Sylens was many things but a fool was not one of them. He didn't know who this mysterious Rhea was, but she at least was intelligent to be worth his time.
She was certainly more quick witted and patient than Aloy was at least.
He had known for a long time the twin wolves marked with emblems of moon and sun were important. Rhea apparently knew of information about them, but she would need their current locations to confirm it. Something he was more than happy to give, as he suspected she was more than she appeared.
After all, there was no loss to him telling her of their current whereabouts.
He was highly curious as to who this Rhea was...and how she knew so much of the old world. Perhaps Aloy had found something in Rhea's Rest, which HADES had been highly recalcitrant about.
Near a secluded mountain...
"So Hati and Skoll are near one of MINERVA's towers?"
"Not surprising... I programmed them to use her program to hide from outside interference. From what Gaia told you, they've been using their copy of HEPHAESTUS to upgrade and evolve in their own way free of GAIA's influence. She knew of them, of course, but she left them be at my request," said Elisabet. She had learned years ago how to speak telepathically to others in her phoenix form.
"Are you sure they can help?"
"They're the back-ups, free of outside influence. Once you give the authorization code, they can be of great help in getting DEMETER back. If not...well, there's another thing we can try to hopefully correct the problem of the plants."
They were coming up on the last known location of the wolves. Sylens had been willing to give them that much at least...he seemed fascinated with Rhea who took his paranoia and secretive nature in stride. Sharing even a fraction of the APOLLO program that she had copied from HECATE had been enough to loosen his tongue.
He was still pouring over the information she had shared.
Aloy was about to ask when she heard two long foreboding howls. She knew those howls...she had heard them before, a few times actually.
They belonged to some extremely vicious, intelligent and downright deadly machines that had a rather odd habit of attacking machines much bigger than them and winning.
She had never gotten too close, but they had shown up around her once or twice as a child and seemed to watch her with disturbing intensity. Almost as if they were waiting for something.
Hearing that sound made the blood run cold in her bones.
As she was trying to locate the origin, she realized all too late she was surrounded by both machines.
They looked different from the rest...almost sleek. There were no openings her Focus could detect, the one time she had been close enough to scan them.
The darker machine had a crescent moon illuminated on it's left shoulder, and the lighter colored one had a sun painted on it's right shoulder. Their eyes glowed an ominous color, and she knew without a doubt that she would be in for the fight of her life if they attacked her.
And she wasn't entirely sure she would win that one...not without being seriously maimed.
It took her a moment remember what Elisabet had told her...she took solace in the fact that her mother was right above her, flying close.
She took a breath before she spoke.
"The Weïrd Sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus do go about, about,
Thrice to thine and thrice to mine
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace, the charm's wound up."
The wolves paused in their circling. There was an odd whirling noise from them both.
Aloy took that as a good sign, as they were sitting down rather than looking at her with clear intent to attack.
Taking a shaky breath, she said the next part of the password.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
That definitely did something.
The moon carved one...Hati, made a whine in his 'throat'. The sun one looked almost...eager?
"Mischief Managed," said Aloy finally.
"Authorization confirmed," said Hati almost cheerfully.
"We have been waiting," said Skoll, wagging his tail.
Elisabet, pleased that the wolves had accepted Aloy, flew down and let out a cry. The wolves barked cheerfully in greeting, going nuts. They looked like puppies excited to see their pack again.
She transformed into her human self, and greeted the wolves.
"Good boys. I trust you've been keeping busy while I was asleep?"
"Can we go home for good?" asked Hati.
"Yes. It's time to come home. And then...it's time to cause some mischief."
Both wolves barked in delight, nuzzling their metallic heads against Elisabet, and to a lesser extent Aloy. To be fair, dogs hadn't been included in the limited list of animals that had been brought back.
Elisabet nodded to Aloy.
"Hati, Skoll, return to home base," she said.
Both wolves barked in agreement, and took the data from Aloy's Focus to make a general guess of where she called her home base. It wasn't hard, as they had used that location to hide out whenever HADES was active and doing his job.
It was a good thing they had been in sleep mode and had cut off all outside signals the day the extinction signal had been sent.
The two immediately turned, and began a fast-paced clip towards the direction of home.
"I almost wish we could be there when Gaia lets them in," said Elisabet amused beyond belief.
"Why?"
"I never told them that you weren't going to be bringing back the entire wolf," said Elisabet.
Aloy processed this moment, before she started to laugh. Varl was going to have a heart attack and so was Erend.
"Gaia records everything in the base, right?" said Aloy.
"Absolutely. She turns it off of course, during certain moments, but she's always recording."
Aloy couldn't wait to see the video of the others meeting the wolves.
"Now...since we have a bit of time on our hands while they head home, why do we work on your magic?" said Elisabet.
"I've been trying. I've made some progress, but some of it is being really difficult to pull off."
Elisabet suspected it had more to do with Aloy trying to force the magic, rather than allowing it to happen.
As they rode the machines back to base, Elisabet gave Aloy the best advice she could regarding the matter.
"When it comes to magic, sometimes the best you can do is wish for what you want, and then let go. Your brain can be a hindrance when doing the really finicky bits, like the transformation magic I do."
"What do you mean?"
"When you make a leap towards an outcropping and hold to it, do you think about what you're going to do or do you just leap and trust your body to instinctively catch you?" she asked.
"Well...when I was training to be a hunter, I used to fall a lot," said Aloy thinking. "But over time I just learned not to look down and make the leap."
