The family including John all sat at the table.
"Let us now give thanks to our ancestors," Thraen said as he closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his breastbone, of which the others do the same; prompting John to do the same as well.
"We thank our ancestors for watching over us, helping us with the hunting, gathering, and farming. We thank our ancestors for our health. We pray that they continue to watch over us. Praise be."
"Praise be," the rest of the family echoed, and eating began in earnest.
John first took a swig of drink. "What's this?"
"That's blueberry juice," Gearo answered.
"So you pick blueberries just for their juice?" John asked.
"Not just their juice but also to make cakes with them," Gearo answered. "We can have some after supper."
John started eating the vegetables before moving onto the meat.
"That's an interesting earring?" Breo said upon taking notice of John's focus, as he would wear it as an earring.
"Thank you," John said, feeling strangely relieved that they didn't recognize a focus.
"So where are your people exactly, Jawn Smith?" Merei asked. "The . . . Veer-geen-ea tribe was it?"
John thought about that carefully as he slowly chewed to give him time to think about how to answer that, then swallowed.
"They're," he began slowly. "They're . . . gone now."
"Gone?" Merei asked. "Where did they go?"
John hung his head, not knowing how to answer that and instead let them draw on their own conclusions.
"When you mean gone, do you mean that they're all dead?" Merei asked.
"Yeah," John said softly with a repeating nod. "Machines killed them all."
The family look around at each other as they had paused in the midst of their eating.
"How?" Thraen asked.
"I . . . I'd rather not say," John instead gasped.
"So be it," Thraen nodded. "You can stay with us."
John was startled by their answer. "A-Are you sure that's okay?!"
"Of course it is," Merei said gently. "But we do expect you to help us."
"Oh absolutely," John stated. "What do you need done?"
"We'll get around to that when the time comes," Thraen said. "But for now. Welcome to our household."
"Th-Thank you," John said graciously.
John looked down at that piece of boar meat, then cut it. He picked up a forkload, gingerly put it into his mouth, and started chewing. The idea of this having once been a living animal began diminishing due to the situation he found himself in. He could no longer get picky about the food that will be served in this household. He finished off the boar meat and had that piece of blueberry cake. Later on, he cleaned his teeth using floss that came from the delicate parts of machines and were great for getting in between teeth without shredding. They did use toothbrushes, but instead of toothpaste they used that scrappersap Gearo had mentioned. Instead of drinking it, the Harguess use it to clean their teeth with it. John winced at the strength of the alcohol within it, finding it hard to believe that it was actually meant to be a drink.
When the time came to go to bed, a simple roll was laid out on a sofa and a blanket and pillow were offered to him. They bid him a good night and went to their respective rooms. Even though this house was small, there were two bedrooms, with the three siblings sharing one as he had seen that both sides were partitioned off. Their parents bedroom was next to theirs.
John removed his focus and wrapped it in a piece of cloth. He next tucked it into his pocket and laid upon the couch and covered up.
"I thought about my world, my people," John continued in a contemplative tone as he looks off to one side at something distant. "All gone . . . now a legend to you new humans."
"Did you tell them that you're an Old One?" Aloy asked.
"I wanted to, and I was willing to go so far as to prove it by leading them to that cryo facility . . . But I didn't."
"But why not? If I were an Old One I don't think I would stop talking about it."
"You may think that but you have to put yourself in my shoes. I wanted to start a new life. Not only that but they wouldn't have believed me. There was no chance of me finding that Tallneck let alone that mountain I was inside of."
"That makes me wonder about any other Old Ones who might have come out of cryogenic sleep. If any of them did survive, are they currently boasting that they're one of the Old Ones too?"
"I wonder about that too."
"So how did it go for you with Gearo and her family?"
"That I won't ever know because two days later . . ."
John was helping Thraen in his workshop when Gearo entered.
"What are you both working on?" Gearo asked.
"I'm helping to make another machine blinder," John answered. "You know . . . since these Oseram are tinkers of machines and devices, I find it odd that they never invented one of these. Given that they've invented a number of things that I thought lost."
"Lost?" Gearo asked.
"As in what the Old Ones once had," John said upon realizing that he had gotten nostalgic.
"That's certainly true," Thraen said. "When I was a boy, I found one of their artifacts. It was this piece of metal over here." As he went over to a section of the workshop and pulled up what looked like a flat rectangular piece of metal, though rusted.
"Gearo did tell me about that," John said. "But can I see that for a moment?"
Thraen handed the piece of metal to him and John discovered that it was a license plate off of an automated vehicle. Though rusted all over, John could make out the plate number on it.
"I found that further up the road when I was with my father out hunting machines," Thraen continued. "It was in an area near a lake. We were staying on what was an unusually flat strip of land and set up camp. I dug in the dirt and found that metal plate."
"Do you know what it might have been?" John asked, curious over what Thraen's answer may be.
