Horizon: Echoes

by Wandergirl108

Months after the battle for the Spire, Aloy is still struggling with her identity. Desperate to find herself, and maybe her mother, she leaves for a new quest, unaware of the new threats she'll find…and, begrudgingly, she lets herself be accompanied by the only person she knows who understands what it is to not belong. Canon now, will be AU when HFW happens. M-rated as of Ch.20.

31. A Life Unlived

A/N: UGH. Sorry for the long delay, I decided that in order to avoid future hiatuses (hiati?), I was going to fully draft out all of the remaining 15(!) chapters and then try to play through HZD one more time before committing to a final draft of any of them. (I didn't quite manage a full playthrough by the day I eventually committed to, that being today, but I did play enough to realize I needed to tweak Nil's story in chapter 8 a little bit, so I did, if you care…Analytics suggest very few people actually read every chapter, which makes no sense to me, as every chapter of this story matters…) I swear, if Guerrilla are putting as much work and effort and sweat and tears into every aspect of the canon sequel as I have put into finishing this fanfic, I cannot blame them for having not committed to a release date for HFW as of the last time I checked, which was last week. The good news is that, as a result of all my hard work, I'm now comfortable committing to posting a new chapter every four days instead of every five from here on out.

Thank you to everyone who has Favorited, Followed, reviewed, or even just read this story. This is one of the most popular fics I've ever posted, and of those it's the only one I've written in recent years (aka the only one I don't hate). And extra thank you for your patience, everyone who has supported this project and waited for this chapter to come, you are why I committed to getting this thing done before the canon sequel's release and I hope you come away feeling like your patience has been rewarded. The next few chapters are gonna be kinda mellow, I won't lie, but down time is important for pacing, as anyone who comes to this story for the first time after this last hiatus will appreciate, and things will ramp up again in due time. Cheers!

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Back inside the wall surrounding the festival, Aloy was once again met with a thick crowd of people, more than she'd ever seen in one place, even in Meridian - which shouldn't have been surprising, considering an entire tribe was here, but it seemed impossible to even proceed without pushing past someone. Eyeing the flow of the crowd carefully, she calculated an opening.

"Come on," she said to Nil, "let's go see if we can still buy that flower for your mother."

"Aloy." Before she could step forward, his hand caught her arm, and she turned back to meet his pained silver eyes. "I can't," he told her softly.

"Yes you can," she stated. "Come on, I know you want to."

He sighed and shook his head, saying nothing.

"Okay, well, if you won't give it to her when we go back east, then I will," she shrugged. "I'll make sure she knows you're the one who picked it out for her, though."

"Aloy, please," he groaned. "Don't do this. Ina shouldn't have to be reminded of me, of the shadow she brought into this world. She's better off pretending I was never born."

"But she won't do that," Aloy pointed out. "You're her son, Nil. She wouldn't just forget you. And I think it would make her happy to know you care." Turning back to the crowd, she added, "Besides, I have several bags full of small metal objects that I can't use for anything but making purchases from the Corsair; I might as well take any opportunity I can find to spend them. I'm going to buy that flower for Ina, whether you come with me or not." Another opening in the crowd presented itself, and she took her arm back and stepped into the swarm. Though he gave a grunt of irritation, Nil followed.

Actually finding the wood carver's stall again was not going to be easy, Aloy quickly realized - the rest of the booths had been set up, and most of them were obscured by clusters of people looking over various wares; when she glanced at her map, she found it utterly useless for the situation. Trying to remember the path they'd wandered the first time, Aloy pushed through, and she couldn't help but take a closer look at the stalls she passed when possible. While most of what was for sale seemed impractical, she couldn't help but also feel a strange sense of…wanting? Something about people haggling over small, useless figurines sculpted from metal, or sparkly bits of jewelry that wouldn't help with survival in any way, just felt like…like another world, one she wished she could ever have been a part of, in ways even the ancient world never had. Still, she wasn't going to buy something she wouldn't use, not even to get rid of all this excess 'money' she was carrying.

Sometimes, she felt people look at them as they passed, furtive glances like those she had been subjected to as an outcast whenever she came near a Nora village following her every step, yet when she managed to make herself meet the looks, she was surprised to see no hostility in anyone's eyes. The Corsair were wide-eyed, but with something more like awe than fear - something else she had started to get used to in Nora land, now that she was the Anointed, but most of it seemed directed at Nil, not her. Even so, it was difficult to relax, she kept waiting for someone to get in their way or demand that they leave, though no one did. It was an uncomfortably familiar feeling, to be known by all but belong with none…

After a few minutes, Nil suddenly took her hand.

"They're not mad at us," he told her when she stopped and turned around to meet his mildly bemused gaze. "Stop glancing over your shoulder waiting for an attack; it isn't coming, and if it was, I would take care of it for you."

"We don't belong here," she mumbled.

"We don't belong anywhere," he chuckled. "That's why we came to the Forbidden West in the first place, isn't it? Neither of us truly belongs. But if we don't belong anywhere, then we can go where we please."

Aloy sighed, then stepped closer to him so she could lower her voice. "The last time I was at a festival, it was…the day before the Proving," she confided. "Everyone there looked at me then, too - the motherless outcast. I know it's not the same, but…with all these looks aimed at us, I can't help remember the last time I was in a place like this."

"Ah." Nil nodded, softening a bit. "Well, try to let it go, for your own sake. We're a curiosity to them, but we aren't outcasts."

Blinking against the burn in her eyes, Aloy forced herself to nod back and resume walking, glad that the rivers of people seemed inclined to flow around them rather than push against them, but Nil didn't let go of her hand, and she didn't pull hers away, either. Being able to hold her mate's hand helped her remember that this was different, that she was as far removed from the Proving festival as it was possible to be.

Finally, they reached a set of booths that seemed familiar, and it was with relief that Aloy spotted the wood carver's stall.

"Howdy!" she called to the man behind the table that now bore significantly less wooden figures.

"Well howdy, folks!" the carver exclaimed happily, a smile splitting his face, and Aloy felt herself relax slightly. "Good to see y'all again!" His eyes immediately focused on Nil, and he added, "I watched the fight. Ya cost me a thousand doubloons!"

"If you bet against me, that was your mistake," Nil said calmly, flashing his teeth.

"Aye," the carver chuckled; he didn't seem at all upset. "That fight was a match for the ages. How lucky we are that y'all managed to hold it in the arena, where it'll be recorded forever!"

"Recorded?" Aloy asked, her heart skipping a beat.

"Aye," the man nodded, giving her a pointed look. "You could probably ask the Sheriff to download it all to yer Focus, if ye like."

There was a lot to process about this simple statement - a man talking about a Focus's use like it was common knowledge, the fact that Nil's lunacy was preserved as a data point, the idea of having that pointless fight with her for the rest of her life. Drawing a deep breath, she forced a smile. "No thanks," she told him. "But, uh, do you still have that wooden lotus we saw earlier?"

"Aye!" the man exclaimed, ducking under the cloth-covered table and rummaging around before pulling out the carved flower Nil had picked out that morning. "Kept it safe, just in case y'all came back. You can pay me back some of the coin I bet on ye!" he added to Nil, an offhand laugh clarifying that he wasn't mad about losing so many of his 'coins'.

"What?" Aloy asked, turning to give Nil a questioning look.

Alarmingly, her partner didn't meet her eyes, instead shifting uncomfortably, his mouth closed.

"Nil," Aloy pressed in a low voice, "what is he talking about?"

"The money people bet on the fight," he mumbled, still not looking at her. "It wasn't just divided between the people who bet on me, I got a share too." Finally looking up, he turned to the merchant, though he still refused to glance at Aloy. "But I spent it."

"You spent it?!" Aloy and the man both exclaimed at once.

"Matey, there must've been hundreds of thousands of coins in the pool!" the carver cried. "Not many people bet on ye, ya must've won a pretty penny! How could you have spent it already?!"

"What did you spend it on?" Aloy asked sharply.

"I'll tell you later," Nil answered, and at last he met her eyes. "Don't worry about it, okay?" Before she could protest that she was very worried about it, he quickly added, "And I wouldn't have spent it on this carving anyway; if you really want to get it for my mother, that's your business."

"Do you have coin, little lady?" the merchant inquired.

Giving Nil one last glare, though she was more concerned than afraid or angry, she turned back to the man running the stall. "Plenty," she answered. "How much for the lotus?"

"Five hundred doubloons," he answered.

"You mean coins?" Aloy asked, already opening one of the sacks of useless metal objects.

The man laughed, which she took to mean yes, and she started counting out the disks.

"No need to count 'em out one by one, little lady!" the merchant exclaimed before she'd gotten to ten, and he pulled out a strange contraption, two bowls hung by wires from a thin metal pole that was balanced precariously on a stand. "Here we go," he muttered, tossing ten small golden objects into one of the dishes, which immediately dropped from the weight. "Just start pouring the coins into the other side; when the scale balances even, that's five hundred."

"Huh," Aloy remarked, pouring coins from her bag into the empty dish. "Convenient. Did the Old Ones come up with this?"

"Aye!" the merchant answered with a grin. "One o' their oldest tricks, far as I know, from back in the days before they had robots and holograms and the like. Easy there, missy!" he added as the 'scale' started to tip in the other direction, but Aloy had already stopped pouring.

"I get it," she assured him. "It's an easy enough idea to understand, just making sure the two sides weigh the same. Clever, though. We use shards the same way back east, but we have to approximate most of it; we could use tools like this."

"Aye," he chuckled as she started taking coins back, "I'd imagine so."

Slowly, the unbalanced contraption wavered, then evened out. Aloy wasn't sure she entirely trusted that it was precise, but of course, counting things out one at a time or weighing them by hand wasn't perfectly precise, either. Precision is not enough.

"Thanking ye kindly," the carver nodded. "And for another five coin, I'll package it up for ya, so it'll be less likely to break in yer bag while ye travel."

"Yes please," Aloy immediately responded, tossing another five coins into the dish.

He laughed again and took out a small wooden box and a few handfuls of what looked to be dead grass. Again, Aloy quickly understood the principle as he nestled the carved lotus inside the box and packed the dead grass around it - it would keep the carving from being jostled and hitting something, which could have caused one of the delicate petals to snap off.

