not have expressed “Well I want to do that!” any louder if she’d bellowed it from the tops of her lungs.

“Aloy,” drawled Sona, looking past her at the machines for a moment. “Aloy Machine-Rider, it would seem. Or is this the work of your mysterious ‘oracle?’” She eyed Max, who cringed back a bit, just as she had on meeting the woman before.

“I did this,” Aloy replied. “It should help us complete my tasks in the time I need. War-Chief, did Vala give you her report?”

“She did, and I agreed with your request to bring the matter before the Matriarchs. Vala is not one to exaggerate, and her characterizations of these ‘Eclipse’ and their tame machines were… disquieting.” Sona eyed the Striders again. “You seem to have the same ability, but these do not match the descriptions I was given.”

“Similar,” corrected Aloy diplomatically, “not the same. HADES, the Metal Devil, changes the machines when they become Corrupted, makes them stronger in many ways but also vulnerable in others. What I can do just makes them treat me and my allies as friendly.”

“A valuable resource,” Sona said flatly. Aloy wished she could tell if she approved or disapproved, but pulling emotion out of Sona’s voice was like trying to dig a well in the Rustwash. “Can you reach Mother’s Watch tonight? I intend to push ahead, but it will be well after sunset before we can arrive.”

Aloy nodded, and signaled for Varl to pull his sister up in front of him on the Strider. “We’ll let them know you are coming,” she suggested. “We can present our scouting report, and hopefully they’ll be ready to hear your strategy when you arrive.”

“Go then. We will see you shortly.”

Varl and Vala had a little trouble working out how riding double could be best managed on the Strider, but in short order, the group was racing up the slope of All-Mother Mountain to Mother’s Watch. Although she didn’t like leaving anyone behind, Aloy regretfully told Bast to wait outside the town and make certain none of the other Nora bothered their Striders; she could all too easily imagine some overeager hunter deciding to take advantage of such easy prey. Bast simply agreed with a nod of his head, though, so she led the rest of her entourage into the town.

Fortunately, all three High Matriarchs were there, in the Matriarchs’ Lodge. When the weather was good, the Matriarchs preferred to make pronouncements in front of the cave leading into All-Mother Mountain, but when that was infeasible - or the matter at hand simply didn’t require that level of pageantry - the tribe met with its leaders in the Lodge. Dinner was past when Aloy presented herself to the braves holding their ceremonial guard outside the Lodge, but none of the High Matriarchs had retired just yet. It took some time to arrange, but twilight was still settling over the Embrace when Aloy was at last allowed to make her case.

She let Varl and Vala present their observations and experiences at the dig site above Devil’s Thirst, trusting to their experience as Sona’s children to both know how best to give their reports and to lend those reports the air of authority she needed. The Matriarchs’ reaction was suitably horrified, and as Aloy stepped forward to take her turn, she was feeling confident that things were going the way they needed to.

“In that excavation,” she explained, “I found a message from one of the Eclipse, a man who serves as a coordinator of supplies for them. It revealed that more Eclipse are working at a much larger site in Devil’s Grief, within the Ring of Metal. It also revealed a Blaze stockpile inside the Ring that I believe can be used to create an opening in their defenses and allow a War Party to finish them once and for all.” Within the Sacred Land, anyway.

“A War Party?” said Jezza, shocked. “In the Tainted Lands? That ground is cursed. Any who enter without a Seeker’s protections would be lost to All-Mother’s memory.”

“That is why War-Chief Sona is coming here tonight to request an exception for the taboo. She would like your blessing to lead a War Party into Devil’s Grief for this specific purpose.”

“An entire War Party?” The three High Matriarchs exchanged dubious looks. Even Teersa, who Aloy would have counted on to back her no matter what, seemed daunted by the magnitude of the request. Lansra had an expression that reminded her of some of the Shadow Carja toadies she’d seen in Sunfall, trying to find a way to give High Priest Bahavas bad news without getting punished for it.

Teersa leaned forward. “If there is this weakness as you suggest,” she began, “perhaps a smaller group of braves would be enough? You and your Seekers, and a handpicked force of Sona’s best? We could perhaps make an exception for... twenty or so?”

Given how many more Eclipse and Corrupted machines had been at Devil’s Thirst, Aloy was absolutely certain that twenty-five braves would attack fiercely and die badly. She glanced worriedly at Vala and Varl, searching for any ideas, but they seemed as lost as she was. They didn’t know the numbers as well as Aloy did, but Devil’s Thirst alone had shown them that their foes would not go down easily. She felt her jaw clench in frustration. Maybe Sona would be able to-

“We think Helis is there,” Max said. The words were not loud, but every eye was immediately on her.

“The Terror of the Sun?” Jezza whispered, and Max nodded.

Aloy looked hard at Max. She’d been keeping that information just to herself and Max, because she wasn’t certain he would be there. He probably had been the day before the Proving, else he could not have led the Proving Massacre, but by now he could have gone anywhere. Varl and Vala looked stunned; Varl in particular seemed to have gone a bit grey.

“We don’t know that,” admitted Aloy reluctantly, “but we know he was there, as recently as the Proving. He might still be.”

“How soon can you find out?” Teersa asked.

Now that she had her override and could use Striders… “Two days.”

All three Matriarchs looked disbelieving - it was usually a three or four day trip each way - but Aloy nodded firmly. “Two days,” she repeated.

“Let us consult together for a moment, Aloy, if you please,” Teersa said, and Aloy saw little choice but to withdraw. Varl and Vala immediately crowded in, whispering furiously.

“When were you going to tell us?”

“Helis? Really? How do you know?”

Aloy raised her hand and they fell into a frustrated silence. She led them around to the back of the Lodge, away from anyone who might just be passing by, and looked at Max. “Was that a rewind?” Max nodded, and the two siblings’ eyes went wide. “How far?”

“Just a few minutes,” replied Max, subdued but certain. She met Aloy’s gaze levelly, but the sadness and pain that coiled behind her eyes felt like a dagger cutting into Aloy’s chest. “They kept refusing you; nothing I said or did seemed to have any effect until I brought up Helis. Even then, you saw what happened - they had to think about it. This is the best I could manage.”

“So you don’t actually know Helis is there,” Aloy said, eyes narrow.

Max shrugged. “No, I don’t, but it doesn’t take a rewind to know that 20 braves wouldn’t be enough.”

“Sona is planning for at least one hundred,” Vala put in.

“We’ll need that many and more, if we can get it,” Aloy agreed, still studying Max. “So what if we find that he’s not there?”

Max looked at Varl and Vala warily, but finally she shrugged again. “Then you’ll probably have to lie and say he is, to make sure the Matriarchs don’t cave. If he’s not there by the time the War Party gets to Devil’s Grief, it will be too late for them to turn back anyway.”

Vala’s mouth fell open, and Varl could barely make himself speak through his shock. “You’re telling us to lie to the High Matriarchs?”

Max’s lips thinned. “No,” she said firmly, “I’m telling Aloy to lie to the High Matriarchs. Your only job in this scenario is to not contradict her.” After a moment, she sighed, going on in a more sympathetic tone, “Look, I know what kind of position that would put you in. I don’t like it much myself. But you’ve seen the Eclipse. You’ve seen the Corruption. Whether Helis is in Devil’s Grief or not, the Eclipse are, and you know they can’t be allowed to stay there. If HADES does what it’s trying to do…” She rubbed at her left shoulder. “I’ve seen it. I know what will happen. I will do anything to make sure it never comes to pass. I think you should too.”

The echo of that horror etched itself across her face, amplified by the soft, haunted quality of her words. Even without knowing exactly what Max had seen, Aloy could tell that Vala and Varl felt its truth. After a moment, Vala said, quietly but with determination, “Whatever it takes.”

“Whatever it takes,” Varl agreed.

Aloy nodded, then turned to the others. “Can you give me a minute with Max, alone?”

Vala reacted immediately, snatching her brother’s hand and all but dragging him back into the street. Her expression was pure concern for both of them, and Aloy found herself unspeakably grateful for the woman’s friendship. What she had missed out on the first time, and how close she’d come to never knowing it at all. She desperately needed someone to be solidly on her side. Not because of All-Mother, and not because they were stuck a millennium from their home. Just for her.

When the siblings were out of sight, Aloy turned back to Max. She said quietly, “Thank you, Max. That was well done.”

Max shrugged. “It’s why you said I could stay,” she replied. “I meant it: I’m here until you get this done.” Her voice was rougher than usual, abraded by emotions she was trying to keep in check.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Max let her gaze drift up the mountain, coming to rest on the Metal Devil, and she swallowed hard. She still thinks she did that, Aloy reminded herself. It’s like she’s looking for reasons to feel guilty, manufacturing them if they don’t already exist.

“I don’t know how to trust you,” said Aloy at last. “I have to, and Goddess help me, I want to, but I don’t know how.”

Max’s face twisted in pain. “That’s the thing, though,” she said quietly. “You shouldn’t. I’m not trustworthy.”

“Then why did you make me want to?” Aloy hissed, and for the first time since she’d caught Max falling off that disc, she felt the tears in her eyes as they started to fall. “How dare you?”

Tears slid down Max’s cheeks too, and she made no more move to wipe them away than Aloy did. “I was too selfish,” she whispered. “I couldn’t help myself.”

More heartbeats passed. Finally Aloy said angrily, “Damn you, Max.” She scrubbed at her face, turned away. “Get some sleep if you can. I want to be headed back to Devil’s Grief in six hours. HADES won’t wait on us.” She left Max there and forced herself not to look back.

The High Matriarchs summoned her back in a few minutes later. Lansra was the first to speak, apparently eager to be able to deliver what she thought would be good news. “The threat of Helis cannot be overstated,” she said in her slightly quavering voice. “If he has returned to the Sacred Land, we must use every resource to defeat him. And if he has allied himself with this new Metal Devil, then we cannot wait. If you can confirm his presence in Devil’s Grief, we will intercede with All-Mother on behalf of the War Party. The Hymn of Atonement will purge their sins.”

Teersa nodded her agreement. “We should be able to summon enough of our sisters here to the mountain to begin the Hymn in a day or two. Sona’s forces cannot reach Devil’s Grief before then.”

Jezza asked, “Does this meet with your approval, Seeker?”

It didn’t, really - the Eclipse needed to be dealt with whether Helis was there or not - but she knew it was the best she was going to get. “Yes, High Matriarch. The War-Chief should be here soon. I will consult with her and then set out for Devil’s Grief.” They waved a dismissal, and Aloy left them.

She gave the same instructions to Varl and Vala that she’d given Max, then went out to take over watching the Striders from Bast so he could get some sleep as well. She knew she had no chance of sleep herself with so many emotions roiling within her, but at least she didn’t have to make anyone else suffer.

Sona arrived about an hour later, and Aloy filled her in on what had happened. At the news that Helis might be in the Ring of Metal, Sona’s nostrils flared. For the first time in Aloy’s experience, she seemed ever-so-slightly intimidated. It didn’t put her off her stride, however. “How certain of this are you?” she asked, and Aloy shook her head.

“I’m certain he was there five days ago. Whether he’s there now… Well, that’s why we’re going to scout.”

Sona nodded, “I will assemble the War Party tomorrow and begin our march. I’ll send out messengers ahead of us and we will add braves as we go.”

“We won’t be back yet by tomorrow,” Aloy pointed out.

“I won’t risk waiting longer if he is there. You can report to me on the road before you return here.”

Aloy had to resist the urge to salute the way Uthid had saluted her on the Meridian Ridge. Sona just had that aura about her. Instead she just bowed her head briefly in acknowledgement.

She did ask Sona to assign one of her people to watch the Striders, assuring both her and the brave she chose that they weren’t a threat. “I just don’t want anyone getting upset about them being here,” she explained, and Sona acquiesced. Once she knew the Striders she had would be watched, Aloy slipped out into the night to collect one more. Vala would pout all the way to the Ring of Metal if she had to ride double.

Chapter 21: Ionized Atmospheres

Chapter Text

Max got precisely the amount of sleep she’d expected: none at all. After only managing a few hours each of the last two nights, and with last night’s mostly broken up by nightmares she couldn’t quite remember, she was beyond simply exhausted. It didn’t matter, though; her brain wouldn’t shut up. Weariness kept derailing her train of thought, but a new one always appeared immediately after, running on the same damn track. She kept seeing Aloy’s face, hearing her voice as she said, “Damn you, Max,” followed immediately by a whisper from that other Max in the Two Whales. Too late! Beat you to it.

She heard Sona’s people arrive outside her tent, but didn’t bother to climb out and see what was happening. Instead she brooded, waiting while the minutes passed, ticking away one by one. It was amazing how slow time could run for her at times, given how much power she had over it. She could have actually skipped ahead to the next morning if she’d wanted to, but it wouldn’t really help - she’d be up at Rost’s cabin, not here in Mother’s Watch. She could only imagine what Aloy’s reaction would be to finding her gone when the time came for them to leave.

Yeah, that idea was entirely off the table. Which left waiting. And thinking.

By her own reckoning, she’d already spent more than half a year in the Sacred Land. It was the longest she’d spent in one place since she’d bought her RV. She’d gotten used to what wearing their clothes felt like, eating their food. She’d gotten used to walking places - though she was thrilled to have a Strider to ride, no question - and she’d even gotten used to how much physical fitness this world demanded of her. For some of that time training with Aloy at Rost’s cabin, she’d even found herself thinking of the place as home.

Home. A thousand years from where she was born and literally everyone she’d ever known for more than a couple of months. What a concept.

It had been true, though. Something she’d been looking for since she’d left Arcadia Bay and she just might, maybe, have found it. And just like that, a panicked mistake and a bizarre malfunction of her powers had combined to take it all away in a matter of minutes. She wasn’t used to having to live with her mistakes. Especially not ones this big.

Even though she knew it was a terrible idea, Max pulled out her camera bag and withdrew from it several photos. The one of her and Aloy from the other night was the first in the stack, but there were several more, none of which she’d shown Aloy. They were from that other timeline, the two months she and Aloy had spent together. More selfies of the two of them, more of Aloy alone - not always with her clothes on - and even a couple that Aloy had taken of her. Those last were, artistically at least, kind of awful: Aloy aimed the camera like she aimed her bow, so her framing and use of space were entirely wrong. They were also among the ones Max liked the best. Their very “flaws” made them so very Aloy.

She was still lost in those memories when Vala scratched the side of her tent. “You up?” she called softly. “Aloy’s ready to move.”

Max hurried to put the pictures away and get ready herself. She was relieved to see that she wasn’t the last one - Bast had apparently been sleeping pretty soundly. Still, it hadn’t even been fifteen minutes since Vala’s message by the time they were all heading out through the gate.

She had no idea what time it was; there was no moon visible, and the eastern sky was pitch black. Max did sneak a peek up at the cloudless, absolutely breathtaking night sky, so different than the light-polluted one she’d been used to. It seemed like she could see thousands of stars and the Milky Way was a brilliant spatter of hazy white light running from horizon to horizon. She felt a sudden pang, missing Warren. He’d have loved the sight, would have been thrilled to bend her ear for hours about the constellations and supernovas or whatever. Even if she’d never been able to be the girlfriend he’d wanted, he’d always been there for her when she’d needed him during her brief, torturous experience at Blackwell.

And you used him every chance you got. That’s the caring Max we all know and love!

Aloy had apparently acquired a fifth Strider for Vala to use while Max was failing to sleep in her tent. Vala took to Strider riding like the metaphorical duck to water, making her brother and Bast look incredibly awkward and clumsy by comparison as she turned and guided her mount. She’d probably have done the same to Max if Max hadn’t actually had some horse riding experience. Riding the Strider wasn’t exactly like riding a horse, but there were enough similarities that it hadn’t taken long for her to feel comfortable. In fact, she had been kind of shocked by how comfortable the Strider was to sit on. They were riding “bareback,” basically, but the design of the Strider’s back and the placement of the Blaze canister over its flanks provided a space much like a classic saddle. It made Max wonder: had GAIA actually designed Striders to be ridden?

Despite the darkness, Aloy seemed to have no trouble setting their course as they headed toward the Northern Embrace Gate and then turned north. The Strider’s own lights gave a bit of illumination, but for the most part, Max let the Strider handle the steering, just keeping it aimed generally toward the front of their little herd.

They were well beyond the Embrace by the time the sun rose, and they had breakfast within sight of Mother’s Rise. They had passed other herds of machines a couple of times as they rode, blue lights flaring yellow, then red, but their sheer speed and Aloy’s focused intent on riding onward meant that none of the hostile robots could muster an attack before the riders were already past. Devil’s Thirst glittered in the morning light, and she could just make out the Tallneck cycling its way through the ruins. It had a strange, inhuman grace; Max could admit that much but she doubted she’d ever really be able to like them. Too many bad associations.

Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, they arrived in what had once been Denver. If anything, it was even more demolished than Colorado Springs had been. The entire eastern half of the city seemed to have been swallowed by a massive lake. She hadn’t spent as much time there as she had Colorado Springs; for whatever reason, Denver hadn’t given her any kind of vibe the way that a lot of the other cities she’d visited had. She hadn’t been able to find its soul, and that meant she’d had trouble finding pictures to take there. Still, it hurt seeing it like this. It hurt knowing she was responsible.

Rather than take all five of them with her to scout out the Ring of Metal, Aloy decided to leave Max, Bast, and Vala behind, just taking Varl. “We’re going to look,” she explained, “not to fight. I want to stay as inconspicuous as possible.” Even so, she then looked directly at Max and added, “If something goes wrong, though, come get us.” Rewind and stop her, she meant. Max nodded. She looked around, making a special effort to remember things as they were right then, so she could jump back if she needed to.

They were gone for maybe two hours. Vala and Bast spent the time telling Max about all the different kinds of machines they’d hunted, including several Max hadn’t seen yet. She was particularly impressed and horrified by the walking flamethrower-tank they called a Bellowback. Bast and Vala, however, both agreed that something called a Glinthawk was the worst.

When she and Varl did return, Aloy's report was just, “He’s there,” before she mounted up and turned back south. Varl’s jaw was tight and he looked ashen, but if anything, he seemed more determined than Aloy did.

Sunset found them approaching another Nora settlement, one Max hadn’t yet seen: a place called Mother’s Crown. It was much more fortified than Mother’s Rise had been, with tall watchtowers on the northern walls and long bridges separating it from the surrounding foothills. As she had the night before, Aloy chose someone - Vala, this time - to stay with the Striders while the rest of them entered the town.

Aloy was looking for someone named Marea, who Varl was evidently familiar with. The two of them headed off to speak to her, while Max and Bast found themselves left to their own devices in the middle of the town.

“Vala told me what happened,” Bast said abruptly. Max blinked at him. Something about the way he said it made her think he’d wanted to say something else, something that made him even more uncomfortable, but had chickened out. “Between you and Aloy. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Max snorted. “Why? You don’t know me.”

Bast frowned, frustrated by her rudeness, but gamely made another attempt. “It’s good that we still have you along. It speaks well of you, and of her, to work together, despite… everything.”

Max spun on him. “Bast, I lied about knowing who her mother was. I lied about her grandmother effectively being my ex-girlfriend. I still haven’t told her we spent two months sleeping together. I’ve taken the two things I know she would most want to know about and kept them from her because I am too chickensh*t to deal with anything I’ve f*cked up and can’t fix just by waving my hand and rewinding. Oh, and let's not forget how I once killed about a thousand people for the sake of one girl who either left me or killed herself rather than stay with me. How exactly does any of that speak well of me?”

Bast’s jaw dropped. “What ar-” She lifted her hand.

“-to work together, despite… everything.”

Max exhaled, running the raised hand through her hair. “Thanks, Bast. We’re trying. Aloy’s got a mission that’s vital to literally everyone in the world, so my… issues… will have to wait.”

“She seems like the type to forgive when she can,” he said carefully. “Perhaps that will be true for you.”

She shook her head, looking away. She was done with the topic. “So what’s the story with you and Vala? I have to admit, I didn’t see that coming. You seem very… intense… and Vala really doesn’t.”

Bast smiled that smile that made him look exceptionally punchable. She was starting to feel for the guy. “Thank you for not saying ‘arrogant.’ Or ‘like a lard.’ It’s appreciated.” He turned to look back the way they’d come, where Vala was still waiting. “You’re right, though. It didn’t make a lot of sense. That’s probably why it didn’t last.

“Some of it was just that everyone expected us to be together. The two most promising braves of our year, we were told over and over. But there was more to it than that, really. She was the only one who ever called me out when I was out of line. Until Aloy, anyway. And I was the only man who sought her for something other than being Sona’s daughter.”

“Prom king and queen, huh? Figures. So that was it? You guys just split when she found what’s-his-name? Bek?”

Bast chuckled. “Not really,” he said. “We’d pretty much already figured out we were better off as friends than mates. And it’s not like I spent very long pining after she left. That was when I got together with Lina, and we've been together for more than a year.”

Max grinned. “You guys make a terrible love story,” she observed, and Bast gave a smiling nod. Max decided she’d been wrong. That smile wasn’t punchable at all.

“That we do.”

“You need to introduce me to this Lina person. So what happened with Vala and Bek? That sounded like a story too.”

“Not that much of one, really,” Bast shrugged. “Bek is a man with, uh, a short attention span. You met Teb, didn’t you? Let’s just say the reason he and Vala are friends is that they bonded over how quickly Bek moved on from each of them.”

“Wait. The friendly, shy, cute-as-a-button tailor is gay? God, could that be more adorably cliché?”

Max was saved from having to explain “gay” again by Aloy and Varl returning. “Marea’s going to assign one of her braves to watch the Striders tonight so we can actually sleep in a lodge for once,” Aloy explained. “Might be the last chance we get for a while, so I plan to take advantage of it.”

As soon as she heard the word “sleep,” a wave of fatigue swept over Max. Oh, yeah. She’d only had about ten hours of sleep in the last three days and none for probably 36 hours. Maybe she should go lie down?

It was not to be, though. At least not right away. “Max,” said Aloy quietly, “I have to talk to you. Bast, Varl, go let Vala know which lodge we’re in, will you?” The two men nodded and left, though Bast paused as though wanting to say something to Aloy before shaking his head and departing.

“Come on,” Aloy said, turning up the street. “We’ll need some privacy for this.” Max felt her heart sinking as she started to follow, but at least Aloy didn’t sound angry or disgusted or hurt. She only sounded tired.

They went out through the village’s northern gate, then made their way halfway across the bridge that linked it to the next ridge over. When they got to the middle, Aloy stopped, putting her elbows on the bridge’s rope railing and resting her chin in her hands. For several minutes, Aloy didn’t say anything; instead she just looked out at the panorama spread out before them. It was, Max admitted, a lovely view, with the foothills of the Rockies right below and a verdant conifer forest beyond. Her fingers itched to take a picture, but there were too many Nora eyes around to see.

“Something happened when you had your… attack… on top of the Tallneck,” said Aloy quietly. “A file got uploaded to my Focus. An encrypted file, and one I don’t have an access code for. I’m not sure an access code is even possible, because the encryption message itself looks to be corrupted. It’s got garbage symbols attached to it, which is not a good sign.

“I can’t be sure, but it really seems like it happened at that exact same moment. Do you know anything about it?”

Max frowned. A file? Aloy’s Focus? She didn’t even know for sure how Aloy turned the thing on. Did she just tap it, or was there a fingerprint scanner? Did it have volume control? “No, I… I have no idea. That’s really weird.”

Aloy nodded, still not looking at her. “I’m assuming it’s Sylens doing it, but why I have no clue. I’ve tried getting him to talk to me, but he’s sticking with his name.” She finally turned toward Max, and there was clear worry in her hazel eyes. “I’m concerned he was behind whatever happened to you. Somehow he used my Focus to disrupt your powers or something. Do you think that’s possible?”

“Possible?” Max repeated, trying to process that. “Aloy, I have no idea how my powers work. I have no idea what’s possible. But why? Why would he do that? I haven’t done anything to him.”

“I don’t know that either,” Aloy admitted. “I don’t really know anything. It’s possible it’s just a coincidence and has nothing to do with what happened to you at all. But I thought you needed to know.”

Max looked away. Whether Aloy had meant the rebuke or not, Max had heard it. I’m telling you what you need to know, the way you should have done with me. “Thanks,” she made herself say. The word was barely audible.

They stayed that way in their own silences for several minutes before Aloy stood up. “I’m going to find that lodge now. You coming?”

