Side-Traveler's Grave
-The pair come across a new bandit camp and a secret that lies hidden within their base…
Luckily for the two of them, the rain and wind subside early the next day, leaving only grey clouds behind. The storm had slowed them, however, and it was obvious that they weren't going to make it to Meridian by the end of today, which annoyed Aloy slightly. But she realized if they had stayed in Daytower, they would have been delayed further.
The new weapon she had received from Burgrend in Daytower is more powerful than she realizes. The complex contraption that tightens the bowstring can be adjusted and comes with a circular sights mounted on the handle. It's hard to pull the string back, but once it was fully drawn, she finds it easy to hold it. All these things Vale points out, because he recognizes the design.
"Strange," Vale mutters as he observes the bow. "This looks like something from my homeland. How did someone from the west obtain one of these? Anyways, you'll probably have to craft your arrows with different materials. Swap the wood for metal."
According to him, wooden arrow shafts couldn't handle the pressure of the bowstring; the shaft would just splitter in her hands. Metal rods had to be used. It meant hunting for new materials, likely ones that merchants around here didn't stock, but it would be worth the firepower. Vale recalled a few times he had seen the bow in action: holes in body parts; metal plates shattered.
Aloy recognizes the hill they are coming up on. The trail is within sight of a Thunderjaw that loiters in the open plain to the right ahead. The group of highlands to their left had once housed a bandit camp, long since cleaned up by the people who choose to move in after she and Nil had killed the bandits all those months ago. She can see the first houses at the gates to the new village are well built. They were beginning stone construction, with a couple crates loaded with brick huddled together under a makeshift shelter to protect it from the storm that rolled through. They must be receiving help from the city. This was Carja territory, after all.
She tries to ignore the urge to find them a nice place to sleep under a roof and a warm bed, but since she was on Hephaestus' black list, staying in settlements was not a choice. She expects to have to navigate around the Thunderjaw's territory as well. They were coming up on it soon, and she'd rather keep the giant machine fighting to a minimum.
But yet there is no machine bulk to see when they reach the top of the hill, no quaking footsteps of the machine or red lights of any kind. Instead, what she finds annoys her even more.
Black smoke rising into the air, poorly made walls lined with wooden spikes and machine parts scattered on the ground.
"That doesn't look good," she hears Vale say behind her.
"No, it doesn't," she agrees. "What happened to the Thunderjaw? It was supposed to patrol this area."
"Maybe the bandits forced it out," Vale proposes, but she snorts in response.
"Bandits can't fight a Thunderjaw, even if there were a dozen of them," she says in a half-serious tone. Some bandits couldn't even aim a bow properly. Vale pulls his machine up next to hers and points ahead.
"Well maybe these aren't your ordinary bandits."
Ahead, close to an opening in the wall, stood several machine trophies mounted high up on pikes. The biggest of them all, Aloy recognizes, is the head of a Thunderjaw.
So that's what happened to it.
Her first thought is to find a way around them so they won't get spotted. But then she remembers passing the former bandit camp-turned-village just several feet behind them. She wants to keep moving, but with the bandits so close to the new village, they run the risk of being attacked.
"We can't let this go, Vale. If they realize there's a village right around the corner, they'll pillage it for loot and hostages," she says as she dismounts her ride. She activates her Focus and can see a good number of people highlighted in orange all around the camp.
Vale lowers himself to the ground and does the same. "No, I guess we can't. Though it shouldn't be too hard. Bandits are easy work compared to machines."
She snorts. "Try not to sound too confident."
With a tsk, Vale smirks. "Do you know what I did before I started killing machines for a living? I killed bandits for a living. These guys are as good as dead."
"Hm, do you know why there aren't any bandit camps in the Nora lands?" Aloy shoots back, a daring grin on her face. "It's because I booted them all out."
Vale leans back and eyes her up like some kind of predator.
"You wanna make a challenge out of this? Fine. Whoever kills the most bandits has to cook for the rest of the trip."
Aloy hates the idea of it, that betting on who could take the most lives was a thing to take likely, like a sport. It reminds her too much of Nil's unsettling attitude, but these bandits threaten the nearby village. They were in danger, and she had never backed down from a challenge before.
"Alright, you're on. I'll take the left side. You take the right. We reconvene at the centre and see who wins."
"How do I know you won't lie about it?" Vale says. She let out an angered huff, but she wonders the same thing about him.
"There's a counter on your Focus. Use that," she snaps.
"Fine. I'll even let you have the first shot," Vale replies.
"Oh no. Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean you get to take it easy on me!"
"I never said that. I was merely giving you the courtesy!"
"I don't need your damn courtesy—"
A fire arrow lands at their feet, startling both of them. They both look up and see the bandits mobilizing, shouting at each other. A couple of them flood out of the front entrance and run in their direction.
"Great, so much for a sneak attack," Aloy sighs.
"Who needs stealth when you got armour?" Vale replies, pounding his fist against his chest. "I'll take the centre. You can go in which ever direction you want," he says, and rushes past her to meet the bandits head on. Aloy shakes her head and watches as he charges forward with his shield ready.
