Chapter 1

Horizon Justice Calling

By McMysterio

1: A Gift from the Past I

6 years later...

"Children, come with me."

Jast watched timidly as the group of children was led deeper into the berry patch by a tall woman carrying a basket in her arms. Between the leaves of the shrub where he crouched behind, Jast could see the group of children now picking the berries from the bushes and placing the small blue orbs inside the basket.

He'd been watching them for the past three days, sneaking away from the watchful eyes of Grata every chance he could find. Every morning, once the sun was well and truly up, the tall woman and the children would leave the walled village, cross the river, and pick berries from the bushes that grew there. The children would never collect a huge number of berries, often no more than ten, but the woman would accept their paltry offerings with a warm smile and praise.

Jast could almost feel the excitement churning through his chest as he slowly stepped out from the bushes and got to his feet, slowly making his way towards the group.

Today was the day. For the first time, he was going to talk to them - the tall, kind-eyed woman with the basket in her arms, and the children who followed her. The plan had already been formed in Jast's mind. He knew that many of the children did not gather many berries, preferring instead to play in the grass with the others. Several more children would show up from the village and join the children in the grass now and then. Some would not bother to pick berries at all but instead chose to simply play with the children who had already been there. The other children never seemed to care where the others came from - they would always accept them all the same.

If they accept them, he reasoned, they'll accept me.

An odd fluttering sensation began to rise inside Jast's stomach as the woman and the children grew closer and closer. Grata had specifically told him not to speak with anyone of the tribe. When asked why she had simply replied in a serious tone of voice: We are outcasts. Jast wasn't sure what the word 'outcast' had meant, but had not asked further, as he had seen the shadow casting over Grata's face whenever he had brought up the topic. He had wanted to ask what being an 'outcast' exactly meant, but it was obviously something that pained Grata and the last thing he wanted was for her to be upset for something he said.

The dark thoughts were wiped away as he slowly made his way towards the group, his mind focusing on what he would do after he talked to the woman and the children. The plan was simple: he would go to the woman with a small handful of berries he had picked while watching the group and hand them over. After that, he'd be able to talk to the other children who were picking the berries, or who were playing in the grass. Perhaps he'd even be able to play with them afterwards.

And, just maybe, for the first time in his life, he could make a friend.

Despite his knees shaking in excitement, Jast took a deep breath and forced his feet to move forwards. It's going to be okay, he told himself and took a deep breath like Grata had taught him to do when he was scared. He was only a few feet from the smiling woman now - with a shy smile, he approached the woman and tapped her arm two times.

Something was terribly wrong.

The smile on the woman's face vanished the moment her eyes found the small boy - the woman wasn't smiling now. Her kind eyes were suddenly filled with something else entirely. She looked scared, no, furious.

"Children, come with me." The woman said quickly, ushering for all the children to follow her. "He is like the girl, an outcast, to be shunned."

Jast stood numbly as the woman and all the children began to quickly leave the berry bushes, too shocked to even speak. Many of the other children shot him a look of pure disgust as they followed the woman out of the field.

There it was again - outcast. The woman had spat the word with such disgust and anger before she had left with all the children. Despite not knowing what it meant, he knew it must be something very bad if the woman had shunned him from the others for him being an outcast.

'Have I done something wrong?' He suddenly began to feel slightly lightheaded as he began to think about anything that he had done that would have caused him to be called an 'outcast'. But as far as he could remember, he had done nothing to the woman and the children. He had not meant to do anything bad and had never even spoken to the group until today. Within moments, the initial shock began to turn into something else. Jast was scarcely aware of his body trembling as he dropped the berries in his hand.

It wasn't fair. He hadn't done anything to the woman or the other children. He had only wanted to talk to them, to play with them, perhaps even make a friend. He had done nothing to harm them, insult them, nor had he even met them before. What had he done to them for them to not even speak to him?

"No-Mother!"

Jast froze, slowly turning to face the person, the boy who had spoken. He recognized the boy as one of the children who'd been picking berries with the woman, standing out from the others as the only one he could recall with a single blue streak across one eye ('Bast' was what the other children had called him if he recalled correctly).

At the moment though, none of it mattered.

"What did you just call me?"