"There you are," he told her, handing over the box. "Pleasure doing business with ye."

"Yeah…you too," Aloy said, taking the packaged carving. Forcing a smile, she glanced at Nil. "I'm sure she'll like it."

"She won't have a place to put it," Nil grunted. "Every flat surface in her home is covered with her work."

"I have no doubt that she can find a spot for a gift from her son," Aloy told him, and she held it out. "Do you want to carry it?"

"No," he answered flatly.

Sighing, Aloy stowed the box away in one of her own bags. As she did so, though, she felt an odd, heavy sensation she couldn't identify settle in her chest. Ina would of course find a spot in her home to display a gift her son had picked out for her…but that made Aloy think, and look around again at all the sparkly, useless decorations being sold at this festival. When she stepped away from the stall and started making her way past others, Nil right behind her, she found herself feeling…burdened. She couldn't buy any of these things for herself, because she didn't have a home - the only home she'd ever known was Rost's house, and now, without him, there was nothing there for her. So many people had homes, spaces they called their own, a place to go back to after a long day of whatever their life might hold; Aloy didn't. She had Nil, but…that wasn't the same…

Suddenly, she couldn't take it anymore. Picking up her pace, she hurried to the edge of the marketplace and started forging her way south, away from all the trinkets, until she found the area Nil had been in before, where the stalls sold food instead of crafts. The sights and the smells were so strange here, but these were oddities Aloy could actually explore - anyone could eat food, after all, whether they had a home or not. Curiosity and caution warred in her chest as she slowly browsed the many treats on offer; would trying any of this make her sick, since she'd spent most of her life subsisting on meat and herbs? She knew from experience that gorging herself on fruit after years of only meat would upset her stomach, but even so, she couldn't help yearning for experiences she'd never known, and decided to start with an odd arrangement of seasoned meats and vegetables on a stick, hoping it would be familiar enough to her system for her body to not reject it outright. Mindful of her constitution nonetheless, she ate slowly - not that that was difficult when the chunks of meat and plants were on a long, thin stick, figuring out how she was supposed to eat it took some effort, and eventually she settled for biting into the pieces from the side and then sliding them free. It was strange for different tastes and textures to mix in her mouth, and the flavors of the meat and vegetables seemed to have almost melted together before being coated in spices; it took her a moment to adjust, but by the time she'd managed to get half the chunks off the stick, she found herself enjoying the odd food arrangement.

With the one treat done, and her stomach not feeling too upset, Aloy looked around some more. She still wasn't quite prepared to try cakes, though she knew what bread was, but as long as she paced herself, she thought maybe she could handle fruit. A stall not far from where the waves lapped at the shore reminded her of Brightmarket, but the wares here were strange - enormous yellow-brown lumps, each one the size of an Annihilator's heart, caught her eye, and she asked the Corsair woman selling them what they were.

"Coconuts!" the lady replied brightly. "They only grow by the sea, but they're one o' nature's greatest bounties! Have a look and give 'em a shake, I promise ye they're all fresh!"

"A shake?" Aloy repeated, baffled, and she picked one up and shook it. To her surprise, she heard a sloshing sound, like a mostly-full canteen of water, and she brought the enormous fruit closer to her ear and shook again. "Is there water in this?" she asked.

"Coconut milk," the Corsair corrected. "Ya don't need food or water if ya have coconuts. And the husks are tough, perfect for nets, baskets, even garments in a pinch." She grinned, and Aloy noted that at least two of her teeth were missing, the rest a grayish-yellow. "Ye're from the east, ain't'cha? The two outlanders who've graced our festival this year. Honored guests or not, I won't offer ya a discount if ye wanna buy it, but I'd be happy to just show ye the beauty of the coconut fer free."

"Uh…" Aloy blinked, confused about the 'honored guests' part, but decided to let it go. "Sure," she managed at last, handing over the giant fruit.

"Right-o! Now see here," the lady said, and she pulled out a large metal tool that looked like a small hoe. "First, ya gotta get the husk off," she began, striking the coconut alarmingly hard so that the curved blade was buried deep into what Aloy had assumed was the fruit's flesh; instead of leaking or spurting juice, however, the damage stayed almost dry, and Aloy watched as the woman grunted with effort and peeled away a thick layer of fibers that looked like grass stalks all packed together with chunky, sticky material. "Like I said, useful stuff," she told the outlanders, holding out the fibers she'd stripped off so Aloy could get a closer look. "Strong, tough to break, coconut husks have a hundred uses. And underneath…" She turned the coconut, revealing a smaller orb nestled under the layer she'd just taken a piece of. "That's the actual nut." With evident effort and another tool used to hold the coconut still while she worked, she peeled off the rest of the husk, leaving a brown ball about a third the size of the original fruit; then, that done, she pulled out a hammer and chisel, placed the ball on a metal dish, and cracked it open with a violent swing of the hammer. From the sound it made, Aloy could only assume it was incredibly tough; underneath the brown skin, the fruit was white as snow, but seemed to be merely a shell holding a clear liquid that spilled out into the dish. "Food and water," finished the Corsair woman. "Ye could live for years on coconuts alone."

"What a strange fruit," Aloy remarked, leaning closer. "I've never seen anything like this. And they only grow by the ocean?"

"Aye," nodded the vendor. "Palm trees only grow by the sea, and only in places where it's warm all year 'round. We grow a lot of 'em on the beach just south of Dry Bones, if ya ever care to go that far."

"Huh." Her curiosity only growing, Aloy pulled out a handful of coins. "How much? I'd like to try some."

"You sure?" snickered the woman. "Ya don't wanna spoil yer appetite before the banquet."

"Banquet?" Aloy asked.

"Aye!" laughed the lady. "What kinda harvest festival would it be if we didn't all get to gorge ourselves on the bounty? All these stands ye see are for those who can't wait or want special treats."

"Are we…allowed?" Aloy asked. "To eat at the banquet, I mean? We aren't Corsair…"

"I'm sure ye'd be welcome," the woman stated. "Ye're our honored guests, after all!"

"I'm not sure why we'd be honored," Aloy mumbled, and Nil chuckled behind her. "Anyway, I'd still like to try this coconut."

"Fifty doubloons, then," the vendor stated, and Aloy counted out the disks before the merchant could even pull out one of the 'scales' used for larger purchases. The food on the sticks had cost a hundred, and she'd bought one of those for Nil too, but even now, the first of the many sacks of coins she'd traded for still held a fair number of 'doubloons'.

Beginning to despair of ever having a means of ridding herself of all these useless metal objects, Aloy picked up the two halves of the coconut, which the merchant poured the spilled juice back into. There was a sort of outer shell that was remarkably tough, that had been what the chisel was for, and the white part was a separate layer of meat; Aloy handed one of the halves to Nil before drinking from the other. Though the fluid looked as clear as water, it had a faint, almost sweet flavor, and Aloy grunted in surprise that fruit juice could be so pleasantly mild.

Once the juice was gone, Aloy tried eating the fruit itself, finding it tough and equally mild in flavor; it was still sweet, but not too much so. Scraping the white substance out of its shell was something to occupy herself with as she walked away from the fruit vendor and resumed looking around, though she chose to discard the rest after she managed to extract a few bites - it didn't taste good enough to be worth filling up before the supposed banquet. Nil immediately followed suit, saying nothing, but Aloy thought he looked glad for the excuse.

So close to the shore, she found her attention drawn to the massive boats that had taken her breath away the first time she'd seen them, eventually leaving the majority of the crowd behind to take a closer look. They were far out to sea still - the shore was crowded with much smaller boats that the tribesmen must have taken to actually get to land - but even in the light of the sunset, they were beyond anything Aloy had ever seen in modern times, almost more awe-inspiring than Meridian.

"Impressive," Nil remarked. "Where did they get all the wood to make these? Cities built from metal or stone, I understand, but to create floating towns like this…"

"The Old Ones made incredible things too," Aloy said. "I bet the Corsair learned how to do it from somewhere in Dry Bones. Maybe there's less wood to it than we think." She glanced at Nil, and saw him regarding the vessels with a passive expression, his head tilted. "You've been pretty tame since the fight," she remarked. "Is all of this reminding you what it's like to live in a settlement?"

He gave her a sidelong look. "Maybe," he grumbled. "Though it doesn't do me any good to remember. Still, the fight with Shands should sate me long enough to pretend I can be civil, at least until the festival's over."

"I thought you didn't like pretending," Aloy teased.

Nil shrugged dismissively, and she wondered how much of it was really pretending. Maybe he wasn't as utterly at peace with himself as he seemed to be…The idea unsettled her, though she couldn't quite place why.

"Howdy there, outlanders!"

Before Aloy could start pressing Nil for answers, a deep voice cut through the sound of the waves and the relatively distant crowd, and they both turned to see a massive, purple-cloaked figure with dark skin and ropes of gray hair making his way over to them.

"Sheriff Orns," Aloy said, resisting an urge to step back.

"Aloy," nodded the Sheriff. "And Aren, was it? Good to see you both again. I would have caught up with you sooner, but I had other business to attend."

"I'm sorry about Shands," Aloy told him quickly.

Orns waved a massive hand. "Don't be," he told her. "That fellow got what was coming to him." He turned his dark brown eyes on Nil and added, "Being honest, I'm impressed that someone managed to put him in his place. Thank ye for that."

"It was my pleasure," Nil chuckled, flashing his teeth.

"Shands wasn't just put in his place, he was killed," Aloy pointed out.

"Aye," Orns nodded at her, "but he learned before he died. I was afraid he was beyond hope."

"Beyond hope?" Aloy repeated, and she shook her head. "Wasn't he your first mate? Your favored, to take your place leading your tribe?"

"He was," Orns sighed, "but only because he was our best fighter, and ambitious to boot. He challenged my last three first mates to duels and defeated them all; I knew if I didn't name him my first mate, he'd just keep it up. Besides, he was strong, and no mistake, and with the Derangement getting worse, we do need someone strong at the helm. All the same, I had my doubts, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little relieved he was bested." Before Aloy could protest again, he raised a hand. "Enough about that," he stated; "no sense arguing about what's over and done. I was hoping y'all would sit with me at the banquet tonight, if you'd humor me."

"Why?" Aloy asked.

"You're our honored guests, both of ye," Orns smiled, "and I'd like to talk to you. Were you planning on attending?"