“Yeah,” replied Max. “I’m exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping very well.”

Aloy glanced at her as they re-entered the town. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and sounded like she meant it.

Max looked away. “I did it to myself.” Aloy did not disagree.

They found the lodge easily enough. When they arrived, the other three weren’t there yet, likely due to having slept far better than either of them had recently. Aloy picked out a bunk near the door, and Max elected to take one a few beds away. As she was sitting down, Aloy spoke again.

“I’ve been meaning to ask: where did you learn to ride?”

“Oh.” Max had to recalibrate her brain. She hadn’t been expecting such an… ordinary… question. The sort of thing you’d say if you wanted to have a perfectly normal conversation with someone. “Actually, that’s kind of a funny story. Do you remember Nathan Prescott, from my diary?”

“The boy who killed Chloe in the latrine?”

“The bathroom, yeah. Well, he wasn’t exactly a great human being, but a lot of what was wrong with him wasn’t really his fault. He had some mental illnesses that were exacerbated by his father - who was a right asshole, for the record - and then when Jefferson came along, he used those things to manipulate and further abuse him. I eventually realized he was, in his own way, at least as much a victim of Jefferson as Kate was, so I decided to try to help him. The way I found was a treatment camp in the Cascades, a kind of work program for troubled teens. It got him away from his father, got him into a situation where he had people who were actively trying to help him, and let him get a little John Wayne on without shooting anybody. Nathan always felt like he was small - physically, mentally, socially - so I thought maybe physical exercise might help him. It did, too. Well, something at the camp did, anyway. Last I heard he’d gotten his sh*t together, had a therapist and a girlfriend, a decent job, even a kid.

“The trick, though, was making sure he went and he stayed long enough for the program to help him. To do that, well… I kinda had to get sent there myself. It was a lot easier to arrange than it had been to get Nathan there, thankfully. So I played time-traveling party pooper to foil all his plans for doing drugs and escaping until he’d realized the place could actually do him some good. That was most of a month, so that’s how long I stayed. The camp was at this ranch, and part of what the kids had to do was take care of the horses, but getting to ride them was one of the perks you could earn for good behavior. So thanks to Nathan Prescott, the boy who murdered Chloe, I learned how to ride a horse.”

Aloy studied her across the room. “You were there for a month. Did it do you any good?”

Max didn’t reply at first. She didn’t really want to analyze herself enough to answer that question. Finally, though, she said, “It was the last really big thing I did before deciding I needed to move on with my life and started the process of going to college.”

Aloy nodded as though she’d expected it. She laid back on the bed. “Good night, Max.”

“Good night Aloy.”

She finally got a full night’s sleep that night.

Chapter 22: Convergence Zone

Chapter Text

They spent the next three days riding back and forth between Mother’s Watch and Devil’s Grief, keeping tabs on Sona’s progress and reporting Helis’ presence to the Matriarchs. They hadn’t been entirely thrilled that Sona had left without waiting for Aloy’s confirmation, but Sona had just drawled, “I know who I can rely on,” a phrase that had made Aloy turn pink at the unexpected compliment.

The time ticking by made Aloy’s skin itch. It had already been a week since Max had come back from the future with an apocalyptic deadline on her lips, and Aloy had so much more yet to do before that day arrived a second time. She was hoping that staying home at Rost’s cabin rather than going out and confronting the Eclipse was part of why it had happened so fast - the Battle of the Alight had been close to five months after the Proving in her original timeline, but in those five months she’d attacked more than half a dozen Eclipse work sites and crashed their Focus network, events that must have slowed HADES’s progress. None of that would have happened while she just stayed home and trained Max for seventy-two days, which hopefully explained the discrepancy. Taking out the Eclipse at Devil’s Thirst was the first step in repeating that success, but she didn’t have the luxury of assuming she’d have the same amount of time she’d had originally. What she could be sure of was those seventy-two - now sixty-five - days.

On the other hand, she did have a plan. She didn’t need to spend time chasing Elisabet’s history and the whispers of Zero Dawn around the land; she already knew where she needed to go. First the ruins of GAIA Prime to get the Master Override, then the Eclipse base deep in the Jewel to stick the Override in HADES. Once that was done, then she could look toward wiping out the rest of the Eclipse, recovering the Alpha Registry file from the Zero Dawn project base, and indulging in some Hunting Trials to requalify for the Lodge in Meridian, among other things. She did have a few stops planned before she confronted HADES, lives she still hoped to save before they could be lost, but if all went according to schedule, she’d have the rogue AI taken care of long before her deadline ran out.

Knowing that didn’t really help her impatience right now, however.

She also still had Max, and in spite of everything, she remained a potent weapon in Aloy’s arsenal. Even if Aloy couldn’t make herself believe she knew all of Max’s secrets, at least Max knew all of hers, so she had someone who actually understood everything she was trying to accomplish and why. It was better that way. Secrets kept you isolated.

Maybe that was why Max kept so many.

Despite the ongoing tension, they’d managed that first civil conversation in Mother’s Crown, and managing one had made the second one easier, and that one had made the third easier still. Things weren’t right between them, assuming there even was such a thing any more, but they could discuss things without it immediately descending into recriminations and bitterness. It would do. It would have to.

Since her little group of Seekers was splitting its attention between keeping an eye on the Eclipse in Devil’s Grief and maintaining contact with Sona, she’d assigned everyone to rotating shifts. One person at the Red Echoes, two people scouting the Eclipse for movement or changes, two riding to report to Sona and returning. It had the advantage of getting everyone used to their Striders and familiar with the terrain around the Ring of Metal while also making sure that Sona was the most up-to-date War-Chief in Nora history.

Morale among her group was a mix of high and low. Vala was excited: excited for the coming fight, excited to ride her Strider, excited to be part of something she saw as momentous and important. Varl was determined, focused, and seemed thoroughly convinced that Aloy would be able to basically handle the entire Eclipse army with one hand tied behind her back. She actually heard him tell Vala that he expected much of the actual fight to be just the Nora serving as audience to Aloy’s destined triumph. Fortunately, Vala had bopped him on the ear and told him to stop being ridiculous. She might have been enthusiastic, but at least she had no illusions about their chances.

Bast and Max, though, were a different story. It seemed to Aloy that, ever since she’d overridden the Devil’s Thirst Tallneck and all that had immediately followed it, both of them were becoming increasingly morose. For Max, at least, that made sense, and she did have her better moments, laughing with Vala and Varl around the fire or letting out an excited whoop every time she got her Strider up to its fastest gallop. Bast, though, seemed to be thinking increasingly dark thoughts, thoughts he did not want to share. Aloy tried to draw him out a bit, but all she got was, “It’s not a concern, Seeker. We have an enemy to focus on, and my head is clear.” She had little choice but to take him at his word.

By the grey pre-dawn of the fourth day, Sona was only hours away. It was time to begin moving. The first objective was exactly what it had been during her original timeline: silencing the perimeter outposts the Eclipse had set up in the ruins. Unlike Devil’s Thirst, these had no more men than she remembered from the first time, and if she had slightly fewer Nora with her than she’d had before, it quickly became apparent that she’d chosen well in selecting the braves she had to join her. All of them had had enough encounters with Corrupted machines with Devil’s Grief during their scouting missions to have gotten used to handling the Corrupted Scrappers and Watchers as easily as they would have ordinary versions, and the Eclipse were just men. (In multiple senses - she remained somewhere between disgusted and angry every time she remembered again the Carja prejudice, shared by the Eclipse, against women who wanted to fight. Idiots.) By now, all of the Nora knew very well how to use their spears to take out the weaker Corrupted machines quickly and quietly. Max still only had her bow and knife, but now that most of her secrets about her powers were out, she’d started using them more aggressively in fights, simply vanishing from one spot and appearing in another whenever she was attacked or needed a better shooting angle. The respect she was given by the other three Seekers had climbed rapidly.

The only moment where things got dicey was during their assault on the first of the three camps, and even then it was more a worry in Aloy’s head than reality. One of the Eclipse had spotted a downed machine and drawn the correct conclusion; though all the Nora themselves were concealed, he started running for the alarm. Aloy didn’t have a good shot on him and couldn’t tell if anyone else did either, but about five steps before he reached the alarm Max simply appeared in front of him and slashed upward with her knife, right through the bottom of his jaw and up to the brain. She disappeared again before he had a chance to fall to the platform.

When the battle was over, Aloy had found Max kneeling over the man she’d killed, staring down at him intently. His blood was still on her hand and arm, a couple drops making little red-brown starbursts on the wood beneath her. “He got the alarm off the first time,” Max said as Aloy approached, not looking up. “I tried the bow next, but he held on long enough to set the alarm off before he collapsed.” She absently cleaned the blood off her blade with part of his trousers. “This was the way that was left.

“I was looking at him, right into his eyes, when he died.”

“Max, I-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Max cut her off. “I’m fine. Let’s make sure he doesn’t have anything we need and get out of here. We’ve got two more camps to deal with.”

Aloy frowned at her, but then nodded. Not Carja porcelain. She signaled the others and they got ready to move.

Similar measures weren’t necessary at the other two camps, whose occupants and machines fell entirely unaware of their peril until it was far too late. By shortly after noon, the approach to the Ring of Metal was cleared of obstacles, human or otherwise. “Now we just have to hope they don’t keep in very regular contact with the main group,” Vala observed when they were done, but Aloy wasn’t worried. They hadn’t had any reason to change their behavior since her first timeline, when the camps had been out of commission for an entire night and well into the following morning with no one the wiser. Even attacking during daylight this time, they should be fine.

Sona’s forces reached the Red Echoes just a couple of hours later, and to Aloy’s surprise, she had Marea and several dozen braves from Mother’s Crown with her. Marea, it turned out, had had some experience fighting Helis during the Red Raids, on two occasions when he’d personally led the attacks. “He’s fast,” she said flatly, “and crafty. As a tactician his only weakness is that he always looks for one opening to exploit and throws everything he has at it. Unfortunately, if he has the kinds of forces you’ve told Sona he has, one opening might be enough. And as a personal fighter…” Marea shook her head. “I’ve never seen his match. He’s quick enough that I’ve personally witnessed him knock arrows out of the air with his vambraces. If we hadn’t been using whole flights to keep him pinned down, he might have been able to storm the gates of Mother’s Crown himself. I’ve heard he essentially did just that in the Claim; climbed across Carja and Oseram dead alike to reach the top of a wall. They call him the Stacker of Corpses now.”

Aloy firmed her jaw. "I can deal with him," she said, and Marea's eyebrows rose.

"You certainly don't lack for courage, Seeker, but you wouldn't be the first overconfident Nora he's killed. If we're going to be able to take him, it will be using massed fire on open ground where he has nowhere to hide."

Aloy decided not to debate the point. She had no way to show Marea that she’d already beaten Helis once, but it also didn't matter. Once they were in the Ring, she'd find the so-called Chosen of the Sun and see him finished once and for all.

"According to Aloy’s reports," Sona began, "much of the Ring's interior is in fact level ground, but there are structures inside that will hamper our aim…"

The strategy session continued for more than another hour, but when it was done, the same basic plan emerged that Aloy had followed before: set off a Blaze explosion, breach the wall, the Nora launch their surprise attack. The biggest difference was that rather than infiltrating with Varl, this time Aloy planned to go in with Max. By this point, all of the Nora in her little group had seen the inside of the ancient stadium, so they all knew the basics of the plan and where to position themselves for when the Blaze stockpile detonated and opened the hole in the wall. In this particular case, Aloy found herself pleased that the Eclipse had more Blaze in this timeline than they’d had previously. It meant that much more damage to the cultists and their machines.

With everything set, the War Party got underway quickly. Their mustering site would be the spiraling tower across from the Ring of Metal, there to ready themselves ahead of the planned explosion. Aloy and Max stayed with the group until they got within just a few streets, then veered off to the Ring itself.

The same access point she and Varl had used in the previous timeline was the one they’d been using during their scouting trips here. The entrance was a gap into the massive walls of the Ring itself, which not only curved around in a circle but also arched inward a bit as they reared up, reaching a sharp peak overhead and then sloping down sharply toward the center of the structure. The two women climbed up and moved into the shadows, a dense cross-hatching of light and dark where sunlight struggled to reach them through the rust and steel. There were guards stationed in here; the Eclipse hadn’t completely ignored this vulnerability. On their previous trips, Aloy and the others had been working to make certain the Eclipse had no idea there was an imminent threat and so had patiently and carefully slipped past the sentinels. That was done with, though. This time, Aloy and Max put their weapons to use.

None lived long enough to cry any warning. Aloy employed the spear techniques she’d first learned from Rost and then mastered over years, while Max shifted herself right behind her targets and used her knife. Both were equally effective, though Aloy was growing increasingly concerned by the look in Max’s eyes.

Eventually they reached the overlook that gave them a view across the open space of the stadium and the Blaze stockpile on the far side. It was a large, mostly open space, ground covered in wet mud and a scattering of small ponds near the edges. The Eclipse diggers had erected a number of temporary shelters, mostly just scaffolding frames of wood covered with linen or leather, around various dig sites, either to protect diggers from the elements or to do the same for the artifacts they were recovering. Plant life had colonized enough of the area to give some cover as well; between the buildings and the underbrush, it would be difficult to see or be seen very far. That was what had allowed her to reach and destroy the Blaze stockpile last time, but that, at least, would be much simpler in this timeline. Max wouldn’t need to sneak at all.

“You remember the target?” Aloy asked unnecessarily. She knew it was unnecessary, that Max had been here several times already, but she still asked, and pointed on top of it. Max only nodded, opting not to call Aloy out for the repetition. “Get into position to shoot it with a Fire Arrow, but make sure you aren’t seen. I’m going to start trying to see if I can weaken them quietly first, thin out as many as I can. As soon as things heat up, though, take the shot.”

“Aloy,” Max said quietly, “I can take Helis.”

The words froze Aloy. Shock robbed her tongue of words, and all she could do was stare at Max. The smaller woman didn’t look back, keeping her eyes out toward the Eclipse encampment. “I can do it the same way I’ve been killing these guards. All I need to do is see him, then I can jump to him and cut his throat. Done.”

Aloy’s first reaction was a visceral refusal to risk Max going anywhere near Helis, followed immediately by an strangely jealous insistence that Helis was hers to defeat. She didn’t give voice to either of them, let them and the very shock of the idea itself pass through her, then tried to look at the situation rationally. Max’s abilities made her an incredibly effective combatant, but she hadn’t ever really studied hand-to-hand fighting. She’d said so herself. Against regular enemies, even reasonably well-trained soldiers, the sheer unexpectedness of what she could do meant she didn’t really have to worry about an actual fight. But against Helis…

“No,” Aloy commanded softly. “Marea wasn’t exaggerating a bit when she described Helis’s reflexes. I’ve never seen anyone who could move as fast as he does, and you would only have one chance at him. If you failed, you might not survive long enough to rewind and try again. All he needs to do redirect you or block just well enough to turn a lethal strike into a nonlethal one and you could be dead.”

Now Max did look at her. “Aloy, I…”

“No, Max,” Aloy cut her off. “Stay clear of him. I know I can take him, and if I make a mistake, you’ll be there to rewind and help. But there’s no one around who can rewind either of us if you’re dead. There are lots of other Eclipse here that we have to deal with. Focus on them and leave Helis to me.”

For a long moment, Max seemed to want to keep arguing. But at last she just nodded. “I think I see a good spot over there,” she pointed. Aloy studied the location, gave her approval, and Max vanished.

Aloy shook her head. Such an incredible power. And such a toll having it seemed to have taken on Max.

She cleared her head, refocused on the task in front of her. She had plenty of work to do on her own, and no time and space warping powers to help her do it. Time to get started.

A short drop from the overlook put her inside the Ring proper, and she quickly moved to some cover before activating her Focus. Dozens of Eclipse agents and handfuls of Corrupted machines glowed in her vision, scattered all around her it seemed. Here, as at Devil’s Thirst, there were more Eclipse than she remembered, including one carrying a Deathbringer gun and several others her Focus identified as kestrels, the Mad Sun-King’s highly-trained elite. There were more Corrupted machines as well. In addition to the Corrupted Fire Bellowback patrolling close enough for her to feel the heat rippling off its chassis, she saw Corrupted Watchers, Scrappers, and - she inhaled sharply - a Ravager. Moreover, a pair of Corrupted Glinthawks were perched on the Ring’s far side. Those last worried her less than they might have - luck was on the Nora’s side in that the Glinthawks would almost certainly be in the blast area of the Blaze when it went up. It had turned against them in another way, though: there were only two Corruptors in their standby mode near the Blaze. The third was patrolling the opposite wall from where she was crouched. It came near enough to the Blaze that it might be taken out when the explosion hit, but only if it happened to be close at the time.

None of those were what she was really looking for with her Focus, though, and it took almost a minute of careful scanning before she found him: Helis, overseeing the operation from the central pavilion, near the edge of one of the ponds. She tagged him with her Focus, but it didn’t seem to be able to extrapolate any movement pattern for him. At the moment, he just appeared to be standing there. She’d just have to keep an eye on the marker she’d assigned him and improvise.

Bit by bit, step by step, she crept closer to the central pavilion. Along the way, half a dozen Eclipse members met their silent ends on the tip of her spear, along with one of the kestrels and three of the smaller Corrupted machines. She got a better look at the Corrupted Ravager’s positioning, grimacing as she did. It was right next to the pavilion, and wasn’t patrolling at all - just holding its spot, occasionally turning to look in different directions, but remaining directly outside Helis’s shelter. That was definitely going to make her confrontation with him more difficult. On the other hand, Ravagers could be a resource… if she had a chance to make use of it.

About ten minutes had passed when she reached the last available hiding spot before she would have to leave cover in order to launch her attack. She tapped her Focus on to make sure she knew where everything was - and had to fight back a gasp. Helis’s Focus was visible, broadcasting the same signal she’d seen originally on Olin’s during her first Blessing. And if she could see his…

She pulled her Focus off and stuffed it quickly into her satchel. She should have realized. Had he, or any of the other Eclipse here with a Focus on, happened to scan her direction, all the effort she’d put into stealth would have been wasted. What was worse, it might have alerted HADES. Much, much too close.

She gave herself a long count of ten to get resettled. She couldn’t see Helis anymore through the canvas walls, couldn’t watch the Ravager’s movements, couldn’t track the Corruptor’s pacing. It couldn’t be helped. She felt almost blind, but she’d been in this situation before, when she’d fought the Corrupted Behemoth at Sunfall. She’d adapted then, she’d have to adapt now.

Carefully, she loaded three Fire Arrows on her bowstring, then tilted her head to listen for the Corruptor’s distinctive rapid-fire locomotion. Tracing its movements as best she could, she waited until it was headed back toward the Blaze, then dove around the corner she’d been hiding behind, tumbled into a shooting crouch, and aimed at her bow. The front of the pavilion was half linen, half open air, and Helis was standing over a table, looking at some papers laid across it. She drew a bead on him and loosed.

Chapter 23: Gale Force

Chapter Text

Somehow, Helis began moving before she fired. How he’d known she couldn’t imagine, but he was already throwing himself backward as the arrows left her bowstring. Two of them hit his armor and the third missed completely; the Blaze in the arrowheads splashed over him, burning, but not enough to sustain itself. A corner of the damp canvas tried to ignite from the missed arrow, but flickered and died without ever really catching. From the corner of her eye, Aloy saw the Ravager’s lights flash yellow, then red - but that was the moment the wall of the Ring exploded as Max fired her Fire Arrows into the stockpile, and the whole camp burst into bedlam.

Helis spun, seeking his attacker, and they locked eyes just as she fired again. It had been a desperate shot; she hadn’t had time to get more than one arrow on the bowstring, but she’d been hoping she’d be able to hit him before he could react. His reflexes were everything she remembered, though, and the shaft shattered on his forearm guard as he knocked it aside. His sword was in his hand then, and he leapt from the pavilion, right toward her.

Hand-to-hand was not where she wanted to be with the man. He had a sling, but knew he was more dangerous up close and would try to run her down; likewise, she was more dangerous at range, since she knew she could fire more arrows at once than he could block, as long as she had the time to set it up. She scrambled backwards, pulling Hardpoint Arrows from her quiver, but then nearly lost them into the mud when that damned Corrupted Ravager barreled into her from her right. She went flying, mostly unharmed thanks to the Shield-Weaver, but the Ravager was already leaping toward her to press the advantage. She dove sideways, trying to keep the machine between her and Helis. He was sprinting around its flank, so she dove again, reversing direction so that the Ravager and Helis were turning toward each other.

“Whoever you are, girl,” Helis snarled over the rising din of the battle around, “know this: the Sun shows no mercy to those who defy its will.”

She’d landed in the pond, water that would normally be only up to her ankles now splashing into her face as she crouched. “Bold talk from someone who has turned away from the Sun to serve the Shadow!” she shouted back, swapping out her Hunter’s Bow for her Ropecaster and firing an anchor into the Ravager. She couldn’t fight Helis and the machine together, so she needed one of them handled fast. The Ravager, suddenly pulled up short, turned its cannon toward her and she had to dive clear again as the blasts churned up water and mud right where she’d been kneeling.

Arrows were ricocheting off of Shield-Weaver as other Eclipse tried to aid their leader. The hard light plates were holding, but the energy seemed to be dimming fast. Without her Focus, she couldn’t even tell how fast that was, but knew it wouldn’t last much longer. She fired another anchor into the Ravager - it had already pulled the first one free, but that made it jerk to a stop once more. As she got ready to hit it again, Helis appeared, sling in hand, and hurled a grenade at her.

His aim was perfect. The explosion rocked her. Shield-Weaver failed, shrapnel tore through the thinner armor on her arms and legs, the flames seared her skin, leaving her nerves screaming in agony. There was more Blaze splashed across the ground around her, ready to send the flames higher if she stayed where she was. She leapt clear. “You understand nothing!” Helis roared. “I serve the Sun and the Sun-in-Shadow! All halves of nature, joined together-”

“Night to day, Shadow to Sun,” Aloy finished, splashing down in the pond again. The water doused the flames, but not the pain. An arrow punched partway through the armor on her shoulder, the tip stabbing a fingernail deep into the muscle there. She tore it free, but more were falling around her and she had to move before the other Eclipse in the area pinned her down. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before.” She fired the Ropecaster right past Helis’s shoulder, getting another line into the Ravager; this time it seemed to be holding. She tossed the ‘Caster aside and readied her Sharpshot Bow. “I mean, there’s no way that something that calls itself the ‘Buried Shadow’ could be lying to you!”

Despite her bravado, Aloy was starting to get worried. This wasn’t going well. The battle all around, the Corrupted Ravager fixated on her: they were complicating the fight in ways she hadn’t anticipated. Burns and contusions covered her and she was bleeding from a lot more places than she wanted to think about. Helis got ready to throw another grenade, but as he reared back, Aloy heard splashing behind her, someone running up. Instinctively she turned, swept a half-circle with her bow, and hooked the charging Eclipse kestrel right beneath his jaw. The bowstring cut into the man’s throat sharply, spraying arterial blood; Aloy immediately twisted, swinging him around in front of her and directly into the path of Helis’ grenade. Flames exploded over him.

With blood in his airway he couldn’t scream, but he twisted and gurgled and writhed nonetheless. Aloy couldn’t wait while he finished dying, though. She planted her knee in his back and wrenched the bow free. The body toppled forward, splashing into the water. Blood slicked the bowstring, but her unwilling human shield had bought her the time she needed to regroup. She grabbed for ammunition and drew in a single movement, letting a Tearblast Arrow slam into the armor of the Ravager and begin its hum.

His kestrel’s death seemed to have put Helis off his stride for an instant - or maybe it was her understanding of the Eclipse’s theology - but he recovered quickly. With a tremendous leap, he hurled himself forward, sling discarded in favor of his sword. The jump took him clear of the Tearblast’s explosion and put much, much more momentum behind the swing of his weapon than Aloy would have liked. With no other options, she lifted her bow up, catching his descending wrists on its back; his force nearly drove her to her knees, and pain reverberated through her hands at the impact. Dimly she heard the Tearblast explosion and the snap of anchorwires as the Ravager broke free, but all her attention was on pushing up against the overwhelming strength trying to drive Helis’s blade downward. “You fight well for a savage,” Helis snarled, his face just inches from hers. “I see the hatred in your eyes. Did you lose someone dear to you in the Red Raids? Perhaps you will see them again on the Sun’s Path.” He pushed harder, and she felt her muscles beginning to give.

