Avad's whole body throbbed. His ears rang with the sounds of dripping water and his own heartbeat. Droplets smacked his face in intermittent splatterings, and when at first he tried to call for help, he almost choked on his own tongue. He doesn't remember how this happened to him; he'd just woken up here. Whatever had transpired, he must have hit his head.
"Help..." he manages to speak this time, but it feels like his own voice is ground glass in his throat, and his mouth is as dry as the desert. He could feel that he'd soiled himself at least once... how long had he been out?
He calls out again, and hears no response to his plea save the dripping of water. When he pries his eyes open, the world remains as dark and cold as before, the only warmth being that of the hot tears that are starting to track down his face. Nobody was here to help him. He could only help himself. He started with the water; after a few minutes of feeling it splash against his face, he can pinpoint where it will land, and catch it in his mouth when it falls. He doesn't know how long he does this; just that he needed water, and there might not be time in this place, wherever it was.
Next, he tries sitting up. It's like his back lights on fire. But he can do it; he can sit. Next, he tests whether he can crawl. It sent pain throughout his limbs, but yes, he can crawl. He nearly crawls himself into what might have been a shallow pool, but eventually he finds a wall he can brace himself against for the last test; could he stand? Walk?
The teenager discovers that yes, he can do both, but it is incredibly painful. His entire body feels, to varying degrees, broken or bruised. He wished he could see.
He turns his pants out and cleans them in the pool as best he can. He's a prince of the Radiant Line, he won't waddle about in his own filth like a toddler, no matter how dire his situation. Once finished, he rests and let's the pants dry, trying to asses his injuries as best he can in the dark. Finds what feels bruised, what feels broken, separates them by degree of severity. His hair is stiff with dry blood. His left shoulder is definitely dislocated.
When he stands again, dizziness accompanies the pain, so if it wasn't obvious before, he was certainly concussed. He used the cold wall to find his way around. He could now surmise that he was somewhere underground, and must have fallen down here somehow. He still can't remember, and he cant find any sign of a hole or anything else to indicate what had happened.
He thinks he smells fresh air. He thinks he feels a breeze. So he staggers his way towards it, only to be met with more uncaring darkness. Was this what it felt like to be blind? Maybe he was blind. Maybe the blow to the head had taken his sight, and he was flailing in shadows of his own making while light he couldn't see danced around him.
Then a sputtering noise cut through the air from in front of him, like a sound from a dying machine, and light flared to life. Lights lining the hall he overlooked, light behind him, light bursting from the strange pedestal a few feet in front of him. It's all faint, like the dying embers of a fire, but it's enough to blind him after all the time spent with nothing but pitch black to look at. He has to shut his eyes, and look at the biggest light gradually, but he abandons that plan in favor of staring.
Before Avad, standing on the pedestal, is a man. He wears strange, dark clothes, with a white shirt showing from under a neatly-tailored jacket of some sort, and a strange flag of stripped fabric hangs from around his neck. His hair is receding, and his eyes are strangely kind. There's a kindness about his whole face really, but of the sad sort; it's the look cousin Fashav often wore when speaking to aunt Mirin, who was slowly wasting away in a healers bed. He can't really determine the color the man's eyes or hair, because he seems to be made from starlight.
"Hey." The man says, another sound of another human finally make it click that he might be saved.
"C-can you help me?" But even before he finishes asking, the man is talking over him.
"My name is Phil Coulson, with S.H.I.E.L.D." he lifts a strange piece of leather to flash a metal insignia concealed within, some sort of bird, a hawk perhaps. "This is a pre-recorded message for t-t-t-auduats of Elllllllll-"
Phil Coulson flickers and Avad's heart skips a beat as if in time with the malfunctioning vision. That had to be what this was, a vision; light-pictures from the Old World that few ever discovered, they were supposed to be myths. He supposed myths didn't light up dark caves and speak to people.
"Don't go!" He chokes out, despite the futility of such a request.
"Congratulations." Coulson's speak evens out again. "I know that whatever cirrrrrrrr-cumstances made G-g-g-g-g-ink- the Avengers Iniiiii-tive was needed again have to be bad, but you've done well toooooo- alright-eee- the shield. The first line of-weirder world-d-d-d. And when we couldn't, that's what- were for. There was an idea-remarrrrk-wanted them to, and-battles-never could. Heroes. When people see a hero, they seeee hope. Hope ignites courage, and courage ignites defiance. That's humanity. Defiance, in the face of fear. So if-ourrr ready to defy f-f-fear, place your hand on the p-a-a-ad."
