Joe's Note: Didn't really get a lot of response to the first chapter... probably because I didn't post it very widely. So I have no idea what people think of my story as of this point, but I'm going to push on anyway because it's a passion piece of sorts. This chapter sees us skipping ahead a bit, although hopefully it'll manage to answer any questions you might have about how the battle during the Proving - and the subsequent events - unfolded for this version of Aloy. Enjoy and don't be afraid to review. I don't bite... hard.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Samuel, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, Daniel, Beverly, Daniel, Jade, Robert, Kimeru, Charles, Crygon20, Subtle, Christopher, Stephen, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Janne, Joseph, Jason, bloodylord, Marc, Ziryo, Leigh, Chris, George, Koby, William, Dale, Dimitria, Haematite, Mauday, Ken, Paul, Pat, Edward, Roman, Warren, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.
"Why are the Eclipse digging up ancient machines? And how do they get them to work?"
"I thought they wanted them for scrap. But they brought them back to life! Plugged some kind of device into the corpses so that Hades could whisper to them and call them from their grave."
"I've fought that kind of machine before. Are there others?"
"Yes. The ones you fought today, they call 'Corrupters'. But there are others, much bigger, bristling with ancient weapons. Those they call 'Deathbringers'. I've only seen them buried in the ground, but after today... anything is possible."
"Sounds to me like they're raising an army."
"If so, the world will fall. And I helped dig the pit."
Standing over Olin's supine form, Aloy's head spun as she held the Oseram at spearpoint. When she'd arrived at Rockwreath, her plan had been exquisite in its simplicity: fight her way through anyone standing between her and Olin, confront him, and demand answers about the attack on her Proving that he'd involved with. Instead, things were - if possible - even more complicated than when she'd arrived. She was now armed with far more information than she'd possessed when she'd left Mother's Heart behind, but so very little of it made any sense. Especially the prospect that images of her older self... her mother... whoever the older woman who looked like her was, there were images of her in Maker's End, a location far beyond the Sacred Lands. To top it all off, some new and wholly unknown man had involved himself in her quest by disabling the Eclipse cultists' Focus devices... and she was pretty sure that Emma was lurking around the excavation site somewhere. Which meant that she had both an ethereal stalker and a physical one to figure out how to deal with once she was done handling things with Olin.
'I resent that. I'm neither a stalker nor am I lurking. I was trying to give you some space while you dealt with the reason you came here in the first place, but if you insist...' Stepping out from behind one of the fallen Corrupters, Emma rolled her eyes and let out an annoyed huff as she made her way over to Aloy with her Stormslinger pinned under one arm. As the redhead watched, Emma's fingers nimbly wound machine cord through an override device identical to the one that now graced Aloy's spear as the Banuk attempted to lash it into place. "I can't for the life of me figure out why this is giving me such difficulty. I'm literally watching your memories of doing it, and yet..." After a few more seconds of fiddling, Emma gave an exasperated sigh and held her Stormslinger out to Aloy, the scavenged cylinder dangling pathetically beneath it. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to help me out?"
The question earned her a disbelieving look from Aloy, the redhead glancing back and forth between Emma and her prisoner several times before gesturing to the latter with the tip of her spear. "Is now really the time to be doing this? I'm trying to interrogate him."
Emma did her best to look innocent as she shrugged, the motion making the poorly secured override device sway back and forth wildly beneath her staff. "In my defense, I was perfectly happy to wait until you were done with him. Then you had to go thinking about me being a 'stalker' who was 'lurking around', I felt the need to defend myself, and... well, here we are."
Yes. Here they were. Arguing over the way she'd phrased her thoughts and Emma's ego as the credibility she'd established as an intimidating warrior during her battle with Eclipse and the twin Corrupters under its control slowly melted away. "Just... stop. I'll deal with it when I'm done with this." Emma brought her hand up to her mouth and drew two fingers across her lips before taking a step back and resuming her fiddling with the override device. The Banuk had some odd gestures, Aloy mused, before shaking her head and returning her attention to Olin. "I've heard enough. It's time to finish this."