"I was thinking that it might be an identification number for a machine of some sort," Thraen answered.
John looked down at the plate. "Yeah, I think so too."
That was when a loud rumble was heard, followed immediately by an equally loud crash.
"What was that?" Gearo sneered.
"Let's go see," Thraen said.
They run outside and look upon something large that had arisen from underneath a section of the walls of High Hopes. Dirt and sections of the wall cascade off it like a waterfall. John's eyes widen along with his mouth as more of the dirt and debris fall away to reveal an only too familiar machine in all of its horrifying glory.
"A KOPESH?!" John screamed as his heart skipped a beat from the bewilderment and horror that now flood him.
"What kind of machine is that?!" Gearo exclaimed.
Just down the mud street, something else rose up. Something smaller, but no less familiar to John. A Scarab! John watched in horror as the Scarab released its dreaded red cloud of nanites that descended upon a man to instantly envelop him. He watched and heard with a mixture of awe and horror as the screaming man went silent and the red cloud lost the humanoid shape it had taken on then returned to the Scarab, leaving nothing of the man behind. The Scarab released more of its nanites onto more of the people around; as did the Kopesh as John had seen a red cloud of nanites leaving it as well.
That was when more Scarabs came racing in past the Kopesh through the massive gap in the wall it had created.
John felt as if he had vacated his body and was now outside controlling it. He turned and ran, only for his legs to suddenly feel as if they had turned to jelly and he collapsed to hit the ground hard, but was quick to get up onto his hands and knees and speed crawl into Thraen's workshed. He did not stop crawling until he hit the wall underneath a worktable. There was a loud crash and the shed came tumbling down, trapping him underneath the table, which ended up protecting him.
"I just laid there," John said in a monotone of shock with a thousand yard stare. "I just laid there and heard nothing but screaming and Kopesh cannons blasting away . . . I kept thinking . . . This is it, we're all going to die and the world will end a second time, forever. On and on the crashing and sound of machine movement went. After a while I realized that I wasn't hearing any more screams. Then before I knew it, it got quiet."
"That's because I purged Hades," Aloy said in a tone to relieve him, then turns dour. "I just wish that I had been quicker to do so."
"At least you stopped it, that's what's important. Anyway, I crawled out of the wreckage and looked around at the Chariot Line Model that had stopped working. I walked over to where Gearo and her father had stood. But all I found was the machine blinder," as he takes it out to show, "along with pieces of trinkets that the nanites couldn't digest. At first I thought it was broken or turned off, but it wasn't."
"That means it didn't work on the Chariot Line Model."
"Maybe it has to do with it being designed to counter Gaia's robots." As he looks it over then puts it back inside his tunic. "Because Gearo's father never had the Chariot Line Model in mind."
John looks away for a moment and makes that thousand yard stare. "I thought I would never have to see any of the Chariot Line Model ever again. But now here there are." Then snaps out of it to gaze at Aloy. "Anyway, where was I . . . ? Oh yeah . . . I next went in search for any survivors . . . But there were none. I was the sole survivor in that town. So I spent the rest of the day scavenging for supplies. I found a backpack and put a small tent, trail rations, a canteen for water, and a change of clothes. I also found a spear."
"And then you left."
"Yes, but that would be the next day. I spent the night in Gearo's house, or what was left of it. I was up early the next morning and walking out of there, due east since the Claim was over that way. I keep wondering why Gaia allowed Hades to restart them. I mean, this biosphere is perfect for us humans. So I don't get it."
"Why would Gaia want to allow Hades to restart the Faro Machines?"
"Okay, what I have to say is something that may be disturbing, but you're a big girl, so here goes . . . The Faro machines were only meant to be shut down, not destroyed. The reasoning was that if the biosphere had turned out to be all wrong for humans, Hades was to awaken the Faro Swarm and let them do their thing all over again."
Aloy gapes in shock and begins speaking in a low but intense and bewildered tone. "You mean to tell me . . . That this world we are currently living in . . . might not have been the first world to have been brought back . . . ? That there could have been more worlds before Gaia got this one right?"
"That was the plan, but it seems that Gaia got it right the first time after all. And judging by the date in my focus, my world ended nearly one thousand years ago; given the tribes that now exist, I don't think any of them could have gotten to their current level in half the time between now and back from when the vat grown humans were released into this world. Which by the way would have been . . . several hundred years ago maybe?"
Aloy blinks in thought over this.
"So Hades wasn't needed after all." Frustration was in her tone as she looks away.
"No, I guess not . . . But to continue . . ."
John walked along as his thoughts were in conflict over the horror that was supposed to have been lost forevermore. Along the way he encountered more Faro machines. The now defoliated trees and other vegetation around gave cause for concern. He wondered if all seven million of those monsters really came back to life.
