A Mercenary at the Gates Pt.2
Riding upon her overridden Sawtooth, Aloy navigates the rocky terrain along the elevated path at a breakneck pace, making her way to the northern gate. The machine had beaten her there already, and she could hear the sound of braves fighting with it. Or more like the screams of pain. They needed help.
Coming up to the last hill, she finds that more machines have joined the fight. A quick touch to her Focus reveals that there is nothing different about them, which is confusing. The device doesn't indicate them as corrupted or daemonic. They fight the Nora along with the new machine, Striders, Scrappers and Watchers. Why were they fighting alongside it? What made them fight?
That new machine is a different problem. It looks like a Sawtooth, but bigger, and its armour is bulky around its shoulders and back hunches. Its eyes glow bright red with a menacing anger unlike anything Aloy has seen in a machine before, and it pounces with amazing precision, sending a Nora brave flying through the wall. She can't identify any weaknesses, but she grabs a fire arrow and shoots at the machine in hopes of distracting it.
It works almost too well. The machine glares up at her and charges. The cliffs are too high, but it still makes an impressive jump to try and reach her and her Sawtooth, sharp claws and metal teeth all bared, hungry for her flesh. As the Sawtooth growls defensively, Aloy grabs a hardpoint arrow and aims at one of its eyes.
Then something amazing happens. Just as she lets the arrow fly, the metal hide of the machine shifts. A plate with a red visor slides over the machine's lens', effectively blocking the arrow with nothing but a scratch left behind. It snarls at her and backs down.
"That's new," she retorts. The machine keeps an eye on her as she dismounts her ride and joins the braves up on the wall and continues pouncing around and dodging attacks as the braves on foot retreat.
"Keep them away from the wall! Use your fire arrows!"
Aloy looks over and sees Varl, with his spear in hand, commanding the braves with no hesitation and a booming voice. Normally, he would be on patrol out there somewhere in the Sacred Land or on guard at the central gate. He must have seen the fire signal she set off earlier. Good. She needs someone around who could watch her back. Varl was there at the battle for the Spire. He could handle himself in a fight.
Aloy takes a few arrows and has them join the volley that is assaulting the machines. Four out of five arrows found their mark in eyes or vital parts, severely wounding the now small army that had gathers in front of the gate. There were so many machines, however, that the attack didn't slow down.
"Where did these machines come from? And why are they attacking us?" Aloy speaks to herself. As the machines fight, she keeps track of the larger one, how it moves and how it attacks. It's fast for its size and looks like it can tear through a small village on its own, or even Mother's Heart. That's a frightening thought.
But she had handled worse.
"Can you keep them off me?" she says to Varl.
"What? You got a plan?"
She tilts her head towards the strange new machine. "The big one."
Varl takes a good long look at the machine as it dodges fire arrows and knew exactly what she was asking for. His cheeks puff out as he exhales and takes a firm grip of his spear.
"Ready when you are."
Aloy glances at her machine friend. It stares back at her, almost as if it is thinking the same thing. The three of them jump over the edge of the wall together and land on the ground in sync. Aloy wastes no time grabbing another arrow and downing an injured Scrapper in their way before they charge forward. Varl rushes ahead and chooses his ground in front of the machine. It must have looked daunting, but she is determined not to let him down. Aloy taps her Focus to scan the machine again for any weaknesses as her Sawtooth tackles it.
She is surprised to find none. There are no batteries, no canisters, not even a removable component that she can see. That would prove to be a problem. She would have to use tearblast arrows to remove the plating and make a vulnerable opening.
Her first shot almost misses. The machine is so much faster up close, but she manages to land a shot on its flank. A few plates rip from their hinges and a few sparks fly, staggering the beast. Varl sees his chance and pushes his spear to puncture deep into the wires and microfibre metal underneath. He has to move quickly because the machine doesn't stay dazed for long. He dives out of the way as he avoids a large paw from taking off his head. Her Sawtooth gets between them. Aloy fires another shot at its hind, which brings the machine's attention solely on her.
"Watch out!" Varl shouts, but Aloy knows how to avoid machine attacks. It was easy timing their leaps to her jumps, and this machine is no different. It's massive pounce towards her is predictable and she manages to escape to safety. Once she is on her feet, she whips around and shoots another quick tearblast arrow at its hind side.
The machine jumps back, but quickly turns toward the wall and leaps up onto its hind legs, almost matching the wall for height. It swipes at the braves up on the wall, sending chunks of wood and a few braves flying into the air.
Aloy fires two arrows at its back.
"Hey! It's me you want!" she shouts. The machine drops to all fours again and turns to face her.
"Target reaffirmed. Eliminate Elisabet Sobeck."
Aloy's heart almost stops and she remains frozen with the battle around her swirling in action as consequently, so is her head. She couldn't have imagined that. Did that machine really just speak? And did it just mention…
"What?" Aloy gasps, too confused and stunned with what just happened. The machine takes its chance and leaps at her, high enough to eclipse the sun.
She's shoved to the side before she can spur herself into action and lands with a hard thud, losing her bow. She looks up and Varl is above her, jabbing his spear at the machine so it would back away.
"You alright?" he asks.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she answers quickly, shaking her head of her stupor and grabs her bow before getting to her feet. "There's something different about that machine."
"I know. I've never seen anything like this either."
They step back as the machine fakes a lunge to force them towards the wall at their backs.
"It's not that. I heard it speak. It's looking for something," she explains. Varl takes a quick glance over his shoulder to look back at her.
"What does it want?"
Aloy already has a pretty good guess.