Suddenly she realized she was in the same position Rost had been right before his fight with Helis had ended. And even as she realized it, she felt Helis’s balance shift. His knee came up, ready to break her bow and drive the sword home just as he’d shattered Rost’s spear.

Instead, Aloy fell backwards.

All his weight focused on pushing down, Helis collapsed on top of her, and with one leg off the ground, he had no way to balance or control the fall. As she hit the water and felt her shoulders slam into the mud below it, she tucked into a roll and then kicked out, both feet catching Helis in the stomach and hurling him over her head. He flew several feet away and came down hard, while she finished her roll and was back on her feet in an instant.

Unfortunately, the move hadn’t been without cost. Her quivers were positioned so that when she did her forward rolls the ammunition would stay where it belonged; rolling backwards changed her momentum, though, and all her arrows had fallen out as she’d gone over. Just as she saw them glittering in the muddy water she remembered she had another problem, right before the Ravager raked its claws down her back.

Shield-Weaver had had a chance to recharge, and that was the only thing that kept her alive. The armor blared an angry warning, but the Ravager could only shove her forward; its weapons couldn’t reach her spine the way they were trying. With little alternative Aloy dropped the now-useless bow and pulled out her lance. She slashed at the Ravager twice, aiming for the vulnerable areas where the Tearblast had stripped armor away. Wires sparked and synthetic muscle parted as she drove the lance in, but Ravagers were tough under normal circ*mstances and whatever Corruption did only made them worse. It whirled, snapping with its jaws, then electricity began to crackle over it as it powered up its defensive shock. Knowing that staying was suicide, Aloy turned and ran, sprinting to get clear of the shock radius before the machine finished charging. She managed it by the skin of her teeth. Helis had struggled back to his feet, but the electrical surge had kept him from following her, so she’d opened up some space from both of them.

Suddenly, Aloy spotted her Ropecaster behind the Ravager, near the pond’s edge. Helis was now racing forward, coming up to the Ravager’s right, but there was open space to its left. She dove forward, a long, low dive into a roll that took her right past the machine’s maw, once again putting the Ravager between her and Helis. She finished the roll up to her feet and sprinted, dropping into a slide just before she reached the ‘Caster. She snatched it up as she went past, then spun and fired into the Ravager’s hindquarters. Time seemed to slow as she turned, and it felt like she had forever to fire a second line in and ready a third before the Ravager even really reacted. When it did, it was already mostly bound; the third anchor drove in, then a fourth, and it fell over, straining for freedom but held for the moment.

The Ravager was out of the fight - temporarily, anyway - but the Ropecaster was basically useless against Helis. He’d circled the machine and was coming for her again, though with the greater distance he’d switched back to his sling. A grenade hurtled toward her, but she was ready this time, dodging to the side. There was a small alley of sorts between two of the linen-covered shelters there and Aloy began to back down it, returning the Ropecaster to the satchel on her back and pulling out her Blast Sling. She had a bomb ready to go when Helis appeared at the alley’s mouth and ran for her, leaping into the air again. This time she met him with a Blast Bomb halfway through his arc, and, committed to the strike, he couldn’t knock it aside. The explosive reversed his course, hurled him backward, and she thought she heard a cracking noise from his ribs when he slammed into one of the wooden poles holding up the lefthand shelter. She spun, running for the opening at the opposite end of the alley, and skidded in the mud as she reached it and turned the corner.

It was the first chance she’d had since she’d attacked Helis to actually see how the larger battle was going. Nora and Eclipse warriors alike were down all across the field, bodies filled with arrows or stab wounds. She couldn’t see any Corruptors still up, and the Glinthawks were, as she’d hoped, out too, presumably also from that first blast. The Bellowback, however, was still functional and churning through the Nora, burning here, bludgeoning there. At that moment, though, Aloy heard the distinctive rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of a Deathbringer gun, and the Bellowback began to jerk and stagger sideways under the barrage. Aloy reached another corner of the building and turned again, racing back out toward the front where she’d started, and as she reached the open space, she saw Max, eyes fixed on the Bellowback, perched on top of one of the destroyed Corruptors with the Deathbringer gun in her hands. She staggered under the weight of the massive gun but kept the trigger down and the weapon firing until, with a roar, the Blaze storage sac on its back erupted and the massive machine collapsed amidst the flames.

For a moment, Max was the only thing Aloy could see, standing up there, weapon in hand, eyes resolute. It reminded her of the photo Max had taken of her atop the eastern Overlook in that other timeline, and for the first time, Aloy thought she might have a glimmer of what drove Max’s photography. Despite the facepaint, the armor, and even the weapon she was holding, Max didn’t look like a brave; she looked like an ordinary woman doing what she had to do, regardless of the cost, and determination and pain together framed every line of her stance. Aloy felt a powerful urge to wrap the other woman up in her arms and tell her it was going to be alright, and waves of anger and heartbreak followed right on its heels as she remembered why she couldn’t. Why she wouldn’t.

Then the growl of the Ravager directly in front of her reminded her suddenly of the other reasons why now wasn’t the time for those thoughts. The Ravager was still trapped but was close to breaking free; Helis hadn’t reappeared from either the alley way or the corner behind her, though she was sure he would shortly do one or the other. She had a plan now, however, and was ready for him.

Her first step was to finish dealing with the Ravager. Heedless of its weaponry, she raced directly up to it, reaching into a pouch and producing a Sticky Bomb. She pried the Ravager’s jaws open with one hand, feeling the Corruption burning her skin, and shoved the bomb into its maw with the other. As soon as it was in place, she sprinted past it, toward the far side of the central pavilion where Helis had been standing before the fight began. As she passed the alleyway’s mouth, Helis appeared from it, sword in hand once more. His face was a carved mask of rage and frustration, and she couldn’t help smiling just a touch as she saw it. He could see the toll the Nora had taken on the Eclipse and machines here as well as she could. He had to know that, even if he managed to kill her, he would either have to flee or die, and either way, his mission would be a failure.

He was closing on her, but before he could reach her the Sticky Bomb’s counter reached zero and the Ravager’s head simply vanished, converted into a hail of metal and plastic. Helis was shoved a step forward by the blast, shrapnel slicing his back and shoulders; he half-turned to see what had happened, looking for any threat behind him. There was none and he turned back, but that didn't matter. The hesitation had cost him everything, even if he didn't quite know it yet. Aloy was at her destination. She dove, rolled, and came up with the Ravager’s cannon, blown off with that one Tearblast Arrow she'd managed to fire earlier, in her hands.

“Turn your face to the Sun,” she said quietly, the words almost lost to the cannon’s power-up whine. Helis’s face went white. She pulled the trigger.

The blue energy blasts hit him dead on, ripping through his armor, tearing through his flesh. He was hammered backward, unable to even fall before the next round hit him. She kept shooting through the weapon’s entire magazine, long after Helis’s body was only barely recognizable, until there were only a few quiet clicks and then the cannon fell silent entirely.

Chapter 24: Thermocline

Chapter Text

There were still Eclipse fighting, but with their machines destroyed and Helis dead, the conclusion was already written. Aloy gathered some of her arrows up and put her Striker bow to use, picking off stragglers and tipping the balance on some individual melees where Nora and Eclipse still struggled against one another.

Eventually a few of the remaining Eclipse broke and ran - far fewer than would have been reasonable, but true believers didn’t rout easily - and Sona ordered a group of braves to pursue them. Within the Ring of Metal, though, the battle was over. As the reality set in, the Nora let out a ragged cheer, while Aloy just leaned on her lance to recover. She saw Bast joining in, but it looked like Max was inclined more in Aloy’s direction, having simply dropped down to sit on the Corruptor Aloy had seen her standing on earlier. To her surprise, Max looked to have taken some actual wounds, including what looked like a rather nasty slice along her collarbone that seemed to have only missed her throat by an inch or so. There was no immediate sign of Vala or Varl, which was worrisome. She tried not to think about what might have happened to them.

After she’d had a chance to catch her breath, she took her weight off the lance and looked back at the ground where her own private duel had been fought. It seemed like she’d lost half her weaponry and nearly all her ammunition over the course of the fight, and she knew she was going to be spending quite some time later making arrows and bombs. That wasn’t necessarily unwelcome. At times, she found the familiar, well-practiced routine of craft soothing, and after what had just happened, some soothing didn’t sound too bad.

Helis’s body still lay where it had fallen at last, several paces beyond where he’d stood when she began shooting. Stretching suddenly cramping muscles, she approached and knelt, beginning to search for anything important or useful on the corpse that had survived her barrage. Not much had. His sword, if she wanted a trophy - she’d never really used the weapon, the Nora didn’t favor such things - and some of the grenades he hadn’t thrown. That was it. She started to stand up again, then something occurred to her and she paused. Slowly she extended a hand and turned his head to one side.

His Focus was missing.

She’d seen it on him only seconds before she’d fired the first time. He would have maybe had time to have taken it off, but why would he? Perhaps it had fallen off during their fight? Given what hers had been through without ever once being accidentally dislodged, it seemed more than unlikely, but she had no other ideas. She withdrew her own Focus from her pouch and put it on, scanning the area for signals. Nothing.

Footsteps sounded behind her, loud with the Focus’s audio enhancement. It was Marea, her eyes on Helis. “It seems I underestimated you, Seeker,” she said, sounding only faintly impressed. “You may actually be as good as you seem to think you are.”

Aloy wanted to chuckle at that, but her confusion and concern over the missing Focus kept it from happening. “I was highly motivated.” She glanced around at the other nearby Eclipse bodies. “Marea, has anyone begun searching the enemy for items of importance or value?” The word “looting” probably would have been more accurate, but it sounded so much worse.

Marea, to Aloy's surprise, shook her head at once. “War-Chief Sona has commanded that everything be left here, lest we risk carrying some part of the land’s corruption back into the Sacred Land. I think it’s a very wise decision.” She tilted her head slightly, considering her. “That said, I would imagine that prohibition wouldn’t apply to you or those you’ve made Seekers alongside you. Are you looking for something specific?”

“Yes,” confessed Aloy, “but you’re right. It will probably be best if I handle the search myself.”

Marea nodded, already dismissing the matter from her attention. “Seeker… Aloy,” she said slowly. “I’m aware that I can give people around me the impression that I think less of them than I do. So let me be clear: you’ve done an amazing thing here today. The Matriarchs chose well when they agreed to make you a Seeker, and, if it’s anyone's place to make judgements on Her actions, then I think All-Mother chose well also. Whatever you believe the Nora need to do, I think you will find many who are willing to follow you. I expect I will be one of them.” There was just the faintest trace of a bow of her head, then she was gone, calling out orders to her people as they gathered the wounded and dead.

Aloy stared after a moment, trying to figure out what to make of the woman, but failed utterly. Ah well. She too had work to be about. And I'm sorry, Marea, but I really hope I've cost you that heroic death in front of the gates of the Embrace you wanted. I hope you can forgive me.

She tapped her Focus on again and started slowly making her way across the muddy and blood-soaked ground. It was only when she began to approach the spot where Max was sitting that she finally found the signals she was looking for. There were four of them, and every one was coming from a small pile of devices sitting on one of the Corruptor's legs next to Max.

Max saw her coming and followed her gaze to the Focuses. The smaller woman took a breath, clearly readying herself for a confrontation. “Max!” Aloy snapped angrily. “I told you I didn’t want you anywhere near Helis! He could have killed you!”

To Aloy’s surprise, Max didn’t look guilty at all. She gave a little snort of laughter. “‘You’re not thinking fourth-dimensionally, Marty,’” she replied as though quoting something. “I didn’t get anywhere near him until after he was dead.” At Aloy’s perplexed expression, she elaborated.

“The first time, when you fought, HADES saw you through Helis’s Focus, just the way Olin did. I heard him calling out to ask you why his precious ‘Buried Shadow’ considered you a system threat. After you killed him, I jumped over and grabbed his Focus, then jumped back to where I’d been waiting to shoot the Blaze and rewound back through the whole fight, to just before you got into HADES’s view. Since I had his Focus, he didn’t, and HADES never saw you.” She rubbed at her head. “I didn’t want to risk anyone else with a Focus getting close enough to see you either, so the next thing I did after setting the Blaze off was start jumping around the field, killing everyone I could find who was wearing them.”

Something clicked into place. "That's why Helis reacted before I moved. His Focus disappeared."

Now Max did look upset. "Oh f*ck, I didn't think about that," she admitted, paling. "I didn't realize it would make things harder."

Aloy's anger had cooled, the fuel for it gone when she realized Max hadn't risked herself in violation of her promise. "It did," she said calmly, "but you were right. It was the right thing to do. We need every advantage we can find, especially surprise." She reached out toward the bandage across Max's chest and neck, but didn't touch it. Clearly the healers had found her while Aloy had been scanning. "I thought Helis had done that to you somehow."

Max looked down as far as she could to look at it. "No," she said. Her voice was strained, the tense sound of someone talking through pain. "I kept having to rewind and jump and rewind again to keep from taking an arrow or a sword to the face. I started to run out of juice. By the end I was only rewinding stuff that looked fatal, and I almost guessed wrong on that one."

She looked over to where the Bellowback chassis was still smoldering. "I don't think they liked it when I broke their toy."

Aloy settled herself down next to Max on the machine. "I saw that," she told Max. "It was pretty impressive."

Max snorted, but it still sounded amused. "I might be in the best shape of my life, but Rambo I am not." The amusem*nt faded. "I just didn't really have a choice. He was killing too many Nora, and the Bellowback wasn't going down either. So I cut his throat and took his gun."

"You saved lives," Aloy pointed out.

Max looked off toward the far side of the ancient arena, where the afternoon sun was rapidly approaching twilight. "Lives don't get saved, Aloy," she murmured. There was a strange tension in her voice that Aloy didn’t like at all. "They get longer or shorter but they always end. And the difference between one and the other is sometimes more trivial than you can believe."

“Sometimes the difference is a woman who sees what needs to be done and does it.”

“Why am I the one deciding who needs to die?”

The amount of despair in the words caught Aloy off guard. Max still wasn’t looking at her, or at anyone. Her hands were shaking and she looked pale enough that Aloy was worried she was going to pass out.

“Max,” said Aloy sharply, and the other woman jerked before finally turning to look at her. For a moment, all the work Aloy had done to remind herself that Max was an experienced adult several years older than Aloy herself just vanished, and all she could see was a traumatized teenage girl. “You didn’t decide that. They did. What you did was decide to stop them.” Max just stared at her numbly. She tried again. “If they’d all stayed home on their farms or in their villages or at their shops or wherever they came from before they joined the Eclipse, would you have killed them?”

Slowly Max shook her head. “And if you and I had stayed at Rost’s cabin, would they have killed us?” When Max didn’t answer right away, Aloy repeated the question with a slight change. “Did they kill us?”

Max touched her scarred shoulder in that new habit she’d developed since she’d jumped back 72 days. “Yeah,” she whispered. It was a barely audible croak.

“This isn’t Arcadia Bay, Max. The storm we’re trying to stop is one of humans and machines, and the humans, at least, are making their own decisions. They’re not just random acts of fated destruction. The universe isn’t forcing you to decide who lives or dies. Other people are. All it would take for it to stop would be for those people to do something else.” Aloy exhaled slowly. “I know you like to collect all the guilt for yourself, but this time, it’s not yours to keep.”

She tried not to put too much emphasis on “this time.”

Max still wasn’t answering, so Aloy went on. “Listen. Everything about this would be easier with you along, and I’m not going to pretend it wouldn’t be, but you’ve already done more than enough to help me do what I have to do. If you need to, you could go back to Rost’s cabin and wait there until I’m done. I would actually be happy to know he had some-”

“No.” Max’s voice was still soft, but the word was firm, final. “I’m coming with you. Wherever you go, whatever it takes.”

Aloy reached out, turned Max’s face toward hers. Those wide blue eyes were still as beautiful as they had ever been, but the pain in them stabbed her heart like a spear point. This time she had no righteous anger to protect her from them, just the compassion to know that here was a person who was suffering needlessly, thanks to actions made by others. The same as so many others she’d tried to help on her travels. “Max,” she said gently, “I don’t like what this is doing to you. You’re an artist, not a warrior. You shouldn’t be putting yourself through this.”

Blue fire flared in those breathtaking eyes, something other than despair appearing there for the first time since the conversation started. “I don’t care if you think it’s my martyr complex,” said Max, tone hard. “I don’t care if it is my martyr complex. This is my best chance to finally, actually do something with these powers that’s not completely selfish. Maybe it breaks me. If it does, I probably deserve to be broken. Maybe I’m going to see those faces in my nightmares for the rest of my life. I don’t f*cking care. If I help you, if we stop HADES… then maybe my rewind will be something more than just the thing that ruined every version of my life in every timeline I’ve ever found.”

Aloy’s brow furrowed. “Your rewind ruined your…?”

“Because I know what I f*cking lost! Don’t you get it? If Chloe had just died in that bathroom and I hadn’t had my rewind, then it would have just been this horrible, painful tragedy that I couldn’t do anything about! I would have regretted not getting back in touch with her in time, I would have probably beaten myself up about that for awhile, but I would have gone on! But instead, I had the most incredible week of my life, finally understood what being in love meant, and remembered how much Chloe had meant to me my entire life, just in time to have it all stripped away again. Every stupid, selfish, horrible f*cking decision I made afterward was to either try to get it back or forget about it. And neither of those ever worked.

“That first time, when Chloe asked me to go back and let her die, she told me that it wouldn’t matter because what we’d had over that week would be real regardless. That we’d found each other again and that would always be true, whether or not anyone else remembered it. The thing is, she was right. She just didn’t know she was cursing me by saying it.”

Max laughed then, a harsh bark that sounded like something at the very opposite end of reality from humor. “And then, just when I thought I’d somehow, miraculously, managed to run far enough away from it that maybe I could finally forget… the whole cycle started again, just with somebody else.”

Aloy put the pieces together, and Max watched her do it. Max's hands gripped the machine she was sitting on to brace herself.

“We weren’t sisters, were we?” Aloy said quietly.

“No.”

It should have made her angry, furious even, to find out that even after everything Max had still kept this from her. It didn’t. She was just sad, and disappointed, and maybe a bit envious of that other her who had gotten the full experience of what she herself had barely tasted before it turned to ash. “You never told me about Elisabet and Chloe?”

Max shook her head. “I slipped up a few times and you figured it out, but I was always able to rewind it away again.”

“Were we happy?”

That got a longer pause. “I think so,” answered Max finally. “We both knew there was a deadline, even if we didn’t quite reach it. That part was hard.”

They both fell silent, just looking at one another. After several moments had passed, Aloy asked, a bit impatiently, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you going to rewind this too? Why are we still sitting here?”

Slowly, Max shook her head. “To be honest, I’m not sure I could. I wasn’t kidding about how close I was to running out of gas during the fight. But I’m not going to try. I don’t want you to keep trying to send me away, so you have to understand why I’m doing it.”

Aloy studied the other woman. “Me knowing about us in another timeline doesn’t have anything to do with you trying to do something good with your rewind.”

“It doesn’t,” Max agreed carefully. “But it still has a lot to do with why I’m not leaving.”

“Max,” Aloy sighed, looking away, “I don’t think that’s going to happen now. I don’t see how it could.”

“I know that,” said Max. “But I also know that if I leave, there’s zero chance. If I stay and I help you, then maybe the chance is a little higher than that. I think it’s a chance worth fighting for.”

“Worth fighting for,” Aloy repeated, “but not worth being honest for.”

Max winced. “I deserve that,” she said slowly, “but I am being honest here. I swear, Aloy, this is everything. No more secrets left.”

Neither of them spoke again for several minutes. At last, Aloy scooped up the Focuses and turned them fully off, rather than leaving them in the low-power “sleep” mode that she usually thought of as “off.” It was the same thing she’d done when talking to Rost’s grave with her own Focus to keep Sylens from listening through it. Overall, the devices seemed to be in good shape, and they could be a valuable resource once the danger of HADES detecting her through them was neutralized. She tucked them away and stood up. Max, still sitting on the Corruptor, watched her.

“I guess we’ll see,” said Aloy, and left.

Chapter 25: Eyewall

Chapter Text

Vala had survived the battle, but it hadn’t gone well for her. Eerily reminiscent of how she’d died in Aloy’s first timeline, she’d taken fire from the Deathbringer gun, giving cover to another group of braves so they could regroup against the Bellowback. The weapon had tracked its way across the ground as she tried to jump clear, punching a ragged wound through the inner side of her left thigh. The healers were worried: it had torn through the big artery there, and Vala had come far too close to bleeding out from it. Sona had gotten a tourniquet in place just barely in time, and the healers had had to start sewing the artery and muscle back together almost immediately. The only good thing was that the gun hit with such fury that the bullet had passed through, so they had not had to dig for fragments still hiding in among her tissues. After several hours’ work, the healers announced they had done what they could, and the rest was up to Vala and All-Mother.

Max watched a little of the surgery, and seemed surprised by the healers’ skill. Apparently, she’d expected the Nora to be largely ignorant of anatomy and healing techniques as compared to her own time, but in reality, the differences weren’t nearly as large as she’d expected. Aloy had a theory about it. “The Cradle servitors included a healer persona, one I assume was designed to be able to perform fairly advanced techniques,” she explained. “ELEUTHIA did everything it could, in APOLLO’s absence, to prepare the children it raised for the world outside before they were released; I doubt it had the capacity to teach medical theory, but practical instruction was already within its programmed behavior, so I’m guessing there were some rote memorization of as much training as they could manage.”

“They’re doing way better than I could,” Max observed. She was tense, even a little jittery, while it was happening. Max was taking Vala’s injuries quite personally, apparently feeling like she should have been able to find a way to use her rewind to keep Vala safe. Never mind that she hadn’t even known it had happened until after the battle, when she was far too tired to rewind, and she had actually been the one to kill the man who’d shot Vala. Aloy thought about reminding her about taking guilt that wasn’t hers, but she just didn’t have the energy for the conversation twice in one day.

The Nora departed the Ring of Metal well before dark, with both Sona and Marea very intent on being clear of Devil’s Grief before the braves made camp. Even moving at their fastest, though, it was full night before the War Party reached the Red Echoes once again. There were too many injured, too many bodies to carry, to go any quicker.

Despite weariness and wounds, though, the atmosphere in the camp was festive, to say the least. Songs, drumming, dancing, copious amounts of alcohol, the celebration of life still being lived in defiance of all that could have taken it away. None of the Seekers participated, with Aloy, Bast, and especially Varl all too worried about Vala’s injuries to feel much like a party. Aloy had not seen Max since they arrived at the camp, but she reminded herself firmly that Max’s activities outside of their mission were entirely not her concern.

Quite a large number of people approached her over the course of the evening, tracking her down at the spot she’d staked out near the healing tents. As a distraction and to try to keep being productive while she waited for word, Aloy had started reviewing the notes she’d been making in her Focus about her future plans. Keeping a “task list” of sorts had proved useful during her original timeline, and she’d been slowly building another one in this timeline as she’d been going. The Nora who came to her were all very respectful, waiting until she acknowledged them to speak, but they were not making it easy to keep her mind on her work.

They all wanted some variation of the same thing: a moment of time with the brave who had finally killed the Terror of the Sun. Most just wanted to congratulate her. Some, usually ones who had lost loved ones to the Red Raids, wanted to thank her. Those made her uncomfortable - however necessary it had been (or how personal for her, as vengeance for another Rost in another timeline), she wasn’t sure how she felt about being thanked for killing someone - but not nearly as much as the small handful who wanted either her blessing or for her to intercede on their behalf with All-Mother. The others she could thank for their kind words, but these? What did she have to offer except either disappointment or false hope?

She did what she could as honestly as she knew how without destroying what hope they already had. “I don’t have any special power, but for whatever my blessing is worth, you have it.” Or, “You are as close to All-Mother as I am. If she hears the prayers of her faithful, then I know she will hear yours.” They went away happy and almost piteously grateful, and it made Aloy want to throw up. She could not wait until she could open up the Cradle facility under All-Mother Mountain and begin showing the Nora their true heritage and history.

Shortly before she decided to give up the whole attempt at getting work done, Sona herself appeared at Aloy’s fire. She wasted no time with pleasantries, not that she ever did. “Tomorrow we will march to Mother’s Crown to regroup and resupply before journeying to Mother’s Rise. The Matriarchs need to know about our success as soon as possible, however. Normally I would use runners, but your Striders would be much faster. I know you have more Seeker business to attend to, but will you deliver a report to Mother’s Watch first?”