Sighing in resignation, Olin reached up and deactivated the Focus that had been glowing a sickly shade of yellow ever since she caught up with him at Rockwreath. "I won't beg for my life. But if there's any mercy in you , free my family. Please." He pulled the Focus away from the side of his head, holding it out toward Aloy as his desperate gaze bounced back and forth between her and Emma beseechingly. "My Focus recorded the location. There are always guards there but you... both of you look like you can handle yourselves."
Aloy reached out and took the proffered Focus from Olin even as her mind raced. All the time that she'd spent tracking him down since leaving Mother's Watch, she'd thought the decision would be simple. Now that she had him at her mercy, though, it was proving to be anything but. It was clear that he'd been coerced into what he'd done to her tribe; at worst, he was a weak man rather than an evil one. And so in the end, she shook her head at the Oseram before pulling her spear away and tossing his Focus back to him. "It will take many good deeds to make up for the crimes you've committed. Forge a new life, Olin. One of better make."
"You're sparing me? After all I've done?" Olin slowly rose to his feet, a look of wonder bordering upon worship upon his face that Aloy quickly found herself turning away from. She wasn't sparing him to be magnanimous; she was sparing him because it was the right thing to do. "Then the rest of my life will be lived in your debt."
Shuddering faintly at his words, Aloy did her best to ignore the thoroughly amused look on Emma's face as she waved dismissively back over her shoulder at Olin. "Go to the place where your family is being held and wait for me. We'll make their lives the first ones you save."
"I didn't earn this mercy, but I will die to make myself worthy of it. I will be waiting for you."
Keeping her back firmly to Olin to make it clear that the conversation was over, Aloy waited until his footsteps grew distant enough that she doubted the Oseram would be able to overhear them before arching a brow at Emma. "You traveled all the way from Ban-Ur for my Proving, actually followed me through the Proving, and now you've shown up in the middle of nowhere just when I happened to be here. So if you're not stalking me, then what exactly would you call this?"
Emma appeared to consider that for a moment before closing the distance between them, reaching out to run her hand along Aloy's left arm. "Protecting my investment? You look good in Banuk colors, by the way. Although I must admit, I'm surprised to see you actually wearing it. I would have thought it would offend those delicate Nora sensibilities of yours."
"You do remember that I was technically an outcast right up until I finished my Proving, right? Rost and I had to pretty much make things up as we went along for the last nineteen years. Including our 'sensibilities'." Blushing faintly, Aloy glanced down at herself... or more specifically, at her bare midriff. From what she'd seen of the Banuk in passing, the colors of the outfit that she was wearing were the only things it had in common with the tribe's traditional attire. "To be honest, I found it when I woke up and stuffed it in the bottom of my rucksack because I knew that it'd probably be destroyed if I left it behind. I wasn't planning to ever wear it... but it's really warm here in Carja territory. I was sweating something fierce in the outfit that Teb made me; it was either this or go native."
Chuckling softly, Emma continued to run her hands back and forth along Aloy's arms and shoulders for a bit longer before eventually pulling away. "Is that so? Well then, I suppose I'm glad to have been of service. Especially if the alternative would have been you buying something Carja to wear while you're operating out of Meridian." The blonde shuddered at the thought before shooting a baleful look at the corpse of a man dressed similarly to the men in Meridian rather than the distinct attire of an Eclipse cultist. "They're so... flamboyant. Gaudy. And it's not just one or two of them; their entire tribe has awful fashion sense. Somewhere back east, Carson Kressley is spinning in his grave."
While Aloy had no idea who that was or why he would be offended by the fashion of the Carja - which personally she found a bit more aesthetically pleasing than the Nora's aesthetic - the redhead couldn't help but notice the irony inherent in Emma's complaints. "The woman who can turn into some sort of crystal is calling someone else gaudy? Really? You don't see the problem with that?"
