The Wandering Spirit

The winds blowing through The Cut were nothing if but cruel in the way their icy touch froze Aloy's skin. She could hardly feel her limbs, let alone her fingers and face. Everything was so numb that her very skin could have turned into a layer of ice and she would not have noticed.

Having known in advance that she would travel to the land of everlasting snow, Aloy had put on her warmest clothes a long time before: A Banuk hunter's garb, padded with warm fur on the inside and sturdy metal plates on the outside. It had been more than enough to help her get through the snowy mountainside areas of the Sundom and the Sacred Land, but it was a poor match against the unrelenting cold of the wilderness in The Cut.

"Stupid traders will only trade for bluegleam...", Aloy muttered angrily out of her clattering teeth as she trotted along one of the Banuk's paths, a treasure map in her hands. In Songstone, she had set her eyes on an outfit that would be capable of protecting her from ice in any form, but unfortunately, the only resource that anyone would trade for in these parts was an immensely hard-to-find crystal called bluegleam. She had already spent much time on venturing into some far-off corners of The Cut to find some of it, and now, one more piece was all that she needed to complete the deal.

As Aloy raised her gaze from the map, a distant, indistinct sound of people's shouts caught her attention. Past the trees of the forest in front of her and the snow that was gently floating down from their tree tops, she could make out the shapes of four people as mere shadows against the blinding white of her surroundings.

From afar, she watched how one of the strangers pushed another off the path, sending him or her tumbling into a thick layer of snow, and then walked away as though nothing had happened at all.

"Looks like there's trouble ahead.", figured Aloy, packing the map away and hastening her steps. While she was slowly closing in on the stranger who had been left behind, she realized it was a young Banuk woman about the same age as she was. Like most of her tribe, she wore a blue garb and an impressive-looking headgear made of fur and machine plates. It didn't take long for her to spot the Nora once she had risen back to her feet.

"Outlander!", the stranger called over to her. "Outlander, I need your help!"

"Coming!", Aloy replied, before quickly putting the last steps behind her. As she stopped before the Banuk woman, she could see plainly by look on her face that she was in distress. "What happened?"

"I need you to help me stop those werak runners!", the stranger blurted out much too hasty. "I was trying to talk them out of it, but they wouldn't listen to me!"

"Stop them from what?", asked Aloy, who could not make much sense of her words. "Why don't you just tell me what happened from the very beginning?"

The stranger looked at her with a puzzled expression. "The very beginning?"

"How about names? Your name would be a good start.", suggested Aloy and gave her an encouraging smile. "I'm Aloy, and you are...?"

"The name's Tynka.", the Banuk woman finally introduced herself. "These werak, they've gone after a Ravager that's very special to me. They mustn't kill him!"

"A Ravager that's special to you…? So that means... you want to get the kill before they do?", guessed the freezing Nora, whilst rubbing a little bit of warmth into the exposed skin of her elbows. She had noticed how the Banuk had referred to the machine as a 'he' instead of an 'it', and wondered whether that might have been just a slip of the tongue.

But it appeared that her words had only made Tynka more upset. "No, oh no! Quite the opposite!", she replied instantly. "This Ravager, he's docile! I know he doesn't want to hurt these hunters any more than I do."

Aloy eyed the stranger's painted face with curiosity. She knew she hadn't overridden any Ravagers lately, so it wasn't her doing behind this story, but she remembered the village the Banuk had built at the foot of a mountain and lived there together with a number of tame machines. All of that had ended some time ago, when a group of Oseram destroyed the device which had been sending an override signal to the machines in the area. With a quick motion, Aloy activated her focus and scanned the area, but it couldn't detect any signals nearby. Not even the kind of signal a Tallneck would send.

"Are there any more docile machines in The Cut?", she asked the Banuk in front of her.

"I don't think so...", replied Tynka, and sighed so deeply that it made her seem incredibly sad all of a sudden. "You see, this Ravager… he carries the spirit of my brother, Atek. That's why he's docile."

Although Aloy raised an eyebrow in surprise, she didn't believe that such a thing was truly possible. Machines carrying spirits in them? Yes, she knew that the Banuk believed in spirits and the power of the so-called blue light, but she didn't. The only reason why she didn't object now was because Tynka was about to explain in detail what had made her come to this unlikely conclusion.

