If Aloy had hoped that sleep would somehow annul the bond she and Nil now shared, she had hoped in vain; when they broke camp the next morning, there was still undeniably something between them, something Aloy had to accept would never go away. She still wasn't sure she would call it 'trust', exactly, but her feelings towards her companion no longer ended at disgust mixed with begrudging respect. As she vaulted onto her mount, she remembered what he'd said when they first agreed to take this journey, about 'the bond of shared secrets'; she had scoffed at him at the time, but now that he'd actually told her his secrets, she thought maybe she understood what he meant.
"So, north?" Nil asked as they set off at a trot.
"To Sobeck Ranch," Aloy confirmed, "but we should head east as well. Straight north of us, there's nothing but wasteland and Machine sites; the nearest green is more east than north, and that's my best bet at restocking my herbs. We're not running low quite yet, but at this rate, we will be soon."
"Maybe you should stop wasting them on me," Nil commented.
"Maybe I should," Aloy muttered. "Anyway, I'm hoping we might find a Cauldron too, if we spread our search more, but Sobeck Ranch is our main goal."
"And then we'll come back and give the Roller blood to the Bacchan?" Nil asked pointedly. "Or are we just going to carry that with us until one of us accidentally drinks it?"
Aloy blinked. "I…forgot about that," she admitted. "Delivering Machine blood isn't usually on my to-do list. But yes, we'll go back and give the Roller blood to the Bacchan after we find Elisabet - I'm pretty sure I know where they live, and there's a good chance they'll smell the blood we're carrying, so they won't attack us."
"Smell?" Nil questioned.
"Brin always claimed he could smell the blood I was carrying from hills away," Aloy sighed. "If we ride up to a village of blood-drinkers with the canister open, hopefully at least one of them will know what we're bringing them. Especially if Rollers are so rare."
"Huh. So…north, then, for now. Into Deima territory." When Aloy glanced at Nil, she saw his teeth glint in the morning light. "More vicious than the Tenakth, Brin called them…I hope we run into them immediately."
"Well, if we do, hopefully my Focus will be able to see through whatever illusions they cast," Aloy said.
"Just as long as you find a way to let me have some of the fun, I won't complain," Nil stated.
"Didn't you get it out of your system with the prairie dogs?" Aloy groaned, though she knew it was a stupid question.
"The prairie dogs were only to tide me over," Nil responded. "I had hoped we'd get in a real fight by now."
Aloy sighed. "And this is why I let the Hollow Fort bandits live for so long," she muttered.
"Hm?"
She looked at him. "The bandit camp north of the Sacred Land, on the way to the Cut," she said. "I'd…known it was there for a while, but I left them be, since they were too out of the way to do much in terms of the slave trade, and…well, if all the bandit camps were gone, I was worried about what might become of you."
"Worried?" he repeated.
"Not for your well-being," Aloy clarified coolly. "I mean I was worried what you might do if there weren't any more bandits. You said you make opportunities to kill people; without bandits, I thought you might move on to…I don't know…Nora outcasts, maybe. Of which I used to be one."
"Nora outcasts are protected by politics," Nil pointed out.
"No, Nora outcasts have been abandoned by politics," Aloy said. "They're not allowed to speak with the tribe, or each other, nor is anyone allowed to speak to them. No one would miss them if something happened to them. I thought, without bandits to hunt, you might turn to them." She paused, then added, "But, after my time up in the Cut, one thing I realized was that I didn't have to worry about that. Even if there aren't any bandit clans, there will always be bandits, traitors and outlaws and…scum, as you so eloquently put it. You wouldn't be lacking for people to kill. And without camps, the bandits couldn't run slaving operations, so…on my way to pick up the Master Override, I took them out." She shook her head. "I definitely didn't expect you to invite me to a deathmatch, I'll tell you that."
Nil said nothing for a long minute; there was silence but for the sound of the Broadheads' hooves against the dead earth. When at last he spoke, he sounded…unsettling. "If I killed Nora outcasts…there would be no retribution?" he asked slowly.
She looked at him in surprise, only to see a gleam sparking in his silver eyes, and she felt her blood run cold. "You didn't know that?" she whispered.
"No," he replied dangerously. "No, Aloy, I did not know that."
Aloy closed her eyes and swallowed hard, fighting down the urge to vomit. "Nil…" she choked. "Please…please don't."
He didn't respond, and she wrenched herself into a state of relative composure and opened her eyes to glare at him.
"Don't you dare," she hissed. "When we go back east, don't you dare start hunting Nora outcasts! If I hear about a single one of them being hunted down like animals, I'll-"
"Kill me?" Nil asked slyly, his grin widening.