"The same rules apply to magic, after a certain point. Your body isn't used to making the necessary adjustments, so it's sending you signals as a precaution. Once you're used to actually using it, you can instinctively learn to ignore those signs the same way you learned to ignore your fear of falling when leaping onto a ledge with no safety nets," said Elisabet.
Elisabet could see the light of understanding come into Aloy's eyes. She had been approaching magic from the wrong direction and had been hitting a lot of roadblocks.
She had long since lost any fear of jumping into the unknown, where the wrong amount of force could send her careening to her death in short order, with no chance of saving herself. The number of times she had jumped from one cliff face wall to another without any worries of what would happen if she fell were beyond count at this point.
"So I just need to make the leap and trust that my magic would catch me if I fell?" she asked.
Elisabet nodded.
"Some people learn by rote, others by leaping into the unknown. Beta learns better by stringent practice, but at heart she's an enchanter and creator. You on the other hand are clearly a battle mage and a curse breaker," said Elisabet. "You learn more by doing and by combat than sitting down to read. You just need a direction to work with and you instinctively let it happen to get where you need to go."
It made a lot of sense...she had always followed her instincts to solve the mysteries in her life.
Elisabet had a tired smile on her face.
"You remind me of how I was when I was your age. I was fresh from a magical civil war, with all my friends across the sea and trying to rebuild their lives, and in a country where I was completely clueless about the culture but at least spoke the same language hiding under an assumed name. I had made the decision to not use my magic unless absolutely necessary, because my core and my soul needed to heal. All while taking care of a toddler that was my godson," said Elisabet.
"So what did you do?"
"I found the most intensive, work-heavy field I could get into with absolutely no ties to magic, and then threw myself into it while raising a child. I wanted to make the world better."
"But you did! You created Gaia!"
"Only after Ted had utterly screwed everything and everyone over. That was a last ditch effort to at least salvage the remains of what was left to clean up another person's mistake...it seems like I'm always stuck with that role," sighed Elisabet.
The entire civil war had been because Dumbledore had been so consumed by the greater good that he had failed to see the forest for the trees.
"You seem unusually close with Beta," said Aloy.
"Aloy, I am unbelievably proud of you. You're a confident, strong-willed woman who isn't afraid to do what needs to be done to fulfill your goals. Beta, on the other hand...she's still trapped by her fears, terrified of being trapped. If you are the person I later became once I stepped out of the shadow of the past, she is the woman I was right as the cage doors were closing in before I finally left," explained Elisabet. "Trauma like that doesn't disappear overnight, and I know you are determined to save everyone. So while you work on that, I'm trying to save Beta from her crippling fears to become her real self."
Aloy was the type of person who's boggart would likely become a Dementor. Beta, on the other hand, was more likely to be crippled in fear when confronted with the trauma.
Elisabet was laughing, as was Aloy. Hati and Skoll had entered the base and as predicted, scared the living shit out of everyone there. It wasn't until Zo had the sense to ask Gaia why they were there that they calmed down.
Then again Zo was used to machines being tentatively friendly to humans. Her people worshiped the Land Gods after all.
Beta seemed to find odd comfort in the wolves, and Hati kept the girl company while Skoll kept an eye out for the return of Aloy and Elisabet.
"So...was it worth it? Did you find what you were looking for?" asked Varl.
"Gaia?" asked Aloy.
"APOLLO and ARTEMIS have been fully integrated into my heuristic process. My operating capacity has increased to the extent that reclaiming HEPHAESTUS should be possible."
"Possible, but I really don't like leaving DEMETER exposed. The damage that the Zeniths could do with her is too high to accept," said Elisabet.
"What do you mean?" asked Varl.
"Plants are natural filters. They do more than grow and provide food. They help to cleanse the very air we breathe, as well as help to clean the waters. You've seen the damage the blight has done to the natural order of things...imagine what would happen if AETHER was unable to clean the air or POSIEDON was unable to cleanse the water?"
Aloy winced that implications.
"So we retrieve DEMETER, while Beta tries to figure out a way to retrieve HEPHAESTUS," said Aloy.
"I had an idea about that," said Elisabet. "There's a high probability that the Zeniths are already tracking HEPHAESTUS...they would have the capability of doing so."
"Well we can't do anything without it," said Aloy.
"Which is why we're going to pull a fast one and copy HEPHAESTUS base code while we're capturing it," said Elisabet.
"Copying the code?" said Aloy. "There's no way it's going to let us capture it without a fight."
"I never said that you would be the one copying it," said Elisabet. "I can use one of the wolves to download HEPHAESTUS onto, along with the GAIA kernel Beta stole from the Zeniths. Obviously it's going to send machines after you, and I doubt they'll overly care much about one more dead machine so long as it doesn't read as active. They'll be too busy trying to acquire GAIA and recapturing Beta to notice us," said Elisabet.
Beta shrunk in on herself hearing that. She really didn't want to do this at all.
"I've been working on some...surprises...to insure that you won't stay in their care for long," said Elisabet. "They still have no idea I'm awake and still very much alive at this point. Which means they won't be shielding against a phoenix teleporting into their base directly."
She had been discreetly flying over their base, and she had seen the wide-open space on top with the ship. No one had looked too closely at yet another bird, since they felt secure in the fact she was already dead. Knowing what arrogant assholes they were before, they would take Beta to the most secure position in the very top if they recaptured her.
All Elisabet needed was something to mark where Beta was to reclaim her.