She's about to yell after him but Vale springs into action like nothing she's ever seen before, sliding into his first target with his shield and blocking another attack almost without looking. She likes to think that it's the bandits who have never proven to be that much of a challenge in a fight, but her mercenary companion weaves his movements and attacks together in a fashion that suggests that he's very much done this plenty of times. He expertly parries sharp-bladed weapon's away from him with his shield and strikes with his hammer when there's an opening. She's seen a hammer in action before; Erend wielded one, and skillfully so.
But Vale's style was different. It was like he was meant to be holding that hammer. It twists in his hands and slams against heads and torsos one after the other. Whatever his masters had taught him, it was clear that Vale knew what he was doing.
Aloy snaps herself out of her thoughts before she can be caught off guard and fires an arrow at one of the sentries stood up on one of the towers, nailing her shot right between the eyes of the cutthroat. She rushes up to the tower and climbs up to the sniper's platform to get a better view inside the camp.
A few more bandits are rushing out to meet Vale, while others stay back to get ready. While they were preoccupied, she would have the chance to take them out. Maybe the element of surprise wasn't so lost to her.
From where she stands, she manages to kill three bandits before they realize where the shots are coming from. Some of them fire back, but Aloy takes cover behind one of the posts that give the tower a roof. She grabs her blast sling, which she thankfully remembered this time, and lobs out a few shots. The explosions send bandits and dirt flying into the air, and she switches back to her bow to pick off those that had survived.
Meanwhile, Vale had succeeded in killing the bandits around him. Bodies litter the ground around him. He runs for the entrance as Aloy lowers herself from the tower. She catches sight of an all too familiar contraption; an alarm. It isn't set off, but a bandit was approaching it. She fires an arrow into his shoulder and another into his gut, and then shoots another through the sack that holds the blaze fluid, spilling it onto the ground so that nobody could use it.
She delves further into the camp. Bandits hide themselves in every corner to try and stop them, but with her Focus she can see them and avoid surprise attacks. She never wastes a single arrow, always landing her shots in fatal areas of the body as bandits before her fall. Going to war against the Eclipse must have magnified her human hunting abilities.
Or Nil was rubbing off on her. She really hoped not.
As she rounds the corner following some fleeing bandits, she comes to a dead stop and observes a strange sight. The bandits had been doing some construction in their own base. A tunnel had been burrowed deep into the rock, blasted away by bombs or some other heavy-duty means. A wooden structure is built around the entrance and a door that the bandits ware running into.
Aloy hears a scream and sees to her left a bandit fly onto the ground unconscious, and Vale appears shortly after. He too stops in his tracks when he sees the structure.
"Woah…" he says quietly. He finds Aloy as she stares back.
"Looks like you were right, Vale. These aren't your ordinary bandits," she responds.
"I mean, it was supposed to be a joke."
"What do you think they're doing in there?"
"Bandits? Nothing good, and I wager they want to keep it a secret with this big fancy door of theirs," he answers.
"We should look into it. Could be bad for the other villages," Aloy replies and they both walk up to the door.
"What's your kill count at?" he asks casually.
"Really?" Vale shrugs, but she taps her Focus anyway. "Twelve. And you?"
"Fourteen. Looks like I'm winning." His helmet covers his face, but Aloy could hear the smugness in his voice.
"Don't think you've won just yet," she reminds him and pulls on the door. It hardly budges, and a jingle of metal chains can be heard behind it. "Looks like they locked it up pretty good. Think your hammer can get through it?"
"Oh yeah."
Aloy steps back as Vale mounts his shield on his back and grasps his hammer with both hands. In one mighty swing, he manages to obliterate the door, flinging chunks of wood down the narrow tunnel. Aloy is prepared to meet a wave of enemy bandits behind the door, but the tunnel is empty, save for a few torch lights. It's still relatively dark inside.
Vale steps inside first with his shield in front. Aloy doesn't complain. If this was an ambush, they needed something to hide behind.
They creep along slowly, both of them anticipating an attack at any moment. The tunnel went on for several feet and curves a little. Aloy can see light around the bend, but it's hard to tell what is causing it. She can't hear any noises aside from their footsteps. It only meant trouble.
What they finally come upon she can hardly comprehend. A large metal structure stands tall in a massive cavern. Several large plates made the structure look round, and a platform around the base of it makes it look like a flower just before blooming. Light trickles in from a crack in the cavern ceiling, where it shines down on the pristine metal and scatters it throughout the entire room.
"What is that?" Vale asks, right before a fire arrow clanks against his shield. Aloy gets as close to him as she could.
"Kill them! This machine is ours to loot!" someone shouts.
"Vale we can't let them have that machine," Aloy hisses as another arrow bounces off his shield.
"Why? We don't even know what that thing is!" he argues.
"Exactly, which is why we should clear them out and found out ourselves before they do something really bad."
"Alright, I see your point. I'm gonna move ahead. There's cover to your left."