"Atek spent a lot of time following and fighting this Ravager. He had chased the machine deep into The Cut. I was always on his heels, but he refused to let me help. He said that this was his personal ordeal, a personal rivalry between him and the Ravager. One day, he had caught up with it again, and, as usual, I stayed behind to watch as they fought once more. Atek jumped up and, with a mighty strike of his spear, he finally broke the cannon off the Ravager's back." For but a few moments Tynka had almost turned cheerful, yet the smile on her face had vanished all too quickly. "But there was a blast as it came loose, Atek was knocked back down, scorched and wounded… Before I could intervene, the Ravager was charging towards him again. I saw my brother getting back to his feet, hunting knife in his hand, and as the Ravager was about to run him over, he grabbed the machine by its head and clung to it with all the strength left in him… until it stopped rampaging." The young Banuk's eyes widened as she recalled the memory. "When my brother's limp body fell into the snow, the Ravager had become completely calm. It… He... glanced at me. He saw me running towards them, but instead of turning hostile towards me, he just walked away, slowly. I had never seen a machine behave in such a way."

"So… You believe that your brother's spirit was passed on to the Ravager?", guessed Aloy, who was still sceptical, although, knowing what it was like to lose a family, she sympathized with the young Banuk.

"A few days ago, as I burned my brother's remains, I was certain.", Tynka claimed, full of conviction. "I noticed the blue light of the Ravager's gaze in the distance. At once, I grabbed my spear and followed his tracks into the wilderness, until today, when I saw this group of werak runners walking in front of me. They had picked up his trail as well and… because they seem to think he escaped the hunting grounds, they wish to take him down." With begging eyes the young Banuk huntress turned to Aloy again. "Please, I know it's an unusual request, but you must help me! It would be foolish to face three experienced werak members all by myself!"

"I will help you, Tynka.", Aloy assured her. "If what you say is true, this machine must truly be special. There certainly isn't another docile Ravager in the entire Cut."

Tynka nodded eagerly. "Then, let's be quick. They might be closing in on him already."

Even before she had finished the sentence, Aloy had already reactivated her focus and was scanning for the tracks of a Ravager this time. Not too far away from them, the focus had highlighted for her a series of imprints which laid hidden beneath a small layer of freshly-fallen snow. The form of the imprints matched the metal claws of a Ravager.

"This way!", Aloy instructed her companion, and lead the way along the creature's highlighted tracks.

It wasn't long until the edge of the forest came into view, marked by a steep descent in the terrain. In the distance, there were the sounds of men shouting, metal banging against metal, and a machine howling. It seemed that Aloy had spent too much time listening to Tynka's story… the fight had already begun without them. The Nora signalled her Banuk companion to stay behind. "You should let me do this on my own.", Aloy told her. There was no point in Tynka getting hurt in the fight, just because of a machine that may or may not carry the spirit of her brother.

"Don't talk to me as though I couldn't fight.", Tynka replied sternly and drew the spear from her back. "I let my brother fight by himself before, and it was a mistake I will not repeat!"

There was a determination in her eyes that could not be denied. The desire of a desperate sibling to save whatever was left to save of her family. In a way, Aloy respected her wish. Tynka was only doing was she thought was right… "Alright, if that is what you must do… But let me attempt to drive an arrow or two between them first. If I fail, you can still join the fight.", she suggested.

With a nod, Tynka took off to the right to look for a way to approach the werak sideways, while Aloy walked up to the peak of the hill in front of her, bow in hand and an arrow at the ready.

Below the young Nora huntress, the three werak runners were locked into a fight with the same Ravager that Tynka had described to her. Aloy recognized him easily by the missing cannon on his back. Yet despite of what the Banuk had told her, the machine didn't appear to be very tame. Just now, she witnessed as he charged towards one of the werak, almost trampling the man to his death. Another Banuk went for a quick revenge and lunged at the Ravager's side with his spear raised high, but the machine was quicker than him, turned around and knocked him out of the air back into the snow.

Was that really what a docile machine looked like? Aloy knew from experience that even overridden machines would turn against humans, if those humans were classified as hostile towards her. But she couldn't tell who had overridden that Ravager – if anyone at all. Seeking the help of her focus, Aloy reached up to her temple. It scanned the combatants quickly, and, to Aloy's surprise, it identified all of them as 'FRIENDLY' – even the Ravager.

"Now what am I going to do?", she whispered to herself.

[CHOOSE]

Stop the Ravager [Jump to Chapter 2]

OR:

Stop the werak [Jump to Chapter 3]