“Of course,” replied Aloy. Part of her wanted to wait until she knew that Vala would be all right, but she knew that wasn’t going to be feasible. She had too much to do.

There was a flicker of real emotion in Sona’s eyes, just for a moment, as she continued, “Vala will not be riding with you. Her injuries are too extensive.”

“Understood,” said Aloy. “Varl can stay with her. Bast and Max will be enough.”

“My scouts have reported two abandoned outlander bandit camps in the Sacred Land,” said Sona, changing the subject with her usual abruptness. “One was near Devil’s Thirst. Carja arrows were found at both sites. Do you believe this could be related to the Eclipse?”

“Where was the other one?”

“The pass above Valleymeet, near Shivering Watch.”

“No,” Aloy said slowly. Apparently Nil and Apeph were working quickly. If that were the case, though, they were probably north of the Sacred Land at this point, and beyond Sona’s concern. “I encountered a pair of Carja bandit-hunters a few days ago just northwest of Devil’s Thirst. They seemed eager to die, so I decided to let the bandits do the job. It seems I underestimated them.”

Not really true, of course, but as much as she was trying to make sure she did not fall into Max's habit of reflexive lies, trying to explain Nil to Sona seemed, at the very least, extremely complicated. “Extremely complicated” described Aloy’s feelings about Nil in general pretty well, but she hadn't expected the bandits to kill him, and hadn't wanted them to either. She knew his skill at delivering death. Working with a partner, he could handle a bandit camp. If she was wrong, though, she also knew she would in some very weird way mourn him. Honestly, she’d probably be more upset about Nil dying than Nil himself would be. One more thing she didn't really understand about him.

Returning her attention to Sona, she shrugged. “They were headed toward Banuk lands, from what I understand, so I don’t expect we’ll see them again.”

Sona nodded and departed with no more ceremony than she’d arrived. Aloy watched her go, glancing off toward the healers’ tents. What would it take to crack the woman’s self-control? She had to be worried about her daughter, didn’t she? Aloy couldn’t make herself believe that Sona was heartless. She was too passionate about protecting the Nora people to not have any feelings at all, so there must be love for her children in there somewhere. But Aloy had never seen her mourning Vala in the timeline where she died, and the War-Chief seemed to be keeping any worries she had now incredibly private as well.

Eventually exhaustion won out over her desire for an update about her friend’s condition, and she barely managed to drag herself into her tent before she was dead to the world. Aloy finally saw Max the following morning, when she crawled out of her tent to find Bast and Max already awake and readying themselves and the Striders for travel. It turned out that Max’s disappearance last night had been to find one of Sona’s Stitchers, and she and the Nora crafter had spent most of the evening making the items that were now slung across the flanks of all five Striders. “I couldn’t actually help Vala, but I had to do something. I had to be doing something,” she explained apologetically. She gestured to the leatherwork on the two unoccupied machines. “When Varl and Vala are ready to catch up with us, they’ll be prepared for the trip too.”

The items in question were fairly ordinary, truth be told, but their utility was obvious at once. Each consisted of two large satchels of the kind Nora usually carried weapons and supplies in, sewn onto broad, flat pieces of leather. A single strap looped underneath the Strider to hold each one in place. “Saddlebags,” Max announced proudly. She’d put most of their rations and waterskins in them, along with some of their crafting supplies that Aloy had been running out of space for in her own gear.

“What’s a saddle?” Bast asked.

“It’s a broad, low stretch of terrain between two mountains,” Max answered at once. “Kind of like a pass, but roomier. I thought the spot on the Strider's back where you sit sort of looked like one.”

Bast nodded understanding, commenting only that he’d never personally heard the term, while Aloy tried to figure out how much of that was truth and how much Max’s usual time-displaced nonsense.

Varl appeared just before they left, looking torn between wanting to go and wanting to take care of his sister. “You are where you should be,” Aloy told him firmly, swinging up to mount her Strider. “Varl, I need both of you at my side when the time comes to face HADES, so keep Vala safe and sound. Make sure she behaves, make sure she heals, and make sure you’re both prepared. I’ll be sending instructions as soon as I can.”

“As you command, Seeker,” said Varl at once, looking relieved.

“Take care of yourself too,” she told him more gently. “I don’t have so many friends that I can afford to lose some of the best ones I’ve made.”

Varl suddenly seemed unable to meet Aloy’s eyes, and she was once again struck by the sheer strangeness of a man at least five years her senior becoming shy and embarrassed just being around her. Had she behaved that way around Talanah? Had she been making Talanah feel as awkward as Aloy felt now?

After Max and Bast had made their goodbyes as well, the three of them turned their Striders southward at a fast gallop. It took all day and more than an hour past sunset for them to reach Mother’s Watch, even with their early start, but word was racing up the mountain from the moment their machines were spotted from the walls, so they were still making their way into the village when the three High Matriarchs met them.

Seeing all of them still wearing bandages, the villagers had already realized that there must have been a battle, but the gasp when Aloy announced Helis’s death was a small roar. “The cultists of the Metal Devil have been driven from the Sacred Land,” she called out, “and our people need fear them no longer! Soon, though, their master will learn of his followers’ defeat, and it may be that it will send all its strength against us in retribution! We must be ready and prepared!”

Shouts of approval and cries of “For All-Mother!” and “For the Nora!” went up, along with no small number of “For Aloy!” ones as well. Those last she could have done without, but the rest was reassuring. She hadn’t wanted to report a new threat just as she told of an old one defeated, lest she damage their spirit, but the Nora were more resilient than she’d feared.

Aloy and her companions were once again brought into the Matriarchs’ Lodge to give a more detailed report, but describing a victorious battle was much easier than begging for aid. Bast told how Max had used the Deathbringer gun to bring down the Corrupted Bellowback, and Jezza eyed her speculatively. “Perhaps you should have run in the Proving this year as well,” she commented. “We could use another brave with such spirit.”

“I’m no brave,” Max replied at once, keeping her eyes on the floor. “I just saw what needed doing and I did it.”

Jezza smiled. “What else do you think being a brave is?”

After only perhaps an hour they were released to get some sleep. There was even a lodge free for their use this time, so they got to have a roof over their heads. The next morning, Aloy and Max returned to Rost’s, while Bast made his way home to Mother’s Cradle. The two women promised to see him there the following day; he agreed, but seemed pensive. Still worried about Vala, Aloy assumed. He left on foot, claiming he wasn’t sure how he could keep the Strider away from curious villagers, so Aloy and Max took it with them up the mountain.

Just exactly as she had last time, Aloy found herself worrying that she would find an empty, abandoned cabin when they arrived at Rost’s, but once again she was happily disappointed. He kept his eyes down as they entered, but he laid a small stack of leather badges on her usual stool, and then crossed the room to pick up a third, freshly assembled one and place it next to the fire for Max. Frowning, Aloy picked up the badges and her eyes widened. Each held the six-pointed star that constituted the Mark of the Seeker, but they had been crafted with incredibly rare and valuable materials. Rost had used polished and dyed crystal braiding for the main design, a lacquered Scrapper Lens for the backing, and what looked like hand-braided wiring for the detail work. And he’d made five, one for each of her chosen group.

“Rost, I…” Aloy ran out of words. He could not have told her better how proud he was if he’d shouted it to All-Mother from the top of the mountain.

Max, in the middle of sitting down on her new stool with a grin of pleased familiarity, stopped and gaped at the badges as well. “Rost, those are beautiful. Can I…?” She pulled out her camera, aiming at the topmost one in Aloy’s hand, and snapped her photo. Rost twitched a little at the flash, but otherwise remained as silent and stoic as ever.

Aloy threw her arms around him in another hug, and once again felt his awkwardness at the close contact. She hadn’t been this physically demonstrative at any point during her previous timeline, but recent events - and yes, she partially had Max to thank for it, for better or worse - had really been changing that, and she couldn’t help finding Rost’s discomfort just a bit funny. He put up with it, though, and even raised one hand to pat her back gingerly.

Aloy had been the only one of her companions that even had a Seeker badge to wear. She quickly swapped out the one she’d been wearing for one of Rost’s, and handed one over to Max to don as well. It looked amazing.

They took their seats and started in on the story of their campaign against the Eclipse. Though Rost had never served in the Red Raids, having already been made an outcast long before they began, even he knew Helis’s reputation, and he nodded in pride and satisfaction at Aloy when they got to that part of their story. “I told you I learned the lesson,” Aloy smiled back, and she saw an answering glint in his eye that warmed her heart.

As they talked Rost made them more stew, and Max dived on it as enthusiastically as she had when they were there before. Despite herself and the tension between them, Aloy couldn’t help laughing a little at her shameless pleasure in the food. It was a little weird too, though, because Aloy had never found it more than just okay. She was much more a fan of Rost’s scrambled eggs.

They spent the rest of the day just being in Rost’s company, and Aloy could hardly believe how wonderful it felt to know that she hadn’t lost him. Wasn’t going to lose him. He’d even apparently decided to accept her determination to stay in his life, whether she was a member of the tribe or not. She hadn’t decided yet whether to tell him that she knew why he was an outcast - she was afraid it would bring up memories he found painful - but she’d made it abundantly clear that she did not and would not believe he deserved it. “You’re a hero, not a criminal, and you can’t change my mind,” she told him, and he had sighed the same sigh he’d always used when he realized Aloy’s stubbornness wasn’t going to give way.

He could tell there was something wrong between her and Max, though, and she saw the concern written on his brow each time he glanced at Max when she wasn’t looking. After he’d given her that same look at least three times Aloy had seen, she put her hand on his arm. “Don’t worry,” she told him quietly. ‘It’s just something between us. As much as I could use your advice on it, I know you can’t give it, so I’ll have to work it out on my own.” He actually met her eyes then, his gaze full of sadness and regret, along with something else she couldn’t quite name. A kind of sorrowful resignation, maybe, though resigned to what she had no idea.

She smiled at him, just a bit sadly, and he put his hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. Now the only thing she could only see in his eyes was his unshakable confidence in her. It occurred to her then that he’d already taught her literally everything she knew about loving someone. If that wasn’t enough to get her through this, nothing could.

Chapter 26: Frontolysis

Chapter Text

It was raining the next morning when they headed down the mountain again. The rain still had some of the sting of winter in it, but the lower the elevation they reached, the warmer it became. By the time they reached the valley floor, it had even become kind of refreshing. Spring was definitely on its way, another reminder for Aloy of time passing. She wished she could just appreciate it, but the urgency of her mission refused to allow it.

Noon was still a couple of hours away when they arrived at Mother’s Cradle, Bast’s Strider following docilely along behind their own. Bast had clearly seen them coming, as he was already waiting for them at the end of the low bridge that served the village’s northern access. His semi-permanent scowl was in stronger force than Aloy had seen in some time. She and Max dismounted, leaving the Striders waiting a few dozen paces short of the bridge so as to avoid any confusion about their intentions. Despite the rain, there were other Nora watching - curiously for some, warily for others - as Bast approached them. Aloy noted two in particular, a pair of women watching Bast with open concern. The older of the two bore a strong resemblance to Bast himself, and Aloy thought she recognized her from a dimly-recalled berry picking incident in her youth. The younger was a brave, quite lovely, with glossy black hair and eyes. She had her bow out and an arrow on the string, though she had neither raised the weapon nor drawn the string.

“Bast?” Aloy prompted, eying the watchers curiously. “What’s going on?”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about them. They’re just nervous about the Striders and people riding them. Rumors about Corruption have gotten around to the Embrace, but the specifics have gotten confused somewhat.” He tilted his head to one side. “Well, and Avina’s still mad about not getting her new house.”

“I still can’t make myself be sorry for that,” Aloy noted dryly.

Bast grinned briefly, “I probably wouldn’t be able to either.” The grin faded, though, and the scowl replaced it once again. “I do need to talk to you about something before we go, though.”

Aloy frowned. “Go on,” she said. Max was frowning too.

It took him a moment to actually find the words for what he wanted to say. At length he just asked, “Do you honor All-Mother? Do you keep her commandments so as to live in her memory?”

Max put a hand on Aloy’s arm. “I can’t find a way out of this one,” she murmured in Aloy’s ear. “I’m sorry.”

Aloy glanced at her. Well that wasn’t promising. She refocused on Bast. “Why are you asking?”

Bast’s scowl redirected itself to the ground near Aloy’s feet. “Because I can’t reconcile what I know of All-Mother with what you do. I don’t mean fighting the Eclipse; that is as righteous as anything I could ask for. But… those.” He gestured at the Striders. “And that.” He pointed at her Focus. “And that.” He indicated the override at the tip of her lance. “You use devices from the Old Ones and ally yourself with machines. How can you be an emissary of All-Mother and do that? I don’t understand, Aloy… and I need to. If I am to follow you, I have to understand.”

“Bast… Where is this coming from?” Aloy asked. “What happened to ‘I’m with you?’”

“You don’t...” Bast shook his head. “I want to be. I just… can’t bring it together in my head. Varl is too smitten and I don’t think Vala cares, but I need to grasp it. Vala told me you were willing to lie to the Matriarchs about Helis being at the Ring of Metal. I know you spent the day yesterday with an outcast. You made no attempt to hide it. And you let those two Carja walk away from us alive when the law demanded their deaths. Being a Seeker doesn't forgive those sins, Aloy. How can you break the law so… casually? With so little care for what it means?”

Aloy studied him. He truly seemed conflicted. She wanted to take that away from him if she could, but she didn’t know how to do it without simply lying to him and she’d already done enough of that for a lifetime. “What if my answers can’t satisfy you? What if, when we’re done here, you decide I must be one of the faithless?”

Now he did glare at her. “Then I will ask you to take away my Seeker status and leave me and my family out of your schemes in the future. I would ask you to do the same for Varl and Vala and, for that matter, for the Nora as a whole, but I don’t think that would happen.” The glare became something more like a grimace. “Or even that Vala or Varl would want you to. But if you respect the Nora at all, take your fight against HADES away from the Sacred Land and do what you need to do without tainting All-Mother’s sight any further.”

Well. At least everyone knew where they stood. “Very well,” Aloy said, knowing she was about to lose Bast as an ally, let alone a friend, possibly forever. “Here’s how I see All-Mother. She’s an almost forgotten memory of an ancient device that restored the world after machines killed every living thing in existence. The device was called GAIA, and was built by an Old One who foresaw the end of the world, and so found a way to make the machines’ victory a temporary one. One of the things GAIA did was build and maintain birthing facilities across the world, one of which is inside All-Mother Mountain, behind a great metal door that was originally built to keep the hostile machines out. The birthing centers and the children in them were maintained and cared for by machines that GAIA controlled, machines that the children called ‘Mother’ and ‘Father.’

“GAIA was sabotaged by another Old One who believed that the knowledge the Old Ones possessed, specifically the knowledge that led to the creation of the machines in the first place, would corrupt the children who would be born in those birthing centers. GAIA was meant to give us, the humans of this restored world, the tools to rebuild what was lost and supply our own needs, but after the sabotage, she couldn’t. So instead she was forced to let our ancestors go into the world with as much preparation as she could manage. When the door opened and the children left, the last thing she told them, through the Mother machine who had cared for them, was that they would need to be brave, and that she would sleep and remember her children.

“Stories of that experience and those last words eventually became the basis for what makes the Nora who we are. We remember GAIA as All-Mother, and we call our warriors ‘braves’ because bravery was her last instruction.”

She paused then, watching Bast’s reaction. He had remained completely silent while Aloy had talked, his habitual glare hiding any emotions he might have been feeling that weren’t anger. When he didn’t take the opportunity to say anything, she went on. “I know how to open the door inside All-Mother Mountain, and as soon as the threat from HADES is gone, I’m going to do just that and show the Nora what their heritage really is. I believe that truth is better than a comfortable lie, and if I have the tools to reveal truth, I have an obligation to do it.” After she’d told CYAN to begin lifting the veil of Banuk superstition, how could she not do the same for the Nora? “That’s why I’m telling you this, even though I know you’re going to see it as blasphemy. Because I believe you deserve the truth, even if you don’t like it.”

Bast just stared at her, the rain falling down his face and plastering his hair to his forehead. He hardly seemed to notice it. Aloy waited him out, once again practicing the patience of the hunter, even while she could sense Max beside her getting increasingly anxious.

More than a minute had gone by before he finally said, “I can’t follow you, Seeker. Please go.” He started to turn away, but Aloy caught his arm. He looked back.

“Take this,” she said, putting one of Rost’s Seeker badges in his hand. “I’m not going to make you come with me, but you know the stakes. Whatever else you think of me, you know the danger the Eclipse pose. I’m going to ask Varl, and Vala if she’s healed enough, to meet me in Meridian in a few weeks. I’d like you to be there too. For the sake of the Nora, put aside my faithlessness and stand with me against HADES. Please.”

Bast glanced down at the badge in his hand, then pulled his arm free of her grasp. He put the badge in a pouch on his belt. “I will think about it.” It was more than she'd expected, and she nodded her acceptance. He headed back across the bridge, making his way to where the two women Aloy had seen before were waiting. The three of them began speaking animatedly to one another and Aloy saw both of the women give her disapproving stares as they moved away. She briefly considered activating her Focus to see if she could make out their conversation, but decided she had no cause to violate their privacy that way.

She felt Max’s hand on her shoulder. “It was the right decision,” Max offered, and Aloy sniffed.

“I’d have thought you’d have argued for the lie, to keep him with us.”

“I would have. I did, actually, in several rewinds just now. You didn’t go along with it once, and I think we both know that maybe my advice where honesty is concerned isn’t all that great.”

“So what makes you think it’s the right decision?”

Max let out a breath. “Because you made it, and you’re a better person than me. That much I know for certain.”

Aloy didn’t answer that. She just headed back to the Striders and left Max to follow in her footsteps.

Aloy allowed Bast’s Strider to go back to its default behaviors, setting it free to wander off and do whatever ecological cleansing tasks it was designed to do. They did take the saddlebags, though; Bast wouldn’t have accepted them and there was no point in letting them go to waste. In short order they were riding through the Embrace gates and had turned their Striders northward once more, a quiet, solemn ride through the downpour. They briefly rode out of the rain as they went, but it caught back up to them that evening, when they stopped in Mother’s Crown for the night. Their silence lasted through the night; Max made a few attempts to start a conversation, but Aloy was too wrapped up in her own thoughts after the confrontation with Bast to want to talk much.

Truth, lies, confusion, misunderstanding, disbelief… Everything seemed to have consequences. She wanted a simple, straightforward, easy to understand policy: tell the truth as best she knew it and trust in those around her to use that truth to its best purpose. It seemed like it should work. Why would anyone want to believe a lie? And still, she’d lost Bast to a comforting story in defiance of an honest history and Max had become so accustomed to the power that lies gave her that she had to work not to tell them every chance she could. Even if Max was trying to change - something that Aloy wanted to believe, but couldn’t, not yet, not until she’d earned back Aloy's trust - the instincts she’d developed since gaining her abilities were a testament to the power lies had. The Mad Sun-King had believed hard enough in a comforting delusion that he’s sent hundreds, maybe thousands, to their deaths rather than accept something was simply out of his control. Ted Faro and his mad belief that humanity’s ignorance was so much better than its knowledge, deliberately obscuring the truths of the world from an entire people. Bahavas had used the facade of a young boy’s holiness as a weapon against his own people’s security and prosperity, propping up a crumbling regime and doomed rebellion rather than admit defeat or accept his own loss of power.

And of course, Bahavas and Helis both had fallen victim to the exact same ploy when HADES had used it against them. Lies told to pawns that were just what they wanted to hear, so they would eagerly allow themselves to be used and destroyed.

Just as she had lied to the Matriarchs and told them what they wanted to hear so they would give her a Seeker’s authority and freedom of movement.

She hated that Max was, in many ways, right. The truth wouldn’t save her. Telling it would doom her and the world with her if she did it the wrong way or at the wrong time. If she was able to stop HADES and restore GAIA, it would only be because she’d agreed to a lie, had told it and allowed it to be told to others in her name. Maybe she should have done the same with Bast. Maybe the truth wasn’t worth the price of losing the support of one of the few people she trusted. She could tell Max, ask her to go back, make Aloy’s earlier self agree to prop up Bast’s faith for the sake of the mission against HADES…

No. No, damn her, she was going to cling to her ideal as much as she could. She might have to accept some hypocrisy here and there, but only where she’d tried and failed to find any other options. Truth had to be the best choice. It just had to be. She refused to accept a world where it wasn’t.

They were just getting ready to move on the next morning when braves on the town’s watchtowers spotted Sona’s War Party returning. Rather than wait for them to arrive, Aloy decided that she and Max should just ride out to meet them. It took just a few minutes as compared to half an hour for the braves on foot to reach the walls.

Aloy went to Sona first, confirming she'd reported to the Matriarchs, but also hoping to hear an update about Vala. She got one, of sorts. “Vala is recovering,” Sona told her. When Aloy didn't respond immediately, expecting there to be more, Sona raised an impatient eyebrow. “Do you have something else to report? If not, you can go now.”

Realizing she’d been foolish to think Sona would indulge sentiment, even for her own daughter, Aloy departed with a nod of her head. Max followed her as she made her way through the trooping braves toward the healers carrying the injured in long carts, each covered with a kind of low tent to keep the rain off of them. Watching the Nora leaning into their harnesses to pull the carts along, Aloy remembered the Corrupted Striders the Eclipse had bound to a much larger cart back at Devil’s Thirst and sighed with frustration. So many ways things could be made better for the tribes if she could only rebuild GAIA enough to gain control of the Cauldrons.

It did not surprise her in the least to see that one of the Nora pulling a cart was Varl, and behind him, a heavily-bandaged Vala slept in the cart’s bed, heedless of the bumping of the wheels over the ground. “Would you like to rest, Varl?” Aloy asked as they approached. “I can take a turn if you want.”

“Thank you, Seeker,” Varl said, managing a weary but sincere smile for her. The rain did not seem to be even registering on him. “It’s a generous offer, but I am following your instructions: seeing to it personally that Vala recovers.” He greeted Max with a similar smile as the two women fell into step with him. “Where’s Bast?”

After all her soul-searching the night before, Aloy wanted nothing more right then than to tell him exactly what she’d told Bast, to just lay out every truth of the Nora’s history she had been carrying around. The honesty would have felt like such a relief, but she knew she couldn’t allow herself that relief right then. She remembered all too well what Varl had told her in her previous timeline when she’d offered to take him into the Cradle inside All-Mother Mountain: “All-Mother meant for you to see that,” he’d explained, not quite meeting her eyes. You, not me, he’d meant. He wanted to keep the lie. She wondered if he had suspected on some level that it was a lie, suspected and did not want to have the suspicion confirmed.

He wanted the lie, and as much as she wanted truth, she also had to respect the wishes of her friends. Bast had asked for her truth and she’d given it, even knowing the consequences. Varl had asked the opposite, and even if she wasn’t going to lie to him, she had to accept that truth wasn’t the right choice here either.

Instead, what she said was, “He asked me to take back his appointment as a Seeker. He’s having trouble with some of the things I’m willing to do in All-Mother’s name. I told him he could stay behind, but I also asked him to come to Meridian with you - and Vala, if she’s able - in a few weeks. I plan to launch my attack on HADES from there, and that’s when I’ll need you. All of you.”

“What you’re willing to do?” Varl repeated angrily. “You’ve done more already for All-Mother and the Nora than any brave in our stories ever has! Everything about you proves your worthiness to be her emissary! How dare he turn his back on you after-”

“Varl,” Aloy interrupted gently. “He has a right to his concerns. I’m the one who gave him permission to make his choice about coming with me, remember?”

He looked like he wanted to continue his rant, but he slowly subsided under Aloy’s steady gaze. “Of course, Seeker,” he said finally. “It shall be as you say.”

“How’s Vala doing?” Max asked, and Varl turned his attention to her.

“Healing,” he said, sounding intensely relieved. “The healers say she will likely be as strong as ever in another couple of weeks.”

She almost missed it, but Aloy just barely caught a flicker of not-movement around Max. She’d rewound something, and her voice still sounded odd even now as she replied, “That’s really good to hear. I wish there’d been something else I could have done to protect her.”

“You have many amazing gifts, Max,” Varl chuckled despite his tiredness, “but not even your magic actually lets you be in two places at once. Vala is a brave to her core and would choose to do the same exact thing if she had it to do again. I’m sure of it.”