The lost teenager glanced at the slim, flat pad affixed to a rod next to the pedestal. The vision of Coulson couldn't help him. All he had left was his own curiosity.
"And hey." he looks back at Coulson, who has adopted a sympathetic look. "I know it seems impossible to do. You might even b-b-be doubting yourself. But it'll get better. Someone once-thing- bigger. You wouldn't be here i-if-idn't think you had it in you. You're going to be fine, and you're going to do good. Just remember, people need h-help, and you can do the helping. That's what heroes do. You're one of those now. You got this."
Maybe the words strike him in the heart, maybe the concussion has made him delusional, but he places his shaking hand on the panel. It glows green, the flashes.
"Ow!" Sharp pain stings his wrist without warning, and he jerks his hand back. Nursing the spot that had hurt, he swears he feels something under his skin that wasn't there before.
"Confirming genetic identity." A female voice, as garbled as Coulson's, states. "State your name."
"A-Avad." He isn't sure what else to do. Maybe if he does as the visions and voices say, he'll be shown a way out? He can't tell if the pain in his gut is from hunger or internal injuries, but the lack of food probably wasn't helping with his dizziness.
"I-Identity confirmed. Welcome to T-t-t-acility. Please report to you-rrrre designated room." the voice told him. More lights appeared, illuminating several hall entryways. Still unsure of what he was doing, Avad followed the lights. He followed them, using the wall as support until he reached a hall filled with doorways. In hope of somewhere to sit down, because he wasn't really certain how much longer his legs can support him, he opts to go through the door with the gold and red light above it; the colors of his people are what draw him to this fated room.
At first he can't figure out how to open the door, and in desperation he slaps his hand on the center of the door. It opens at that, of all things, with an odd beeping sound. There's an ancient, but remarkably preserved bedroom on the other side of the door, and he collapses in a hard, centuries-old bed that isn't his. For a while he drifts in and out of consciousness, until during one lucid moment, he sees what he thinks at first is a man standing on the other side of the room.
It startles him into alertness, and his body shrieks at him for sitting up too suddenly.
It's not a man. It's a machine that looks like a man, standing in a thick glass tube and preserved so well that it's red and gold plates still shine in the lights lit within the tube as if to display it. He's not sure how he missed it on the way in. He sits and stares, and when the machine does nothing, he gets up and approaches. It stays still. Legs shaking, he notices there's a panel next to the tube, like the one next to Phil Coulson's vision.
I shall likely die down here anyway. He thought mournfully. Might as well die with sated curiosity, at least if it kills me this misery will be over with.
He places his hand on the pad, and winces, expecting the same sharp pain as before.
"Identity confirmed. Avenger d-ignation confirmed." There was that word again; 'avenger'. What did it mean? The tube opened. "P-p-please enter to begin orientation."
To his utter shock, the man-machine opened. The plates and panels peeled back as if in invitation, to reveal the man was hollow inside. It wasn't a machine; it was a suit of armor, but who would try to wear such a thing, he had no idea. Surely armor made of pure metal would be too heavy to be effective? how would the wearer even move?
"Please enter to begin." the voice insisted. Fashav had once told him that one must sometimes be bold for the worthwhile things in life.
Avad, led by his cousin's voice in his head, pain, and curiosity, steps into the suit.
They had been searching for two days with no luck. No sign of where his cousin might have gone.
But Fashav had his suspicions, ones he wasn't sure he wanted to share with Kadaman yet, because he knew his remaining cousin might do something stupid if he heard them. Strange, how Avad should disappear so soon after making known his opposition to the war Sun King Jiran was planning, and that Helis was nowhere to been seen for a time beforehand?
His uncle made no secret of his distaste for his 'mousy' spare son. But to actually, finally get rid of him? Fashav knew his mind wasn't what it used to be these days, but surely some seed of fatherly instinct must remain to protect his scroll-loving cousin?
So here he was, still pushing his way through the jungle, trying to find some sign of Avad, anything to confirm or deny the dark theory that had taken root in his mind and refused to leave. He'd even take a corpse at this point, at least the wounds might tell he what had happened.