"No," Aloy all but whimpered, recoiling as she realized her mistake. "I can't…" She trailed off, icy-cold sickness roiling in her gut, desperately trying to get her thoughts in order so she could see a way out of this situation. Why had she sworn not to kill him on Rost's grave?
Just when she was about to come up with a decent threat, he said, "Well, it's like you said, there will always be bandits for me to kill; I don't have to resort to such underhanded measures just to do what I love."
She blinked. He shrugged.
"To be honest, I'd be delighted at the chance to pit myself against Nora again," he told her, "but if outcasts aren't even allowed to talk to each other, it wouldn't be the same. Don't worry about your people, Aloy, I won't hunt them even if I do make it back east alive."
Everything Aloy had been struggling with lurched, sending her insides summersaulting, her heart in her stomach and her stomach in her throat as she struggled to figure out how to respond. "Did you just…promise not to kill people - people no one would miss - just because…because I asked you not to?" she eventually managed.
Another shrug was the only response he gave, as though it wasn't a sacrifice on his part. Damn him, he was so confusing all of a sudden…After last night, she'd at least thought she would never have to second-guess him again, yet here he was, upending what she thought she knew.
What did she know…?
"…Thank you," she said at last. "It, uh…means a lot to me."
He just nodded, as though he knew exactly what she meant, which only served to baffle her further.
They kept riding in silence for a bit, which suited Aloy just fine. All around them, there was barely a hint of GAIA's work; the ground was dry and cracked, the rocks were bare of even lichen. There were a few cacti, but with all the rocks and ruins, it was far more lifeless than even the Daunt; it almost felt like an ideal place for Rockbreakers, but Aloy was too busy thinking about the man who rode beside her to worry about that, even though she hated Rockbreakers more than any other Machine. His comment about the Nora, in particular, reminded her of something that had crossed her mind the previous night, but that there hadn't had a good time to ask about…
"Well?" Nil spoke up, startling her.
"Hm?" Aloy blinked, shaking herself and turning to him.
He flashed his teeth at her. "I see a question in your eyes, like an arrow nocked and ready to fire. Are you going to ask it or not?"
"I…" A bit of heat prickled Aloy's cheeks. "I'm not…" She took a deep breath, then decided to take the subject from a side angle. "Nil, does the name 'Prefect Zaid' mean anything to you?" she asked him.
"Zaid?" He blinked, looking surprised. "Yes, very much so. He was my commanding officer when we raided the Nora, the man who first introduced me to Nora land. Why do you ask?"
"He was an ally of yours," Aloy sighed. "I should have guessed as much."
"You know him," Nil said, and it wasn't a question; his tone was grave, but when she looked at him, he was grinning. "You know, the battle against the Eclipse was the only time I've set foot in a settlement since my time at Sunstone Rock, but I hear things sometimes, when I pass through gates. Word was that Zaid managed to work his way into Avad's good graces, until he mysteriously vanished a few months ago. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
"Vanished?" Aloy asked. "That's what the rumors say?"
Nil shrugged. "It's pretty obvious to everyone that he's dead, and the higher-ups are just keeping the circumstances hidden to save face," he said. "But no one seems particularly inclined to look for the culprit."
"Huh." Aloy shook her head. "I really would have expected better of Avad than that."
Her tribeless companion chuckled. "Aloy, let's not play games," he smirked; "you killed him, didn't you?"
"I killed his men," Aloy replied, "and I struck him down. But I let someone else have the killing blow. She needed it."
"You let someone else have your kill?" Nil exclaimed.
"She needed it," Aloy repeated firmly. "Though she did give him a quicker death than he deserved."
Those silver eyes were positively gleaming. "This sounds like a story I'd pay to hear," Nil remarked, baring his teeth.
"No need," Aloy sighed. "It's not that complicated. On my way out of Nora land, I ran into a man named Yan, whose sister Nakoa had left the Sacred Land to hunt down and kill the man who murdered her father right in front of her when she was young, a soldier named Zaid. Yan asked me to find her and make sure she succeeded, and that she was safe. I made some inquiries at Daytower; there was talk of an attempted murder, but Nakoa wasn't there. I questioned Zaid, but he insisted it was all a case of mistaken identity and that he had nothing to do with what Nakoa had suffered."
She glanced at Nil to see him shake his head, a faint sigh of exasperation huffing from his nose; clearly, Nil already knew where this was going.
"He directed me to a small outpost northeast of Meridian, said he'd heard of someone being captured by bandits around there," Aloy went on. "I went to the outpost and asked, but…"
"Let me guess," Nil said, "there were no bandits."
"Never were," Aloy confirmed. "When the soldiers there heard Zaid had sent me, they tried to capture me."
"And you killed them all?"
"Easily," Aloy shrugged. "There were only like four of them."