Aloy looked away so that Varl did not see her expression. She knew all too well how true Varl’s words were. “She’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever known,” she agreed. “She would never hesitate to help others at the cost of herself.” Max met her eyes from Varl’s far side, and Aloy saw the sympathy in them. Max knew too, which made it easier to remember. A little easier, anyway.

“It’s good she’s healing so well,” Aloy went on, wanting to banish those memories of a friend’s death that had never happened. “I’d like you and Vala, and Bast if he’s changed his mind by then, to meet Max and me in Meridian in thirty days. If we have not arrived yet, find an Oseram named Erend Vanguardsman and tell him you’re waiting for me. He should be able to help you find somewhere to stay and hopefully gather some supplies as well.” She produced the two remaining Seeker badges Rost had made and placed them on the bed of the cart next to Vala. “These are for you two when you are ready to leave for Meridian. Bast already has his, if he decides to come.”

“Just the three of us?” asked Varl, uncertain. “Will we be enough for an attack against the heart of the Eclipse?”

Aloy patted him on the shoulder. “We’re going to go in quietly. A spear to the back before they know what’s hit them. But,” she grinned, “I also think we’ll have a few more people with us by then too.”

Chapter 27: Advection

Chapter Text

“There’s no way,” Max shook her head firmly. “No f*cking way. I’m not a surgeon, but I’ve had to spend enough time in hospitals and around doctors to have at least a little idea of what healing wounds like Vala’s would take.” She looked at Aloy as though trying to drive the truth of her words straight into Aloy’s brain. “Months, Aloy. Months! Plus physical therapy and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were permanent after-effects, like nerve damage or bones that didn’t heal quite right. It’s impossible! And I can f*cking time travel, so I know what impossible looks like!”

Max had been on this tirade pretty much since they’d left Varl and set out northward once more, waxing and waning as she wore herself out on the subject and then came back to it again. The rain had finally broken for good around midday, and liberation from the wet weather had only seemed to increase Max’s fervor on the subject. Aloy found it oddly entertaining, and it was certainly making the ride pass faster than she’d expected. Apparently Max had been so disbelieving when Varl had first told them that she’d accidentally revealed her true identity as an Old One, prompting the rewind Aloy had noticed.

“I did tell you I fell off of a mountain and was basically fully recovered after three days, didn’t I?” asked Aloy, raising her eyebrow. “Not counting all the times I got shot, stabbed, bitten, burned, poisoned, or exploded along the way from the Proving to Elisabet’s ranch. Never kept me down for more than a day.”

“Haxx,” Max muttered. “Something’s not right here.” She chewed her lip. “Maybe you guys are like genetic supersoldiers or something. Who knows what ELEUTHIA might have done to your DNA while you guys were in storage.”

Aloy wasn’t entirely sure she knew what Max was talking about, but thought she was getting the gist. “I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “When I was at the Zero Dawn project base, I saw the introductory speech the ELEUTHIA Alpha, a man named Patrick Brochard-Klein, gave to his subordinates. He was very adamant about not wanting to modify humanity from what it was at the time the Glitch occurred. He seemed to think that someone might want to change us or redesign us somehow. There was something about… I think the word was ‘eugenics?’”

Max made a face. “Well that’s a gross topic, but I’m glad to hear this Patrick guy wasn’t a fan either.” She didn’t explain further, instead returning to her rant. “But it still leaves us with f*cking medical miracles from a bunch of people who’ve never heard of gunpowder, or… or the printing press. Or cameras!”

“Sorry, Max,” Aloy shrugged, hiding a grin. “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe your healers should have used more ochrebloom.”

Max stared at her as though Aloy had just said something brilliant. “ELEUTHIA was just responsible for storing the human zygotes, right? The animals and plants were handled by different parts of GAIA?” she asked.

“ARTEMIS was in charge of the animals and DEMETER the plants,” confirmed Aloy.

Max brushed her hair out of her face in that habit she had that Aloy liked far too much for her own good. “So they would have had different Alphas,” she murmured, thinking out loud. “Suddenly I’m kind of wondering if they had the same safeguards against tampering that the humans did.”

She didn’t go on, but apparently something in that last idea had produced a theory she could be satisfied with, because she let the topic drop entirely. “So where are we going, anyway?” she asked instead.

They’d spent the day riding north along the edge of the mountains, back in the direction of the Red Echoes, but veering further west than they had when waiting for Sona to launch their assault on the Ring of Metal. Dusk was approaching rapidly, and Aloy had already started keeping her eyes open for a good campsite.

“Your hometown,” Aloy replied. At Max’s befuddled expression, Aloy laughed before adding, “Hunter’s Gathering. We should get there tomorrow, I think. I’m hoping to catch a particular merchant caravan before it leaves without its ammunition. Also, there’s a Cauldron nearby and I want to start getting my override codes back.”

“I had to admit, I’m really curious about these Cauldrons of yours.”

“You have to see them to really believe them. They’re almost literally indescribable. Somehow, Cauldrons are both some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and some of the most unsettling. Inhuman.”

“I guess that makes sense. They weren’t built for or designed by people.” Max dug out her camera. “I’m definitely looking forward to seeing if I can get any interesting shots.” For a brief moment, she looked embarrassed as she turned the camera over in her hands. “I hate to say this, but I’m glad it’s just the two of us so I can start using this again. I mean, obviously I’d rather have Vala okay and everybody else with us, but not having to hide this feels good.”

“You weren’t really using it before,” Aloy pointed out. “I never saw it in your hands until that night in Devil’s Thirst.” For a wonder, she didn’t stumble over the memory.

“We were still around too many Nora too often,” replied Max as she put the camera away again. “And unlike some people I know, I’m not the ‘emissary of All-Mother’ and get a pass on anything and everything tech-related. I did sneak a few in here and there, but I always rewound as soon as I had the photo in my hand so no one could burn me as a witch or anything.” She laughed suddenly. “I can teleport and see the future and no one blinks an eye, but take one picture and suddenly I’m forgotten from All-Mother’s memory. So unfair.”

“Sorry. Guess you’ll just have to be satisfied with breaking all the rules of time and space.”

They found a campsite shortly thereafter and stopped for the night. As they made their camp and settled in, Aloy was continually astonished by how easily their conversation was flowing. Nothing had been forgotten and it was hard to say that anything had been forgiven either, but she still felt more at ease with Max than she had since those first few days together, before Devil’s Thirst or anything that came after. It felt good. She wondered if that was dangerous.

The slope of the mountain where Hunter’s Gathering perched came into view just an hour or so after dawn the next morning. As they dismounted from their Striders and walked into town, Aloy spotted Gera near her bar at the small settlement’s western end. She was looking forward to seeing the boisterous Oseram again, but decided that she needed to find Lubavad and warn him about the traitorous gambler in his employ more. Before his caravan departed, if possible.

She got lucky - they’d already formed up and were heading toward the road when she saw them, but hadn’t actually gotten out of town yet. “Dirid!” she called, waving as though recognizing a friend. Dirid looked up, frowning in complete confusion, and the rest of the caravan exchanged looks as she and Max trotted up next to the man who’d sold out the rest of his companions for the price of his gambling debts.

“I don’t-” he started, but Aloy put her arm around his shoulder as though greeting a friend and tightened her grip, hard. Her thumb dug into a weak point right next to the joint, and he suddenly jerked in pain. Max came up on his other side, the tip of her knife just pricking his spine.

“It’s good to see you, Dirid! I thought we were going to miss you!” Aloy said, still speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. “Marzavid! You’re Marzavid, right?” She was looking now at the caravan master, whose expression was turning from curious to annoyed at the delay. “Dirid was just telling us the funniest thing, weren’t you, Dirid? Tell him about the Explosive Arrows, Dirid. Oh, you’re going to love this, Marzavid. It’s hilarious.”

As soon as she mentioned the arrows, Dirid paled so fast and completely that Aloy was afraid he was going to pass out. He tried to say something, but Max pressed her knife a bit further into his back and looked over at Aloy. “I don’t think he wants to tell the story, Aloy,” she said, with a meaningful tilt of her head.

“Oh that’s okay,” Aloy said, still smiling. “I can tell it. So get this, Marzavid! Dirid swapped your Explosive Arrows for a bunch of sticks! Just so he could let your caravan get slaughtered by machines and steal your Songcores! Isn’t that just the funniest thing?” She suddenly shoved Dirid forward, sending him stumbling into Marzavid. Marzavid caught him and held his arms in a grip at least as tight as what Aloy had been using. Max calmly slipped her knife back into its sheath.

Marzavid stared into the wide and terrified eyes of his employee. “Dirid? What’s she talking about?” His voice was the kind of calm that suggested imminent violence, and Aloy was reminded how much she’d liked the man when they’d met before.

“I don’t- I don’t know! She’s crazy! I’ve never seen her before!”

“So you’re saying that if I go over there and open the ammunition crate, I’m not going to find nothing but sticks?”

Somehow, Dirid turned even more pale. His mouth moved a couple of times but nothing managed to escape. Marzavid pulled him closer, so that their faces were just a couple finger widths apart. “Get out of my sight, Dirid. If I ever see you again, I might have to get upset with you. You wouldn’t want that.” He let go, and Dirid stumbled backward, then - after a terrified glance at Aloy - started running toward the road out of town.

“Thank you, stranger,” Marzavid said, stepping closer to Aloy. “I have no idea how you knew, but you probably just saved our lives. You know, we’re a guard down, now. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in taking his place? I’m getting the impression you know how to handle yourself.”

“For what Lubavad pays?” Aloy laughed. “Thanks, I’ll pass. But do be careful, my friend. There’s a Stalker up there on that route. I’d hate to think I did all this just to have you die to one of those.”

The caravan master shook his head. “Who are you that you know all these things?” he said, laughing in disbelief. “We will keep our eyes open. Sun light your path, stranger.” He touched his headdress in a kind of salute, then turned to begin issuing orders. A man went running back the way the caravan had come, presumably to collect the Explosive Arrows that Lubavad the merchant still had.

Max was chuckling as they turned to begin walking back toward where Aloy had seen Gera. “That was kind of fun,” she said. “I’ll be your legbreaker any time, Aloy.”

“Let’s not make a habit of it,” Aloy answered, but she was smiling too.

Gera was the cheerful, loud, welcoming presence Aloy remembered, greeting Aloy as though they were old friends. Aloy was once again christened “Little Spark,” but this time Max gained a nickname of her own, based on her pale skin and bright blue eyes: “Snowflake.” The name made Max grimace for a moment. When Aloy asked her about it, though, she shook her head dismissively. “I just forgot that Fight Club didn’t ruin that word for you guys,” she explained, which made about as much sense as Max’s explanations usually did.

Aloy knew better than to let more than a few swallows of Gera’s Scrappersap get past her lips, but Max was much more enthusiastic, and it became clear to Aloy very quickly that they wouldn’t be leaving Hunter’s Gathering that night. Shortly after the drinking began in earnest, Gera challenged Max to an arm-wrestling contest. It went exactly as Aloy had expected. Max might have been training and exercising for months of her own time, but Gera was built like an Oseram forge piston. After she won and left Max panting for breath, Gera got up to grab them more drinks. While she was gone, Aloy leaned over to whisper, “So how many rewinds before you gave up?”

Max glared at her. “Eight, and also shut up.” Aloy buried her laughter in another sip of her Scrappersap.

Despite herself, Aloy found she didn’t hate the delay as much as she had expected to. She was having a good time, actually able to relax a little and at long last enjoy Max’s company again. Gera told her and Max about Oseram culture and why she’d left the oppression of the ealdormen, which really set Max off and taught Aloy a new word: patriarchy. Gera also mentioned her husband Kendert and her worries about his whereabouts. Since Daytower’s gates had never closed, word had reached her of Kendert’s disappearance sooner than it had in Aloy’s original timeline. As she had before, Aloy promised to see if she could locate him. The entire conversation felt more poignant this time than it had, and Aloy was pretty sure not all of it was the effects of the Scrappersap. When Aloy asked Gera what her feelings toward Kendert were and Gera replied, “Do you ever wake up in the morning and not have all the answers?” Aloy understood her meaning in ways she had not previously. Aloy couldn’t help glancing at Max when Gera asked, and she saw Max look away, ashamed.

Previously, Aloy had gotten the impression that Max was a pretty happy drunk, but it didn’t turn out to be true this time. The conversation about Kendert seemed to be weighing on her more and more as the evening went on. Even Gera’s relentless good mood couldn’t buoy Max’s spirits forever, and by a couple hours past dark she had become nearly catatonic. Rather than leave Gera thinking she was failing her job as a host, Aloy opted to instead find them someplace to sleep, wishing Gera a good night and escorting - or more accurately, carrying - Max to bed. She wound up actually renting a cot from Lubavad, the Carja merchant whose caravan she’d saved, at something close to a reasonable rate. He must really have been grateful for her help.

They passed that same caravan on the road the next day as they rode toward Cauldron SIGMA. Aloy called out a greeting and Max offered a somewhat bleary wave as they galloped along, leaving wide-eyed and astonished Carja behind them.

Perhaps twenty minutes later they had to stop to deal with a Longlegs and the Scrappers and Watchers tagging along behind it like little goslings. As machine battles went, there wasn’t much to it; Aloy likely could have handled all of them without getting a scratch on her. She didn’t have to, though; Max was there beside her, and the experience was unexpected, to say the least. Despite the remnants of her hangover, Max was in fine form; maybe the thrill of the fight was enough to shake the last of the aftereffects off.

It was the first time they had fought together, just the two of them, in open combat, with all of Max’s abilities on display. Aloy leapt into the fray, mixing spear work and point-blank arrows without hesitation as the situation demanded, while Max stayed on the fringes, constantly shifting herself from one place to the next as she fired arrow after arrow with uncanny precision. Several times a Scrapper or Watcher would try to circle Aloy to strike from a flank or behind, only to meet one of Max’s arrows moments before it could make its attack, while Aloy calmly and efficiently dispatched one of its fellows.

It felt like a dance, rhythm and movement in near-perfect harmony. Nothing was wasted. It seemed to Aloy that she instinctively knew where Max was, knew where she would be, and didn’t have to look or waste time wondering. When Aloy at last finished the Longlegs off with a Shock Arrow right to its power supply that resulted in a very gratifying explosion, she looked over to see Max standing right at her shoulder, wearing a grin almost identical to her own. “Thanks for watching my back,” said Aloy, putting her bow away.

Max colored slightly and looked at her feet. “It’s why I’m here,” she replied quietly.

“How many times did you have to rewind to keep those machines off of me?”

Max looked surprised by the question. “Um, none?” she answered. “I was just following your lead. You kept moving them right into my sight line, so the shots were easy.”

Aloy considered that for a moment. “Huh,” was pretty much all she could come up with to say.

Max wandered over to study the remnants of the Longlegs. “So, can we ride the chocobos too?” she asked.

“The whats?”

“These things,” Max said, gesturing to the Longlegs. “We can ride them too, right? I mean, I love Hidalgo to death, but…”

Aloy wasn’t sure which of those threads to follow. They all seemed like traps. She finally settled on, “What’s Hidalgo?”

“My Strider,” replied Max, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Aloy stared at her. Oh yes. All traps. “You named your Strider?”

“Of course. Didn’t you?”

Shaking her head, Aloy decided this conversation was not going anywhere useful and tapped on her Focus, scanning the area. They were close enough to the Cauldron for the signal to be detectable, and she headed back toward her Strider and… Hidalgo, apparently. “Come on,” she called. “The Cauldron’s this way.” Max mounted up and they kicked their machines up into a gallop.

Chapter 28: Katabasis

Chapter Text

They weren’t even ten steps inside the Cauldron when Max really just had one question: could they be used to make more instant film? Because she was in serious danger of using everything she had left in here.

Aloy had been right about how strange and amazing they were. The way the thick cabling seemed to wrap around the vents and walls made her think of the organic-mechanical blend of H.R. Giger, but it lacked the same dark, unsettling quality that Giger’s work so often had. Not that it was all that bright; the dim lighting put her in constant danger of tripping or stumbling into Aloy’s back as they crept along, and she was once again incredibly envious of Aloy’s Focus to help her see where they were going. No, the difference in the lighting had more to do with the soft blueness of everything, thick enough that she thought her pictures might come out looking like she’d used a filter. Her camera’s flash helped a little, but the blue glow was everywhere, even if it wasn’t all that intense. It seeped in around the edges no matter what Max did.

That sense of the techno-organic only heightened as they made their way further in, sneaking past, destroying, or overriding machines as they went. The triangular passages connecting one larger chamber to another reminded her irresistibly of arteries and veins. The tubing and cables hugging the walls resembled muscle fibers or nerves. The resemblance wasn’t exact, though: all the similarities were like those of the animal-like machines she’d watched Aloy and the others disassemble and harvest. Technology serving the same purposes as flesh, but not slavishly following the same designs. Aloy mentioned at one point having seen something very much like a pumping heart in another Cauldron, but it had been pumping Blaze rather than blood.

All of it combined to make Max almost dizzy with the visual possibilities, and that wasn’t even taking into account how utterly impossible the technology was. Things were just… floating… in the air, with no wings or even any engines she could recognize. The construction processes didn’t seem to use rivets or steel, but just flickering light, as though the machines were being woven from lightning. Max watched Aloy fly along over the length of the Cauldron, dangling from one of those hovering transport platforms like she was waiting for her stop on the subway, and shook her head in sheer awe. Max, of course, did nothing of the kind. Stepping through memories was absolutely less terrifying. Faster, too.

“So HEPHAESTUS built these?” she asked Aloy at one point, while they rested on top of a ledge lined with glowing yellow lighting. She was taking a photo of a section of cabling entering into one of the triangular shafts; she was really taken with the way the shapes intersected with one another.

“I don’t know,” Aloy answered thoughtfully. “I’ve always assumed so, but it’s also trying to force its way into them and take them over, override them essentially, and hasn’t succeeded nearly as well as I would have expected. So maybe not. The only one whose builder I know for sure is EPSILON, and that was actually built by CYAN. HEPHAESTUS forced her to, but she did the actual work. Or at least, that’s how I understood it.”

Max tilted her head as she realized something. “You called CYAN ‘she.’ I’ve only ever heard you do that with GAIA, at least as far as AIs go. All the others are ‘it.’ How come?”

“Well, that’s how their creators referred to them. Elisabet always said ‘she’ when she was talking about GAIA, and Kenny Chau and Anita Sandoval did the same with CYAN. I guess I just assume they knew what they were talking about.” Aloy shrugged. “I suppose you can ask her yourself if I’ve got it right when you meet her.”

“Wait, say that again. I’m going to meet CYAN?” Max blinked. “I thought we were heading into the Sundom. Isn’t HADES on the far side?”

“It is,” Aloy acknowledged, “but most of a Banuk werak is going to die in the next few days, and I’m hoping to keep that from happening. Besides, the sooner we can get EPSILON shut down, the fewer Fireclaws it will have a chance to make, and the better things will be for everyone.” She sighed. “I know we don’t have a lot of time and even you can’t be in two places at once, but I have to try to save as many people as I can.” She gave Max a speculative glance. “I don’t suppose you want to jump back from the future and tell me it’s all going to work out okay, do you?”

Max paused, waited, then made a face. “I guess not. Future me is quite often an asshole, though, so I’m not surprised.”

Aloy nodded. “All right. Let’s get back to it.”

They learned a new trick on their way through the Cauldron. Aloy’s Focus had a range of about 250 feet for most uses, and it turned out that she could still trigger the override with it even if she wasn’t personally holding it. So Aloy was able to give Max her lance and have her memory-jump across a gap to override the bridge function, saving Aloy, at least, a decent amount of extra walking. They tested it a little, and it turned out that as long as Aloy could still see Max with her Focus - however the hell that worked - she could use the override. It seemed like something with a lot more potential uses, especially if they could override more Cauldrons along the way to get all the missing override codes into Aloy’s Focus.

In fairly short order, they had reached the Cauldron core and were studying the looming Bellowback in front of them warily. “I don’t suppose you have another Deathbringer gun in one of those satchels,” Max asked Aloy, and the other woman chuckled.

“Fresh out, I’m afraid. Going to have to do this one the old-fashioned way.”

“Right,” Max muttered. “Because ‘old-fashioned’ means arrows with napalm tips. Just like Grandma used to do it.”

They dispatched the two Watchers patrolling the area, then Max stepped through her memory to the ground floor and watched Aloy rappel down. She really did just jump and then throw the hook back up, like an absolute lunatic. It still made Max’s heart climb into her throat, the trauma of seeing Kate’s death all those years ago compounded now with the memory of everything that had gone wrong on top of the Tallneck. Plus, of course, the fact that Aloy should have gotten herself killed years ago pulling stunts like that. It all combined to produce a great deal of discomfort watching it happen, but Max knew not watching would have been worse, so she just stood there and pretended like Aloy wasn’t an utter madwoman as she slid down the rope and landed lightly next to Max.

Aloy quickly prepped the area with a variety of traps and bombs while Max got out and loaded her Ropecaster. She hadn’t had much practice with or need for the weapon since Aloy had bought it for her, but she’d noticed that Aloy tended to use one with larger or more dangerous machines and this seemed like an excellent opportunity to give it a shot. It’s crowd control. Like spamming Cyclone. If I keep the damn thing pinned down, Aloy can wreck it and nobody gets hurt. The biggest drawback to the Ropecaster from what she’d seen so far was how long it seemed to take to reload, at least in combat situations, but manipulating how long things take to happen was something of a specialty of hers.

When they were both ready, Aloy climbed one of the access nodes around the edges of the core and jammed her override into it. The power around the area flickered briefly, then the access nodes began to sink into the floor and the… force field? (it was probably the same thing as in Aloy’s futuristic glowy armor, not that that really explained anything) around the Bellowback faded away. Its lights glowed an angry red and it turned toward Aloy.

Max shot it in the Blaze tank on its back with the Ropecaster. She didn’t bother slowing time to aim - shooting the thing was almost literally like hitting the broad side of a barn - but as it jerked and stumbled, she started reloading. It had almost turned all the way toward her when she rewound with her reloaded weapon and fired again. She did it a third time, then a fourth and a fifth, and in less than a realtime second, she had it completely pinned. Rewinding was a lot easier than slowing time; she’d barely felt the effort.

Aloy actually stopped to give Max an impressed nod before turning her attention back to the Bellowback. “I guess we’re getting out all our big toys,” she called over to Max, swapping out the bow she’d had at the ready for a weapon Max hadn’t seen her use before: something that looked sort of like a bagpipe with a firehose nozzle attached. “You might want to stand a bit further back,” she shouted, and Max took the hint. Aloy’s weapon hummed, whirred, then made a thunk noise, and an actual freaking fireball shot out the end, slamming into the Bellowback with an explosion that left Max’s ears ringing. It also shattered almost all of Max’s anchorwires, but before the Bellowback could manage to break the last one, Max had fired four more into it.

The fight wound up being pretty anticlimactic. Max went through a lot of anchorwires, but the Bellowback barely had a chance to move before Aloy had it reduced to burning, twisted metal. The ease of the fight didn’t seem to bother Aloy, though, who smiled with great satisfaction when her final fireball ripped secondary explosions through both of the Bellowback’s Blaze tanks and the massive machine crumpled. It was very nearly the exact same expression she’d worn when she’d taken down the Longlegs earlier; apparently Aloy liked explosions, which, to be fair, was very much in line with her bigger-than-life action hero persona. She didn’t even seem mad that none of the tripwires or bombs she’d set up had gotten used, using the time the fires on the Bellowback needed to burn out to carefully disable them and return them to her satchels.

“Okay,” Max said, watching as Aloy delicately disconnected a proximity trigger from a Blaze mine. “So how long have you had the ability to cast fireball?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“That… thing. The weapon you used. Where have you been hiding that awesomeness?”

Aloy chuckled, standing up. “You mean the Forgefire. I got it in the Cut last time. Took it off the body of a bandit lord up there named Ohlgrud. Nasty piece of work, even by bandit standards. And then a friend named Varga upgraded it for me. I think you’ll like her; we should be getting to Longnotch in a week or so, and I think she’ll be there.”

“Why haven’t you been using it? It could have just torn Helis apart, couldn’t it?”