"Aw, the motherless outcast is angry!" Bast taunted, coming to a halt and staring down at the outcast boy in front of him. He was tall for his age; he towered over Jast, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, wearing an expression somewhere between a smirk and a sneer.

"But that's what you are, isn't it?" Bast continued, taking another step forwards so he was almost face to face with Jast. "You don't have a mother, outcast. You're a curse of the Metal Devil, not worthy of walking among the true Nora."

Jast was hardly aware of the small crowd of children who had gathered around Bast and himself. The words seemed to constantly echo through his head, multiplying every time they bounced off a wall.

Outcast.

Shunned.

Motherless.

No-Mother.

And it hurt.

The world was a sudden blur of colour, and there was an audible thud as Jast suddenly found himself on the ground, Bast leering down at him, a triumphant grin now on his lips. He was vaguely aware of the other voices around him, the murmurs of children and the distance calling of the woman, but he could hardly care. It was taking all of his self-control to prevent tears from spilling over his eyes, and though his eyes burned from the effort, he refused to cry in front of him.

Until Bast's words stabbed through like a knife to the heart.

"Stay away, Motherless chuff."

Jast was unaware of the roar that escaped his throat, nor was he aware when the edges of his vision turned red. He wasn't aware of his hands curling into fists, and he didn't remember launching himself at Bast.

Before he knew it, it was Bast who was on the ground, with Jast landing blow after blow with all his strength on the blonde boy. The screams of the other children, the approaching shouts of the other Nora, the yells of Bast. None of it mattered. The only thing he wanted to do at the moment was to cause Bast as much pain as he possibly could.

What gave him the right to look at me that way? To shove me around? To call me 'No-Mother'?

How dare he call me a 'Motherless chuff?'

Some small part of his mind was aware that this went against everything Grata had taught him, but the rage immediately silenced it. Nothing had felt so right in his life, so sweet... So he continued to land blow after blow on every bit of Bast he could reach until...

SMACK!

Something struck Jast across his face, the sheer force of the blow sending him tumbling off Bast and into the grass once more. Groggily raising his head, Jast was suddenly aware of the woman with the basket standing over him. Every trace of kindness was gone from her face as she stared down at him as if he was some dangerous beast.

"Come children," The woman commanded, leaving no room for argument as she gently took Bast by the hand and began to lead the children away. "It is forbidden to communicate with the boy. He is an outcast, to be shunned."

Jast watched in a dazed trance as the woman and the children began to walk away. He watched silently as the woman, Bast and the other children disappeared from view. The part of his face where the woman had struck him burned, and when he raised his hands to wipe the wetness from his nose, a streak of blood stained his fingers.

Then the tears began to flow down his face.

He turned back to the shrub where he had first emerged and began to run, not caring about the destination, so long as it was away from them. His mind barely registered the branches that left scratches and cuts up and down his arms as he crashed through the flora.

He is like the girl, an outcast, to be shunned. The woman's words seemed to echo endlessly in his mind as he stormed through a particularly thorny shrub that was in his way. At the moment, he wasn't going to back down to anything - not even plants.

Outcast. Motherless chuff. Somehow, the words ached more than Bast's fists or the woman's hands backhanding across his face. They all looked at me as if I'd done something wrong. But what had he possibly done to the woman and the children to be shunned from the tribe altogether?

Why am I an outcast? Who was my mother? The image of the woman's face, filled with disgust and anger at the sight of him swam before Jast's eyes, fueling his rage ever further. With another scream of anger, the outcast boy charged through another branch in his way, snapping the offending plant in two.

In the blink of an eye, Jast's heart leapt into his throat.

The flat ground suddenly gave way to a rocky hole in the earth, revealing a near-vertical drop into a vast cavern that Jast couldn't see the bottom of. And as the world turned into a blur of colour for the second time that day, Jast wondered if this was going to be the day he died.

SPLASH.

All the air in his lungs was knocked out of Jast's body as his back slammed into the hard rock at the bottom of the pool of water he landed in. Gasping and coughing for air, Jast dragged himself out of the water and fell on all fours, spitting out the water that had accidentally breathed in underwater. Pain aching through his entire body, he slowly put his two feet below him and allowed them to support his weight once more. The previous encounter with the woman and Bast momentarily driven from his mind, Jast squinted to adjust his eyes to the new darkness as he began to look around his surroundings.

