Terror of the Skies Pt. 1
-Deep in the territory of the Oseram, Aloy and Vale begin their search for Erend and the missing Vanguard…
Two more days in their journey into the Oseram territory, the two of them decide to make another stop at a small village named Maine's Gate for a night. The weather in the Claim is cold and the light snow powdering the ground makes it tough to travel – with their obedient Silvermane companion carrying most of their extra gear without so much as a single sign of struggle – so for once Aloy is thankful when Vale suggests they acquire some accommodations at the village's small lodge.
It was really a strategic decision. They were getting close to the Capital of Mainspring and the ravine where the Vanguard had been ambushed by machines was less than a day away now. They would need every ounce of strength and every minute of rest if they were to hunt down this machine and track the missing Vanguard. Aloy only hoped that they weren't too late and that Erend was still holding out somewhere.
The lodge beds were in a private section of a pub that hosted all sorts of travellers, and thankfully so. The public area was mostly occupied by Oseram merchants and mercenaries, and they were all so noisy that it was almost like they were standing in the middle of Meridian market on a busy day, and all Aloy wanted to do was think. She secluded herself in the room for two they rented for the rest of the night and attempted to get some shut-eye with the Oseram screaming and cheering not far away.
It was a surprise to her when she awakes the next morning, feeling decently rested. In the other separate bed, Vale is already gone, but his armour and gear are still sitting by the bed, so he can't be far away. Aloy digs into her bag of things and comes across her tech-heavy armour and makes a split-second decision to put it on. If they were ever to run into trouble, of which she absolutely expects to happen, she would need the extra protection.
She begins strapping on the armour, which is a complicated and time-consuming process, but it's a task she bares willingly. The shield weaving technology has saved her life multiple times, and it works better than any other weave modification she's ever equipped to her person. The other outfits she's acquired over her journey almost feel obsolete compared to this technological marvel.
Thinking of her weave mods, she goes to her satchel where she keeps them. There's a handful of them, all of them different elemental types, and they work the same way her shield weave does. She already has a few on her bow and slings, but her newly acquired bow has no such tech on it.
She also thinks of her companion. She wonders if Vale knows anything about weave mods. Not many people did.
She continues to strap on her armour. The torso is the most annoying to get on. A few leather straps cross her back where a row of metal plating covers her spine, but the piece right between her shoulder blades is difficult for her reach. When she first made this armour, she didn't think to make it convenient to put on. Hence why she didn't wear it often.
"Do you need a hand?" she hears and freezes halfway trying to reach for the straps at her back. Vale is standing in the doorway. He has no armour on and his clothing underneath consists of a black shirt with no right sleeve and belted leggings with a half-skirt draped over his right hip. He looks just as ridiculous as he does with his armour on, but it doesn't seem to concern him. There's a sympathetic look on his face and two bowls of steaming hot stew of some kind in his hands. It smells delicious, but Aloy is petrified in embarrassment.
"Uh… I mean, if you could?" she stutters. Vale puts the bowls down on the nightstand sitting between their beds and takes a seat behind her. He plays with the straps and Aloy can feel the armour tightening around her body.
"I didn't think you were the armour type," he says casually.
"Some situations call for a little extra metal. And if these machines are as dangerous as Avad says they are, I'll need the protection," she explains.
"It doesn't even cover that much of you," he replies. The tugging stops as Vale finishes fastening the armour. Aloy goes to her Focus and finds the shield wireless power activation, and suddenly her body is enveloped in a blinking wave of red light that fades into white and disappears.
"Whoa," the man mumbles. She turns to him and smirks.
"It has other benefits."
She gets up and finds the head piece sitting on the counter and straps it around her forehead. The shield boots up and forms around her head in a glimmering white light before turning invisible.
"I've never seen armour do that before," Vale observes. "What is it exactly?"
"Armour made by the Old Ones," Aloy grabs her spear and sits back down on the bed. "As their world was being consumed by the Faro Plague, the air became unbreathable. So they made these suits of armour so they could breathe, and for fighting the machines. They were able to fabricate a magnetic wave that protects the body from damage, head to toe."