"If we're allowed," Aloy answered hesitantly.

The Corsair Sheriff laughed. "Ye're mighty skittish, ain't'cha?" he remarked. "Is my word that you're welcome here not enough for ya? It's my tribe, little lady; what I say goes. Of course you're allowed - more than that, you're welcome!"

"Then, yes," Aloy told him. "We'd be happy to attend the banquet. And we'd be happy to sit with you, if that's really okay."

"Follow me, then," Orns said, sweeping his hand in a wide gesture. "I get first pick of the nature's bounty, o' course, but you two can pick with me."

"No, that's fine-" Aloy began.

"I insist," Orns stated, leaving no room for argument.

Biting back more protests, Aloy conceded and followed the massive man in purple, Nil by her side. "So, uh…who's your first mate now?" she inquired as they walked back into the crowd, which parted readily for the Sheriff, and Aloy instinctively kept close to his back so as to not get separated from her host; there was barely a sliver of sunlight on the horizon, but all sorts of lamps had been lit all around the festival, strung along between poles overhead, so that it was still almost as bright as day.

"At the moment, no one," Orns replied, glancing back at her, and to her surprise, he was smiling. "Since tomorrow's contest day, I figured I'd pit the deputies against each other in the arena, so whoever succeeds me will truly earn it."

"What?!" Aloy yelped, drawing a lot of looks from the Corsair milling around them, which she ignored. "You're going to make them kill each other and whoever's left gets to succeed you?!"

"Of course not!" Orns laughed. "That arena ain't just for fighting, little missy! All sorts of Corsair are gonna be competing tomorrow in feats of strength and smarts, without bloodshed. The toughest course will be tackled by the deputies, and whoever finishes first will be my first mate."

"So it's…like the Proving, then?" Aloy asked, calming down.

"Eh?" Orns inquired. "What's that?"

"The Nora have a similar custom, held every year as a coming of age ritual," Aloy explained quickly. "We hunt Machines and carry our trophies across a series of paths in the mountains to present it to the waiting Matriarch. Anyone who finishes is made a brave of the tribe, but the first to finish gets to ask for a boon, anything they want."

"Huh," Orns remarked. "Well, you'll find the challenges my deputies will face are a fair bit more complicated than that. Still, it's a similar concept. Interesting to hear that that's a regular thing for an eastern tribe."

"Do you have any idea who might win?" Aloy inquired. "Or…anyone you're hoping might win?"

They'd reached a space away from the stalls and booths now, where there were long tables set up almost as far as the eye could see, all laden with foods Aloy couldn't identify. Only a few Corsair were here, and all of them wore either red or blue cloaks. Orns stopped and looked around quickly, then bent closer to Aloy. "Between you and me, little lady," he murmured, "I'm hoping Lanida claims victory. There hasn't been a lady Sheriff in the history of our tribe, but she's shrewd, clever, and tough enough to get this far. I'd pick her myself, but…well, if she's gonna make history, she needs to earn it."

"Didn't Shands say he wanted to name her his first mate?" Aloy asked as Orns straightened up and turned to greet an approaching deputy.

Nil chuckled. "So he did," he answered for the preoccupied Sheriff, and Aloy stepped away from Orns and closer to Nil so they could talk without bothering the leader of the Corsair tribe who was conversing with one of his people. "In his honor, I hope she wins, too. That way, he'll leave nothing undone."

"You really liked him, huh?" Aloy asked, unsure whether or not she was teasing him.

Her partner flashed his teeth at her. "He was a splendid opponent," he answered, "and a kindred spirit. I'm glad I got to be friends with him."

"Friends don't usually try to kill each other," Aloy pointed out.

"Well, some friendships are different than others," Nil shrugged.

A chuckle drew Aloy's attention back to Orns, who was facing them now, the deputy having gone somewhere. "You two are quite a pair," he remarked. "And yet, you seem to match each other perfectly, like the wind and the waves."

"Uh…thanks. I think," Aloy responded.

"Heh…See anything you like here?" the Sheriff asked abruptly, gesturing to the tables upon tables of various foods. "It's yours if ya want it."

"I've never seen anything like this," Aloy replied. "Any of it. Nil?"

"I don't mind what I eat," the former Carja shrugged.

"Nothing at all?" Orns pressed. "You can have your pick. You must have a preference?"

"I've lived most of my life on meat and herbs I gathered myself," Aloy said. "I don't know what there even is to choose from. I'd…like to try some of everything, but that probably isn't a good idea." She glanced at Nil questioningly.

Nil shrugged again. "I miss spiced apple sauce on boar meat, but I doubt there's any of that here," he said. "Beyond that, I'm fine with anything."

"Hmm…" Orns frowned, stroking the braided gray ropes of his beard. "Spiced apple sauce on boar meat…No, can't say we have that, exactly, but I might know of a dish ye'd like. As for you, miss, if you really have no requests…"

"I'll just eat whatever Nil's eating," Aloy said. "Or what you're eating…Maybe I could try both?" She suddenly thought of something and quickly added, "Just as long as there aren't any blueberries."

Orns laughed, slapping his stomach in that way Kryse did. "I'll keep that in mind," he chortled, turning away. "Come along, now."

"Blueberries?" Nil asked as they followed the Sheriff past several staggering displays of food.

"The Nora grow blueberries, but…they make me sick," Aloy told him.

To her surprise, he didn't question this, just gave a soft "hm" and nodded, leaving her feeling slightly off as they walked - they had grown so close lately, it had almost started to feel like he could hear her thoughts even when she tried to hide them, so how did he not hear them now? Frowning to herself, Aloy set it aside as they reached a small, round table covered in purple cloth that looked far finer than anything Aloy had ever seen in Nora land. Spaced around it were three chairs: one massive and cushioned, one only slightly less elaborate, and one plain.

"Normally, I'd sit with my first mate," Orns told the outlanders, making for the large seat that was clearly his, "but of course, I don't have one at the moment. Besides, it's only fitting that the one who bested him take his place tonight; and for you, miss, I had another chair brought over too."

In the moment Aloy hesitated, Nil quickly made for the plain chair and sat down, leaving her with the seat that was clearly meant for the Sheriff's first mate. Seeing this, Orns raised his eyebrows at Nil, and Aloy swallowed uncomfortably, but Nil's face was set.

"Can I just…get a regular chair, too?" Aloy asked after an awkward moment. "Please?"

"Aloy," Nil sighed.

"I don't want it," Aloy told him before he could say anything more. "I'd rather just have a plain chair."

"Heh," Orns huffed, and he reached up and tapped his Focus. Aloy's attention sharpened as he tapped a few things in the display she couldn't see, then spoke. "Another normal seat for the outlanders, if ye'd be so kind," he said. "They don't want Shands's chair; let the deputies squabble over it." A pause. "Thanking ye kindly." With a nod, he tapped his Focus again, and his eyes met Aloy's. "That'll be taken care of in a moment," he told her.

"Thanks," Aloy managed.

Orns chuckled. "You act like you've never seen someone use a Focus before," he remarked. "Yet you have one of yer own. Word from Kryse is that you're the only easterner who uses a Focus, but I didn't believe it until I met ye."

"It's complicated," Aloy mumbled as a man in a red coat came over with a chair like the one Nil sat in, a man in blue hurrying behind him. The captain and deputy quickly replaced the chair that had belonged to Shands, carrying the almost-throne away, and at last, Aloy sat down.

"So," Orns said, "tell me about yourselves. How is it y'all came west of the safe lands together?"

"That's a long story," Aloy said, immediately uncomfortable.

"The short answer is that, through two unrelated sets of convoluted events, neither Aloy nor I truly belong with any tribe," Nil spoke up, and he flashed his teeth at the Sheriff. "I know where I belong, but Aloy…well, she's not so sure of herself. Our paths crossed a couple times a few months back, as we went about our own journeys, and one day she came to me for advice; we talked a bit, and decided we'd come to the Forbidden West together." He shrugged. "We weren't so close when we left; a lot of what we've come to share came of surviving out here, away from the eastern lands."

"Hmm," Orns mused, and he glanced between them, his brown eyes oddly knowing. "I see y'all have your secrets. Alright then, I won't pry. So…how's the west treating ya, compared to yer safe lands?"

"It's been…interesting," Aloy replied. "The Machines we've seen here but don't have back east are fearsome, and we don't have anything like Dry Bones, or the ocean."

"Or the Deima," Nil spoke up, flashing his teeth. "For all the different ways the six eastern tribes fight, none of them hunt like the Deima. Say, did you know they can pretend to be you?"

"What?" Aloy blinked at her partner.

"Remember that one cloaking module you experimented with?" Nil asked her. "That person you disguised yourself as, it was Orns's face." He smiled at the Sheriff. "I recognized you the moment I saw you, though it took me a second to remember from where."

"Aye," Orns nodded grimly. "The Deima can have any face they please. We don't stand against 'em, don't dare. I'm surprised they haven't given you trouble."

"They have," Aloy admitted. "We've had to fight them off a few times, and…we might not have survived without the medicine and advice we got from Kryse."

"Kryse," Orns repeated, and he smiled. "He told us about y'all, y'know, a couple months back - and a fair bit more today, too. I hear he brought y'all to the festival himself."

"He's been a huge help to us," Aloy told Orns. "He was our first ally out here - not counting Brin, a man who came west from the safe lands to join the Bacchan."

"How did he end up tribeless, anyway?" Nil inquired.

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say he's tribeless," Orns responded. "He's just not suited for life cooped up on a ship, is all - cabin fever affects him differently, makes him shut down rather than look for a brawl, he can't live our kinda life."

"Cabin fever?" Aloy asked.

"An old-world term, for the madness ye get when you've been stuck inside for too long," Orns explained. "Kryse just can't live with it, he needs to be able to keep walking his own path, punching it out on Bloody Beach didn't fix it for him. And that's okay, y'know? Some men are meant to float along on Mother Ocean's waves, others are meant to wander on dry land on their own two feet. We let him go his own way, but we didn't cast him out or anything of the like, he just comes and goes as he sees fit." He tilted his massive, grizzled head. "I am glad y'all found each other, though," he said. "I get the sense y'all are like him, in ways none of us are. Everyone needs that, ya know?"