John's thoughts were interrupted by Gaia's robots nearby walking about or doing their tasks but oblivious to his presence; though at times they did turn their head in his direction upon hearing his footfalls. With this Derangement going on, he wondered why Gaia allowed their hostility to humans in the first place. He patted the inner pocket of his new tunic where the machine blinder that Gearo had worn to ward away machines was stored.
He stepped on a twig, causing it to snap. A nearby Watcher squalled and looked in his direction with its blue eye now yellow. The other machines had also looked in his direction as well. John and machine stare each other down, then the Watcher's eye went back to blue as it turned its head away to continue on its path as it could not see John. The other machines go back to whatever they were doing too.
John sighed with relief over now realizing that the machine blinder still works, if only against Gaia's machines. He next scanned the machines to read their pre-programmed trails, seeing it as a line of pulsating triangles with its tips pointing in the direction it will be taking. Unlike animals, machines will follow a predictable route and will only improvise if forced to. He was relieved to see that their trails did not lead them anywhere near him and will eventually lead them back into the forest.
He continued along once again, albeit slowly and cautiously. He hoped to get far enough away from those machines so that he could continue walking more casually. He should soon reach that placed called the Claim, a territory that belonged to the Oseram tribe.
By midmorning, he reached the Oseram border. He saw the glyphs on a rock and scanned them to discover that he was able to read them.
"Wait, you could actually read those glyphs?" Aloy asked. "Does that mean they're the same glyphs your people used?"
"Actually it has to do with the focus' computing power in that it must be scanning and processing the glyphs from a human perspective, regardless what type of human writing system there is," John answered. "All writing is based on symbols that humans try to convey to other humans. Now as for what those glyphs read? It declared that the land up ahead was the Claim . . ."
John entered the Claim proper and approached a village. He saw that these Oseram built their houses like cones. He also saw that Scarabs and Kopesh had also arisen throughout this land as well. As he got closer to that village up ahead, he saw that some of those houses got smashed up.
As he entered that village, he noted the various Oseram scurrying around to attend to both the damage and injuries. If there were any deaths, they would have to be the corpses of those who got crushed in those wrecked homes.
"Hey, you!"
John looked to see one of those Oseram men walk up to him. He was White with brown eyes and brown hair cut short, along with a merely clean-shaven chin and wore clothing that was suited for working at a forge.
"Did you just come from High Hopes?" The Oseram man asked.
"Y-Yes, yes I did," John stated.
"Did those machines rise up in High Hopes too?"
"They did."
"Was anyone killed?"
"I'm the sole survivor."
"Fire and spit! So are ya goin' to Meridian too?"
"Meridian? What's Meridian?"
"It's a city. The capital of the Sundom, the domain of the Carja. Just keep on this road for another week and you'll come to a place called Broken Hill. Then turn and go south and you'll come to the gates that seperates the Claim from the Sundom. Just beyond it is a place called Pitchcliff that marks the halfway point between here and Meridian. Then it's another week of walking and you'll get to Meridian."
"Okay, I'll keep that in mind. Now if you'll excuse me, I must be going."
John passed more Scarabs and Kopesh, along with the various Oseram checking them over. He thought about this city called Meridian. It must have been that Carja city that Gearo had mentioned. He felt intrigued as he wondered just how far these new humans had come in order to recreate civilization.
It also sounded like a good place to make a new life for himself.
The day progressed onward as the sun climbed ever higher into the sky. The day warmed but a cool breeze blew. The Claim was a cool landscape in terms of temperature as there was still snow about the place. Evergreen forests are throughout the landscape, though many of them had since been cut down by the Oseram to fuel their forges. Deforestation could become a serious issue if the Oseram at least don't take the initative to plant more trees than they take. He kept encountering more of those Kopesh and Scarabs, with some even blocking the road. At one point, he watched a group of Oseram fighting a machine that looked like a large hunting cat. The Oseram proved to be a match for it as they were wearing armor and used cannons that shot arrows into it that tethered it to the ground, along with hammers and axes to bash it up. The Sawtooth finally fell over in a shower of sparks amid Oseram cheering. No doubt that machine will provide resources for those Oseram.
John continued walking and encountered more of Gaia's machines. As expected, they do not see him due to his machine blinder. Along the way John had a snack of roasted chestnuts and figs. He also drank some water out of his canteen. The thought of taking two weeks to travel to this Meridian seemed overwhelming.
"Why would that thought be overwhelming?" Aloy asked.
"Because back in my day, most people didn't walk long distances, especially if they wanted to get somewhere," John answered. "Instead, they used other faster means to do so. Not only that, but before the invention of trains, automobiles, and aircraft, the quickest way over land was through the use of domesticated animals."
"Like horses."
"So you know about horses?"
"Yeah . . . I found out about them."
"Anyway, to continue . . ."
Note:
Aloy's knowledge of horses officially means that this is a (sort of) sequel to Breath of the Dawn.