Where am I?

The cave that Jast was looking around was not as deep as he had thought, nor was it the black abyss he had initially imagined - on the contrary, the rays of sunlight shining through the mouth of the cave reflected off the pools of water on the floor of the cave, illuminating the underground cavern with an eerie, rippling light.

A cold shiver ran down Jast's spine as he stared at the hole he had just fallen through. While he had not broken anything, the fall had hurt him just enough to momentarily drive the previous encounter from his mind. The firey sense of injustice washed away, only to be immediately replaced by the pure, cold terror that now seemed to fill his head as the realization hit him with the force of a charging Machine.

I'm alone down here. Jast felt his heart pounding in his chest as he looked up at the ray of light shining into the cavern and yelled as loud as his voice would allow. "Grata! I'm down here! GRATA!"

His voice echoed off the grey, rocky walls of the cavern, growing fainter and fainter until the cave fell back into silence once more. A minute that felt like an eternity passed without the familiar voice of Grata replying, and eventually, Jast was forced to come to the conclusion that Grata could not hear him.

He looked up at the cliff face and instantly knew there was no hope of climbing back up. What was it that Grata had said he should do if he was lost? Stay where you are and call out for me. I will find you. But the Embrace was vast, and it might take Grata hours before she finally heard his shouts. Furthermore, his throat already felt sore from all the yelling - even if Grata somehow walked by the entrance of this cave, she wouldn't be able to know if he was down here if he could not yell. And he couldn't keep yelling forever.

By now, Jast could feel his entire body trembling in fear as tears threatened to spill over his eyes.

No more of this. Jast could hear Grata's stern voice so clearly, she may have been down here as well. All-Mother guides us and remembers us, but she will not take solve our problems for us - that is up to us alone.

A shaky laugh tumbled from his lips as Jat began to regain control of his emotions once more. A part of his mind simply wanted to sit down where he stood and cry and yell until someone found him. But another, louder part of his mind argued that simply sitting and yelling would accomplish nothing, that if he wanted to get out of the cave, he would have to find a way out.

And it was there, in the middle of the cave, considering his choice of actions when her voice spoke from the shadows.

Aloy had been about to venture deeper into the cave when she had heard the scream.

She barely had time to turn towards the source of the scream when something, no someone, plummeted from the hole in the ceiling of the cavern and landed with a splash inside the pool of water where she herself had been mere minutes before. In the few seconds that it took for the newcomer to gather himself from the fall and pull himself out of the water, Aloy had hidden from his line of sight behind one of the tall, sharp rocks inside the cave.

Her mind raced as she heard the newcomer coughing and gasping, evidently having pulled himself from the pool of water he had fallen into. Who could it be? The scream that had echoed through the cavern as the newcomer had fallen belonged to a young boy. But she had never seen any children playing at the entrance of the cave, nor had the woman ever taken the children pick berries in this direction. Maybe it's one of the children who had been picking berries with the woman who had followed me? But why?

"Grata! I'm down here! GRATA!"

He's looking for someone named Grata. Aloy frowned, never having met anyone named Grata before, nor had she ever heard Rost mention the name. Is Grata his mother? A pang of envy shot through her mind as she suddenly recalled the encounter with the woman and the children.

Careful to remain hidden in the shadows, Aloy allowed herself to emerge from the cover of the stalagmite and took a good look at the boy for the first time. The speaker of the voice that was echoing off the cavern walls was a thin, slightly freckled boy with short, flaming red hair (Aloy noting that it was the same colour as her own). Unlike the children of the tribe, his clothes consisted of a simple leather tunic and pants held together with what seemed to be metal rings. And his face...

Aloy let out a small gasp as she spotted the trickle of blood running down the boy's nose. What had happened to him? Looking closer, she noticed his arms bore several bruises and a part of his cheek was flaming an angry red as if someone had struck his face - hard.

The boy was hurt, and he looked scared.

"Are you all right?"

Aloy's eyes met the boy's emerald-green ones as his gaze snapped towards the source of the voice, which widened slightly as she stepped out from the shadows, whether in fear, suspicion, or both, Aloy could not tell.

He stepped back when she approached, eyeing her warily and saying nothing.