Aloy nodded, swallowing back a wave of emotion. "He's been a good friend to us," she said. "I'm glad we found each other, too, and not just for the night bloom and limberweed he sold us."

"Limberweed…So you've really fought the Deima," Orns mused, and it didn't sound like a question. "Heh…I'd ask why none of the other wanderers from the east have been half as tough as the two of ye, but of course, I already said I wouldn't pry."

"Nil and I are…special cases," Aloy told him. "In our own ways. But I can understand why no one else has managed to stand up to the Deima. Do you know what they do to the people they capture?"

"'Fraid not," Orns replied, shaking his head. "Their business is theirs. Not sure how Kryse managed to make peace with 'em, either." He huffed a heavy sigh. "The Deima own the land," he said; "everything between your safe lands and the sea belongs to them. Especially with their new mother-goddess giving them directions regarding who's of value in this world."

"The Humanoids," Aloy said.

"Aye," Orns nodded solemnly. "They're everywhere, y'know. They don't feel pain, so they can use those cloaking modules the Deima wield while walking or fighting without having to power 'em down. They're always watching, calculating their conquest of mankind, making sure we don't keep herbs we don't deserve…"

"And no one dares try to stop them," Aloy said. "Well, Nil and I are going to try to parlay with the Deima after the festival, maybe we can convince their mother-goddess to change her mind about things. I can't let her replace humans with Humanoids, I have to at least try to stop her."

"Hah!" Orns laughed. "Best of luck to ya with that, little lady!"

By now, the tribe as a whole had mostly shifted to the vast field of food-laden tables; several Corsair in blue coats came over to the Sheriff's spot bearing dishes and jugs and cloths and what looked to be small tools, as well as a few platters of fruit and meat. Aloy pressed her lips together and tried to give polite smiles to the men arranging things in front of her, too self-conscious to say anything more with people listening in. She, Nil, and Orns were given their own setups: a plate, a cloth, a cup, and small instruments Aloy could only guess at the purpose of. To her dismay, she saw blueberries among the fruits piled in one of the bowls that were set down in the center.

"Dig in," Orns told them. "This should be enough to whet yer appetite for the main course, aye?"

"Main course?" Aloy asked.

"What, did you think this was all we were gonna eat?" Orns laughed. "It's the harvest, missy! Tonight, we eat until we can't eat any more!"

"Uh…" Aloy swallowed, already feeling sick as she remembered the last time she'd eaten that much.

Beside her, Nil was already scooping fruits onto his dish using a round, flat tool that had come with the bowl. Trying to refocus, Aloy watched him as he put the round tool back with the fruit and reached to spear some chunks of meat with a pronged instrument that had come with that platter. Orns was scooping fruit himself, and Aloy studied them both; the way Nil handled the tools with ease made her feel like she was being left out on some secret.

Setting her jaw, Aloy reached and took one of the tools sitting in a pile of meat, spearing some to bring back to her plate. It didn't come off the prongs easily, and she took the only tool she'd been given that was familiar - a knife - and scraped it off, hoping she wasn't doing something wrong. Eyeing the fruit pile, she decided she could probably pick out some pieces that hadn't been touched by the blueberries, and she went to stick the tool she'd used to get meat into a yellow chunk.

"Aloy, don't mix the utensils!" Nil spoke up, chuckling. "That fork goes in the meat, there's a spoon for the fruit."

"Is it that big a deal?" Aloy asked, glancing over at him.

He flashed his teeth at her. "Nora savage," he teased lightly. "Didn't Rost teach you table manners?"

"Rost did the best he could!" Aloy snapped, bristling as she returned the 'fork' to the meat platter. "The Nora don't use tools like these, I've never seen them before. Anyway, I was just trying to avoid the blueberries, that's all."

"Oh, tarnation," Orns grunted. "I'm sorry about that, little lady, I forgot to request the chefs leave 'em out. It's alright, you can use yer own fork to get the fruit chunks ye want."

"…Thanks," Aloy said, only knowing from this comment that it would have been rude to do so otherwise, and she picked up the little pronged tool she'd been given and started spearing pieces of colorful fruits, even some berries that weren't blue.

With food on her plate, Aloy waited a moment, watching the two men as they started eating before copying the way they used the small instruments. It wasn't hard to understand what the utensils were for, at any rate - it was certainly a lot less messy using them to eat. But again, Aloy got that heavy feeling in her chest, watching even Nil fit perfectly into these weird eating rituals that she had never known. Even if the Nora as a whole never used utensils like this, it just reminded her that, though he was tribless as she was, he had had a tribe once, while she never had, and it hurt to think that she probably never would. Most of the time, she could avoid thinking about that, but…

Drawing a deep breath, Aloy focused on the strange flavors of the fruits she'd picked out; some were squishy, others stringy, some dry, others juicy, some with a faint but sweet flavor, some with a sharp sweetness that almost burned, and plenty in between. She was careful to eat meat between every bite of fruit, hoping to ease the shock to her stomach, and though her gut wasn't entirely unbothered, she didn't feel like she was going to throw up. After a few moments, once she felt confident she had the hang of the tools and had picked out which fruits she liked best, Aloy lifted her gaze to Orns.

"So," she said, "your Focus has been handed down for generations?"

Orns swallowed, wiped his mouth with a cloth, then nodded. "Aye," he responded. "All of 'em have been, really, but mine has all the data points we've gathered since we first found this old city. What of yours?"

"I found one in some ruins when I was a child," Aloy answered. "This…isn't that one, that one was destroyed, but an associate of mine, a man named Sylens, is good with Focuses, and he backed up the data points I'd found and copied them to this one for me."

"And where is this associate?" Orns inquired. "He back east?"

"Yeah," Aloy nodded. "He…comes and goes as he pleases."

"So you have ruins back east," Orns mused.

"None like Dry Bones," Aloy told him. "It's all been taken back by nature, or it's underground." Pursing her lips, she hesitated, thinking about Maker's End and the facilities she'd seen, but she couldn't stop herself from asking, "Do you…know the name Elisabet Sobeck?"

"Dr. Sobeck?" Orns asked, his eyebrows lifting, and Aloy's heart skipped a beat. "Aye, of course I know the great Dr. Sobeck - finest mind of the ancient world, chief scientist of Faro Automated Solutions until the company switched to making war machines, progenitor of the Claw-Back that saved the planet before the Faro Plague, and mastermind behind Project Zero Dawn."

"You already know all that?" Aloy breathed, her eyes widening. "How come Kryse didn't even know her name?"

"Well, the knowledge we've amassed from these ruins over the generations isn't well-known to every Corsair," Orns explained. "Not that we hide it, but some men just don't care, and we don't force anyone to learn something they don't care about or need to know. By the time Kryse started gathering information, he'd already left us, and he's never asked us about history, not even when he comes back. Says he cares more what's happening in the here and now."

"What do you know about Project Zero Dawn?" Aloy inquired.

"Not nearly as much as I'd like," Orns sighed. "We know about the Faro Plague, o' course - from the way you're talking, I'm assuming you do too. And we know that Project Zero Dawn was the world's only hope against the Faro Plague, but what exactly it was or how it worked, that's been lost somehow." He shrugged. "We assume it succeeded, since we've seen the old war bots lying around dead, but we haven't found any records of the Old Ones celebrating their salvation. There's a piece missing, and we haven't uncovered it."

"…I have," Aloy said softly.

"Hm?" Orns grunted, blinking. "What's that ye say?"

"The facilities where Zero Dawn was worked on…they're in the eastern lands, where Nil and I came from," Aloy said. "I…managed to get inside them, and piece together what happened."

Orns tilted his head, giving her a sidelong look. "Kryse said something, when I asked him what all he's found in the last year and he told me about y'all," he mused. "Said you claim that the Old Ones left behind a machine that would protect the world after they were gone…a machine built by Dr. Sobeck."

"Yeah," Aloy nodded. "That…was Project Zero Dawn. It wasn't a weapons program, it was-"

"Now hold on." Orns lifted a hand, silencing her. "If ye've pieced all this together from exploring old ruins, then that information is stored on yer Focus, aye?"

"Yes…" Aloy answered with a nod, if hesitantly.

"Then send it to me," Orns said. "I'd like to learn from the source, and have the information for my tribe to carry, if it's alright with you."

"Uh…okay," Aloy responded. "How do I…do that?"

"Haven't you ever interfaced with another Focus before?" Orns asked. "Courtesy of that associate of yers?"

"He's the one who deals with Focuses," Aloy told Orns; "he's never taught me how to do anything myself. Our alliance is…subject to circumstance."

"Hmm…Well, it's not too hard to connect," Orns said. "Scan my Focus with yours, and I'll scan yours with mine; you should get an option to establish communication."

"Okay," Aloy said, already reaching for her device, and Orns did the same with his. Her Focus scanned the signal coming off Orns's Focus, and then a display popped up.

"Focus detected: Corsair Sheriff
Establish connection? Y/N"

"Yes please," Aloy said, and she reached out and tapped "Y". This brought up a new display:

"Identify Focus username
Audio
Keyboard"

"Uh…" Confused, Aloy tapped "audio", and this brought up another display.

"Speak Focus username"

"…Aloy," Aloy said out loud.

"Focus username: 'Aloy'
Correct? Y/N"

For the first time, Aloy saw her own name spelled out in glyphs, and she stared at it for a long moment. "Yes," she finally breathed, tapping "Y".

"Establishing connection…"

A bar filled up, and then the web of light that always surrounded Aloy when her Focus activated expanded, now containing both her and Orns. Feeling slightly awed, Aloy looked around.

"Right-o," Orns said, smiling at her. "Now, if ye'd be so kind, I'd appreciate it mightily if you could send me the data points you've found regarding Zero Dawn."

Nodding, Aloy tapped her data point cache. "There's a lot," she told Orns, and the more she thought about it, browsing through the memories she'd gathered, the more uneasy she became. "I…think I'd rather keep most of them to myself…" Glancing over at him, she said, "I'll tell you what: I have three holo points here that get most of the story across, and you can ask me questions about them later."

"Sounds fair," Orns nodded.