Emma scowled at the question, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. "Ahem. When I shift into my transmorph form, my entire body becomes an organic diamond analog that leaves me essentially invulnerable, especially with how primitive weapons are right now. That form is useful." Sniffing haughtily, she nodded in the direction of the fallen Carja man. "Clearly that eyesore did little to keep him alive."
Technically speaking, the blonde wasn't wrong... but mocking a corpse for any reason felt more than a little inappropriate to Aloy and so she cast about for a way to change the subject. Her eyes came to rest on Emma's Stormslinger, or more precisely on the the override device hanging limply from the underside of the shaft. Reaching out, she took the weapon from Emma and eyed the lashing job uncertainly before getting to work securing the object properly. "Just so you know, I'm pretty sure that this thing works in combination with a Focus to take control of machines. I'd recommend trying it on a Watcher or something else small just in case..." Aloy trailed off as Emma cleared her throat, looking up from her work in time to see the blonde brush her hair back on the right side of her face and reveal a Focus of her own. "Of course you do. Is there anything you don't have?"
After pondering the question for a few seconds, Emma perked up and snapped her fingers. "A decent corset. Obviously whalebone is right out, but even the Carja and Oseram aren't at the point yet where they can create a proper steel much less steel boning. And I refuse to lower myself to wearing the equivalent of a fashion corset; I'm not a sixteen-year-old shopping at Hot Topic." Very little of that made a lick of sense to Aloy and so she nodded in feigned comprehensive before returning her attention to the Stormslinger. The Banuk proclivity for using extensive amounts of machine cord in the tribe's unique weapons meant that she had a lot of material to work with, and the very nature of the Stormslinger meant that Emma's override module would quite possibly be able to affect machines more quickly and from further away than Aloy's own. Assuming she could get it to work. As she continued to work to integrate the device into the staff, Emma coughed softly. "I'm sorry about Rost. And for leaving. But with everything that happened, I didn't think being found at the scene of a massacre would end well for me. Not that the Nora would have been able to hold me any longer than I let them, but it would have made things... complicated."
Considering that she could read and control minds, turn into an 'organic diamond analog', and do All-Mother knew what else? 'Complicated' was an understatement in Aloy's book. At the same time? "You were supposed to handle Helis. If you'd done your job, then maybe-"
"I'm sorry, would you have rather me kept fighting with Helis and leave those two cultists with machine guns for Rost to handle? Do you think he would have done better against them than he did against Helis?" Her hands curling up into fists, Emma stepped backward to put a bit of distance between herself and Aloy before sucking in a slow breath. Letting it out, she ducked her head for a moment before meeting Aloy's eyes. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. All I can say is that I did my best. In the heat of the moment, I made a judgement call: to put myself between the two of you and a pair of heavy weapons. Maybe I should have stuck with Helis, and you and Rost would have found a way to kill those cultists before they killed you. Maybe if I'd chosen differently, Rost would still be alive. Or maybe if I'd chosen differently, the two of you would have gone down in a hail of bullets. We'll never know, though, because I made the decision that I did. All we can do is push onward and do our best to avenge all the Nora who have died for HADES's madness."
Aloy managed to restrain her curiosity until she tied off the last bit of machine cord, and then her head rose as she offered the Stormslinger back to its owner. "There's that name again. Olin mentioned it; some sort of devil that Eclipse worships. A devil that doesn't like me much. What do you know about it?"
Taking the proffered spear, Emma shrugged before reaching up to tap at the Focus that graced the side of her head. "Very little, to be honest. My wife and I donated our genetic material to Project: Zero Dawn as a personal favor to Elisabet. That was the extent of our involvement with the project, though; we died with our students when the Faro Plague realized the threat that my kind posed and wiped the entire town of Westchester clean. But we do know someone with a great deal of knowledge about Hades who can tell you everything you need to know. Isn't that right, Sylens?"
After a few seconds of silence, Aloy's Focus crackled softly and she heard a gusty sigh. "I'm not sure who I hate more right now, Emma: you or HADES."
"That's a very exclusive list right there. I'm honored to be on it."