Nil chuckled nastily. "Tough luck for them that they tried to mess with you," he commented.
"Yeah, well, I managed to follow some cart tracks to their base," Aloy went on, "this little fort in the cliffs. Turns out Zaid had been running a slaving operation behind Avad's back."
"Slaving?!" Nil sat up straighter at this, his smile abruptly replaced by an aggravated scowl, and he shook his head. "I wish I could say that surprised me," he growled. "It's a wonder Zaid ever drew breath without finding some way to get five shards out of someone for every time he inhaled…"
"Nakoa was there, as were some others," Aloy concluded. "Zaid came to make sure things went well…and they did, just, you know, not for him. I let Nakoa kill him; she became an exile just to hunt him down, she deserved it."
"Yeah, I've heard Nora who leave your Sacred Land aren't allowed to come back," Nil mused.
"Unless they're Seekers, like me," Aloy explained.
"Why is that?" Nil questioned.
"Something about how they'd be purged from All-Mother's memory if they stray too far from her, unless the High Matriarchs grant them her blessing to ensure they'd stay within her memory, or something." Aloy shook her head. "That's not the point right now, Nil. We're talking about Zaid."
"Why are we talking about him, anyway?" Nil asked.
So much for taking it at an angle. "Nakoa told me before the battle for Meridian that the only butcher more feared among the Nora than Zaid was Helis," Aloy told Nil, "but I wonder if there might be other Red Raiders with legacies to rival those, especially now that both of them are dead. Like, say, a raider named Aren."
The corner of Nil's lip quirked upward slightly.
"Well?" Aloy prodded. "Is there anyone back east whose only wish in life is to kill the Carja soldier known during the Red Raids as Aren?"
"Oh, I hope so," he said, flashing his teeth, though the spark in his eyes was faint. The smile faded almost immediately, and he added, "But if you're asking if there's anyone among the eastern tribes who can't sleep at night because my face haunts their nightmares…no, probably not."
"Why not?" Aloy demanded. "I bet you killed plenty of fathers and mothers under Jiran's rule. And that you've killed plenty since."
To Aloy's surprise, Nil visibly flinched and recoiled at that, like she'd struck a nerve somehow. "I've only killed bandits, Eclipse, and Bacchan since Jiran fell," he said in a low voice, but Aloy thought there was something haunted behind his silver eyes. Then he blinked and shook his head, and it was gone before she could be sure she'd even seen it. "As for during the war…well, to understand that, you need to understand a couple of other things: the politics of the Red Raids, and the…subtle, differences, between me and Zaid."
"Start with what makes you different from Zaid," Aloy told him. "If there is in fact anything."
"Zaid was very different from me," Nil insisted. "Don't get me wrong, his soul was shadowed too, but not the same way mine is. I told you last night that I'm a killer, not a torturer, remember?
"Yeah, I remember," Aloy responded. "And…Zaid was a torturer?"
"Exactly," Nil nodded. "As I delight in the kill, he delighted in the pain and suffering of others. You say this Nakoa watched him kill her father, but lived to tell the tale?"
"She was hiding in another room," Aloy said.
"Hiding?" Nil barked a laugh. "In one of those little ramshackle Nora huts? I guarantee you Zaid knew she was there, and that she was watching, and the only reason he didn't capture her to be sacrificed in the Sun-Ring like he was supposed to was because he took his own special delight in the knowledge that the memory of it would haunt and torment her for the rest of her life."
"That's sick!" Aloy exclaimed.
"Well, I'm not one to judge, but I don't disagree," Nil shrugged. "That was who he was. But even more than pain, he lived for profit. He would never lift a finger, not even to do what he loved, unless he was getting paid for it. Me, I hated getting paid, profiting from killing only cheapened the thrill of it, but he was always of the opposite mindset. I remember I once asked him why he didn't tickle our captives with his blade on the way back from a successful raid, and he replied that he might get paid less if they weren't in perfect condition." He shook his head. "Even what he loved most wasn't worth doing for free…"
"Hold on," Aloy interrupted sharply, and she raised her eyebrows at him. "'Tickle'?"
Nil shrugged, a small smirk on his lips.
"I don't know what's more disgusting, Zaid or the word you're using to describe torturing helpless captives," Aloy hissed.
"I was a soldier," Nil said, shrugging again; "we tend to understate things."
"'Tickle' is not an understatement!" Aloy snapped. "'Tickle' is a mockery!"