"Okay…" There was a set of glyphs that read "send message" hanging between her and the Corsair Sheriff, and Aloy tapped it, opening up a display box that was entirely empty. Already guessing what she was supposed to do, Aloy placed a finger on the holo point she'd found under Sunfall titled 'The Bad News', then dragged it to the box; the icon followed her instruction. Satisfied, Aloy did the same for 'The Good News' and the emergency recording that documented the Omega Override Event, then waited while the display told her the data points were being copied. When all was clear, she tapped the word "SEND".

"Send message with attachments? Y/N"

"Yes," Aloy said, tapping "Y".

"Sending…"

A bar filled up.

"Message sent."

The display flashed, and Aloy dismissed it.

"Got it," Orns told her. "If this is really the piece we've been missing, then I thank ye."

"How do we, um, end this?" Aloy asked, gesturing around them.

"Just deactivate 'em," Orns told her. "You want me to save you as a contact, so I can call you anytime?"

"Oh, uh, no thanks!" Aloy said quickly, tapping her device. Another display came up as she did so:

"Save contact 'Corsair Sheriff'? Y/N"

Aloy tapped "N", and the displays disappeared, leaving her back at the table. Beside her, Nil was still eating, apparently uninterested in the proceedings.

"Right," Orns sighed heavily, stroking his knotted beard. "I'll have a look at those later…"

"You can look at them now if you want to," Aloy told him. "Since we have time to talk them over tonight."

"You sure?" Orns asked. "It'd be rude to review data points when I have company."

"Please, go over them," Aloy assured him. "I'll be happy to answer any questions you'll have."

"Well, if you're sure," Orns nodded. "I'll order our food, then take a look." With that, he tapped his Focus, his fingers moving with practiced ease through the air. "The usual for me," he said, presumably to someone who was listening elsewhere. "Cured ham with pineapple for the Champion, and…an extra share of both as well, for the outlander girl." A pause. "Aye. And tell the tribe to eat, drink, and be merry - the outlanders just sent some information to my Focus, and I need to go over it now, so send the tribe off for me, if ye'd be so kind…Aye. Yep. Right. Thanking ye kindly." Nodding, Orns waved a hand, presumably ending the communication, then tapped at thin air a bit more. "Right," he mumured to himself. "'The Bad News', eh…?"

Taking another deep breath, Aloy forced herself to refocus on the food. Not feeling particularly hungry, she reached over and picked up the jugs one by one, smelling them to see what they held; one was odorless, and the others all smelled reminiscent of Erend's breath. Hoping that the non-alcoholic drink might be more coconut juice, Aloy poured some into the cup made of glass that had been placed in front of her, but when she tasted it, it was just plain water.

"Something wrong?" Nil asked her softly.

"I was…hoping for coconut juice," Aloy told him. "I don't want to drink more alcohol, I already had that one drink you made me try earlier and I don't like to drink more than once in a day."

"Why not?" he inquired.

"Rost told me what alcohol does when you drink too much," Aloy said, "and I don't want to lose my senses. I've seen it firsthand, and I don't want to end up like that."

"Firsthand?" Nil questioned. "Where?"

"Erend," Aloy sighed.

"Ah." Nil nodded, drinking from his glass full of amber liquid that he'd poured from one of the alcoholic jugs. "Of course. Seems like all those Oseram are a bunch of drunk vagrants…It really is incredible what they've managed to accomplish with metal."

"Erend isn't a vagrant," Aloy snapped as Orns let out a heavy sigh. "Even drunk, he's still a good person. Just a little…muddled, is all."

"So it was all doomed from the start," the Sheriff murmured, drawing Aloy's attention back to him. "A lot of us assumed that Zero Dawn had to destroy the old world in order to destroy the bots, but…even that wouldn't have been enough?"

"No," Aloy answered. "I thought that too, at first. But there was nothing that could stop the bots in time to save anything."

"I see…" Orns stroked his beard. "Well…Guess I'd better see what the good doctor did manage to come up with…You two all set while I check?"

"Aloy would have liked some coconut juice," Nil spoke up before Aloy could say anything. "She doesn't like to drink alcohol."

"It's fine, I'll just have water," Aloy said quickly, but Orns was already nodding and tapping his Focus.

"Howdy there," Orns said to someone through his device. "Any chance we can spare a jug of coconut milk, maybe even one of fruit punch?…Aye…Aye, for the outlanders…" He waited a long minute, then his expression brightened. "Good! Bring 'em both on over. Alright. Thanking ye kindly." He tapped something Aloy couldn't see, then turned a smile on her. "That'll be right over. Now, if you don't mind…"

"Go ahead!" Aloy told him hurriedly. "Please, take your time."

Nodding at her, Orns tapped his Focus and began browsing the past once more.

It took every ounce of self-control Aloy could muster not to watch Orns's face for his reactions to Elisabet's proposal, but she had a feeling staring would be rude. After a few moments, two men in red coats came over, bearing two more earthenware jugs; Aloy offered them a polite "Thanks," to which they responded with nods and a smiles, and she tried pouring one of them into her glass. The liquid that came out was an off-red color, cloudy and tinged with orange, and Aloy frowned at it, then sniffed it suspiciously. It smelled sweet, and she couldn't pick out anything that smelled like alcohol, so she tried a sip. It tasted like a bunch of fruits all at once, and the flavor was almost overwhelming to the point of burning her tongue; grimacing, she set her glass back down.

"Too sweet?" Nil asked her, already pouring some of the red liquid for himself.

"A little," Aloy admitted. "I just need to get used to it."

Her partner chuckled, and when he drank from his glass, he didn't seem all that bothered - his silver eyes blinked once, he gave a soft grunt, and then he kept drinking.

Steeling herself, Aloy drank from her glass again, forcing down the overwhelming juice that she could only assume was a mix of many different fruits all combined into one, if only to empty her glass so she could try the other jug, which she hoped held more coconut water. Glancing around, she saw the whole Corsair tribe talking, laughing, piling their plates with foods and eating them; she saw stringy foods, mushy foods, foods with sauces, all requiring different tools and different techniques to eat them. The fine fabrics covering the tables were kept clean as the tribesmen casually navigated all the weird forms of sustenance with the practiced confidence of people who'd been doing something their whole lives.

It all felt so much further removed from Aloy's life than the ancient world ever had.

"Well, I'll be…"

Aloy was jolted out of her daze by Orns's awed sigh. Turning to him, she saw his dark eyes were wide, and he met her gaze with a slack jaw.

"Kryse said you told him the Old Ones left behind a machine," he said. "You didn't tell him they built us a god!"

"There really isn't much of a difference, in this case," Aloy pointed out.

"No," Orns shook his head, "there's a world of difference. Machines just do; gods think. A mother-goddess for the whole world…" He shook his head again. "Dr. Sobeck was quite a dreamer. And she really pulled it off?"

"Yeah," Aloy nodded. "With help, of course, a lot of help. Every sub-function was directed by an Alpha, someone she picked out as the best in their area of expertise to make sure GAIA would have the tools she needed to take care of the world, and a lot of Betas and Gammas answered to them, all while Elisabet mentored GAIA herself, taught her to think and feel…to love the world, and life, like she did."

"And these sub-functions," Orns mused. "I saw nine names, but the good doctor didn't go over 'em all…" He blinked. "Say, you look a lot l-"

Aloy cringed, already anticipating his questions about why she looked just like Elisabet.

But Orns frowned, then shook his head. "Never mind," he mumbled. "I said I wouldn't pry. So, the sub-functions?"

"MINERVA decrypted the shutdown codes that would stop the bots," Aloy explained, overwhelmed with relief. "AETHER cleansed the poison from the air, POSEIDON cleansed the poison from the water, HEPHAESTUS built the terraforming Machines needed to make all that happen, DEMETER brought back the plants, ARTEMIS brought back the animals, ELEUTHIA brought back the humans, APOLLO was supposed to teach the humans raised through ELEUTHIA about the ancient world, and HADES was the failsafe extinction protocol - if GAIA's attempts at reconstructing the biosphere didn't go quite right at first, HADES was designed to reverse the terraforming operations and return the world to nothing so she could try again."

"I see," Orns said slowly. "And this…APOLLO…?"

"That's what the third data point I sent you is about," Aloy told him.

Nodding, Orns tapped his Focus and started waving his fingers, and Aloy averted her gaze. With bitter determination, she drank down the rest of the fruit juice, then went for the other new jug. This fluid was clear, and only faintly sweet when she drank it, soothing to the burn and sting of the other concoction: coconut water. Pouring herself some more, she glanced at Orns, but his expression was still mildly perplexed, if grim. Moments later, she saw the shock in his eyes as Ted Faro confessed that he'd erased APOLLO, and a few seconds after that-

"Sea squalls!" Orns yelped, jumping in his seat. Blinking a few times, he focused on Aloy. "That bastard…he killed them all? Just to keep APOLLO from being rebuilt?"

"Yeah," Aloy nodded.

"Great Mother Ocean," Orns growled, shaking his head. "And here I thought we already knew the depths of that man's depravity…" Meeting Aloy's eyes again, he told her, "You did a good thing, digging up these data points. For all his desperation, he failed in what he was trying to do, and that's some consolation."

"Failed?" Aloy repeated. "He didn't fail; APOLLO is gone, we'll never know all the Old Ones' history and culture, their science and everything else-"

"You really think he cared about any of that?" Orns asked, raising his eyebrows at her. "I know what he said, and maybe he even convinced himself he meant it, but mark my words: his greatest fear was that the future humans of Zero Dawn would learn about everything he did. He erased APOLLO to erase his legacy, so his misdeeds would be forgotten, and for no other reason."

"You really think so…?" Aloy breathed, feeling the fruit she'd eaten roil in her stomach.

"It fits better than what he claimed," Nil spoke up. "Considering everything he did - changing his corporation's policy to what would garner more profit, trying to keep the initial effects of the Faro Plague from being common knowledge, and Elisabet's other accusations - for him to suddenly care about people who wouldn't even be born for hundreds of years doesn't suit him. Ted Faro never did anything that wasn't entirely self-serving in his wretched life."

"Aye," Orns nodded, "that's my take, too." Then he chuckled. "And yet here we are, talking about all the things he did to doom the world. I'm sure he's turning in his grave, wherever he is."

"I certainly hope so," Nil remarked, flashing his teeth.

Though she didn't want to speak ill of the dead, Aloy couldn't argue with the sentiment, either.