"How did you get a hold of it?" he asks, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, curious.
"There's a bunker hidden underground in the Sacred Land where a full suit had been waiting for me. I tore it apart and made this outfit myself."
Vale nods, impressed. "How come the Nora haven't touched it if it's sitting right in their homeland."
"They're afraid of technology, or anything that doesn't make sense to them, for that matter," she answers in a hard retort. "The ruins of the Old Ones in particular. They think they're cursed and that ghosts haunt them."
The man raises an eyebrow and looks like he's about to ask more, but he doesn't and it leaves a silent gap between them. Aloy finds she doesn't like it.
"What about the Lakota? What do they think about the Old Ones?" she inquires. Vale thinks about his answer a few seconds before he shrugs.
"I'm not sure. I'm not really around them that much."
Aloy looks at him in surprise. "You're not?"
"No."
"Were you… cast out?"
Vale gives her a weird look. "Why would they do that? I provided for the tribe. Among the Lakota, you can either become a labourer or a mercenary, and most of the shards you make as a mercenary go to the families back home who can't do either."
Aloy feels foolish for asking and fidgets with her spear. "Oh… and so you became a mercenary."
"Eventually I did, ran a crew of my own for a while and we took jobs across the land, working for many to send back to our families. Most of us were from the same seaside village, so we worked pretty well together."
"Were they the same people that died fighting the Faro machine beside you?" she asks cautiously. The man nods silently as his gaze lowers to the floor.
"They were. Some of them I even knew since childhood. To bury them was… hard."
Aloy finds she can't sympathize with something like this. She's had no lifelong friends or many real close friends. To imagine the pain Vale is going through is unimaginable, but she can offer empathy, but losing someone she cares for was a pain she had felt too, when Rost died. So she places her hand gently on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry Vale. I think they would be proud to know how far you've come. You're carrying a legacy that's hard for one man to carry alone."
Vale looks at her hand on his shoulder and then up at her. With poor lighting in the room, there's no shining sparkle in his eyes, only grief, but Aloy finds herself looking deeper, trying to distinguish the retina and blue irises in the dark. In the middle of her search, Vale smiles.
"You're pretty good at the whole people thing."
Skittishly, she removes her hand and twirls her fingers in her hair instead and clears her throat.
"I guess I'm just gifted in that sort of thing. Should we get going?"
"Right, I'll be ready in a few minutes here." Vale begins strapping his own armour on as Aloy gathers her things and starts eating the stew that he brought in. She sends a signal to the Silvermane waiting outside the village and tells it to meet them out on the road by the gates, just far enough that hopefully none of the villagers would see it.
A thought comes across her mind as they get ready to move, something Vale had said. She understands now that the Lakota work for other people to send an income back to the tribe, including Vale, and that sticks with her in a revelation that she's never thought of before, and something she's never had.
Vale has a family. And they're probably waiting for him to come home.
… … ...
It's a tense moment when Aloy first spots the ravine in the distance. The mountains have flatted into low hills and the odd outcropping of trees here and there, because the Oseram liked to cut down the forest around them for their forges and contraptions. She can see the cliffs of the ravine as they come to the top of a hill on the road. She stares at it in silence, a gentle breeze picking up her hair and fur robes and for some reason her heart is beating faster with anticipation.
"The ravine where the Vanguard was attacked," Vale says beside her.
"We should look for signs, anything that suggests they might have gotten away," she sputters. Vale points to something in the distance.
"Looks like something man-made over there. That's where we should start."
They make their way over to the structures he's referring to, and the closer they get the more Aloy realizes that it's a camp. Skins stitched together make up several small tents and a few fireplaces are scorched and long since burnt out that the coals had turned white. Nothing more than empty sacks and tools lay on the ground inside the tents, but there are a few tankards in the ground that help her conclude who had once occupied this space.
"The Vanguard, they made camp here before descending into the ravine," Aloy speaks.