"Well, he knew what I meant," Nil said. "Of course, he was also a slippery liar, he could make a long, drawn-out, torturous death inflicted on a helpless victim sound like a noble and hard-won battle that he should definitely be rewarded for, as long as no one could prove otherwise. It didn't surprise me to hear that he managed to escape any form of punishment when Avad took the throne…and it doesn't surprise me that he managed to run a slaving operation under Avad's nose while living on Avad's good graces." Nil scowled again. "A slaving operation…"
"You're not fond of slavers," Aloy noted, deciding to drop the whole 'tickle' thing.
"It's a disgusting business," Nil said bluntly. "If you're going to take away someone's life, don't take half measures like a coward - do it with a bow or a blade, not shackles. I despised the practice even before I was a prisoner at Sunstone Rock, and after…well…" He shook his head. "And what makes it even worse is that the people who make it profitable to trade slaves are entitled asses who can't be bothered to carry out their own projects or do their own chores. Very little disgusts me more than someone who makes other people take care of them because they're too lazy to live their own damn lives. No matter how you look at it, every single aspect of the slave trade is vile."
Aloy stared. Nil was always eager to kill, but she'd never seen actual hatred in his eyes before.
The former Carja took a deep breath, as though trying to calm himself, and the glint of anger faded. "To be honest, though, I can't really say I'm surprised Zaid turned to enslaving people," he admitted. "To inflict such ultimate suffering on others without granting them the sweet release of death, and to get paid a mountain of shards for doing so…a life like that was exactly where he'd be happiest." He blinked, then added to her, "You were right, he didn't deserve a quick death."
"Well, that's what he got," Aloy sighed. "Admittedly, I probably wouldn't have been able to give him what he deserved, either…but at least killing him let Nakoa get some amount of peace." She glanced over at him. "You must have seen her before or during the battle against the Eclipse - she was stationed at the ridge, same as you."
Recognition dawned on Nil's face. "Light hair in a tight braid, pale skin, swirls of blue paint around her right eye?" he asked.
"That's Nakoa."
He nodded. "She was a good fighter," he said. "Nothing special next to you, of course, but fierce as any Nora. I think she took down a few of the corrupted Machines that would have gotten in the way of my kills."
For a moment, Aloy had thought he was saying he'd fought against her; glad to have been proven wrong, she said, "So she didn't mind helping you. But why wouldn't you have a reputation among the Nora like Helis or Zaid did?"
"If I have one, I would think it's for fighting brutally but honorably," Nil replied. "See, what you need to understand is that the whole point of the Red Raids was to bring sacrifices back to the Sun-Ring, an arena consecrated by the Sun Priests, where the blood shed in the Sun's honor would be recognized; kills made on the battlefield didn't count towards Jiran's attempts to end the Derangement. All of us were ordered to take as many people alive as possible, innocents and warriors alike, and most of us did. There were some, like Zaid, who found their way around those orders, but I followed them to the letter; everyone I killed would have killed me if my blade or arrows hadn't found their mark first."
"All of them?" Aloy asked, her eyebrows lifting.
"Of course," Nil assured her. "I never did anything that felt wrong, and though I might not have understood the code of honor I live by at the time, it still influenced me. It was understanding of my creed that I found at Sunstone Rock, Aloy, not the creed itself."
"I…see," Aloy said slowly.
"Of course, some tribes made for easier prey than others," Nil went on. "The Utaru, for example, didn't put up much of a fight, so we were able to take most of them alive. The Banuk and the Oseram…well, the Banuk make excellent Machine hunters, but they aren't soldiers, and the Oseram have intimidating weapons but give in without much trouble once disarmed. The Tenakth fight tooth and nail, but they don't have much of a society, more a loose agreement between them that just barely manages to make them a tribe, so we could pick them off and get to their young and infirm if we kept our wits about us. The most difficult tribe of all to handle was the Nora - savage as the Tenakth, but coordinated, a team of warriors working together who could do more damage with simple arrows than most Oseram can manage with their cannons. Only the strongest and deadliest of Jiran's soldiers were sent to Nora land; Zaid was one of the first, and of those, he was the only one who lived to see the war end." Out of nowhere, Nil chuckled. "Funny how he still died to Nora hands at the end…and he didn't even have the honor of dying to yours! I suppose, in a way, that was the death he deserved."
Aloy could only shake her head.
"Anyway, as I was saying," Nil went on, "the Nora were the most feared among the Carja, and only Jiran's best were sent to their Sacred Land. As one of Jiran's favored, I was granted that honor, but among those who joined me, I was nothing remarkable, at least as far as the Nora would have been concerned."
"What about the Forsaken Village?" Aloy asked pointedly. "You said that was your victory."