"Now," Orns said, "about GAIA…I was hoping that the third data point you sent me would explain the Derangement. I saw images of Grazers, Glinthawks, and Snapmaws in Dr. Sobeck's presentation, which I can only assume means the metal beasts of our world are part of GAIA, so why in tarnation are they attacking us all of a sudden?"

Aloy took a breath. "Twenty years ago, something happened," she told Orns; "we don't know what, exactly, but the Bacchan Master recently had a vision that confirmed someone did it on purpose. These people, the Masters, they sent a signal to GAIA that turned her sub-functions into self-aware AI, including HADES. HADES's creator, Travis Tate, designed it to-"

"Travis Tate?" Orns interrupted. "The hacker and malware coder of Sterling-Malkeet infamy?"

"Uh…" Aloy blinked. "I know he was a criminal of some sort…but he became the Alpha in charge of making HADES. And he designed it to basically seal GAIA and her other sub-functions away when it triggered, so GAIA couldn't prevent it from re-killing everything. When HADES was triggered by the Masters, it…he, activated, when he wasn't supposed to, HADES wasn't supposed to serve a purpose after the biosphere was reconstructed successfully, but now he's not just a tool, he's a person, like the other sub-functions. Before he could enact the extinction protocol, GAIA self-destructed, hoping to take HADES with her, but before the explosion split the mountain facility she was based in, HADES somehow unchained himself and the other sub-functions from her. They were scattered around the world, and…now they're all doing things, just trying to find some purpose. HEPHAESTUS, the sub-function that makes the Machines, it - he - hates that humans hunt his creations, so he's started making hunter-killers to fight back against us."

Orns stared at her for a long minute, and Aloy wondered if she should have slowed down, but it felt so good to tell someone else the truth of the world, for them to be willing and able to fully listen to her, she hadn't been able to pace herself.

"So…GAIA…" Orns finally said slowly.

"She's dead," Aloy confirmed grimly. "But the associate I mentioned, Sylens, he's working at the GAIA Prime facility right now to see about rebuilding her, and…I've found some things out here that might help. HADES has been captured and contained, and we'll hunt down the other sub-functions at some point. It'll take a few years, but GAIA can and will be restored." She hesitated, then added, "The Deima's new mother-goddess, the thing making the Humanoids…that's ELEUTHIA. That's one of the reasons I have to go and parlay with the Deima; I need to convince ELEUTHIA to return to GAIA Prime, maybe even help us rebuild GAIA."

Another long, heavy minute passed in silence, Orns's dark eyes boring into Aloy. In response, she set her jaw and met his gaze, struggling not to fidget under his scrutiny…and at last, he nodded, even as he frowned and stroked his beard.

"I see," he said, though Aloy wondered if he really did. "You've brought some very crucial pieces of information to us, Aloy, and for that I thank ye."

"What will you do with this information?" Aloy asked him.

"For now, nothing," Orns replied; "the festival is a time of relaxation and peace, we're not gonna analyze the past while we celebrate nature's bounty. Once we're back on the sea, I'll explain what you've told me to my deputies, and offer the information to any other Corsair who want to know. Though, I reckon there will be some pieces we determine everyone needs to know, even if they don't particularly care about the ancient world - understanding the Derangement, and that we only need to hold out until your associate restores GAIA, would be a big boost for morale, and to understand that, we also need to share the background information." He frowned. "Like the sub-functions themselves, the pieces only really work if you have all of them together."

"Yeah," Aloy nodded, swallowing hard. "And we're going to put them together, one at a time…somehow. It would help if we knew where they went, though."

Before the conversation could continue, a bunch of Corsair came over to Orns's table, some of them bearing massive platters of food.

"Yer main courses, sirs and miss," a man in a red cloak told them as he led a group of several men carrying a massive plate with some sort of fishlike creature on top; other Corsair cleared the platters of meat and fruit that had been sitting around, and two more placed a dish with two massive hunks of meat topped with rings of yellow fruit and dripping with juices in front of Nil. As the group set down the gigantic platter on the table, the red-cloaked captain added, "Since ye said to bring an added portion of your usual, Sheriff, we figured we might as well just bring over the whole shark."

"Hah!" Orns laughed. "Much appreciated, Manal. I'm sure the lady will love it."

"What is this?" Aloy asked, staring at the creature laid out artfully over what looked like herbs and nuts. It was clearly cooked, and soaked in colored juices that were probably heavily spiced, yet it retained enough of its features for Aloy to see that it was not an animal she was familiar with. If anything, it looked vaguely like a Bladefin: massive fins jutting out all along its length, and a wide, gaping mouth that probably had once held teeth if she had to guess.

"That's a shark, little missy," Orns answered, hefting a large knife in one hand and a 'fork' in the other. "Foxes of the sea, they are, in a sense, and right tasty when prepared properly. Ye're welcome to try as much as ye like!"

"We brought two of the Champion's order as well, in case you wanted to try that, too," the captain told Aloy.

"Thank you," she said, somewhat awkwardly, and he nodded and left with the deliverers. Eyeing the strange creature again, she said, "So this is…an ocean creature…?"

Orns laughed again. "Don't look so alarmed, girl," he told her; "that's one of the most normal-looking critters you'll find beneath the waves. Mother Ocean is full of strange and unknowable things."

"I've…seen crabs," Aloy said, still staring at the 'shark'. "Those are strange. But…I've never seen a fish the size of a turkey before."

"There are larger creatures," Orns stated. "The biggest animals in the world live in the sea, and the most twisted, too. Not even the Old Ones knew what all the ocean contained, y'know - they tried, aye, they tried their darnedest, but Mother Ocean doesn't give up her secrets without a fight, and her deepest depths were never explored. There's no telling what's living down there."

"I bet ARTEMIS knows," Aloy remarked. "Since all the animals in the world were archived by Charles Ronson, after the Faro Plague ate everything that used to exist."

But Orns shook his head. "Little lady, there are depths to the ocean that even the Faro bots couldn't reach," he said, and Aloy looked up at him in shock. "Some parts of the ocean are deeper than the tallest mountain is high, and not by just a little, either. Far, far down beneath the waves, where the pressure of all that water would crush even the toughest of the Old Ones' seafaring vessels, there is no biosphere; there's only cold, and dark. The sun can only reach down so far, and that's only scratching the surface of the sea's depths. Mark my words, little lady: in the deepest reaches of the ocean are places where life has gone on uninterrupted, never knowing the devastation of the robots or the touch of GAIA."

"But…how?" Aloy asked. "How could anything live down there, if the weight of all that water would crush even the bots?"

"Life finds a way," Orns answered. "Of course, we don't know for sure anything lives down there, or ever did, but the Old Ones suspected - every now and then, a strange creature would wash up on the shore somewhere in the world, and leave everyone baffled as to what it might be or where it came from." Tilting his head, he added, "One of our oldest theories about life on Earth and Zero Dawn was that, in order to destroy the robots, the Old Ones had to destroy everything else, too, and that the life in the world nowadays came from some of those deep-sea critters, so far beneath the surface that they weren't affected by the Faro Plague, slowly working their way up and back to land." He shrugged. "I never believed it - that kinda evolution takes thousands if not tens of thousands of years, and by all accounts, the Old Ones only fell a few hundred years ago. But it was the most plausible explanation we had before now."

Her jaw going slack, Aloy turned and stared out in the direction of the ocean. The first time she'd seen it, it had been a breathtaking sight, but knowing now that she couldn't begin to imagine what it held… "There could really be old life out there?" she whispered. "Life that wasn't affected by the Faro Plague at all?"

"It's possible," Orns confirmed. "Even likely."

"Wow…" Aloy couldn't find any words other than that.

"Aye," Orns chuckled, and Aloy forced herself to turn back to him. "The ocean is a strange and glorious thing; the Old Ones were fascinated with it, too. That's one of the reasons our tribe ever formed."

"You mean how incredible it is, or that the Old Ones loved it?" Aloy inquired.

"Being honest, mostly the latter," Orns admitted, cutting some large chunks off the 'shark' that dripped with fluids and spices. "The Corsair tribe was founded on the Old Ones' stories. Even our name, 'corsair', is an old-world term, meaning 'man of the sea'. Bandit seamen were called 'pirates', but we're not bandits; we just live free, as the seagoers of old did."

"The Old Ones' stories…" Aloy repeated slowly. "You mean…the movies in Holovid Studios?"

"Aye," Orns nodded. "You've seen 'em, I take it? Cut a share for yerself, miss," he added, gesturing to the 'shark'. "Go on now, it's all yours."

Pursing her lips, Aloy stood up and started carving chunks of meat from the strange sea creature. "Sheriff Orns, I-"

"Orns is fine," he assured her. "Or Sheriff, if ye prefer. We Corsair don't call each other by proper names very often, but I can't expect you to use our common nicknames."

"Orns," Aloy acceded, wrestling a large chunk of meat onto her plate and barely managing to avoid dripping its sauces onto the cloth that covered the table. "The movies at Holovid Studios, they…they're not real."

"We know," Orns assured her calmly, not even hesitating in his work cutting a smaller piece from one of the chunks.

"You…know?" Aloy asked, trying to mimic the Sheriff's motions in cutting the seasoned meat into bites; glancing at Nil, she saw him operating at one of his own meat chunks similarly, and again felt the heavy sensation of being an outcast. Swallowing hard, she pressed, "Why didn't Kryse know that?"

"Well, it's a complicated matter," Orns replied. "Sure, the movies themselves are performances put on by what the Old Ones called 'actors', a series of pre-written events, but there are truths buried in those falsehoods, and just how much truth, we don't know. Some movies boast their 'historical accuracy', and others are shamed for their lack thereof, yet what little talk we can find regarding some of the most fantastical movies don't bring up the subject at all. Disentangling fact from fiction is damn near impossible with those movies, and some folks just gave up entirely, claiming it's all reenactments of real history - we weren't there back then, after all, we don't know any better. Me, I've always figured most of it was made up, but there's really no telling. After all, ships are feasible." He gestured with his knife to the massive structures floating among the crooked shapes of Drowned Bones. "The first ship our precursors built was constructed on a bet, just to prove that there was more truth to the movies than some were inclined to believe."

"Tell me about your tribe," Aloy said, suddenly overwhelmed by a surge of curiosity. "How did your people end up living on the ocean?"

"You want the whole story?" Orns asked.