"Are you okay?" Aloy tried once more, her tone gentle. The blood from the boy's nose was now flowing down his chin and small drops of red dripped onto the rocky floor. Aloy noticed how he winced slightly when he stepped on an especially large rock. "Are you hurt?"

The boy must have noticed her gaze upon the blood. "It's nothing," He said quickly, wiping the blood from his nose and chin. "I'm fine!"

"No, you're not." Aloy shot back."Rost always said helping others is the way we help ourselves, and you're obviously hurt."

At the mention of Rost, the boy stopped backing away. His face flickered for a moment before his eyes returned to Aloy once more, though the previous expression of suspicion and wariness had morphed into something resembling curiosity.

"What happened?" Aloy pressed.

Though the boy was hesitant, he eventually spoke. "Bast and the woman with the basket hit me."

Aloy stared at him for a moment, the memories of the encounter with the woman and the group of children, which had been driven momentarily from her mind, suddenly came rushing back - How the woman's kind demeanour had abruptly changed when she saw her; the children's questioning looks as they were led away from the berry bushes; how the woman had led the blonde boy away.

"Why?" Aloy was able to ask after a moment's pause.

"He called me a motherless chuff," The boy snarled, turning away. "The woman told the others I'm to be shunned because I'm an outcast."

Seemingly realizing the mistake of his words, the boy suddenly looked at Aloy with wide, fearful eyes, as if she would throw some kind of insult at him like the others because he had announced he was an outcast. Aloy, however, could only give an understanding nod, an odd ache in the throat seemingly preventing her ability to speak.

"You're the outcast girl, aren't you?" The boy said quietly after a long pause; his previous wariness now replaced with sympathy. "How did you fall in here?"

"She called me an outcast." Aloy shrugged. "I was angry and didn't see where I was going."

It was strange for Aloy, talking to the boy about the woman and the other children. As far as she could remember, the only person she had been able to talk with was Rost. You must not run off like that, Aloy. He had said sternly the last time she had gone exploring without his permission. Rost was always filled with lessons and seemed to know nearly everything. He always seemed so tall and strong - Aloy had always felt small when she stood next to Rost, but despite this, she had been always determined to make him proud.

Talking to the boy, on the other hand, was something else different. He wasn't full of lessons like Rost, nor did he seem to know nearly everything. She didn't feel small next to the boy - as a matter of fact, she was tall enough to look into the boy's eyes without looking up. When the boy confessed that Grata had mentioned Rost several times, Aloy found herself listening intently to every word. It was strange for her, talking so freely to someone her age without the expectation of chiding or any teachings whatsoever.

But Aloy decided she liked it.

The sudden scurry of movements cut off the outcast children's conversations as both turned their heads to the source of the distraction, only to see several rats scurrying deeper into the cave.

"We need to find a way out" The boy pointed out as if he had just remembered that they were stuck inside a cavern with no way out.

"Rost said never go in places like this..." Aloy exhaled sharply as she looked down the tunnel of the cave. "But we have to find a way out."

The last thing Aloy had expected when she had fallen into the cavern was to find herself looking for a way out with someone else. But she liked this boy - he was the first person she had met besides Rost who had not pushed her away because she was an outcast. And besides, a little company wouldn't hurt, right?

"What's your name?" The boy asked as they began to walk down the tunnel of the cave. It suddenly struck Aloy that neither she nor the boy had introduced each other since they had fallen into the chamber.

"My name is Aloy." She introduced.

"I'm Jast." The boy replied with a small smile. After a short silence, Jast hesitantly turned to speak to her once more. "Grata said that people who help each other are friends." He took a deep breath.

"Are we friends?"

For the first time, Aloy smiled.

"I guess we are."

Well, I finally got around to writing the first mission of the video game, 'A Gift from the Past'! As always, I own nothing except my OC Jast, with everything else belonging to the Horizon Zero Dawn development team at Guerrilla Games.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! As always, constructive comments are always welcomed and have a great day!

Reviews:

Mcmayhem57: Thank you for the kind words! As stated previously, the idea came to me while I was playing the game, for another Aloy-style character to take part in the adventures and burdens of Horizon Zero Dawn. When I first began looking into HZD fanfictions, however, I found that none of the fanfictions seemed to contain this idea, consisting mostly (as you stated), of frozen Old Ones waking up for the events of the story. So I just decided to go ahead and write it anyway.