"But it wasn't my idea," Nil elaborated. "Zaid was the one who planned it, I was just the spearhead." He smirked. "I think Zaid hoped I would die that day, the three of us who distracted the braves were meant to be arrow fodder…and he was a jealous man, didn't like that Jiran favored me so much more than him, especially considering I didn't want most of the boons our Sun-King gave me. The other two did die, but I had the time of my life, and while Zaid bragged constantly about his idea and his conquest afterwards, I was the one Jiran considered promoting to kestrel. Still," he shrugged, "if the Nora blame anyone for that, they probably blame him, he made sure as many people as possible knew it was his plan. There's nothing your people would hold a grudge against me personally for."
"They're not my people," Aloy reminded him. "I…don't really have people. Friends, sure, but…not a tribe."
"But you fit in with them," Nil said, "at least as a warrior. I wonder what any of them could do if they tried using outlander weapons…" A light sparked in his silver irises.
"Not the point, Nil," Aloy stated, shaking her head.
"What was the point, anyway?" Nil asked. "You're the one who said last night that I'm not a monster, this isn't new information for you. Why are you acting like you still need to determine that?"
"Did I say that?" Aloy asked.
"Among other things," Nil smirked. "Remember? 'You might be a bloodthirsty madman, Nil, but you're not a monster.'"
"I…" Aloy blinked. "Yeah, actually, I do remember…"
"And it's true enough," Nil told her. "I don't delight in causing suffering like Zaid did, and Helis…well, Helis was something else entirely. I don't think he ever delighted in anything."
"I'd be surprised he did," Aloy remarked. "From what I've found, it seems like he resented the very idea of taking delight in something."
Nil chuckled. "I wouldn't have thought to put it that way before you said it, but that pretty much sums him up," he remarked. "It's a wonder he was ever married."
"I found some data points he recorded using the technology Sylens gave the Eclipse, and one of them is of him talking about how he thought of his wedding night whenever he couldn't sleep," Aloy confided in Nil.
The former Carja's eyebrows shot up into his headdress, his face going slack with shock.
"He talked about how he hated how fragile her face was and how soft the bed was, and how he pulled back the casement so he could lie down naked on the cold stone floor just because he wanted to spurn any semblance of comfort," Aloy explained. "When he woke up, she was lying naked on the stone with him, and that was how he knew she belonged by his side."
"Ah." Nil gave a slow nod, blinking a few times in rapid succession as though trying to dispel some mental image he was having a hard time banishing, presumably the same one Aloy was working hard to not start envisioning herself. "I…see. And yes, that sounds like Helis. So to answer the question you were trying to ask, Aloy, no, I'm not like the people the Nora personally resented. I was just another soldier, one who followed orders, fought with honor, and relished every moment he got to spend in battle against your…against them. And as much as I'd love to relive those days, I won't pursue it hunting outcasts, per your request. Does that put your mind at ease?"
"I…guess so," Aloy managed, her mind still catching up from the part where he'd deliberately avoided calling the Nora 'her people'. "Yeah, I guess. Um…thanks."
"Of course," Nil said, flashing his teeth. "You can always ask me anything, Aloy."
"…Thanks," she repeated. Then she remembered something with a jolt. "No, wait, none of this puts my mind at ease! Nil, when I told Avad your real name, he went pale and collapsed in his seat, I thought he might pass out - you do have a reputation!"
"I said I don't have a reputation among the Nora," Nil corrected, and his grin stretched wider. "The Carja are another story. See, for the Carja, it's not about what I did, it's about how quickly I did it. The fact that I joined the military after the Red Raids started and yet ended up raiding the Nora for several years before the rebellion is noteworthy; most Red Raiders sent into the Sacred Land were veterans who'd served before the Derangement began, and of the few young soldiers who were sent out that way, I was by far the youngest. On top of that, I did whatever my king asked of me - I had other duties during the war besides the raids, defending against attackers and the like, and I won quite a bit of renown among the Carja for that too."
"For your strength, or your brutality?" Aloy questioned.
"In this case, they're the same thing," Nil replied. "I was doing what I loved, and I was good at it. A lot of people died by my hand, and that got me recognized by my tribe. If Avad was about to pass out from fear when he heard my name, it's because of who I was to him, not to other tribes."
"You make it sound so complicated," Aloy sighed.
"Politics are complicated," Nil said simply. "But that's not my fault. I do what I'm meant to do in this world, and I don't care what people think. But I doubt I gave the Nora reason to loathe me as they did Zaid and Helis; I fought them with honor, and only killed in fair combat. Surely they would respect that?"
"Not sure about respect," Aloy muttered, "but maybe they don't hate you more than the average Red Raider, which…I guess has to be good enough."