"Yes, please," Aloy nodded, and she took a bite of the 'shark'. Seasonings of all sorts overwhelmed her tongue for a minute, but when she eventually managed to work through it, the meat itself was like a softer, milder sort of turkey, but in a good way. "Mm," she grunted, "this is good."

"This too," Nil spoke up, and Aloy glanced over to see him flash his teeth at the Sheriff. "It's a lot more intense than what I'm used to, but I think I prefer it this way."

Orns nodded to both of them. "Much obliged," he said. "Now then…" He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, then met Aloy's eyes and said, "There's a lot about the origins of our tribe that's gotten a bit muddy since the day it all came about, but I know the story better than anyone else - have to, as Sheriff.

"Long ago, there was only one tribe west of yer safe lands," he began, speaking between small bites. "We lived up north, cold and afraid. We had ruins, of course, we knew we weren't the first people, but what became of those who came before us, and why, we didn't know. For a time, we only worked to survive, but as we began to establish ourselves, we also began to explore. Individuals, pairs, groups, all went forth, and always returned to the mountains from whence they came in the end, getting bolder and bolder. Before long, they found the ocean, and so began trying to find out just how far it stretched, not knowing that it was the land that was limited, not the sea. So it was that our ancestors first happened upon Dry Bones. The stories suggest that the ruins were a lot more expansive back then than they are now-"

"They must have been," Aloy said quickly, swallowing her most recent bite of shark. "The Machines I've only seen here, the Blasters and the Melters, are some of GAIA's earliest terraforming Machines; I'm guessing that this, one of the Old Ones' largest cities, posed the biggest challenge to terraforming, so she left it for last. GAIA still hasn't finished clearing the way for DEMETER and ARTEMIS to reseed these ruins with life, even after all this time, so…it was probably a lot more intact a few hundred years ago."

The Corsair Sheriff eyed her for a moment, then continued. "Well, regardless, our precursors hoped to find out what happened to the old civilizations that built these places here, and so more expeditions were sent out, bigger, more well stocked, more heavily armed. Bit by bit, we slowly managed to work our way into the ancient structures, until one day, someone found a usable Focus. As I'm sure you can imagine, exploration took a turn then, to finding data points and trying to understand what they said, what it all meant. Some groups took to it with gusto, and in time, temporary settlements started cropping up around the edges of the ruins.

"Then they found Holovid Studios, and everything changed. These old stories, so fantastical and unlikely, made many of the first folks to see them question reality itself. Others, like you, quite quickly pieced together that they weren't all true stories, but…well, as I said, the first ship was built on a bet that it couldn't be done, only for it to be achieved, unlikely as it seemed. Arguments cropped up, o' course, and some wanted nothing more to do with it all and went back north, but just as many came south to join in the mystery. In time, there was a divide between the people of the north and the south, we of the south so enthralled with the Old Ones' tales that we wanted to see just how far we could push our recreations of what we saw." He raised his eyebrows at Aloy, and she was immediately on guard. "A common theme in the Old Ones' tales is freedom," the Sheriff told her. "Stories of heroes most people called criminals simply for living their own way, breaking the shackles of the society they were born into."

There was no way he could have known just how deeply Aloy would feel those words, and she suppressed a shiver.

"That said, things were peaceful between north and south for a long time," Orns went on. "Our first ships were built in hopes of making grand expeditions to sea, like what we saw in the stories, but we were all still one tribe, in a sense. But then…something changed. What changed, exactly, I don't know - those of us who would form the Corsair tribe weren't up north when it happened. All we know is that there was a disagreement, between those who would become Corsair and those who would later split into the Deima and the Bacchan. It's suggested, though not known for sure, that those who took to the sea did so to flee some new regime, but the only proof we have of that is the creed our tribe was founded on: freedom, above all else." At this, his dark eyes sharpened. "We believe that once they're grown, every man and woman has a right to live and die as he or she sees fit, so long as they aren't infringing on that right in others. Hence your crime, little lady."

"Kryse said that interfering in a duel is a worse crime to your people than murder," Aloy said softly.

"And Brin, a man who joined the Bacchan, told us your people were savage and lawless," Nil spoke up, and Aloy blinked, remembering those words from so long ago.

"Our laws revolve around freedom, not control," Orns said. "In that sense, I suppose we are lawless, for most laws are established to control the people who live by them. But we would never save a life that didn't want to be saved - if two people agree, of their own will, that one of them will kill the other, then that's their right."

"Doesn't murder take away someone's right to live their life?" Aloy asked coldly.

"Aye," Orns nodded, "it does, but at least only one person's right is infringed on in that case. To interfere in two is worse than to interfere in one. Mind you, if a Corsair murders multiple people, then they're charged with multiple murders, not just one. Two murders is as bad as interfering in a deathmatch between two people."

Aloy could only shake her head.

"It's how the free men of old lived," Orns said. "We were inspired by the old tales of cowboys and pirates - outlaws, in the ancient world, yet we make it our rule to live free as a people. So, we're not pirates, we are Corsair."

"I…guess I can see the appeal, to an extent," Aloy admitted. "Still, it's the job of whoever's in charge of a tribe to protect their people, both from outside threats and from each other, for the sake of those who can't protect themselves."

"I protect my people from each other, if they want to tell each other how to live or die," Orns stated. "But beyond that, I mind my business, as do the captains and deputies. That's been our way since we split from the Deima."

"Hmm." Aloy focused on finishing her 'shark', processing this.

"Do you want to try some of this, Aloy?" Nil asked.

"Huh?" Aloy looked up.

Nil flashed his teeth at her, holding up a piece of his meat on a fork. "I'll trade you, a bite of mine for a bite of yours, if you like."

"Uh…sure," Aloy managed, pushing her plate closer to his, and he responded in kind; they swapped forks, and Aloy bit into the meat Nil had been eating. It was definitely boar, but there was a sweetness and a spiciness to it that surprised her all the same.

"So," Nil said around a bite of shark, but he was looking at Orns, "all the western tribes came from the land the Deima now live in. Reminds me of how the Carja came from the Nora back east, in a way." He glanced at Aloy, and there was something pointed in his silver eyes. "Doesn't it?" he smirked.

"I…guess," Aloy said slowly, trying to understand what he was getting at. Then, a moment later, it clicked. "There must be a Cradle up there!" she gasped.

"Must be," Nil chuckled. "Just like All-Mother Mountain for the Nora."

"And that's why ELEUTHIA ended up there," Aloy realized out loud. "Sylens said he found HADES in a Metal Devil, and we know now that HADES's reverse-terraforming protocol involved reawakening the Faro bots to consume the biosphere again…" She blinked slowly as the implications began to set in. "I bet MINERVA is in a control tower, like the Spire, and…HEPHAESTUS is probably in a Cauldron."

"Shame none of them ended up in places we already know," Nil commented. "It would have been a lot easier for you if ELEUTHIA had ended up in All-Mother Mountain…maybe even easier for everyone if MINERVA ended up in the Spire on the Alight."

"I don't know about that," Aloy said. "But…if the sub-functions are all in places they were meant to control when they were GAIA's tools, that's already a huge step towards finding them." She looked up at Orns. "Thank you," she told him. "This could make finding the sub-functions a lot easier, and GAIA can't get back to work until they're all under control."

"Happy to help, missy," Orns chuckled.

"Have you seen POSEIDON?" Aloy asked. "If the sub-functions are all trying to go home, I bet POSEIDON would end up in the ocean somewhere."

"Hah!" Orns laughed unexpectedly. "That'd be right fitting if it did! Poseidon was the Old Ones' name for the god of the sea, y'know."

"It…what?" Aloy blinked.

"Funny naming convention Dr. Sobeck had," Orns went on. "Buncha Greek gods and myths in there…Anyway, I don't think I've seen anything like a sub-function AI, but then again, I wouldn't know what to look for. What do these sub-functions look like, exactly?"

"Well," Aloy said, "now that they're free and self-aware, they're…like big writhing masses of colored light. HADES is red, and HEPHAESTUS is purple, they're all different colors, but…you'd know it if you saw it. It's like a blob of glowing tendrils. Have you seen anything like that?"

"Can't say we have," Orns frowned. "But, we'll keep an eye out for ya."

"Would you?" Aloy asked softly.

"O' course!" Orns chuckled. "We're as eager for the Derangement to end as anyone."

By now, the three of them had eaten most of the meat that had been brought as the 'main course', and Aloy was feeling more full than she ever had in her life without the urge to throw up. The conversation lulled as several Corsair came by to clear away the platters, but one of them set down a single plate with some cakes in place of all the meat.

"Dessert?" Orns asked, gesturing to the new dish.

"Don't mind if I do," Nil said, already reaching for one.

"No thanks," Aloy said, "I'm full."

"Oh come now, I insist," Orns stated, grabbing a cake himself.

"At least try one, Aloy," Nil agreed around a mouthful of food. "Mm…These are really good…"

"I…" Longing for what was apparently a common experience warred with the fullness of her stomach, but in the end, yearning for what she'd never had won out, and Aloy reluctantly picked up one of the small, hand-sized cakes, promising herself that she'd only have a single bite.

"You sure you don't want to register me as a contact?" Orns asked. "It'd probably be helpful to ya if we could talk any time, no matter how far we roam, so I can let you know if we find one of these sub-functions."

Feeling uncomfortable, Aloy took the excuse of filling her mouth with a bite of cake. The food was sweet, but felt so incredibly strange in her mouth - it was squishy, like the cushioning of her cold-weather armor, but also fragile, it came apart with the movement of her tongue. Chewing and mouthing the stuff, she broke it down into mush within moments, then swallowed, needing to try several times before it all went down her throat. When she looked up, Nil and Orns were both on their second cakes, but she simply couldn't eat another bite, and with some regret, she set down the half-eaten food and wiped her hands on the cloth she'd been given.

"Eh?" grunted Orns. "Come on now, link yer Focus to mine. I'd be honored to have you as a contact."

"Are you sure?" Aloy asked.

"I insist," Orns told her, swallowing the last of his second cake, and he wiped his hands before reaching up to tap his Focus.