“Takes forever to charge up the shots, and making the cartridges uses up a whole lot of Blaze and Metalburn. It’s really good against targets that move slowly or not at all, like a tied-down Bellowback, but against Helis, I could only have used it effectively in pretty tight terrain, someplace he couldn’t dodge away easily.”

Max nodded as though she understood that. “So why did you decide to use it now, finally?” she asked.

Aloy grinned, but there was a hint of a blush as well. “You were showing off,” she admitted. “I wanted to too.” She and Max stared at each other, then both burst out laughing.

The flames that had been wrapped around Bellowback’s frame finally flickered and died, so Aloy turned her attention to harvesting the useful parts from it. Max took a couple more photographs of the machine’s remains as she did so, along with a closeup of Aloy’s look of concentration while she worked. Aloy gave her a sidelong glance at that last one, but Max just shrugged as she shook the developing picture and then tucked it into her camera bag. No matter what happened between them, Max wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to photograph Aloy when she had a chance. After all, if nothing did ever work out between them, they might be all she had left of their time together eventually.

When Aloy was finished with the Bellowback, she gestured for Max to get closer to the central pillar. “You could probably do your memory jump if you had to, but just standing here is easier,” she commented before pulling out her lance and jamming the override into the core’s access node. The override cabling snaked out and covered it, then there was a hiss of steam and suddenly the entire platform they were standing on shuddered and began to rise. After about a minute of slow elevation, they were back in the large entrance chamber where they had first come into the Cauldron.

Max took a couple more pictures, then they departed once more. The Striders were still where they had left them, and in short order they were heading out again, this time heading northeast, more or less, judging by the sun. Aloy never seemed to get lost, although Max wasn’t sure if it was just excellent survival skills or her Focus, but Max missed her GPS almost as much as she missed coffee and her shadefire summoner in Sword of Dust and Daylight. She didn’t normally get lost very often, or at least she hadn’t back in her own time, but there was a constant, low-level “where the f*ck are we?” anxiety in the back of Max’s head whenever they were deep in this reborn wilderness and there weren’t any clear landmarks in sight. Of course, it probably had less to do with being physically lost than just being a thousand years adrift from pretty much everything she’d ever felt anchored to in her life.

By nightfall, they were approaching some bare, reddish sandstone hills that Max thought she recognized; the camp they’d used as their home base for scouting the Denver ruins and keeping in touch with Sona was only a couple hours east, if she was right about where they were. Aloy was still heading northeast, though, so the plan clearly didn’t involve stopping back by there again.

As they were making camp, Aloy mentioned one of the Vantages she’d found wasn’t too far away. “It’s at a place called ‘Sterling-Malkeet Amphitheater.’ I think the Old Ones used it for musical performances.” she explained. “I’ve always thought it was interesting, because the Vantage showed it as being made of the native stone, not metal the way everything else was.”

Max frowned. “A natural stone amphitheater west of Denver? And it was called what again?” Aloy repeated the name, and Max heard herself actually growl a little. “Okay, why do corporations have to buy everything and change all the labels for ‘branding’ instead of just leaving the original names, which are usually awesome, alone?” she snarled. “I actually had a Dave Mathews Band LP on vinyl that was recorded there live, and now I hate everything.”

It was clear from her expression that Aloy knew Max was annoyed but couldn’t actually determine how sympathetic she needed to be. Max shook her head. “Never mind. All the stupid marketing execs who pulled that crap got eaten by robots a thousand years ago anyway.”

“...Right.”

Max decided to try to explain a little, and it wasn’t until they’d been talking for most of an hour and Max was trying to define “stadium rock” that she realized it was the first lengthy, uncomplicated conversation they’d had about her time and Aloy’s and the differences between them since the night they’d spent together near Colorado Springs, the night before the Tallneck. Were things getting back to something like normal between them? She honestly didn’t know if it was safe to even think things like that at this point. She still had hope - that was proving as resilient as Aloy herself was - but she didn’t dare risk too much. She didn’t want to f*ck things up again, and she didn’t want to forget that she and Aloy were trying to literally save the world, something that had to be more important than whatever her exact feelings were for her beautiful Nora companion. Max knew she was selfish, but even she had limits.

Take it one day at a time, Caulfield. Tomorrow will be what tomorrow will be. For a wonder, her internal monologue didn’t sound furious and hateful toward her. That was probably either a very good sign or very, very bad one.

The next day dawned with a late-spring snowfall, already a couple of inches on the ground when Max climbed out of her tent. The snow was heavy, wet, and not as cold as it could have been, but the Striders were slowed to a walk through the rapidly building drifts. Aloy had prepped cold weather gear, knowing her intended destination, so being out in the snow wasn’t actively horrible, but it wasn’t much fun either. The day was just one long stretch of riding, making a kind of grand circle around Denver. Max was even more lost today than she had been the day before, thanks to a solid sheet of white falling around her, but Aloy still led her unhesitatingly along, seeming to have no trouble with navigation. The plan, according to Aloy, was to get almost directly north of the city and then head straight north from there, up into what Max assumed must have once been Wyoming. Aloy had two goals, it seemed: a place she called the Grave-Hoard, which had apparently once been U.S. Robot Command (which didn’t mean much more than “the Grave-Hoard” to Max, but sounded downright technofascist), and then further north, into the Cut. The Cut, Max had already determined, was Yellowstone National Park, or had been. That she was kind of looking forward to: Yellowstone was on par with the Grand Canyon for “just point your camera somewhere and shoot” natural beauty all around. She’d loved it there on her previous visit, and wanted to see what it looked like now.

Of course, the way Aloy talked about the cold, it did sound like there would be some drawbacks, too. Especially since, when Max compared their current weather to what was coming, Aloy had just started laughing.

They’d just made that northward turn when they decided to camp for the night. Unlike the day before, they’d just been in the saddle for something like 14 hours and were cold and stiff, so conversation was limited only to the most basic of exchanges before they gratefully crawled into their tents. Max fell into a deep, dreamless sleep almost at once.

She awoke to the feel of a knife at her throat.

Chapter 29: Parhelion

Chapter Text

Aloy came awake with a start, hearing a gurgling scream outside her tent. She had weapons in hand at once, stabbing through the flaps on her tent to make sure her path was clear before scrambling out into the snow. It was nearly up to her knees, even after she and Max had packed much of it down earlier when they’d set up their camp in the first place. The snow had stopped, and a brilliantly clear sky overhead glittered with uncountable stars. The moon wasn’t up right then, so she had only the starlight reflecting off of the snow to use for vision until she tapped on her Focus. Two shadowy forms, standing just outside the perimeter of the camp, resolved themselves under the Focus’s enhancement as Max and Apeph, the Sundom warrior who’d been with Nil.

Max had her knife buried up to its hilt in Apeph’s back.

Blood slicked her hand as she drove the knife in deeper. It looked like she’d stabbed him just below the ribs and thrust upward; there was a good chance she’d not only stabbed through one of his kidneys but had also pierced one of his lungs. It had been Apeph who had made the noise that had awakened Aloy, and he was twitching now, still trying to make noise as he weakly tried to reach behind him. Max leaned away from every frantic grasp, reaching around with her left hand as she did so to where Apeph’s own blade, a double-edged thing as long as Aloy’s forearm without even counting the hilt, was sheathed. Max pulled that weapon free, then drove it into Apeph’s back on the other side. It was her weaker hand so it didn’t go in quite as deep on the first stab, so Max started pushing it in further in short, convulsive thrusts. Apeph was a head or more taller than Max, and Aloy could see Max’s arms were shaking with the effort of holding the man upright as he finished dying. With one last spasm, his hands stopped moving, dropping to his sides as his head slumped forward. Max let go of the two hilts and the body crumpled into the red-stained snow around them.

Aloy watched the whole thing, stunned. In the light of Aloy’s Focus, Max’s face was twisted in a vicious snarl, an expression of hatred and rage Aloy had never seen on her before. There had been none of the hesitation or guilt Aloy had spotted in Max other times she’d been forced to take a life. If anything, this time the light in Max’s eyes as she let the body fall was satisfied. A bloodthirst sated.

Suddenly Max looked up, saw Aloy’s shadow crouched next to the firepit they’d dug, and started forcing her way through the snow as fast as she could go. “Aloy?” she asked, sounding frantic. “Aloy, are you okay? Tell me you’re okay, please.” She reached Aloy, reaching out as though to check Aloy for wounds, but stopped short when she realized she still had gore covering her. She swore quietly, scooping up some snow to scrub her hands off with.

“I’m okay, Max,” Aloy reassured her, frowning between the other woman and the corpse behind her. “But... what happened?”

Max shook her head. “It’s not important,” she began, ludicrously, but Aloy interrupted her.

“Max. No secrets, remember?” Max’s jaw tensed, but she nodded. “Tell me what happened,” said Aloy again, and this time Max reluctantly complied.

“He killed you.” Max exhaled sharply. “He managed to sneak up on both of us. First he stabbed through your tent, then he…” she trailed off. “I don’t know exactly what he planned to do with me, but I’m pretty sure I can guess. I woke up with his knife at my neck. He was... leering at me. I almost couldn’t see him in the dark, but I could see enough to tell that. I rewound until he was back at the edge of camp, and then… well, you saw. I killed him.”

Max had finished getting most of the blood and gore off herself, but she’d started rubbing at her wrists instead. The action seemed to be compulsive. Aloy reached out and carefully wrapped her hands around Max’s, stopping their movement. “You need to get your fingers warm before they freeze,” explained Aloy gently. “Get some gloves on and I’ll get the fire relit.”

Max’s eyes followed Aloys arms down to her own hands and she jerked suddenly, as though only then becoming aware of the action. There were still red smears on Max’s hands and she’d wrapped similar red streaks around her wrists now. She nodded stiffly, forcing her hands apart and starting to make her way to her supplies. Aloy started the fire again with only half her attention; the other half was all on Max. As the flames glowed into life and Aloy began feeding small pieces of ridgewood, saved from her arrow crafting for just this purpose, into the fire, Max came to sit next to Aloy on the fallen log they’d dragged into place to serve as a bench. She had donned the thick fur-lined mittens Aloy had supplied her.

In the firelight, Max’s eyes looked wild, hunted. “Are you okay, Max?” Aloy asked.

Max didn’t seem inclined to answer at first. Aloy was debating whether or not to push her to say something when Max finally started speaking. “For one night, maybe ten hours total, close to ten years ago now by my own timeline, I was taped down to a chair while a f*cking psychopath took pictures of me and told me all about he wanted to watch my innocence become corrupted. A handful of hours, a decade ago. And all it takes even now is the feel of something pressing on the side of my throat or too much pressure on my wrists or the sight of someone I… really care about unconscious or worse on the ground next to me, and I am right back there. Right f*cking back there. In that room, with those lights almost blinding me, my wrists and ankles trapped and unable to move, while the body of Victoria Chase stares up at the ceiling right next to me.

“I can still feel the tape. I can still hear him talking to me. It’s been ten years and I literally killed him in the street and it doesn’t matter because I go right f*cking back there.” Max looked over to where Apeph lay, facedown in bloody snow, and shook her head. “I’m not sure I even knew it was him while I was killing him. All I was seeing was Mark f*cking Jefferson.”

“It sounds like they both deserved their deaths,” Aloy said, putting a hand on Max’s shoulder.

“Oh, that’s not even in f*cking question,” Max said. “It just doesn’t matter. I can’t kill the memories. I mean, factually, none of those hours I spent in the Dark Room ever happened. The Dark Room itself never existed. Rachel Amber is an off-Broadway star. Kate Marsh writes absolutely f*cking adorable children’s books. Victoria Chase had an exhibit at the Olverti last fall that got a rave review in the Chronicle. Mark Jefferson never had a chance to hurt anyone in Arcadia Bay. It just… doesn’t matter. Not for me.”

Aloy wasn’t sure what to say to any of that, so she carefully put her arm around Max. It wasn’t quite an embrace, but something she hoped conveyed her sympathy all the same. Max didn’t even really seem to notice she’d done it.

“The only time it hasn’t made me feel powerless was when I was actually killing him,” Max said quietly. “And I felt it again just now, with… f*ck, I don’t even remember his name.”

“Apeph,” supplied Aloy.

“Right. With Apeph.” She shuddered. “I’ve killed so many people, Aloy. Some of them deserved it, but the vast majority of them were just trying to live their lives. Fishing or teaching or driving a truck or… or working at a diner. Even if those deaths didn’t happen either, I can’t forget them any more than I can forget the Dark Room. And f*ck me, the only times I’ve killed someone and not felt any guilt over it were Jefferson and this asshole here.”

Max looked into the fire for several long moments. Aloy had no idea what she was seeing, but she was sure it wasn’t the flames. “I think I’m a monster,” Max whispered at last. “I’m the literal undead. Has there ever been a story with the undead where they weren’t monsters?”

“You’re not a monster,” Aloy said firmly. “Monsters don’t ever feel guilt.”

Max shook her head. “That’s my point, though,” she replied, still so quiet. “Sometimes that’s exactly what I want. I want to feel like I did when I killed Jefferson. I felt powerful, and in control, and like I had finally, finally found a way to tell the universe to go f*ck itself. And completely guilt-free.”

“But you aren’t doing that,” Aloy pointed out. “You’re helping me. You said it yourself, you’re trying to do something good with your power.

“I’ve known a monster or two in my time, Max. Helis was one, for his whole entire life. Dervahl didn’t start out as one, I don't think, but he became one by the end. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but Sun-King Jiran, certainly. Bahavas, that cringing wretch Jahamin, Gavan, Zaid… I could go on. I suppose even Nil might qualify, even if he put himself on something like a leash. But here’s the thing: none of them ever wanted to be a monster. They didn’t even know they were, again excepting for Nil. They thought they were right. They either refused to see the harm they were doing or they thought it was perfectly acceptable for them to do it. They thought hurting people who had done nothing wrong was the right thing to do, and that's what made them monsters.

“You can want to be a monster all you like, but as long as you still know what the word means, you won’t be one.”

Max didn’t answer, but Aloy felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. Aloy let go of her, instead taking off and replacing Max’s gloves one at a time to make sure there weren’t any signs of frostbite. When she was done, Aloy stood up. “Come on,” she said. “There’s no way we’re going to get any more sleep tonight regardless, and we still have another problem to deal with.”

Max frowned up at her. “We do?”

“We do,” Aloy nodded. “If Apeph is here, then it seems very likely that Nil is somewhere around here too, and we should probably talk to him about what happened to his partner.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, but Max’s eyes slowly widened. “Is he… are we going to have to…” but Aloy was already shaking her head.

“I’m not absolutely certain, but past experience says he’s not going to be too broken up about it. If things start to look dangerous, feel free to rewind and try to smooth things over, but I will be surprised if you have to.” She looked at Max, who was starting to rise too, although she was still a bit unsteady as compared to Aloy. “And Max? Thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re going to have to start wearing that force field armor to sleep in too,” said Max dryly. She sounded a lot more like her usual self. It was a relief.

As they started packing up the camp in the light of the slowly dimming fire, Aloy found herself thinking about how little she actually knew Max. Even Max had only spent about three months with her; for Aloy’s part, they’d only had about three weeks together. Those weeks had been incredibly intense, admittedly, and had done a lot to reveal who they were to each other, but Aloy was continually finding herself surprised by yet another layer of scars Max was carrying around with her.

She remembered the way Max had rubbed her wrists and found herself sort of wanting to kill Mark Jefferson too, as ridiculous as the thought was on several levels.

She was also starting to get a much clearer picture of how little Max knew herself. She’d spent so long reinventing herself, changing to match whatever changes the timeline and her own powers had forced on her, that Aloy was beginning to wonder if she even remembered the excited teenager who’d been so overcome by the simple idea of getting to attend the school she’d wanted and study her photographic passion. Aloy was no stranger to the urge to fix other peoples’ messes if she had the ability, up to and including saving GAIA’s rebuilt world from HADES - twice now, in fact - but how many times had Max rewound, or jumped into her photographs, trying to fix everything around her? Could Aloy have withstood the strain of so many attempts, so many failures? The very nature of Max’s powers meant there was never a point where reality would force her to admit defeat, to accept things as they were and try to move on. No matter what she’d said, Aloy didn’t believe for a moment that Max’s focus had ever only been on Chloe. Maybe in the one moment when she’d had to choose between Chloe and the rest of the innocents in her town, but Aloy remembered how Max had written about Kate Marsh. How Max had said she’d worked to help Nathan Prescott, who by rights should have been a blood enemy for what he’d done to Chloe. How frustrated she’d been about not being able to prevent Vala from being shot.

But she sees herself as a monster. She’s convinced herself she’s somehow solely responsible for the Faro Plague. She flat-out told me not to trust her. Why? Where does it all come from?

No answers were forthcoming, but Aloy found herself increasingly determined to find them. A voice in the back of her head warned her that getting re-invested in Max was not a wise plan, but Aloy had a long and firmly-established history of substituting stubbornness for wisdom, going all the way back to her six-year-old insistence that she was going to win the Proving twelve years later, years of training and other competitors be damned. It seemed all too likely that was going to be the case this time as well. Understanding her friend so she could better care for her wasn’t the same as risking her heart on her. It was just the right and compassionate thing to do. She could keep the two separate. If she was careful and paid attention, she could.

The worrying question was whether she would want to.

Technically Aloy could have used her Focus to follow Apeph’s tracks back to where he’d presumably left Nil, but in knee-high snow, even Max could have followed them, starlight for illumination or not. Apeph himself they left lying where he’d fallen, though Max had reclaimed both her own knife and the short sword Apeph had carried. As they moved out into the night, Aloy instead used her Focus to scan for Nil, expecting that the device would have an easier time spotting the homicidal Carja than she would at this time of night. The trail led them to a nearby cliff, steep but thankfully one that could scaled a boulder or two at a time; this turned out to be more important than Aloy had initially expected, because Max’s “stepping into a memory” trick only worked if she could actually see the place she was trying to “remember.” In the middle of the night, a boulder or two was about the best she could manage. When they finally did reach the top, a small trickle of blood was visible on her face.

Once they were actually up there, Aloy turned and looked back into the darkness behind and below them. It only took her a moment to realize that, from this angle, the glow of their campfire would have been easily visible to anyone standing up here. There were ways to hide such things, but Aloy didn’t usually take the necessary precautions unless she thought herself in dangerous territory, like when she’d had to revisit Shadow Carja land after her escape from the Sunfall Sun Ring. Clearly it was a habit she needed to get more into.

The tracks traveled along the cliff edge for a few hundred paces before cutting north, toward a steeper mountainside rearing up into the darkness and what quickly resolved itself into a small cave boring into the rock face. A tap of her Focus revealed what Aloy had expected: Nil. He was crouched in the cave mouth, as though he was expecting someone. Apeph returning? Or his killers?

She couldn’t tell from that far away, and as it turned out, closing the distance didn’t answer it either. When they got close enough to be easily seen by the light of his fire and to be able to see his expression, he wore the same slight, enigmatic smile he’d worn at every other meeting they’d had, with no trace of surprise. He rose, showing no signs of fatigue either. “Ah, I knew we had not had our last encounter,” he greeted them, his eyes glittering. “Anger and the scent of blood; I fear you’re about to tell me about Apeph’s foolish end at the end of a Nora spear.” He raised his hand. “If it’s vengeance you’ve come for, you should know I did not know he’d left until long after he was gone and had nothing to do with whatever trespasses he might have committed against you. Although that need not stay your hand. A battle to the death would certainly help to offset this chill.”

Max looked questioningly at Aloy, but Aloy shook her head. “I’m afraid I will have to disappoint you once again, Nil. We came to tell you that we killed him. Well, that Max did, more accurately. But I believe that you had nothing to do with it. I somehow don’t think you’d find attempting to slit two throats in the dark very satisfying.”

That enigmatic smile grew a little. “Our encounters have been so brief, and yet you seem to know me so well,” he noted. “If you find that your appetite has merely been whetted and a full meal still calls out to you, perhaps you would like to join me in a few days’ time at the Hollow Fort? I find myself short a partner, and I do not wish to be rude and keep everything for myself.”

Aloy hesitated. Hollow Fort was off her intended path, but what she’d first told Nil in the previous timeline was still true: his work was gruesome and done for all the wrong reasons, but it was necessary. And fighting alone… Nil was more than merely skilled at killing, but she didn’t like his odds without some kind of backup. And, Goddess help her, she honestly did not actually want him to die.

“Very well,” she agreed. “But we’re in a hurry. So I hope you’re up to learning how to ride a Strider.”

Chapter 30: Wind Shear

Chapter Text

Aloy shouldn’t have been surprised by the ease with which Nil handled his Strider. He was athletic, naturally graceful, and intelligent (even if he used that intelligence in ways that made Aloy somewhat uncomfortable). Still, when they were on their way to Hollow Fort less than hour after Aloy overrode the new machine, she still found herself shaking her head. Being Carja, the idea of riding a Strider was novel to Nil but not a cultural taboo, so once he had the hang of it, he quickly started enjoying it, at least to the extent that Nil ever enjoyed anything. Anything that wasn’t murder, anyway.

The trip to Hollow Fort took most of the morning, pushing through the drifts, but they passed the time getting Nil acquainted with the basics of Max’s abilities, so there wouldn’t be any questions at an inopportune time. In this instance, Aloy was not surprised: Nil took the idea of time travel with utter equanimity, mostly just nodding and limiting himself to a few clarifying questions. Aloy knew that Nil had a very small number of core beliefs, all of which revolved around his bow and knife; anything beyond that was simply not important to him. He could accept a woman jumping through time or the sun coming up in the west easily, because neither would actually interfere with his goals. Max seemed a bit taken aback by how little Nil seemed to care about what she could do, but not displeased.

In fact, much of what Nil did seemed not to displease Max. She certainly was not displeased by, for instance, watching him ride his Strider. Aloy couldn’t tell if she was not bothering to hide the way she was staring, or if she was just that bad at it. Nil probably noticed - Aloy knew he was extremely perceptive, at least where things that interested him were involved - but did not comment or, seemingly, do anything to encourage her.

He didn’t discourage her either, though. Aloy spent a lot of time taking deep breaths and reminding herself that she wanted to keep some distance between herself and Max, that she still had not forgiven the brunette for lying to her about Elisabet. If anything, an attraction between Max and Nil should be a relief.

Aloy rather wished she were better at self-deception. It seemed as though it would make some things easier.

Hollow Fort had, in Aloy’s memory, been one of the more challenging of bandit camps she had worked to clear; the inhabitants were skilled survivors and resilient fighters. That made sense, to some extent. Hollow Fort’s position, in the ill-defined borderlands between four different tribes, meant they had probably gained experience skirmishing against Nora, Carja, Oseram, and Banuk at various points. The veterans would be hardened indeed.

It hadn’t protected them against Aloy before, though. Against Aloy, Max, and Nil all three, it was barely a contest.

At Aloy’s suggestion, they hit the fort from two directions, Nil taking one side and Aloy and Max the other. Max shifted herself into the camp’s center to disable the alarm and then immediately jumped back out, before anyone had a chance to notice what had happened. Then they began carefully removing one bandit after another, Aloy taking the lead while Max hung back a little, watching Aloy’s flanks and occasionally shifting to remove a patrolling guard or archer that was positioned too awkwardly for Aloy to easily dispatch on her own.

They had covered almost the entire western half of the fort when Aloy suddenly saw alerts pop up all over her Focus, indicating bandits suddenly preparing for a fight. None of them were moving toward Max and Aloy, though, so someone must have spotted Nil. “Come on!” Aloy called, keeping her voice low but urgent as she signaled Max to follow her. She gripped her spear and began sprinting in the same direction as the bandits. Max was right on her heels, arrow on her bowstring.

They burst out into a larger cleared space in the camp, with smaller paths leading off in several directions and one of the camp’s gates in another. Bandits were rushing down several of those paths, armed with a mix of bows and melee weaponry, but a steady rain of arrows met them from the far side of the area, where Nil was down on one knee, firing The Voice of Our Teeth with a workmanlike rhythm and precision. His smile was as broad as Aloy had ever seen it, and a wild, ecstatic light glittered in his eyes.

Although he was clearly holding his own, the sheer number of raiders might have won out eventually, had he been alone. He was not, however, and as soon as Aloy appeared, several of the bandits started charging her instead. Arrows caught some too, as Max began working her own bow, occasionally shifting position when one of the bandit archers seemed to get a bead on her. Aloy met the remainder with her spear, and only one of them even managed to land a blow on her, a blow absorbed entirely by Shield-Weaver right before her own spear went completely through the man’s chest.