Dragging her attention away from the man she'd spent far too much energy thinking about during this journey already, Aloy refocused on their surroundings. Though the ground below them was still dry, it seemed a lot less dead; there were scraggly plants again, little clusters of weeds or shrubs. Still no herbs, though, and that was really starting to bother Aloy. Medicinal herbs grew in the Daunt, and on the snowiest peaks in the Cut - DEMETER had planted them even in the most inhospitable of places, places its metal flowers hadn't been located, and yet Aloy was fairly certain they had seen none since crossing the border. As other plant life grew thicker under the trotting Broadheads' hooves, eventually giving way to strange, reddish-brown trees, Aloy pulled her mount to a slow walk, scanning the area for something worth picking, but there was nothing. Not even ridge-wood, she realized with a jolt - there was nothing!
"There was ridge-wood in the Oasis, wasn't there?" Aloy asked Nil, stopping her mount entirely. "The forest where we met Brin?"
"Yes," Nil nodded. "I picked a few stalks to replenish my arrows."
Frowning, Aloy looked around again, scouring the landscape. Knowing it wouldn't help, she instinctively tapped her Focus nonetheless…and though she didn't find anything she was looking for, the sudden appearance of several orange shapes made her gasp in alarm. She centered her attention on one, letting her Focus scan it.
"HOSTILE HUMAN
Deima Scout"
"Nil," she breathed, "be ready."
Nil said nothing, but she heard him move through the noise-dampening effects of her Focus, presumably to draw his bow.
Tapping the device again, all the shapes in Aloy's view vanished. Another tap, and they appeared again. They were unmoving, crouched as though hiding, presumably in the red-tipped tall grass that grew in patches here and there, and Aloy signaled her Focus to target one of them before deactivating it again, so she'd know where to look. Slowly, very slowly, she guided her mount towards the little arrow still displayed through her Focus's resting functions. She felt Nil behind her, letting her know through his silence that he was on guard. Through the thickening trees, Aloy approached the spot she had tagged, but saw nothing; when she tapped her Focus again, the orange silhouettes were gone, yet the arrow hadn't moved. Like Stalkers, Aloy thought, remembering Brin's suggestion.
Eventually, her Focus indicated that they'd passed by the targeted individual; after pacing around for another couple of minutes, she thought she knew exactly where the theoretical person was. Drawing her own bow, she nocked a single hunting arrow, pulled back, and shot at where the person was if she was right.
A scream of pain and shock, a splash of blood; the arrow had lodged itself in thin air that was no longer quite as thin as it had appeared, the shape of a person wavering where there had been nothing. Behind Aloy, Nil gasped, and then another arrow whizzed past her, burying itself in the throat of the flickering shape. There was another cry, this one choked and gurgling, and the person became visible as they fell, dead.
"Nil," Aloy groaned.
"You shot them first," Nil pointed out.
"I would have wanted to question them about where-"
Suddenly, their surroundings erupted with shapes, images of dozens of people, blurred and hazy as though seen through a thick fog, all armed, eyes glowing white.
"Don't trust your eyes, there are only about three others here," Aloy told Nil quickly, tapping her Focus again. Almost none of the projected people read as existing according to her Focus, but three orange silhouettes did light up among the false crowd. "I'll mark them; don't bother shooting anything that doesn't already have an arrow in it," she instructed, tagging one of the three people and nocking another arrow. It wasn't until she let fly that she realized the face of the person she was targeting looked eerily similar to Kryse, but when the arrow hit him, his form wavered. Don't trust your eyes, she reminded herself again.
As Nil's arrows felled the marked Deima and Aloy tagged another, the images around them shifted, until they were looking at reflections of themselves. Then the false Aloys started aging, until there were multiple of Elisabet Sobeck in the crowd; Aloy did her best to ignore the illusions and keep tagging the real people among the fakes. Once all three had arrows in them, she drew hardpoint arrows and started firing quickly, taking down one as Nil felled his third.
Just as quickly as the illusions had appeared, they vanished, leaving nothing but four dead bodies lying around them.
"Ahh," Nil sighed happily, "that was a welcome surprise. I thought Kryse said they only hunted at night or in the rain?"
"I think they do," Aloy told him, dismounting to inspect the fallen Deima. "My Focus said they were scouts. If I had to guess, I'd say they were going to follow us until nightfall and report back to their tribe, and then a hunting party would come join them before they tried to take us down."
Walking over to the nearest corpse, the one she'd shot while they were still invisible, she knelt down and turned them over, trying to learn what she could. Behind her, Nil had also dismounted, and was making to inspect another of the bodies, but she ignored him for now.
"How did you do it?" she murmured to the dead Deima as she dragged them out of the tall grass to get a better look, and she couldn't help but remember the first time she'd looted a Corruptor as she started searching the body for clues.