"If…you're sure…" Aloy said slowly, but a display had already come up informing her that a Focus was attempting to establish communication with hers. With a sigh, she tapped her device and accepted the connection. Before she could even figure out what to do, Orns was already tapping a display, and an alert came up for her:

"Save contact: Corsair Sheriff? Y/N"

Taking a breath, Aloy tapped "Y".

"Contact saved: Corsair Sheriff"

When Aloy deactivated her Focus, there was a new display, just under the one informing her that the secure connection to HADES was off, that simply read, "Contacts".

"And there we go," Orns grinned. "Feel free to call me if the need ever arises, miss."

"I won't bother you," Aloy told him quickly. "I…" Frowning, she activated her Focus and tapped the new glyphs, resulting in a new display:

"Contacts
Corsair Sheriff"

Hesitantly, she tapped the one option listed under the heading, and was greeted with yet another display:

"Call 'Corsair Sheriff'? Y/N"

Shaking her head, Aloy tapped "N" and dismissed the display, returning her to the banquet. "I won't bother you," she repeated to Orns. "You have important things to do, I won't pop in uninvited like Sylens does with me."

"Oh, don't be like that," Orns dismissed, waving a hand. "Don't be a stranger."

"What does that mean?" Aloy inquired.

"It's an old-world saying," Orns explained. "Basically, it means, don't pretend we don't know each other." His expression sobered, and he met Aloy's eyes steadily. "You seem like ye're always afraid of something," he told her. "Always bracing yourself for some sort of attack. Your life is yours, as are yer secrets, but…well, from us at least, you have nothing to fear. You're a welcome guest, and I'd like to call you a friend."

"I…I'd like that too," Aloy managed.

Orns nodded, then stretched mightily and stood up. "Well, it's late," he said. "Y'all need some place to stay? We're all heading back to our ships to sleep, and Kryse has his one-man apartment, but I'm sure we could find some place for y'all to camp."

"We're fine," Aloy assured him quickly. "We already set up our camp a little ways north of the wall."

"Right then," Orns nodded. "Well, y'all are welcome to partake in all three days of our festival, and as Sheriff, I would ask you to enjoy the festivities to yer hearts' content. Tomorrow's contest day, there'll be feats of all sorts on display in the arena, so come on by anytime - I'll be announcing the deputies' competition, but there'll be events in there all day. Day after tomorrow's performance day, where there'll be plays from sunup to sundown, followed by a night of music and dancing and a whole lot of partying, ending in a fireworks show. Ye're welcome to join in all of it."

"Thank you," Aloy told him. "Will there be a banquet every night?"

"Nay," Orns replied, shaking his head, "food'll be a much more informal affair the next two nights. Still, ye're welcome to eat anything you can afford to buy."

"I'm okay with that," Aloy nodded. "Thank you for everything, Orns."

"And thank you," Orns told her, and he looked between her and Nil. "Both of you. Together, you've upended pretty much everything our tribe thought was a sure bet, in the best possible ways. We're lucky y'all came out here when you did."

"If you say so," Aloy said, forcing a smile through her discomfort.

"May your seas stay calm, and your horizon clear of storms," Orns told them.

"And yours too," Aloy responded. "Good night."

"Good night, and thank you," Nil agreed.

"Good night," Orns called after them, and they turned and started making their ways back up north.

Aloy felt heavy, her boots dragging along the ground. "I'm tired," she groaned to Nil.

"You're tired?" he chuckled. "I'm the one who had a big fight a few hours ago."

"True," Aloy admitted. "I'll…" An enormous yawn cut her off. "I'll take first watch," she managed at last.

"You sure?" Nil asked.

"You had a fight," Aloy said sleepily, even as she struggled to keep her eyes fully open. "You're more tired than me."

It took too long to reach the gap in the wall, and their Striders, still overridden and waiting outside the camp they'd set up that morning, were a welcome sight. Aloy lit the campfire, and with a lot more relief than she'd ever admit, unstrapped her packs and the many sacks of money she'd been carrying since the trading post, though this did little to help her feel like she could stay on her feet…

"Hm?"

A surprised grunt from Nil drew her attention, and she glanced over to see him kneeling by his bedroll and examining his collapsable pot.

"When did that happen…?" he asked softly.

"Oh." Aloy winced, feeling the wave of guilt she should have felt before. "I, uh…I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to damage it."

"What?" Nil looked up at her, his silver eyes puzzled in the firelight.

"Um…after the fight," Aloy said awkwardly. "I came out here and…well, I needed to…vent, I guess. I didn't mean to dent your pot, I just…didn't really have anything to direct my energy at, so everything got damaged. If it helps, I broke one of the fabricator modules in half, too," she added.

But Nil's eyes widened in shock. "You…lost control?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "I thought you said you've been angrier than this…"

"I have," Aloy sighed. "I was angrier at the Nora for casting me out at birth, and I was angrier at Olin and Helis and the Eclipse for Rost's death. But in those cases, I had something to direct my anger towards - training to win the Proving, hunting down the Eclipse, I was able to channel my anger. With you, and the fight, I…really didn't have anything constructive I could do."

"You lost control," Nil repeated, and his look of shock had given way to something Aloy could only interpret as horror. "Sun and shadow, Aloy, I…" He shook his head. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I'm sorry I drove you to that. It's a dangerous thing, to lose control…I'm lucky my pot only got a little dented." Another head shake, and then he sighed. "You must be exhausted, if you lost control and have been awake since then," he said. "I'll take first watch, okay?"

"No, Nil, you're tired too, I'm sure," Aloy protested. "It's…been a long day for both of us." But the more she thought about it, the more she realized she probably couldn't be trusted to take watch herself. "Tell you what," she sighed at last. "I'll give you my Focus right now, and you can have your talk with HADES; meanwhile, I'm going to go set up as many traps as I can craft to cover the parameter for several paces. We'll sleep in our armor, we have these walls, and we have night bloom; with all that, maybe we can take the risk of both sleeping through the night."

"Sounds fair," Nil nodded. "It's a much safer setup than what we had the night before we first entered Dry Bones, at least."

"We got lucky that night," Aloy grumbled; this wasn't the first time they'd been over it, but as risky as that night had been, she still didn't regret it. Taking off her Focus, she walked over to Nil and held it out. "Say what you need to say to him," she told him; "I'm going to set the traps as quickly as I can."

"Understood," Nil nodded, taking her device, and with a groan of exhaustion, Aloy bent down and picked up her Tripcaster, Blast Sling, and packs of supplies from which she could craft traps.

Over the endless pounding of the waves on the shore, Aloy heard Nil talking to HADES; the energy in his voice told her he was probably going over his duel with Shands, and she wondered how HADES felt about the fact that his mentor had risked leaving him alone just for the sake of a fun fight. It was hard to focus on one line of thought, though; her mind was already drifting on the haze of pre-dreams, her body working only through habit, her familiarity with her weapons and the crafting of traps. And as her mind wandered, she slowly pieced together something mildly troubling.

When at last she dragged herself back into the camp, just barely managing to step over the tripwires, Nil quickly ended his conversation with HADES and handed her Focus back to her, and finally, finally, she was able to lay down her burdens and all but collapse onto her bedroll. Even as she rested her head on her pillow, though, she had to ask…

"Nil?"

"Hm?"

"Have you…ever lost control?"

A heavy sigh came from her partner, and Aloy looked up to see him settling onto his own bedroll beside her. "Once," he replied. "Only once. And after what happened, I swore I would never lose control again."

"What did happen?" Aloy inquired.

"You already know," Nil shrugged. "If Avad begged you not to let your guard down around me, he must have told you."

"He…" Aloy blinked, trying to think. "He told me…you were dangerous. I already knew that, and I told him as much; you've never tried to hide it."

"That's all?" Nil blinked, turning his head to look at her in what seemed like surprise. "He didn't tell you about the slaughter at Cinnabar Sands?"

"…No," Aloy answered.

Nil stared at her, his expression unreadable. "…Maybe he assumed I told you," he said at last. "Well…that explains a lot. I thought for sure you knew, given how hard it was to get you to trust me, but…well, I guess the fact that you care about me should have told me you don't really know what I'm capable of."

"What are you talking about?" Aloy asked.

"Just ask Avad when we go back east," Nil sighed.

"I don't want to hear it from Avad," she told him. "I want to hear it from you."

He gave another, heavier sigh. "Aloy, I'm tired," he informed her. "I really don't want to go over it all right now."

"Fine," Aloy grunted. "I'm probably too tired to listen anyway. But I will make you tell me another time."

For a long moment, Nil didn't respond. Then, as the flickering flames began to blur in Aloy's vision, he simply said, "Aloy?"

"Hm?" she asked, turning her head to look over at him again.

He reached out a hand across the space between their bedrolls, laying it in the dirt not far from her. Too tired to think about it, Aloy reached back, and their fingers met, slowly and clumsily interlocking.

"I love you," Nil told her, meeting her eyes, his teeth gleaming in the firelight.

Maybe it was because she was so tired, but Aloy felt an urge rise in her chest, a reflex to…respond in kind. Before the words could start forming in her throat, though, she remembered what she'd heard him say to HADES that one time: "Once you admit you love someone, there's no going back."

She wasn't ready to face that point of no return. Not with Nil.

"I…" She searched for words for a moment. "…I'm glad you're okay," she told him at last.

"Good night," he said.

"G'night," she slurred, her eyelids finally winning their fight to slide closed. Two breaths later, she was fast asleep.

---

I must give thanks to my dad for helping me husk a coconut as research for this chapter! :D Also, sorry for the long chapter, I don't know why two conversations ended up this long…

FUN FACT: I wrote this chapter long before I actually checked for this, and admittedly I did have to adjust things slightly when I did (I only assumed Aloy wouldn't know what eating utensils were because she was an outcast, not because she was Nora), but if you look at tables with places set for food in the Sacred Land in HZD, there aren't any eating utensils, but if you look at food settings in the Sundom, there are. That is a detail Guerrilla actually included in the game; I would never have noticed it if I hadn't written this story and been so asinine about adhering to canon as much as possible, but it's really there, they put in the thought and effort to do that. The inclusion of details like that makes me wonder if maybe Guerrilla won't just throw Nil out with the bathwater for the canon sequel like I feared they would when I started this project…I'll be interested to read reviews that are posted to this fic after HFW's release and learn if Guerrilla took a Mass Effect route with the series, though this AU is the only sequel I'll ever actually see either way.