On Vale's signal, they move out of the tunnel, where large wooden containers are placed on either side of them. Aloy dives left as Vale goes right, planting his shield into the ground. He shifts the handle and pulls the cannon from its place. It was detachable.
As more arrows rain down on them, Vale glances back at the tunnel.
"What's the chance that they'll have reinforcements coming from behind us?"
"None. I disabled their alarm," Aloy replies as she shoots a retaliation arrow, piercing an enemy right through the heart.
"They had an alarm?"
She ducks behind cover as two fire arrows zip past her. "Yeah, they did. Haven't you done this before?"
"I don't usually encounter bandits intuitive enough to have an alarm! Or dig up ancient machinery…"
"That's not ancient…" Aloy taps her Focus to view the battlefield. As bandits continue to fire at them, she notices a few blaze containers sitting on the far side of the cavern. It must have been what they used to dig out this place. Sh can't hit it at this angle. They need to get closer.
"Can you cover me?" she cries over the rain of arrows. One of the bandits has a firespitter weapon and the missiles are whizzing past them.
"Don't think I can. There's too many of them for me to keep your back, unless…" Vale thinks for a second as dirt blasts in their faces. The missiles are getting closer. "Switch me places!"
After they both fire their weapons a couple times, Aloy slides underneath as Vale jumps over her, swapping cover spots. She leans against the back of the shield as an arrow bounces off it.
"Take the shield! It'll give you cover," he instructs. He fires more shots and begins to reload his weapon and Aloy realizes that this is her chance. She yanks the shield from the ground – it's definitely heavier than it looks – and moves around the crates. She can see bandits hiding behind cover on wooden frames built around the cavern walls and she can spot the one holding the firespitter. She sets the shield back down and pulls a tearblast arrow from her quiver.
She aims for the feet, or anywhere remotely close to the bandit. But instead her arrow finds its mark right on the bandit's face mask instead and blasts it to bits. The bandit staggers back, but before he can recover a bolt hits him in the bare face. Aloy glances back and sees Vale hide behind cover, but his head remains in sight and he gives her an acknowledging nod. Aloy nods back carries the shield forward.
Any bandits who come after her are shot by Vale before they can get closer, and Aloy finds a good angle to shoot the blaze stockpile. She sets a fire arrow to her bow, predicts its trajectory and fires it from behind the shield.
A massive explosion rocks the cavern. Fire rushes out everywhere and engulfs the bandits, including the machine that stands there. The heat reminds Aloy of the Carja sun on a particularly harsh day, except this is a lot worse. A crushing heat waves blows over her and rushes out the tunnel where Vale is, knocking the crates over and anything else that isn't anchored to the ground.
Aloy gets to her feet. Flames are everywhere, and any evidence that bandits once made an outpost here was gone, burnt to a crisp or on fire to turn into ash later.
The only thing that still stands is the machine in the middle.
Vale appears next to her.
"I think you win our challenge."
She smiles victoriously, but the feeling is quickly replaced with curious wonder as she approaches the machine, it's metal untouched from the forces of the explosion.
"I think I've seen something like this before," she says.
"You have?" Vale inquires as he picks up his shield, knocked over from the fire blast.
"Yeah…" Aloy reaches out to the machine, to feel its smooth metal. But when she does, she hears several clicks come from deep within the machine. The metal plates move and turn in a spiral as they spread themselves out like petals of a flower to reveal…
"A tree?" Vale deadpans. A single, medium sized tree stands in the centre of the machine. The base of it is buried in brown dirt or some kind of compost and the bark is as stiff as any other tree found in the wild. The leaves are bright green and perfectly formed, not dead or chewed away by bugs.
"Not just any tree," Aloy says and reaches up to pluck one of the many fruits that hang from the branches. "An apple tree."
She takes a bite out of it. It was cold and fresh. The juices run down her chin as she tosses the apple to Vale to sample.
"Why would a machine be harbouring a tree?" He wonders, examining the fruit before taking a bite out of the apple with a satisfying crush.
"I think this machine was meant to spread this type of tree around the area. I've run into this type of machine before. Metal flowers that pollinate the world with plants and herbs. Each one I found came with a code. This machine probably does the same thing," she explains.
"You think the bandits knew what it was?" Vale asks as Aloy finds a small node for her Focus to scan. In it are several lines of directives and messages, similar to a Tallneck's operations log.
"I don't think so. They were probably going to try and sell it or strip it for parts, not that it would have given them much…"
"But at least they can't hurt anyone else."
Aloy finishes scanning the codes and snatches another apple from the tree before walking away from the machine. It closes back up on its own, sealing the tree.
"Shall we get out of here? If I recall, you're in charge of supper now."
"With all those apples you won't have to eat tonight, but I'll whip something up," Vale replies as the two of them walk out of the tunnel and leave the now empty bandit camp.
Pay attention, because this isn't just a filler chapter. A part of this chapter is important and I might be writing a whole sequel story based around it, so stay tuned!