But rather than a corpse, he got a streak of mid-noon sunlight reflecting on something gold and red that flew overhead quite suddenly. It was gone so quick, like a diving hawk, he couldn't be sure, but it had looked like a man. He charged off in the direction he'd thought he'd seen it go, tried to catch another glimpse through the canopy of trees, but all he could see were blue gems of sky. So he pressed on.
He was brought to a halt by the sight of a red and gold machine in the shape of a man, standing over the prone figure of a person, as though it have come up behind them and pushed them to the ground. A person wearing Avad's clothes, covered with dirt and blood.
Fashav shouts, brings his bow to bear, and fires at the machine-man, horror pulsing through his veins. The figure, in response simply stares at him for half a moment, before taking off into the air. He watches for several heart-stopping moments until he is certain it has left, and then rushes to his younger cousin's side. His pulse is thready, and his skin is cold as ice. Brown eyes blink up at him tiredly.
"Avad, who did this?" he demands, stroking his dark hair back; it's stiff with dried blood, which made no sense because it had been raining almost constantly the last few days. For him to be alive is nothing short of a miracle.
"Don't know..." his cousin rasps, trying to push himself up. He nearly falls back into the mud, and Fashav helps him roll over and sit up, before undoing the cap on his canteen and bringing it to the teenagers lips. "I don't... I can't... remember."
Unsurprising, given how nasty the gash on his head was.
"Let's get you home, okay?" it takes all his self control not to break down weeping. Sorrow, that something like this had happened. Anger, because someone had done this, that was clearly the mark of large, Carja military boot stamped in several places on the back of his cousin's filthy shirt.
"Fashav, I..." Avad slurs deliriously as he prepares to pick up his injured kin. There's a strange sort of wonder in his eyes, the general thinks. "I flew. Fashav, I flew!"
That wound must be awful. But... could that machine have carried him? But why? What had happened? Throat tight, he stands and starts out towards Brightmarket; it was closer, and Avad needed a healer's intervention as soon as possible. "I'm sure you did, Avad. It sounds amazing."
Erend was five when Ersa had her epiphany. Honestly, it shouldn't have taken her even that long. He shouldn't have survived a birth in the depths of winter, or that fall he took when he was three, and that bottle father had thrown at him when he was four only left a bruise instead of a broken bone. But no, it's the sight of him lifting a fallen tree that finally alerts her the fact her little brother isn't in any way a normal child.
She doesn't know why, she doesn't know how, but Erend had the strength and resilience of a grown man at age five.
Naturally, this terrifies her. What would father do to him, if he knew? What would the village do? Just because he was freakishly tough didn't mean they couldn't kill him if they tried. He went against the grain, and Osaram as a tribe disliked anyone who did so. Most wound up as Freebooters, but they were both too young to lift hammers(well, he technically could, but he was still five).
And so Ersa's days became filled with stress, trying to hide the shards she made from odd jobs from their alcoholic father while at the same time teaching Erend life skills that their mother should have been around to teach, and trying to drill it into his head that he wasn't normal. That he was different. So by the forge, he had to act like he wasn't different, or else who knew what would happen.
It was just the two of them, really. If people found out abut his unnaturalness, her young mind feared he might be taken away her, and she couldn't live without the one good person that made her life worth living.
When Erend is twelve, she knows the sword well enough to take him and run away. She's old enough that the Freebooters they locate find her spunk amusing enough to give her a chance. She seizes it with both hands, and finds her calling. The Freebooters become akin to family, but her experiences with that complicated word keeps her from calling them as such.
Erend is old enough to ask questions. Ask why he is the way that he is, and she can't give him any answers. She's now old enough to fear not just him being taken away, but him being used. Someone with his abilities would inevitably wind up used by some stuffy Ealdormen for some nefarious purpose. Now, when he asks why he shouldn't use his strength, she tells him that someone would inevitably take advantage of it-of him. He deserved to forge his own life.
"What if I want to use it to help people?" he asks once.
"If it's life or death, yes, use it." she tells him, because she knows what it feels like to watch helplessly while someone else suffers-glass bottle breaking against her brother's back and if she tries to intervene it will be worse- and knows that if she'd had the power to stop it back then, she would have. She couldn't deny him the same thing.
When Erend is seventeen, the Red Raids break out. Freebooter services start to go up in demand. Erend joins. It's a tricky thing, but he manages to find a sweet spot between impressive and impossible that seems believable. He can tear logs apart with his bare hands now, and lift boulders without breaking a sweat, but he's gotten good at faking the strain a normal person would feel during strenuous tasks. Like carrying a wounded man dressed head to toe in the finest steel shards could buy up a mountain.