The person - a woman, Aloy could now see - had short hair, and was wearing a full suit of tough, blue-gray material that was almost form-fitted to her skin and not much else, presumably for stealth. A lump of some sort under the clothing, just over the sternum, caught Aloy's eye, and she tapped her Focus as she drew a blade and started cutting away the stitching to reveal a small power cell of some sort, her second sight working to decode exactly what the thing was. It was round, small enough to fit comfortably in Aloy's palm, and seemed to consist almost entirely of a moving circle of some kind, not unlike the rings of the holo-locks she'd found in ancient ruins. Once the cloth was cut away, it became clear that there were wires underneath the fabric that bound the device to the body, and, not wanting to strip a dead person, Aloy decided to simply cut the wires away, until the round object was in her hands. Her Focus was reacting with it now, as it had the override module when she'd first pulled it out of a Corrupter.
"CLOAKING MODULE
Military-grade device designed for covert stealth operations and illusory combat. Requires neurological signals for power; compatible with any humans or holograms scanned by a Faro Focus."
"Holograms," Aloy muttered, turning the thick disc over in her hands. "Did they scan Elisabet's image from my Focus and project it back at me…?" She shook her head. "And, 'neurological signals'…what are those? I think they have something to do with the body…?"
"Aloy?"
Nil had been muttering in the background, but the worry tingeing his raised voice got her attention, and she turned to where he was crouched over another corpse. "Yeah?"
"Were these people armed?" he asked, looking distinctly distressed.
"Armed?" Aloy blinked, then turned back to the body she'd been examining, setting the cloaking module aside for now. "They must have been…why wouldn't they be?" And yet she hadn't found a weapon on this one… "Must've been," she muttered, patting the dead woman down. "No one would go out without some sort of weapon…aha!" Something hard caught her attention on the inside of the body's left calf. Grasping a small lump that turned out to be something metal covered in the same rough cloth as the pants, Aloy pulled, revealing a blade slightly longer than her hand, sharp and stained with purple blotches. "Got it," she called to Nil, turning back to him and showing off the knife. "Treated with death bloom - between that and their illusions, they would have been more than deadly without my Focus. Check the insides of their ankles."
Her bloodthirsty but honorable companion turned back to the body he'd been kneeling beside, and a few seconds later, he managed to find and pull out a similar blade, also purpled with the rare poison found out here. "Whew," he sighed, grinning. "I was worried we'd killed helpless people for a minute there."
Despite everything, Aloy felt herself smile slightly. He really wouldn't want to kill someone who couldn't fight back. It's like Janeva said, he's not a blade without a thought behind it, he's not a butcher. Again, that odd sense of connection with him sparked in her chest, no longer hampered by worries about what evils he might have committed during the Red Raids. Nil was complicated, but…he wasn't evil. Not really.
Glad to be rid of that particular doubt, Aloy set aside the knife to pick up the cloaking module and stand up, eyeing it carefully. There were two grooved, concentric circles, surrounding a large button in the middle, and she placed her fingers on one of the rings and twisted. It slid with only a little resistance, ratcheting into place after about a third of a turn.
Frowning at the thing, Aloy walked back over to her Broadhead, still fiddling with it. The outermost ring seemed to have dozens of potential positions, turning so smoothly it was difficult to feel the individual notches in the movement. The inner circle rotated another third of a turn before slotting into place, to no difference that Aloy could determine. One more turn of the inner circle, though, and suddenly the outermost one stuck fast. Frowning, she returned the inner ring to the position she'd turned it to first, finding that this freed the outer ring to move again, but she didn't dare press the button yet, not until she knew more about what she was dealing with. As Nil continued examining the bodies, she looked closer at the device, eventually making out some symbols between the rings. They didn't appear to be glyphs, or at least they were none she recognized…
"Hey, look at this!"
Startled, Aloy looked up to see Nil standing over the fourth dead Deima, holding up a small pouch and grinning.
"What is it?" she asked him, jogging over.
"Take a look," he told her, handing the pouch over.
Curious, Aloy opened it, and was surprised to find a bundle of herbs, wild ember and ochrebloom. "So there are herbs out here!" she exclaimed, gladly using the contents of the bag to replenish her own stock - it wasn't nearly enough to replace everything they'd used thus far, but it was a huge help.
"Maybe we should ask Kryse about them next time we see him," Nil suggested. "If the Deima are controlling the herb supply out here, that would explain a lot."
"Controlling?" Aloy questioned, meeting his eyes quizzically.
He shrugged. "It's a pretty basic battle strategy, cut your enemy off from their access to supplies," he said. "Control of medicine leads to control of territory. And it seems like the Deima want everyone to fear them, so they'd probably want to limit the amount of healing anyone outside their tribe can do."
"That's…actually really insightful," Aloy remarked, dropping the now-empty bag.