"There's barely anything here," Vale adds. Aloy lights her Focus. It can't detect any footprints under the light snowfall, but there are a number of anomalies inside the tents. She checks one such tent and finds a stash of supplies; medical herbs, shards and even an echo shell. Someone had left these behind.
Aloy takes the stash for her own and puts it away in the pouches in her belt. "There's nothing else here. We should go to the ravine."
"If any of the Vanguard did survive, where would they go?" Vale asks, but she doesn't have an answer for him. She leaves the question hanging in the air as she leaves the campgrounds and makes her way to the ravine. The cliffs allow her to find a steady way down to the bottom, where more snow has lightly blanketed everything.
It's not hard for her to find the first body, however.
It's one of the Vanguard. The body is splattered with what looks like burn marks all over his chest, something that a Ravager's cannon would leave behind. She can see more scorch marks along the walls of the crevice and further ahead are more bodies.
She turns them all over, pulls their helmets off, but fortunately none of them are Erend. It leaves a bad taste in her mouth to be concerned only about him and not about her fallen comrades here. Some of them had probably fought with her at the Spire. But for Erend there is still hope. She can do nothing for these men here.
She can hear Vale's footsteps crunch the snow behind her. "They all fell here."
"Aloy, there's a lot of bodies here," he says, voice full of uncertainty, and she hates it.
"I know, but we have to find out if anyone survived," she replies and rises to her full height. There are more burn marks along the wall, but her Focus picks up a different anomaly. Along the walls there are boulders, and they're cracked open in a particular way that suggests something big and heavy hit it.
"Something hit these rocks recently," Vale observes. "Look at all the debris. Whatever did this took a lot of force."
"It must have been the machines that attacked them." Aloy looks at the ground around the rocks. Bits of stone and dirt are all over, but she finds a piece of metal and picks it up. "This must have fallen from the machine."
"Let me see that," Vale demands and holds out his hand. He examines it with his Focus for a few seconds and nods. "Whatever this material is, it's different from what the other machines are made of. This is highly heat resistance."
"Is it made of the same metal from the machine that attacked the Nora gates?"
"Yes, but still different somehow. This is heavy metal. Whatever this machine is has weight to it."
"So that explains the broken rocks…"
"And why the Vanguard's fire arrows didn't work," Vale confirms.
"Let's check the other end of the ravine. Maybe they escaped somewhere," Aloy suggests. Vale nods and they continue searching the area for evidence. More bodies and signs of battle are all over the ravine floor, and at the other end is nothing but a wall. Interestingly enough, Aloy finds a crack in the walls, barely noticeable because it's hidden behind a large chunk of rock. There's another body lying face down in front of it, and Aloy can feel a breeze coming through, giving her hope. "Vale! Come look at this!"
Vale finds her behind the rock and glances down at the body.
"I think they escaped through here. This crack is big enough for both of us to fit through," she says.
"Then let's find out where it goes and follow them," the mercenary replies. Aloy pushes herself through the empty space in the rocks. Inside, there are tracks for her to follow, untouched by the snow outside. She can see a few pairs of them, giving her hope that some of the Vanguard had gotten away.
The crevice narrows before it splits. Aloy stops and observes both ways, finding footprints leading into either direction. She can't tell which one is Erend's tracks, or how much farther either path goes on for.
"I think we should split up," she begins.
"What?" Vale speaks up. His tone suggests he's not in favour of the idea.
"There's two of us and two paths. I'll take the end on the left. If we don't find anything in an hour, we'll meet back here."
Vale doesn't look too sure of her plan. He gives a good long look down both paths before finally saying; "In an hour."
"One hour," she affirms. The man gives her a nod and starts treading his own path as Aloy goes the other way. For the first little bit there's nothing. She has to light a fire arrow to be able to see where she's going, but the breeze is getting stronger and the air is still chilly.