That was a close one.
She misses Erend's twenty-first birthday because she's a Carja captive. She feels like such an idiot, he might have to live without her now. She knew he could take care of himself, but what if he got some kind of stupid idea, like coming after her? It was the Erend thing to do.
There is one upside to getting captured. Well... maybe two. The military secrets she escaped with were very much appreciated, the guilt she feels as she turns her back on Carja territory is very much not.
She honestly couldn't pinpoint how it started; just that somehow, Prince Avad had become a small light in the dark, and it became mutual. Two birds or different kinds, with different lives and circumstances, but very much trapped in the same gilded cage of knives that was the Sun Palace. The last person she ever thought she would ever be friends with had become her only friend, and she had the feeling it was the same for him, given how often he'd risked seeking her out simply for mundane companionship.
She'd wanted to get on her knees and beg him to escape with her; she's never left a man behind, and leaving Avad under his father's roof goes against every part of her nature. But she's no beggar, and he's got a job to do. So she leaves him behind, and for some reason it breaks her fucking heart. There was another feeling, but she packed it away and pushed it deep into the back of her mind, because if she tried to explore it she might actually cry.
There was a very good chance she would never meet Avad again; of all the royals, she'd say he was the most likely to be thrown in the Sun Ring once Jiran decided peasant blood wasn't enough.
Seeing Erend again sooths the hurt a little, though. He's fine. The others had kept him from running off and trying to rescue her. He cries for a whole three hours; the others cry a bit too, and next thing she knows she shedding tears with them.
She's not as reticent to call her company family after that. In the two years that follow, she puts Avad's gift to deadly use, and they start pushing the Carja back.
Whispers come to her that Jiran had slain once of his sons. She quietly cries herself to sleep that night, because General Fashav is long dead, Kadaman is too favored, and Itamen was too young; meant to be raised and indoctrinated thoroughly, not killed as a sacrifice. In the morning she gets up before everybody else, lights a candle, hides it in a rocky crevice so it could burn itself out. She had never told the others about Avad; their lips loosened too much when they drank, she didn't need any word slipping out that he was a traitor.
So it would look weird if she lit a candle for a dead Sun Prince. She supposed their friendship would be a secret she took to her grave now.
Except a very much alive Avad of the Dawn's Rising walked into her camp with his honor guard a day later, all of them bone tired and hard-pressed to speak of what had happened.
She feels guilty. She's glad it was Kadaman instead of him.
The plan to retake Meridian mostly relies on shock and awe, and in private Erend pitches using his abilities to do just that.
"Absolutely not!" she tells him "We have the cannons. Imagine what the Carja would do if they found out about you."
"The Carja can't touch me." he argued.
"Erend." She sighs. "You're strong, you're resilient, but you are not invincible. Don't invite trouble when you can avoid it"
The cat gets out of the bag when a Thunderjaw attacks their camp. Between all of them, they shred the thing, but Joruf had gotten stuck under a collapsed tent, and Avad had gone back to help him. When the machine falls, of course it falls towards them. Erend rushes in at the last moment. Ersa runs around the back of the beast to find him holding it up while Avad drags a screaming Joruf out with a crushed leg. Erend lets go and jumps out of the way before the others can come around and see him.
Avad is asking for medical supplies like he hadn't just witnessed her brother catch a falling Thunderjaw. Once Joruf is stabilized, she drags the exiled prince aside and is prepared to threaten him for his silence, because even though they were friend that was two years ago, and this was Erend. What she isn't prepared for is for him to admit he's seen weirder.
He spins a tale of a cave filled with visions, and a suit of armor that saved his life. He describes how it felt to see the world from above, the impossible awe of flight as he figured out how to use the suit to escape. Many times he'd tried to find an opportunity to look for the place, but something was always stopping him.
If not for Erend's whole existence, she would have called his story Tramplershit.
He swears a blood oath that he wouldn't tell anyone about Erend's abilities. She gets a similar promise from Joruf later on, and Erend spends a lot more time with those two afterwards. Maybe other people knowing has given him some sort of catharsis. It's two more people he could be his real self around after all, and it makes her wonder if she'd been going about keeping him safe all wrong.