"Glad to be of help," Nil said, flashing his teeth at her. "Did you figure out how they cast their illusions?"
"They used this," Aloy told him, holding out the thick disc she still held. "My Focus calls it a 'cloaking module', a military device for, um, 'covert stealth operations and illusory combat.'"
"Sounds like what we were dealing with just now," Nil remarked, taking it and turning it over in his hands. "How does it work?"
"I'm still figuring that out," Aloy answered. "My Focus says it's powered by neurological signals, whatever that means."
"Your guess is as good as mine," he shrugged, handing it back to her. "Maybe you should just try it."
"It might be dangerous to tinker with old-world technology I don't know how to use," Aloy said hesitantly.
His teeth flashed again. "You did with your Focus when you first found that, didn't you?" he pointed out.
"Fair point," Aloy admitted. Palming the device, she pressed the button.
A sting, like the shock from a Shell-Walker, zapped her skin where it touched the module, and a light that was probably only visible to someone with a Focus flashed over it. Ignoring the pain, Aloy looked up, and saw Nil looking around with wide eyes. Following his gaze, she saw a bunch of herself staring back at her, all with different expressions, most with bows drawn. Looking back down at the device, she read the display.
"MULTIPLY: 12"
"Huh," she muttered. Gingerly, she put two fingers from her spare hand on the outermost dial, and when the burn that still stung her palm didn't zap them too, she turned it, causing it to ratchet between its many different positions. With each click, the number went down by one; she tried turning it the other way, and the number increased.
"How are you doing this?" she heard Nil ask.
"I'm just…changing the setting, I think," Aloy replied. Curious now, she pressed her fingers on the inner ring and turned it to one of its other two positions. All the copies of herself vanished from her periphery, and with an added jolt to her skin, the display changed.
"MIMIC"
"What the…?"
Aloy looked up, and saw Nil staring at her, his brow furrowed. "What do you see?" she asked.
"I see…a man, dressed like Kryse, with dark skin and gray hair," Nil replied, blinking. "And your voice matches it." He shook his head. "If I look really closely, I can tell something's off, but it's incredibly convincing."
"Huh…" Doubly curious now, Aloy turned the outer ring again. A display flashed, projecting the person Nil had claimed to see, which changed to someone dressed like one of the Deima scouts.
"Now you look like one of these scouts," Nil spoke up, unprompted.
"I wonder…" she murmured, turning the outer ring further. Various images of people skipped past, and she scrolled through them until she found the image of Elisabet as she'd been while teaching GAIA.
"Is that…?" Aloy looked up to see Nil staring at her intently. "You're, uh…older, with short hair," he said, meeting her eyes.
"No," she told him; "I'm Elisabet. This is a mimicry of her appearance."
"Huh," Nil commented. "The resemblance is uncanny, I'll give it that…"
Suddenly uncomfortable, Aloy turned the inner ring again, to the position that wouldn't allow the outer ring to turn, getting another added jolt on top of the ever-present burn as the display changed once more.
"HIDE"
"Now I don't see anything," Nil informed her before she could even ask. "Or…no, I can just barely make out your outline if I look hard enough, but only just."
"Guess this is the setting they used to hide from us," Aloy said.
"Must be," Nil agreed.
"So you can hear me when I'm invisible," she mused. Wondering something, she turned back to "MIMIC", found the old man again, then reset to "HIDE" once more. "Do I still sound like an old man?"
"No, you sound like you," he answered.
"Hmm." Aloy pressed the button again, and it powered down, the slight stinging sensation fading as the illusions ended. "I think it has to be touching my skin to work," she told Nil; "it kind of burned my hand while I held it, like being zapped by a Shell-Walker or a Stormbird but not quite as painful. I think 'neurological signals' have something to do with the body…"
"With a living body, I'd guess," Nil added. "It would explain why the illusions stopped once they were all dead."
"Huh. Another remarkable insight," Aloy commented. "You keep surprising me." Internally, she winced; though unintended, she knew it sounded like she was teasing him. "Well, we can experiment with it more later. Right now, we should probably head back into the wasteland and keep moving - when the Deima find out we got rid of some of their scouts, they'll probably be mad, and we want to avoid conflict as much as possible on the way to Sobeck Ranch."
"At least we got the herbs you were looking for," Nil remarked as he vaulted up onto his mount.
"Yeah," Aloy sighed, pulling herself onto her own Broadhead. "Let's just get out of here for now. Yah!" she shouted at her mount, kicking it, and the Machine took off at a run, Nil keeping pace right behind her.
With the release of this chapter, I'm also posting a oneshot of the same category, titled "The Sun's Favor", to provide a little snapshot of Nil's time as a soldier during the Red Raids according to the backstory I've built for him.