She finds another body on the floor and turns it over. It's not Erend, but it's another one of his Vanguard brothers. She wonders what Erend must feel like, losing all his men to this new machine. It can't feel good, and it leaves her with an empathetic emotion similar to the one when they had found his sister under Dervahl's camp.
She hopes this doesn't turn out to be anything like that.
Finally, Aloy comes upon a rock wall. There are ledges that lead up to an open gap and out into the open. She's silently thankful for it, as she's had her fill of dark tunnels thanks to the Oseram's mining tunnels, and so she climbs it hastily and with ease until she gets to the top. There, she finds the ground covered in snow once again and no other leads. There's no signs of any other human or machine activity.
Aloy pulls out the map in her Focus. The land in her area is mostly flat except for the jagged cliffs to her left, which are huddled close together. There's some odd shapes beyond the cliffs that suggest civilization, but she'll have to go around them to see and know for sure. It looks like a twenty minute walk from here, which gives her plenty of time to get there and back and meet up with Vale. She begins walking.
The snow has stopped falling, but the breeze continues and the sun is hiding behind clouds, giving the atmosphere a dull grey and gloomy feel to it. It doesn't sit well with Aloy, when she's so close to finding Erend. She's come so far now that finding him anything other than alive would seem cruel. Suddenly she has a new understanding of Vale's conviction from when they first met, how he had come so far for his answers and she's glad she's allowed him to come along.
Aloy finally rounds the cliffs and stops in her tracks.
It's the biggest Oseram village – no, city – that she's come across. It's bordered by stone walls and towers and the buildings inside are the biggest she's ever seen. It's still not as grand as Meridian, but it's size is pretty similar.
"That must be Mainspring," Aloy speaks to herself. She gazes out at the size of it, noting that the towers are lit with bonfires and faint black billows of smoke are rising into the air.
But she takes a closer look and finds that they aren't the only source of smoke. There's more trails of fire and smoke along the walls, telltale signs of an attack. A flash of an explosion goes off and that's all the convincing Aloy needs to spur herself into action, sprinting straight for the battle. She didn't know who was fighting what, and she didn't need to. The answers were likely in this day and age, and she was never one to stand aside and watch people get attacked.
She prepares her arrows on the run, finding her tearblast arrows and hardpoint arrows. Her spear was on her back and thankfully, for once, her sling was with her as well. After the last two times of having missed that weapon, she finally took it from her bag of spare of weapons and slung it to her belt, along with a satchel of blast bombs. She would be ready for anything.
Or so she thought until she finally came upon the scene of the battle.
The first thing she witnesses was a man in Oseram armour get blasted across the air several feet. When he hits the ground, he doesn't move again, and more armoured soldiers take his place in front of him. They carry heavy weapons like mauls and axes and one of them even carries a heavy artillery device levelled at his hip. Aloy looks for the source of the explosion and finds a Thunderjaw flailing about. Other soldiers flee as it stomps around angrily and fires its disc launchers at the soldiers, and all of them make a mad dash to avoid the missiles. But some of the soldiers are hit, including the one carrying the heavy fire weapon.
Aloy's rises her bow on instinct and fires away her tearblast arrows. They land exactly where they're meant too; between the mounts that hold the disc launchers to the Thunderjaw's body. With a blast of air they pop right off and the machine wriggles restlessly and brings its gaze up to her.
Aloy's already on the move, running into the battlefield with her sling. She lobs a few bombs at the Thunderjaw and blows apart the armour along its body. She drops to her knees and slides along the ground as it fires its dual cannons at her, blue bolts whizzing by her face but never hitting her. She lobs two more sticky bombs on its underside and runs to put distance between them before they go off a few seconds later, shattering the chillwater canisters and doing enough damage to kill the beast. It falls onto its side in a mess of sparks and smoke, but it's far from the end of the battle as Aloy figures out when she gets to her feet.
"More Thunderjaws?" she questions incredulously as two more gigantic machines walk among the field, red eyes shining at the Oseram who stand in front of the gates. Their mounted weapons fire in a flurry of missiles and explosions rock the ground. Even with so many soldiers, many would fall to the machines wrath if something wasn't done soon.