"To kill me…"
Varl turns back to the machine and tightens his grip on his spear. "Then let's make sure that doesn't happen."
They continue to pelt the machine with arrows and spear attacks. Meanwhile, the battle around them seems to be taking a turn. Most of the machines have sparks jumping out of them and metal scrap is littering the ground. A few machine corpses lay on the ground too. The Nora braves were winning their side of the fight. She directs her Sawtooth to start clean-up duty on the weaker machines.
Aloy strikes her target in the flank with another arrow and the machine staggers. A shower of sparks pour from its side where the arrow struck. Before Varl can get in a second strike, the machine jumps back and puts several feet between them, and then it starts to glow.
Not glow, but shine brilliantly with white light as the metal bulks on its body activate. Aloy has to shield her eyes. Varl does too. When the light dissipates, she squints and blinks a couple times. She finds the machine had changed.
White lightning arcs all across the machine's body. New armour plates had appeared out of thin air, and the wounds they had inflicted seemed to have disappeared. The machine roars with a renewed vigour that Aloy has never seen in a machine before.
"That's definitely new."
The machine pounces and is suddenly upon her within seconds. She dives out of the way just barely in time, but the machine turns and kicks her with the flat of its back feet and sends her flying.
Varl shouts her name and attempts to run to her aid, but the machine quickly cuts him off, tackling him with the bulk of its body. Then it turns back to her. Aloy is still reeling from the attack, but manages to touch her Focus to send a signal to her Sawtooth; priority safety target – her.
The Sawtooth leaps into action. It shoves the bigger machine aside and rakes its claws against its side, tearing away protective plating. The other machine retaliates quickly, toppling the Sawtooth over with a single swing. Before it can get up, the machine pins it down and clamps its jaws around the Sawtooth's neck.
Crunch.
For good measure, it then tears at the wires and rips the dead machine's head right off. Even with no blood, it's a horrific scene. Aloy has never seen a machine fight with such savagery.
It then turns back to her. Aloy grabs an arrow and fires at it as it leaps at her. It disorients it for a split second, allowing her to fall back and avoid being crushed, and she has to let go of her bow to do so. But when she looks up, the machine is above her, ready to tear her to shreds with its claws.
Something stops it. Aloy sees a flash of blue electricity wrap around the machine's head. The machine struggles to reach her, but the object of light is tugged on it until it falls on its back.
She follows the blue line up to a single man standing on the road behind the machine. The rope sparks in his hands but it didn't seem to bother him. He's clad in some heavy grey armour the likes of which she has never seen before.
As the man pulls his rope back, the machine gets to its feet. Its roar is loud enough to shake the ground, just before it charges at him. The man grabs a weapon strapped to his back: a maul of some kind.
"Leave them alone!" he shouts, just before he spins around, swinging his weapon to build up its momentum. It smashes into the machine's head, deflecting its lunge attack away from him. The machine skids across the ground as metal plates fly everywhere.
Aloy quickly scans the ground for her bow. When she finds it, she quickly nocks a fire arrow and turns back to aim at the machine. She's never seen someone fight a machine so close so fearlessly before. The man easily dodges attacks, swings his weapon expertly to knock off plates that protect the machine's hide. She fire at those vulnerable spots to inflict damage.
When the machine turns back to her, the man twists his weapon to attack with the sharp hook blade on the back of his maul. He digs it into the side of machine's head and yanks a plate free, bringing its attention back towards him.
"Over here!" he machine snarls at him and swings. The man dives out of the way and avoids a follow up attack by jumping off a rock. He twists again and hooks his weapon around the machine's jaw and uses it to climb up so he sits just behind the machine's head, now tearing metal plates away with his bare hand and yanking out wires. The machine fidgets and bucks, but he holds on.
Aloy finds Varl getting up from a patch of grass. At least he's been safe in the cover. She runs to his side.
"Are you alright?"
Varl shakes his head of dizziness. "I'm fine. What happened? Where's that machine?"
Aloy points to the machine that had attacked them, still jumping around with the human on its back.
"Who's that?" he asks.
"I don't know, but it looks like he's got things covered. Let's help the Nora," she quickly answers.
"Right."
Varl picks up his spear and they join the braves in defeating the other machines, the smaller targets that are much easier to deal with. With the aid of the braves they are defeated quickly.
It isn't long after that the bigger machine collapses, a large component from its head missing. The man on it looks unhurt, aside from a fine layer of dirt that covers him. He jumps off from his places and crouches down next to it, presumably to start picking parts.
"We should see to the wounded. The Watchers took out our scouts and the laser from the Scrappers burnt up the wall," Varl reports, as Aloy notices a few burnt lines along the wood logs that make up the wall. Some even caught fire and were now slowly burning the barrier away. "We should also talk to that man, thank him for helping us."
Aloy places her hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Leave that to me. You should help put out those fires."
Varl looks up at the flames and the braves struggling to put them out. There was no immediate water source which made it difficult to deal with. Boots and feather capes would be burned.
He finally nods to her and departs to go help. Aloy turns back to the downed machine and only takes a few steps before she Focus pings her.
"A signal? From where?" she asks herself quietly. And more importantly, why now of all times? She activates her Focus and quickly looks around her. There's nothing unusual around her, except for the machines they have defeated, that the one warrior had defeated on his own. That's where the signal is coming from. From him.
Unknown device detected? Wait…
"A Focus," she realizes with unsteady shock. "He's wearing a Focus."
I'm so full of energy and giddiness right now cause I just bought a new truck and it's soooooo nice! I almost missed today's update cause I spent most of the day cruising around.
I'm a truck kinda guy.