Maybe... maybe he could tell some people. If he trusted them, really trusted them. She tells him as such, and his smile is wider than a Snapmaw's. He doesn't, to her relief, tell the whole camp; again, ale made for loose lips with this lot.
They spend several grueling months preparing, planning, and somewhere along the way her friendship with Avad starts to feel like something else. Something that scares her, because now is hardly time to fall in love. They could fail and all of them could die in this assault, even if they won their respective tribes would never permit a union between the two of them. Not that she cared about what the Ealdormen thought, but all those stuffy nobles in the Sun Court would definitly start a riot.
She kisses him anyway. They're both crying like babies because they might die tomorrow, but she's kissing him and suddenly that doesn't matter anymore. She never thought she could be in love, she wasn't some dopey village girl who spent her time reading romances, dreaming about handsome warriors coming to save her or take her away. But this love isn't dopey at all, it's sharp and painful, because they know they can't have each other. Real love was painful.
It sucked.
But by the forge, that kiss.
She probably shouldn't tell Erend about this. The last guy to show interest in her was Dervahl, and her brother had nearly snapped and broken him in two. Yup, she thinks as she kissed Avad again, definitly keeping this to myself.
They manage not to die the next day. Erend doesn't break out his abilities. Helis escapes and takes little Itamen with him, much to his elder brother's horror when he finds out about it. The next few weeks are filled with nothing but stress, pain, and assassins, and even though it's an excellent excuse to sleep in Avad's room, she spends her nights watching the shadows with a hammer in her hands, not getting any sleep at all.
Even if she did, his night terrors would have woken her up enough to keep her away from any real rest. She eventually relents to Erend's insistence that she rotate her night watch with some of the others. Eventually, the threats die down, and she loses her excuse to be in the King's chambers at unholy hours of the night.
The war wasn't over; Helis had holed up in Sunfall, crowned Itamen a puppet king, and needed a series ass kicking. But he wouldn't be raiding anytime soon. That part of the war was over. For now, she had a new home to get used to, a brother with super strength to keep an eye on, and Sun King who attracted trouble like a magnet to protect.
For the first time in what seemed to be her whole life, though... Ersa could say that things were looking good for her.
Rost watches as Aloy snaps off arrow after arrow.
He could remember the first time he'd put a bow in her hands. Despite the flimsy draw weight, she had managed to knock the canister off a strider, and even scored a lucky second shot that managed to kill it. Since then, it had been like she was born with one in her hands.
She was only twelve, and already she was a better archer than some braves he had known.
But there was always room for improvement; sometimes he had to threaten to pry that Old World trinket off her head to make her train without it. He knew it could help her survive, and for that reason alone he hadn't stolen away with in the night and tossed it in the river, but she relied too much on it sometimes. He had to continuously point out that if it ever broke, she should be used to fighting without it. That usually stopped her complaining, and she had improved tenfold, if possible, since she started training without it.
Right now she was mock fighting Scrappers. Arrows wizzed into targets painted on trees and hanging off branches. She rolls and jumps and practically dances, and excited light in her dark brown eyes. He can tell she's not just training right now; she having fun.
He can't help the soft smile that spread across his face. She wasn't just good with a bow; she loved using it. That would make using it for difficult things a little easier.
"Rost!" she calls suddenly. "Did I do good? I'm out of arrows!"
"You did well, girl." he praises, her eyes shine as he speaks. "If you are out, let us go an make some more for the next lesson."
"Yes!" she says eagerly, rushing past him. "Follow!"
A chuckle manages to escape him as he watches her charge up the hill. I hope she doesn't start taking after me too much. He cast one last glance at the practice setup he'd built, before trailing after his ward.
I'm going to have to make her a new course. She had learnt this one too well. She might already be a good archer, but she could be a great one, and Rost had every intention of making her so.
Not too sure how far I'll go with this, but it's been in my head on and off for years, so it might go a ways. Inspiration struck me hard and fast, and I had to at least write a prologue for it. I do have some other Horizon fics, so if you like this you can read those. Expect no schedule for this thing, I've got a Destiny/Mass Effect crossover I've been trying to stick with.
About Coulson: I will not put Agents of SHIELD spoilers in an authors note. If you want to know how he seemingly found the fountain of youth, go watch AoS.
About Aloy: Her eye color is the only thing I changed. Everything else is the same. I have a reason for everything, trust me.
Ya'll let me know what you think of this little prologue, I hope you find it fascinating.
Fare Thee Well!"