Nil slowly rose from his crouch. The silent fort had ceased disgorging fighters; if there were any survivors, they had fled. Nil’s smile still beamed, and he inhaled slowly, letting the breath out in a slow release that made Max’s face redden so far her freckles disappeared. “The bitter and the sweet together,” he mused. “Their ends, and with them, the joy their ends brought: all the sweeter and all the more bitter for its fleeting nature. But at least there will still be the memories to keep us warm at night.”

Aloy looked around her, at the slaughter the three of them had wrought, and wondered - not for the first time, nor the second, nor even the tenth - whether she and Nil had more in common than she wanted to admit. She couldn’t make herself enjoy it and certainly did not wish to, but surely she ought to at least feel a little hesitation, a little horror, at all this death? But then she remembered the pair of Nora held captive that still needed freeing and her resolve hardened. She had still never come up with a reason for bandits to take captives that didn’t make her fingers twitch for her bowstring, just the way Nil had once said Apeph’s had.

Maybe they didn’t need to die. But she lacked the resources to attempt the kind of rehabilitation Avad was trying at Sunstone Rock, and she would not allow anyone to be sold as slaves or subjected to whatever personal horrors the bandits might intend to visit on those prisoners, and if she had to choose between stopping that and letting the bandits live, then she knew what the answer was. What it had been every time.

She would do what she had to. And maybe she would hate herself a little for it every now and then, but she’d keep going and deal with the consequences. Like she’d told Max back at the Ring of Metal: she’d put her weapons down the moment there weren’t forces out in the world trying to hurt people who didn’t deserve it. She had chosen to fight rather than stand aside, but she hadn’t started the war. She just intended to be the one who finished it.

Aloy tapped her Focus on and quickly scanned around to help her find the quickest way back to those captives. In less than a minute, she had them both - a man and a woman, both from Hunter’s Gathering - free and on their way with weapons and armor taken from the bandits’ corpses. They would spread word of the fort’s fall. Soon there would be Nora living here, and what had been a source of suffering and death in the Longroam would be a place for living and hope.

When she returned to where Max and Nil were waiting, she found them discussing knife techniques; Nil was demonstrating a particular combination of strikes that he preferred while Max watched him avidly. Aloy studied the two of them and found one question whirling through her mind:

Okay, so now what?

The obvious thing to do was to take Max and return to their trek northward; they were still on a deadline to reach Song’s Edge before Aratak led his werak to their deaths inside Thunder’s Drum. Nil could go where he wanted and probably get himself killed the next time he tried to take on a bandit camp on his own. It was his choice and he would not regret it.

But Aloy still wasn’t Nil. She could not be so blasé about his demise. She wasn’t going to abandon her objectives to just wander around killing bandits, but she needed to at least try to find a way to save him too. Even if he wouldn’t necessarily want to be saved. She sighed, then approached the other two.

“Max,” she said, “we need to prepare to leave. Nil, I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure, but…”

Nil smiled. “There is no need for words between us, Aloy. What we share runs deeper than such things.”

“...Right. I suppose we’ll see you around at some point. Assuming the odds we face don’t get us killed, anyway.”

Max frowned at her, but Nil tilted his head curiously. “You do not strike me as the sort of person to rate your chances so poorly in almost any situation,” he said, and Aloy smiled at him tightly.

“Normally I’m not,” she said honestly, “but given what we’re going to be taking on - an army of Shadow Carja cultists, aided by enhanced machines fighting alongside them, all under the command of a new Metal Devil - well, calling our survival, let alone our victory, ‘nearly impossible’ seems just like acknowledging reality. But it’s our fight, so we’re going to take it on and probably get killed by it. It’s just how it is.”

Max was staring at her as though she’d just revealed herself to be a Behemoth in disguise, but Nil’s face twitched into an actual grin. “You make it sound so enticing,” he purred. “I do not normally care for politics, but a battle against enemies such as that? I can hardly bear to keep myself away. I do find myself in need of a new partner - or perhaps two,” he added, nodding toward Max. “Perhaps I could travel with you on this impossible quest?”

“You’d just be signing on to die as well,” Aloy pointed out.

Nil raised a hand. “I am already wooed, Aloy, you do not need to keep pursuing me.”

“If that’s what you want,” said Aloy slowly, “then as long as you agree to follow my commands as your war leader, you can come along.”

Nil tilted his head in acknowledgement. Max looked like she was about to explode. Aloy just nodded to both of them and headed back to their Striders. Nil followed at once, but it took Max several moments to do so as well. Aloy could feel those sharp blue eyes digging into her back as they rode, but made herself ignore it and just keep going.

They ate on Strider-back, reaching the path that would take them north to the Grave-Hoard again just before dusk. In all the detour to Hollow Fort had only cost them a day, which was about as good as Aloy could have hoped for. Given that none of the three of them had gotten a decent night’s sleep, she called for a stop earlier than she would have otherwise, just across a small river from a Fire Bellowback site. As soon as camp was made, Max said, in a rather pointed tone, “Aloy, can I talk to you in private?”

Well, it wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected this. She nodded and they made their way through the snow to where a small stand of trees turned the early twilight into actual night beneath their canopy. Aloy tapped her Focus on quickly, confirmed that Nil was still where they had left him, tagged him to make sure she would know if he moved, then tapped it off again. “Okay,” she said, turning to Max, “go ahead.”

“Why is he here?” Max hissed at once. “And what was all that about us probably dying? I thought you had a plan!”

“He’s here,” replied Aloy evenly, “because I can use him and he’s got much better odds of surviving with us than on his own. All that stuff about impossible odds was just me setting out a bait I knew he’d take. He refused to take on the Eclipse in the previous timeline until he thought the challenge had a good chance of killing him; I suspected the same thing would work here.” She paused, then tilted her head at Max. “I… was getting the impression you didn’t mind having him around.”

Max colored, biting her lip. Aloy didn’t think she was aware of having done so. “It’s not… I mean… I told you, I’m trying to… That’s not the point. The point is that he’s kind of crazy, Aloy. I mean, not even kind of. He’s a literal homicidal maniac. Are we even going to be safe with him?”

“Nil will happily try to kill either or both of us if we agree to it,” Aloy replied, “but he wouldn’t enjoy it unless we fought back. As long as we keep putting other targets in front of him, particularly living ones, we’ll be fine.”

“I am incredibly unreassured by that.”

Aloy sighed. “I know. Honestly, I’m not happy about it either,” she admitted. “But it’s like I said last night. Nil is a monster on a leash. I’d rather hold that leash than let him run free. It’s not a perfect scenario, but the alternative is just killing him and I don’t have that in me. Not without a more immediate threat.”

Max hesitated, but finally nodded. She started rubbing her wrists nervously. “Okay,” she said. “If you think this is the right thing, I’m with you.”

“He’s not Apeph,” said Aloy soothingly. “That much I am sure of.” Max nodded again, and they began to make their way back to the camp. When they arrived, they discovered Nil had already begun searing some fox meat on skewers over their fire. He did not even glance up at their return, but Aloy was certain he had been perfectly aware of their every move the entire time they’d been gone. And probably had a decent idea what they’d talked about.

Twice that night Max woke up screaming from nightmares she refused to describe, but from the way she kept rubbing her wrists, Aloy did not think she needed to. After the second one, Aloy gave her some wild ember to help her sleep; she did not wake again, but was exceptionally groggy the next morning, with definite shadows beneath her eyes. She looked out of it enough that, when they discovered a nest of Glinthawks positioned directly along their path into the mountains, Aloy ordered her to stay with the Striders while she and Nil dealt with the machines.

Watching Nil fight machines was interesting; for one thing, although he remained entirely capable, he was noticeably sloppier in both technique and tactics as compared to fighting humans. He also never smiled. Watching him ply his bow against the flying machines with an expression of boredom and even mild irritation was uncanny when compared against the constant smug grin he had always worn before when they’d fought alongside one another.

Still, the short encounter ended quickly, with no harm done to either of them, and they rapidly moved on. By nightfall, they were into the mountains proper, with the looping arms of the BOR7 Horus towering ahead of them over the mountains. Max had never been so close to one before, and seemed both excited and uncomfortable in equal measure at the idea of getting closer still. Perhaps it was enough to get her out of her head, because that night there were no nightmares, and all three of them were rested and prepared when they finally reached the Grave-Hoard itself about an hour after dawn the next day.

On Aloy’s previous visit here, Sylens had assured her there were no Focuses in the area, but after her unexpected difficulty with Helis, Aloy did not plan to take that on faith. “Max,” she said as they dismounted their Striders and began their approach to the ruin on foot, “if I spot any Focuses, I need you to do what you did at the Ring of Metal. I’ll signal you where they are; you can take them out, take their Focus, and then rewind so they don’t have a chance to see me. All right?”

Max grimaced, but nodded without hesitation. “It won’t be a problem,” she replied. It wasn’t necessary right then, but she drew her knife anyway; Aloy took it as a sign she was prepared to do as she’d been ordered.

“Quietly now,” Aloy said, and gestured her little party forward.

The smile had reappeared on Nil’s face. “We will be as silent as their graves,” he murmured. And with that cheery thought hanging over them, they began their assault on the Grave-Hoard.

Chapter 31: Ventifact

Chapter Text

They hadn’t even reached the USRC bunker when Aloy first signaled to Max that there was a Focus ahead. Max peered up the path, spotting the remains of a millennium-old tank at the top of a rise, and shifted herself up to it, crouching down atop the turret so she could see the guards stationed along the trail there. Two Eclipse, plus a Corrupted Watcher. Easy enough… at least in terms of the physical actions.

The emotional impact was less straightforward to manage.

She pulled out her bow, drew a bead on the Watcher’s eye, and loosed. By now, this kind of thing was a matter of every day, and it still boggled her mind a little to think about that. Casually shooting an autonomous terraforming robot in the shape of some kind of person-sized dinosaur with a bow and arrow. She hadn’t even bothered slowing time for the shot. Was there any part of her situation that wasn’t utterly ludicrous? There had been a time when P/E. was Max’s most despised class. Now here she was, fighting a war as a part of a three-person army.

The arrow took the Watcher and dropped it nearly silently. She’d timed it so the Watcher would be at its furthest point from the two guards; neither noticed it fall. Max replaced her bow on her back, drew her knife, and shifted herself right behind one. He was taller than her by several inches, so even his throat was a bit above her eye-line. It wasn’t an issue; she adjusted automatically and plunged her blade into the side of his neck.

There was remarkably little resistance. Whatever Nora daggers were made of, they held an edge extremely well and Aloy had drilled the importance of keeping it sharp into her during their time training together. The point vanished beneath his skin, bright blood gushing forth as she severed the artery and cut his windpipe in the same thrust.

That part she’d taught herself over more rewinds than she wanted to think about during the lead-up to the battle at Denver Stadium.

The man made a slight noise, a choking sound not much more than a quiet cough. His companion, only standing about ten feet away and gazing down the path, never even turned to look. Her victim grabbed for his throat but the blood rushing down his chest rather than reaching his brain was already having its inevitable effect. He sagged, dragged back partly by Max pulling him down to her with her knife. She caught him, twisted to let him fall softly the rest of the way to the ground, letting his own weight pull the dagger free again.

Her hand was slick with blood. She knelt and quickly wiped it away, leaving dark smears on both the dead man’s tunic and her forearm. His eyes stared up at her. She guessed he might have been twenty, twenty-one at the oldest. He was missing a tooth on the left side, giving him a gap-toothed grin that might have once been charming.

When he was still alive.

She pushed his head away from her. Let him stare at the grass or the Grave-Hoard or the mountains or literally anything that wasn’t her.

The other guard still hadn’t noticed either of his companions’ death or destruction. He might at any moment, though, and she still hadn’t mastered Aloy’s seemingly-impossible ability to sprint down a road without making a single f*cking noise. So she stood and shifted herself the three yards - how much practice had she gotten with this that she was willing to be wasteful of her power, it was like that one movie where Anakin Skywalker had teleported to the other end of the couch to grab the TV remote - and drove the blade in again.

It wasn’t as clean a strike. Max got the artery but missed the trachea, and he screamed. She ground her teeth together, trying to push the sound out of her head as she twisted the dagger, much more viciously than she had the previous attack, forcing the man to topple back as she sidestepped. He slammed into the turf. She pulled the knife free and jammed it through his right hand, all the way into the dirt, and he screamed again. He tried to reach for her with his free hand, rolling onto his side, but she kicked his ribs, forcing him onto his back again. She slammed her boot down on his left shoulder, bent, and snatched the Focus off of his temple.

His struggles were slowing; he had gotten a grip on her leg but didn’t have the strength to do anything with it. She ignored him, deactivating the Focus and stuffing it into her pouch. The hand dropped away from her, flopping lifelessly onto his stomach.

She could see part of the man’s spine through the hole in his throat she’d ripped open.

Max knelt long enough to pull her dagger out of his hand and to clean it on his shirt, just as she had done to the other man. Then she stood up, took a breath, closing her eyes. They are trying to destroy the world, she reminded herself. It’s them or us and everyone else on the planet.

A voice whispered, Sure. Simple math. Just like why you let Chloe die and saved the Bay and left everything else alone, going on with your life. Oh, wait, you didn’t do any of that, did you? Spare me, you f*cking hypocrite. You don’t think any of these poor assholes had anyone who loved them the way you loved Chloe, do you? Because that sure would be awkward if they did.

“Chloe made the right choice,” Max snarled at the voice. “She accepted her fate. I was the one who didn’t let her. She understood that sometimes a few have to die to save everyone else.”

I’m sure that’s a great comfort to these guys’ corpses.

“Shut the f*ck up,” she said angrily. Her eyes found the tank she’d crouched on before and she shifted herself on top of it again. Readying her bow, nocking an arrow, and pulling it back to its furthest draw, she rewound to just after the first guard had died. As soon as time resumed moving the proper direction, she let the arrow fly. It hit the second guard in the head. He crumpled.

At least this time she couldn’t see the wound.

Max stood, replaced the bow, and shifted back to where Aloy and Nil were waiting. “All done,” she said simply. She saw Aloy’s eyes flicker across the new bloodstains on her arms and boot, but she said nothing.

“Such a remarkable gift,” Nil mused. “What is it like, having the chance to perfect each death?”

“Nil,” Aloy began in a warning tone, but Max cut her off. She could stand up for herself, she didn’t need Aloy to do it for her.

“I don’t do that,” she said sharply. “Once is plenty, I promise.”

Nil’s eyes glittered as he studied her. “You’ve never used it to savor the kill? Too much repetition spoils the purity of any experience, of course, but surely a few times for a particularly… memorable… example?”

(A stab to the kidney for Rachel. A slash across the throat for Kate. A thrust to the stomach for Victoria. Another for herself. And then the point buried in his eye for Chloe. She rewound, then did it again.)

Something must have showed on her face. Nil smiled. “Ah, I thought so. Perhaps you can tell me about it sometime. It must have been truly special.”

Max thought she might vomit.

“That’s enough, Nil,” Aloy said sharply, turning on the Carja. “She’s not you. We all have our own reasons for what we do; don’t assume you know hers or mine.”

Nil’s smile didn’t flicker. “We are, all of us, artists. But you are right. It’s foolish to ask an artist to explain their work when the work itself does it so much more clearly.” He went back to scanning their surroundings for other Eclipse. It was probably as much as Max was going to get from him in terms of an agreement to drop the subject.

They reached the bodies. Aloy harvested the Watcher and quickly searched the two Eclipse for anything of value. Nil examined both with an intensity Max found deeply unsettling but said nothing. Max stayed as far from them as she reasonably could.

There were no more Eclipse outside the bunker, but as they descended the roughly-dug passage to the front access, Aloy signaled a halt. Her eyes swept across the wall, studying something only she could see. She was not best pleased by whatever it was. After a moment, she gestured for them to retreat back up the ramp.

“Eight Eclipse, two Corrupted Watchers and a Corrupted Scrapper,” she whispered to Max and Nil once they were far enough away. “Normally I wouldn’t be worried but it’s tight quarters down there. Worse, I think they’re waiting for us. All of the machines are staring right at the entrance - they’ll be on top of us as soon as we try to get in there. There are two Focuses; HADES or one of the Eclipse must have realized their guard dropped out of contact. The Eclipse themselves are working on excavation, I think, not guarding, but they’ll be warned by the machines before we can get to them.”

“We can lure the machines out if we are careful,” Nil said, seemingly unconcerned. “Once the uninteresting step is done, we’ll be able to move on to the part that is actually… engaging.”

Max shook her head. “No. I’ll take care of them. I can use the time stop to take out the machines and you can follow up on the Eclipse.” Aloy frowned at her, but Max kept her expression calm and confident. She could handle this. Holding a time stop was hard, but it was better than slaughtering all those Eclipse. Let Nil do that, if he was so eager.

“Okay,” Aloy agreed after a moment. “Can you get the two Focuses too?”

“I should be able to. I’ll just pull them off while I’m in the time stop.”

“That should work. Nil, wait for my signal. We’ll get as close as we can without getting spotted and move when the machines are dealt with.”

They began to move forward again. Max got out her bow, as did Aloy, while Nil readied his knife. He was smiling again. Max tried to put him out of her head and concentrate on what she needed to do. When Aloy raised her hand, she and Nil stopped and looked at Max. Max nodded and put out her hand.

The time stop was the only thing she still needed to use her hand for with regard to her power, though she did sometimes do so for other things out of simple habit. Everything else had been practiced and repeated so many times that she only needed to think about it, but the time stop had never become familiar, never gotten easy. It still felt like she was throwing her entire weight against a crumbling brick wall and trying to hold it upright. Time slowed, became sticky, flickered around her. Everything shifted, repeatedly overlaying itself in a continual lattice. Aloy and Nil stilled into statues, unbreathing and unblinking.

Despite the pressure on her mind, Max still found herself pausing to look at her two companions. Aloy’s striking beauty and aura of leadership, so effortless and so damn powerful, pulled at Max like a magnet drew a nail. And Nil… Nil made her stomach turn. Nil made her mouth water. She could all too easily picture the things she wanted to do to him, that she wanted him to do to her. He was, in his way, as beautiful as Aloy, especially - horrifyingly - when he was in the midst of a battle against people. So much grace, so much insanity. It made her head hurt almost as much as the time stop did.

That pressure was building, though, so Max pulled herself out of her contemplation (and her ogling) and began making her way as quickly as she could down the ramp to the entrance to the long-dead military base. At the end of the stone ramp she found exactly what she’d been told to expect: three machines, their lights glowing a suspicious yellow, all facing the entrance, and eight men in Eclipse armor scattered around the space, digging with hammer, chisel, and pick. Two tanks and a pair of Corruptors were half-buried in the stone, swallowed by a thousand years’ worth of slow-dripping mineral deposits. Barricades flanked the open passage, ones that looked like they dated back to the Faro Plague, and a few dozen torches blazed to give the area plenty of light.

Quickly Max readied her bow and drew the string back, loosing an arrow directly into the eye of one of the Watchers. The arrow froze just beyond the arch of her bow. She shifted position, did the same to the second Watcher, then again to the Scrapper. After a moment’s hesitation, she froze a second arrow aimed at the Scrapper, just to be sure. Then she quickly squeezed past them, crossing the room to grab the two Focuses. She was already out the door and beginning to climb back up the ramp by the time she had the Focuses turned off.

There was blood on her lip; she could taste it, feel it oozing down toward her chin. She wiped at it absently, then regripped her bow and released the time stop. She wasn’t quite where she’d started, so Nil and Aloy both jumped a little when she - to their eyes, anyway - teleported a short way down the tunnel. Faint electronic squeals accompanied the destruction of the machines below. Shocked though they might have been, the two warriors reacted almost instantaneously, sprinting past Max and down into the ruin. Shouts and screams echoed. Max gave herself a breath to recover from the effort of the time stop, then followed after.

For most of the rest of their penetration into the bunker, Max just tagged along behind Aloy and Nil, rarely needing to even lift her bow; when she did, she did her best to confine her shots to machines. It just made things… easier. It also seemed to create a kind of balance between the three of them. Nil preferred to kill the humans, Aloy struck down whoever or whatever was in her way, uncaring of whether it was flesh or metal her spear was stabbing into, and Max concentrated on the robots.

She couldn’t help but notice how well Aloy and Nil worked together. Some of that was perhaps the experience Aloy already had fighting alongside the Carja soldier, experience gained over months in a previous timeline, but it didn’t explain why Nil seemed to fight so well along with Aloy. Max had thought she and Aloy made a good team, but it couldn’t be like this… ballet of death Aloy and Nil danced.

God, they were even beautiful taking lives.

Well, well, well - what have we learned here, class? Max Caulfield gets all hot and bothered over killers. Is that why you told Jefferson you loved him in your vision? “I've been dreaming of the day when you would finally tell me... I love you, Mr. Jefferson.” Classic Max! Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. We both know how much of a f*cking narcissist you are, selfie queen, and you’re the worst murderer we’ve ever met!

Max gritted her teeth and ignored the voice. She certainly didn’t want to be caught talking to herself where Aloy or Nil could hear, let alone both. That other Max in the depths of her mind laughed again, mockingly.

Eventually they reached the core of the complex, a massive chamber that looked like it might have once been some kind of hangar. The central section - the “head,” more or less - of the Horus burst through the far wall, frozen in the middle of what must have been a final strike at the heart of the USRC. Something must have stopped it, some kind of last-ditch failsafe or doomsday weapon, but whatever it had been, it hadn’t saved the people here. Though according to Aloy, it wouldn’t have been meant to. Everyone who died here was condemned from the moment the Glitch happened.

The three of them were standing on a railed catwalk that circled the hangar, a good three or four stories above the ground. There was some kind of scaffolding climbing up the far wall and wrapping around the long-dead Horus, but it was unoccupied. In between were more Eclipse than Max could readily count and-

Holy sh*t.

One of the f*cking walking tanks Aloy called Deathbringers, all its lights red and all its guns pointed right at them. A swarm of missiles burst out from a launcher and slammed into the walkway. The floor beneath Max’s feet vanished and she fell screaming through the smoke and wreckage.

Chapter 32: Sirocco

Chapter Text

Max’s panic almost got her killed. In that first split second after the impact, her mind went completely blank, every thought swallowed in fear. Then her reflexes kicked in, ones honed by weeks of fighting and months of training. Looking toward the ground, she shifted herself through her memory. The snow-covered floor of the hangar was suddenly under her boots, her fall arrested before it even really began.

She’d moved herself forward a little, clear of the falling wreckage, so she heard the muffled thump of two bodies hitting the ground behind her but had to turn to actually see them. Aloy’s armor was flashing an angry red and one arm was bent at an awkward angle, but she was struggling to lever herself upright. Nil, though…

There had been a neat stack of metal bars, perhaps some kind of vehicle components or maybe ammunition - the intervening thousand years since that stack was made had rendered it impossible to tell - directly below where Nil had fallen. Just before he’d hit the ground, Nil’s head had caught the corner of the stack. She could tell by the bits of blood, brain, and bone that were smeared across it and down one side. Only about half of Nil’s head was still intact where he lay on the ground.

Rage swept over her, swept over everything, annihilated the world.

Her knife was in her hand, though she had no memory of drawing it. Her eyes fell on one of the Eclipse, a massive, heavily-muscled man with one of their cobbled-together flamethrowers in his hands. He was standing on the roof of a small side building at one edge of the hangar. She registered his existence, registered his location, and shifted. The dagger went into his throat; the short sword she’d taken from Apeph went through the Blaze tank on his back. Slowing time, she circled around, grabbed the tip of the flamethrower, and twisted it around so the ignition light at the tip was right in the spilling Blaze. Her eyes fell on another man, one of the Eclipse regular infantry, on the ground level below her. She shifted again.

Her sword slashed open his stomach. Entrails started to spill. She cut the string on the bow he carried for good measure, then shifted.

They had eyes, the men she killed, but she did not see them, did not look into them. Their expressions were hidden behind their white wooden masks, but their body language spoke only of readiness and smug assurance of their victory. Most never had the chance to shift that stance before the blood spattered them and the light began to fade. Throats were slit. Bellies cut. Two had heavy axes that she tore from their grips and then brought down on their skulls. If she happened to appear behind the next man in line, then it was kidneys, spine, lungs. She never let go of the time slow, even as she flickered between targets, so most did not even register their death before it was on them.