Aloy stops herself from charging forth when she thinks of her missing partner. There would be no time for her to go back and meet him in time if she got caught up in this fight, but she didn't want to leave the Oseram to fight for themselves. She brought her Focus online and searched for her machine links. The Silvermane she had overridden was still waiting somewhere. If she could make it search for Vale through the signal on his Focus, it could bring him here.
But trying to figure that out in the middle of a battle was dangerous. She leaves it alone for now and her attention instead turns to the bigger weapon that the Oseram soldier had dropped earlier, not far away from her. It looks heavy but not complicated. There was a barrel and there was a handle, which was simple enough for her. Picking it up with a grunt, she aims the weapon at one of the Thunderjaws which is currently still, aiming its disc launchers at the human forces.
The weapon kicks back with force as a cylinder object bursts out of the cannon and fires at the machine with a tail of fire behind it. It collides with the side of the Thunderjaw and explodes with a great crash, staggering the machine. Aloy adjusts her grip on the weapon and fires again, the missile destroying the radar module on the machine's back. Enraged, the machine turns to her, but she fires again and shoots it right in the face.
The Oseram warriors continue to fight the other machine as Aloy empties the heavy weapon's clip into the Thunderjaw until it falls over, a smoking mess of wires and metal. She drops the weapon and grabs her new bow, loosing metal arrows on the last machine until it is also defeated. By then the Thunderjaw's weapons have already done significant damage to the walls and the Oseram forces defending it. There are casualties that Aloy feels terrible about; if her curious drive had led her any faster they could have been prevented, but there's nothing she can do.
One of the Oseram soldiers approaches her.
"You fight like a wildfire, girl. I've never seen an Oseram charge into battle with such ferocity before! Oh, but excuse me, you're not Oseram, are you? You're clearly foreign."
She nods and mounts her bow to her back. "No, I'm Nora."
This stirs a curious whistle from the soldier. "Nora, huh? Don't see many of your kind up here in the Claim. What are you doing so far away from home?"
"I'm looking for someone, another Oseram man by the name of Erend," she tells him. The soldiers bushy eyebrows rise on his forehead.
"The Captain of the Vanguard? He's here in the city!" The man exclaims. A sense of urgency suddenly arises in Aloy.
"Where? I need to see him," she demands.
"Wait, if you want to see him, you have to—"
Aloy doesn't wait for the man to finish. She pushes past him and struts for the city gates. Now that she's confirmed that Erend was indeed close and alive, she wanted to see him as soon as possible and through her arms around him in relief, or kick him in the gut for making her worry so much. Maybe both.
The gates are already opened to allow the warriors to return to the city. She slips in with them into Mainspring and is bombarded with loud noises. A large crowd is gathered around them, regular old citizens who seem curious about the cause of the commotion outside their city barriers. A few of them cast an odd glance in her direction, but Aloy ignores them and instead navigates her way through them, looking for Erend. Her Focus can recognize his body thermal signature at this point and she pins it as a priority target.
Within a few minutes of walking, her Focus lights up. She keeps her eyes open as she lets her Focus guide her. Down the long street, outside of the large crowds of people, a few men in armour are gathered. Their metal differs from each other, but the stone grey steel of one of them is recognizable, and so is the short mohawk along his head, and the yellow and orange strips of his clothes…
"Erend!" she calls out. The man raises his head and, once she sees him, pushes past the other men around him.
"Aloy?" he asks unbelievingly. Aloy can't help but smile. Here he is, alive and in good health, and all the doubt she harboured ebbs away as she takes off in sprint and wraps him in a hug. Erend's hardly moved, but he chuckles and pats her on the back. There's not enough relief to make her cry, but a silly grin sports her face as well as a hard blush from such an affectionate display made in front of so many people and it almost makes her feel stupid.
Oh yeah, she was definitely going to kick him in the gut next.
HA! Take that Erend.
No I'm kidding, you're a good guy.