She had lost her bow in the fall but it never even occurred to her to use it until she was standing over the corpse of the last Eclipse. On the opposite side of the room, an echoing boom signaled the end of the man with the flamethrower. The entire slaughter had taken less time than required for the Blaze to ignite and explode.

The roar of a machine gun, the Deathbringer’s light cannon, suddenly pulled Max back to reality. She reflexively shifted again, this time back to where Aloy was. The Deathbringer’s slugs ripped through the snow and metal where Max had just been standing. Aloy was back on her feet and had clearly used some of those impossibly-good healing herbs on herself, because her arm was splinted but she still had her bow in her hands. She actually took a step back from Max when she appeared, though, her eyes wide and her face pale.

“...Max?” she said, as though unsure who she was talking to. “Are you- are you okay?”

She wasn’t, Max realized. She was trembling. She looked down. Her chest, hands, arms, legs, boots… all were covered in blood and gore. It was as though she’d stood in the path of a firehose of blood. She wondered if her nose was bleeding. She wondered if anyone, including herself, would actually be able to tell.

The Deathbringer was tracking them. Aloy looked over at it worriedly, then back at Max. Max’s silence was clearly concerning her, but there wasn’t time to reassure her. Nor, for that matter, did Max know if it was possible to reassure her… or even whether reassurance would be anything other than a lie. Aloy reached out as though to put a hand on Max’s arm, but stopped short, looking at the mess. “Just… just stay here,” she said instead. “I’ll be right back.” After taking a quick drink from a painkilling tonic, she gripped her bow and ran off toward the machine, nocking a trio of Blaze Arrows on the string.

Max watched her go. After a few moments, though, Max’s gaze drifted over and down, to land on Nil. Or, rather, what was left of Nil. Nil’s wasn’t the first body Max had seen, of course. Not the tenth, maybe not even the hundredth. But Nil was… not a friend, exactly, but something. A companion. Someone she’d been working with. Someone she’d been meant to protect.

There was another body on the snow next to him. This was a blonde-haired woman in a pastel pink button-up sweater with black trim, black miniskirt, hose, and some dark gray shoes. A large gold watch glittered on one of her taped-together wrists. She was laying on her back, hands on her chest almost as though she were praying, and her lifeless eyes stared blindly upward. She wasn’t there, of course. Victoria Chase had died a thousand years ago. But Max saw her next to Nil all the same, just like she’d been in the snow next to Aloy’s tent when Max had first scrambled out of her own tent during Apeph’s attack. Apeph had turned toward her, a mix of surprise and leering anticipation on his face, his short sword dripping red with Aloy’s blood, and Victoria had been laying there, face slack and eyes empty, while the blood oozed along the blade and spattered onto her still face.

The hallucination was more than just the impossibility of Victoria’s body being there at all. Intellectually, Max knew she’d never actually seen Victoria after Jefferson killed her in the Dark Room. Her journal was very clear about that. Jefferson had murdered Victoria and gotten rid of her body while Max was still in another timeline, basking in useless praise at the Zeitgeist while Victoria died. While Chloe died. And yet, this image, this false memory, was so clearly burned into Max’s brain that it was all she could remember when she tried to think back to that horrible night. Victoria, dead on the floor next to the chair that Max had been taped into. The first person who had begged for Max to save her that Max hadn’t been able to save. Not until after she’d died herself and started making real changes to the timeline, anyway, and by then, the Victoria Max saved felt almost like a different person. That Victoria had never recorded a drugged Kate Marsh’s sexual assault, had never been confronted with the reality of how badly her actions could hurt others. The Victoria who had learned those terrible, shattering lessons… that Victoria had died in the Dark Room and Max had never been able to bring her back.

Dimly, right at the edge of her awareness, Max heard explosions, the rattle of gunfire and the screaming of missile launches, but none of it was really registering. When she at last looked away from Nil and Victoria, it was simply because she couldn’t stand to keep staring at them. On the far side of the hangar, Aloy had her bow out, a pair of Precision Arrows on the string; even as Max focused on her, Aloy loosed and the power-drawn shafts slammed into the Deathbringer, ripping away one of its thermal vents. The bot slumped to one side, one of its supports suddenly failing, and Aloy took advantage of the brief respite to switch bows and begin launching Fire Arrow after Fire Arrow at it. A series of small explosions shuddered through the machine, and then, with a small roar and the scream of shorting and overheating electronics, it collapsed entirely.

Several long moments of silence passed. Aloy, breathing hard and, with the adrenaline of battle wearing off, also now favoring her broken arm again, kept shifting her gaze from the shattered machine to Max and back. She had the same look in her eyes for each, an expression that said the thing she was eyeing was dangerous, even if currently pacified, and she had no intention of being caught unawares if that danger should reappear. Max didn’t feel dangerous - she didn’t feel anything, really - but she could hardly blame Aloy for the reaction all the same.

Finally, Aloy rose from the half-crouch she’d been resting in and crossed the space to return to Max. She glanced at Nil and Max saw a flash of real pain and grief there, quickly suppressed. Aloy’s real focus was on Max, though. “Max, are you-” she stopped, grimaced, then began again. “Are you injured?”

Max shook her head. She nodded toward the Deathbringer. “Is there a piece of that thing small enough that I can carry it that would completely shut it down if it suddenly went missing?” she asked.

Slowly, Aloy nodded. “Its Heart. Wait here a moment. I’ll go get it for you.” She headed off at a quick jog, pulling out some simple tools as she went. In just a few seconds she had clambered halfway into the machine’s chassis and several small pieces of metal, plastic, or rubber began to tumble out of the hole she’d entered.

It didn’t take long. Only a couple of minutes went by before Aloy shimmied back out, a tangle of tubing and pistons in her hands, and she brought it back over to Max. It was heavy and about the size of Max’s head, but she could manage, especially these days. She tucked it under her arm. “What are you going to do?” Aloy asked.

“Go back. Undo this.” She twitched an elbow in the direction of Nil’s corpse but didn’t turn to look at it again. She really didn’t want to see Victoria anymore.

Aloy frowned, but she nodded. Her eyes flicked down to Nil, then back up to Max’s face. “Max,” she began, but Max cut her off.

“It’s fine, Aloy. None of this ever happened. It doesn’t matter. It’s not real.” And before Aloy could respond to that, Max opened a memory in her mind of the three of them just outside the door in the corridor above, a few moments before the Deathbringer destroyed the catwalk, and shifted herself through it.

She’d kept herself in the same position as she’d been in before, but the sudden change in her appearance still caught her companions by surprise. Aloy, glancing casually at her and then doing a fierce doubletake, hissed, “Goddess, Max, what happened to you?” Nil turned as well, his eyebrows going up, and he smiled his smug, almost catlike grin.

“Deathbringer on the other side of the door,” Max explained. She held out the Heart. “It just collapsed in a heap, though, so you’ve got a moment’s distraction you can use. There are a bunch of Eclipse in there too, but they just lost their biggest advantage.”

Ignoring that, Aloy took a step forward, reaching toward Max’s face. “Are you hurt? Whose blood is that?”

“Not mine,” snapped Max, harsher than she meant to, and she jerked away from Aloy’s hand. Aloy couldn’t be allowed to touch her. Max was filthy, in ways that went well beyond the purely physical, and she couldn’t stand the idea of getting any of that filth on Aloy. “You need to go, fast, before they regroup. Seriously, I’m fine. Go.”

Still Aloy hesitated, but when Max all but shouted, “Go!” at her again, she reluctantly nodded and opened the door, darting through it. Nil was right on her heels. Max watched them leave, waited until they were both well clear of the doorway, then dropped the Deathbringer Heart and vomited behind one of the stalagmites in the corner.

By the time Max’s stomach finished heaving and she’d washed her mouth out with the help of her waterskin, the battle in the next room was already over. Eclipse bodies were scattered around the area, most sprouting several arrows, and Aloy was back at work stripping the Deathbringer for parts. She hadn’t actually climbed inside it this time, though, and in fact kept glancing up to see whether Max had yet appeared. Nil was wandering amongst the dead, whether to make sure none had survived or for some other purpose only he would know or understand, Max wasn’t sure.

Max stayed in the doorway for a few moments, out of easy view from below, until she felt more steady on her feet, then crossed to the railing, looked down, and shifted herself to the ground, some distance away from the other two. One of the Eclipse was nearby, a dark-skinned man with streaks of white mixed into his curly black hair. Even this close, staring right at him, Max had no sense of recognition or familiarity. In the previous timeline she must have killed this man, no more than ten or so minutes before by her own reckoning, but she felt as though she’d never seen him before in her life.

“To look like that,” said Nil from behind her, “you must have glutted yourself on their deaths. Such a feast it must have been.”

She turned to face him. “I hardly remember it.” It was all a jumble in her head, just flash after flash of cutting, stabbing, moving. And blood. Always the blood. “It happened too fast.”

Nil studied her. “The press of moments presents its own challenges, even to one such as you. Even so, you must learn to savor each of them, be present with them, dive deep into the experience of each kill. A life unfolds before you like a flower opening its petals; you owe it to yourself to inhale each blossom, let it linger as long as you can, so that the subtleties are not lost in the chaos.”

“How?” she asked, only distantly aware that she was shaking again. “How can you look at this and see beauty? Why doesn’t it horrify you?”

“You might as well ask a man why he prefers salmon to goose, or barley wine to maize whiskey,” Nil shrugged. “We are what we are. You are a rare vintage, the most delicate filet.” He smiled. “As a connoisseur, I am well-equipped to appreciate your gift.”

She sheathed her knife, heedless of its condition and the need to clean it, and stepped closer to him. His eyes didn’t shift or blink as she reached up, took his head in her bloody hands, and pulled his mouth down to hers. She started to feel something, finally. Warmth was managing to at last penetrate her skin, her bones, her core. She could taste his desire, but also his self-control. She wanted both. She needed both.

Gasping, Max suddenly broke away, looking up at him. “Can you teach me how to appreciate it too?”

He nodded.

“Good,” she said, and kissed him again.

On the far side of the hangar, Aloy stared at them both, mouth open and skin pale.

Chapter 33: Permafrost

Chapter Text

They had to leave the Striders behind. The need was self-evident: the climb up to the pass above the Grave-Hoard, the pass that led to the Cut, was completely impassable to any riding machine, and there weren’t any other ways into the Cut from the south. Moreover, she knew where she would easily find a herd of Chargers just beyond Song’s Edge. She had no options now and could address the matter with minimal effort later and yet the need aggravated Aloy intensely.

Everything was aggravating her, really. Reality itself was getting on her nerves. She wanted to scream and the fact that she couldn’t, not with Max and Nil right there, was without a doubt the source of a good nine-tenths of her frustration. From that one fact sprouted all her other irritations, each minor and petty but all somehow clamoring for her attention just the same. She felt as though her skin were covered in polishing grit, with every movement, every moment, grating against her.

Every time she blinked, really. Because lurking right behind her eyelids was Max kissing Nil.

She’d seen Max kiss Erend and had hated it then too. That, though, was before their night together in Devil’s Thirst, before the revelations atop the Tallneck, before Max had told her in so many words that she still wanted them to be together.

Well, apparently not. Apparently a murderous madman with no shirt on held more appeal than Aloy did.

It burned her, burned her like a Blaze arrow, burned her like Corruption exposure. It ate at her. Whether she’d known it or not, whether she’d realized it or not, Aloy had clearly come to expect Max’s penitential efforts to pay off, for her to once more reach a point where Aloy could feel comfortable opening her heart again and letting Max inside. Obviously, in some sense, Max had never left her heart in the first place. If she had, there was no way Aloy would be in this much pain.

She and Nil scaled the rock wall along the handholds easily while Max, laden down with the saddlebags she’d made for herself and Aloy, shifted herself up to the top of the rise and waited for them. Seeing that there was a wayfarer’s camp set up there, the one Yariki had been using in Aloy’s original timeline, Max had apparently taken it upon herself to set up their camp while she waited. A fire was burning in the small hearth and tents had been arranged on opposite sides of the fire.

Two tents, Aloy noted. Not three.

Max clearly had some idea what was happening in Aloy’s head because she made no attempt at conversation, limiting her words in Aloy’s direction just to a few basic informational exchanges. With Nil, though, she talked freely, if quietly, as they sat together across the fire from the log Aloy was using for a bench. Aloy cooked her rations in a silence as chilly as the mountain air blowing down the pass and opted to head for her sleeping furs early, unwilling to keep watching the other two murmur together.

Sleep would not come, however. Perhaps half an hour after she climbed into her tent, Aloy saw the light of the campfire dim. No noises reached her over the sighing wind, but after another handful of minutes, Aloy ran out of self-control and tapped her Focus on. The audio enhancement immediately picked up sounds Aloy knew, sounds she still sometimes dreamt about: Max, breathing quickly, trying to stifle her moans of pleasure, little whispered exclamations of “Oh f*ck” or “yes, there, ri- right there” and on and on. She heard nothing from Nil, or at least nothing she recognized as Nil, but looking through the tent wall, Aloy could easily see the two of them writhing together, faceless purple silhouettes that she could nonetheless easily identify.

She watched for only a moment before tapping the device back off again, hating herself for having done it at all, but her curiosity, her need to know, had briefly overwhelmed her good sense. Of course, now her feverish imaginings of what the two of them might be doing were replaced with the acid, stomach-curdling certainty of reality. She could hardly claim things had improved.

Eventually sleep did arrive at some point, though Aloy was not sure when, nor was she entirely certain when it left again. As she climbed out of her tent the next morning she felt bleary and drained, emotionally battered in a way that left physical traces behind. Obnoxiously, Nil was already awake, though there was no sign of Max. Nil’s gray eyes were almost black in the predawn gloom as he watched her.

“What are you staring at,” Aloy snapped at him.

A slow smile spread across his face. She could see his teeth glinting. “Do you want to kill me, Nora?” he asked softly. “Have we come to our final farewell at last?”

For a moment, their eyes locked across the fire. Then Aloy felt her lip curl. “I won’t give you the satisfaction,” she said flatly. “Max is an adult. You’ll have to find a better reason to die than sleeping with her, I’m afraid.”

He chuckled. Rising easily to his feet and stamping once with each boot to dislodge the snow, he said, “Between the two of you, a man could find enough heat in these mountains to make the Jewel seem cool and refreshing.” He began to disassemble the camp and ready his gear. Max came crawling out of the tent a short while later and Aloy had no idea whether she had heard any of the conversation. She kept giving both of them narrow looks as she made her own preparations to move on.

It took them most of the day to travel the pass, interrupted in the middle by the need to handle a patrolling Scorcher they had no way to bypass. Studying the creature from the cover of some tall grass, Max muttered, “When you described them, I didn’t imagine these Daemonic machines to look… festive. It looks like it’s wearing party ribbons, for f*ck’s sake.”

“Quiet!” Aloy hissed, aware that she was being at least as loud as Max was and probably louder. Max gave her a sharp look but Aloy’s temper was still far too short for her to care whether she was being hypocritical or not. “Fire Arrows are all but useless against it,” she went on, managing to moderate her tone a little. “I’ll freeze it with my sling, then hammer it with your bows until it stops moving. I’ll try to get it tied down after it’s frozen to buy a little more time.”

She took a lot more satisfaction in beating the Scorcher into scrap than she probably should have.

The fight, brief as it was, did at least help Aloy get her head straightened out a little. She was still tired and still having trouble even looking in Max’s direction, but having something else she had to focus on lest she die definitely did her mental state some good. The jealousy and anger hadn’t gone anywhere but at least she didn’t feel as though she were a hair's-breadth from exploding at any moment.

Sunset came early in the mountains, so there were already long shadows falling over the path when they reached the tunnel that marked the edge of the Cut proper. As before a few mocking calls echoed down to them from the Banuk standing watch over the path, but as before, no one actually moved to intercept them. In reasonably short order they were descending the slope into the Banuk village of Song’s Edge.

The small settlement was much as Aloy remembered it, a scattering of large tents and a small number of more permanent structures, all clinging to the shelter of the mountainside. Across the valley that comprised the central stretch of the Cut, the roiling smoke of Thunder’s Drum swirled into the sky, chased by crackling red lightning.

“Holy sh*t,” she heard Max whisper. “You weren’t kidding. There’s an active f*cking volcano in Yellowstone.”

Aloy glared at her, not much appreciating the implication that she had either lied or exaggerated. Maybe Max didn’t mean it that way, but Aloy was not much inclined toward the benefit of the doubt right then. Annoyed as she was, though, she had other things to worry about, so she opted not to say anything and just led the way down into town.

There were fewer people in the streets than she remembered, and that worried her. After a few minutes to reorient herself, Aloy headed straight for the village’s small marketplace. As she’d hoped, Burgrend was there.

The gruff Oseram gave the three of them a cautious smile as they approached. “Outlanders!” he called. “You’re a long way from home, Nora girl, but if you’re in need of supplies for your travels, you’ve come to the right place!”

“Actually, Burgrend,” Aloy said, “I’m looking for information. Aratak and Ourea’s werak: has it left for Thunder’s Drum yet?”

Burgrend was taken quite aback. “You’ve… heard of me?” he said warily. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but-”

“Nothing but good things, I promise you,” Aloy interrupted him. “You and your ‘business partner’ Varga both. That’s why I’ve come to you for the information. I know I can rely on it.”

“Well then,” he said, mollified, “as a matter of fact, yes, they have. Set out for Longnotch just this morning. Some crazy Banuk talk about a ‘Daemon’ and some spirit of their Blue Light. Actually managed to get a few of them to buy supplies before they headed out, for a wonder. Not that my goods aren’t worth buying, of course!” he added quickly. “It’s just these Banuk with their wild ideas about needing to be self-sufficient. I guess that goes by the wayside if they’re in a hurry, though.”

This morning. Damn. Still, they were a large group, crossing a fair portion of the Cut on foot. The three of them on Chargers… Well, she’d really hoped to get some better sleep tonight, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. “Thank you,” she told Burgrend. “We’re in a bit of a hurry, but we’ll do some real shopping when we come back through in a few days.” She turned to her companions. “Come on. We need to find some Chargers.”

They rode through the night and, though Aloy had wondered if she would get some complaints from Max or Nil - though the latter seemed unlikely, Nil didn’t really seem to complain about anything - about being unable to spend another night together as they had before, neither offered even a hint of resentment. The closest they came was Max’s muttering about needing some “coffee,” whatever that might be, as they pounded up the trail to Longnotch through a light swirl of snow.

As they rode, they passed three different Control Towers, two right along their path and the third on the opposite side of the river. Aloy made certain to scan them with her Focus and was relieved to see that they were still available for her to override. She’d worried that somehow, in this new timeline, HEPHAESTUS had upgraded its defenses, but there was no sign of it. That might well turn out to be important, depending on what they found in Longnotch.

A small army, as it happened.

Aloy had never had the chance to see Aratak’s full werak before, let alone assembled in one place. She’d thought the attendees at the funerals for those lost in Thunder’s Drum had been roughly equivalent in number to the dead themselves, but it was not so. What had to be close to a hundred Banuk stood in Longnotch’s central plaza, ready to march, with Aratak and Ourea at their head. The order had not yet been given, but from the tension in the air and so many hunters ready to move, that order could come at any time. The sun was creeping above the eastern peaks as the three of them pounded into the town.

Cries of surprise and alarm went up from the assembled hunters, but Aloy dismounted quickly and threw her hands up. “Hunters of the Banuk!” she called out. “I am Aloy of the Nora and I bring a message from the Spirit of the Blue Light!”

Looks of confusion flew all around but Aloy did not wait for them to sort themselves out. Taking advantage of the momentary disarray, she pushed through the throng until she was close enough to Aratak and Ourea to be heard. “Ourea! I need you to hear my words! I know what awaits you within Thunder’s Drum: disaster and death! There is another way!”

Despite everything, Aloy found herself happy to see the siblings, especially standing together as they were. Aratak had become a quietly steadfast friend and ally, one willing to travel even all the way to Meridian, a city he had once hated with his entire soul, just to aid her. Ourea’s determination and self-sacrifice for the sake of CYAN had inspired Aloy and Aratak both in their fight against HADES and Aloy could only hope that this time, that sacrifice would not be necessary.

“Who are you?” Ourea demanded. “What could you, an outlander, a Nora, know about the Spirit or the Daemon?”

Aloy finished pushing her way through the crowd so she could lower her voice while speaking to the werak leaders. “That is a complicated question with an even more complicated answer,” she said, “but if you will hear me out, I can prove what I say. Listen: is it true that the Spirit has a name? One you never use and, I suspect, are the only one to know?”

Ourea’s eyes widened. “How could you know that?”

Leaning closer still, Aloy went on, “And is it true that the Spirit’s name is CYAN?”

Ourea was stunned. Aratak stepped forward. “If you know something, Nora, speak it plainly,” he rumbled. His eyes flicked past her to where Max and Nil waited at the back of the crowd, still on their machines. “You seem to control the machines even better than a shaman, but we have had little cause to trust the Carja for many years. The war may be over, but the blood of the slain is still frozen in the ice.”

“One of my companions is a seer. She knows the future,” Aloy told him. “And I have encountered machines in the south that are corrupted in a manner much like your Daemonic ones here are. I can show you what I know about how to fight them and she can tell you what your fates will be if you continue with your plans for the werak.”

“What kind of proof,” asked Ourea. She had recovered enough from the shock that her eyes were suspicious slits. “What do you know?”

“Leave the werak here and come with us,” Aloy said at once. “Bring hunters you trust if you think this is some kind of trap, but it should be a small party that can travel without attracting attention. Just west of here, back down the trail to Song’s Edge, is one of the towers the Daemon has constructed in the last few weeks, right? I can show you how to deal with them.”

Aratak tilted his head slightly, studying Aloy as though she were a dangerous machine he needed to take down quickly. “Allow my sister and I a moment to discuss your proposal,” he said. Aloy nodded.

“I’ll be waiting with my friends,” she told them before turning away and working back through the crowd once more.

Swinging down off her Charger, Max said quietly, “Aloy? What is going on? What’s your plan here?”

“Override a Control Tower to show them they should listen to me. Then you’re going to tell them that they will get the werak killed if they go into the mountain without us. HEPHAESTUS built a massive access door at the base of the facility tower, one that Ourea doesn’t know about because it wasn’t there the last time she was. It will be the anvil against which the Daemonic machines prowling the place will hammer the werak. Most of them will die, either trapped against the door or during the push back out.” Aloy eyed Nil. “Sorry, Nil, but we’re trying to save lives today.”

“There is no pleasure to be found in watching machines engage in slaughter,” Nil replied, something close to a sneer in his voice. “They don’t even enjoy it.”

“Are you sure about this?” Max asked. The genuine-sounding concern in her voice made Aloy want to punch her. “You haven’t slept in at least 24 hours at this point and kind of looked like you slept for sh*t even then. Is it safe?”

“I’m fine,” Aloy snapped. “Worry about your own problems, Max. Mine aren’t your business anymore.”

Surprise, shock, and hurt chased one another across Max’s face. “Aloy, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Aloy cut her off. “You don’t owe me any explanations and I doubt they would really explain anything anyway.” She deliberately turned away, facing back to where Ourea and Aratak were murmuring together. Max did not take the hint.

“What the hell, Aloy?” she demanded, moving around to force herself into Aloy’s eyeline. “I know you don’t approve but why would I stop caring about your problems? I’m only still here because I care about your problems.”

“Those aren’t my problems,” Aloy countered. “Those are the world’s problems and we both know that you have to carry the whole damned world by yourself because you’re the only one who matters. ‘I caused the Faro Plague!’ ‘I choose who lives or dies!’ All-Mother save me from listening to one more whining bit of self-flagellation. You may think you’re trying to save everyone, Max, but really, you’re just stroking your own ego. Well, now you’ve got Nil to stroke it for you! Congratulations. We’re done here.”

She pushed Max aside and moved a few paces further away from her and Nil both, staring fixedly at Aratak and Ourea. If Max was planning to say anything else, she didn’t work around to it until after the chieftain and shaman were on their way over to speak with Aloy, and given her powers, that probably meant she wasn’t planning to after all. “Your seer,” said Ourea without preamble, once they were close enough to speak conversationally, “she is this other Nora?”

“Max,” Aloy nodded.

“Very well,” Aratak growled. “Then the Carja stays here, under guard by my werak. You and your seer, you will accompany us to the tower and show us your proof. Be warned, though, outlander. I will tolerate no threats to my sister. If this is some trick, I swear to you: you will regret it.”