S2-12
Red Ridge blues

As she departed from the Eclipse mining site, Aloy received a communication from Erend. "Aloy, I'm ready to look for answers. No more drinks in me so you don't have to worry."

"Red Ridge Pass, right? I'm on my way. HEPHAESTUS, I could use a mount." Aloy then saw her Strider galloping to her side. "Let's be off."

As the robotic equine sped off to its destination, Aloy had called up the High Matriarch for a little chat.

"Aloy! How nice of you to call! The power commanded by the Son of the Goddess is great indeed." Teersa's voice came over the Focus. "To take over a demon once led by the Metal Devil and turn its abilities against the killers is truly a demonstration of His limitless ingenuity."

"I know. HEPHAESTUS made an Override Arrow for me to use." Aloy chuckled at how easily she turned the tables back there.

"And now He has an equal advantage. Incredible." The Matriarch praised. "How are you doing, Aloy?"

The Seeker shrugged. "I'm alright. A little rattled that some evil god put together a psychopathic death cult to spread corruption, but I'm trying not to dwell on it."

"Yes, Aloy. Be brave. May the Goddess and Her Son protect." With that, the line went silent.

It didn't take that long for Aloy to wind up where she needed to go. "There's Erend and Hammerfall."

Erend observed a large group of Lancehorns digging their horns into the ground to inject Chillwater into the earth as he read about them on his own Focus. "So they put Chillwater in the ground to make a layer of permafrost to keep the planet's temperature stable. Can't believe we used to hunt and kill the very things that helped keep us alive. Major guilt trip. I'm sorry, HEPHAESTUS. If only we knew from the beginning…"

HEPHAESTUS was willing to put the past behind him. "[{You_Are_Forgiven.}]"

"Somehow, that doesn't make me feel any better about us almost blindly endangering ourselves." The Oseram sulked in regret before taking notice of the approaching Nora Seeker. "Aloy! Good to see you. Come on over here and have a word."

"What are you and Hammerfall doing out here all alone? Where are your men?" Aloy questioned.

"I'm not gonna risk their lives. Didn't want to risk Hammerfall's either. I don't mind putting my worthless ███ on the line, but not theirs." The Oseram huffed. "Hammerfall wouldn't let me go alone. Sorry I had to drag you into it."

Aloy seemed fine with it. "Ah, don't worry. This is just an average day for me. You know, take down some corrupted machines, track some killers."

"Right. I'd hate to see a busy morning for you." Erend then gestured for Aloy to lead on. "Ready to get started?"

"Are you sure you're alright?" The Oseram's well-being was Aloy's greater priority at the moment.

Erend shrugged as he answered. "Well, I'm sober, so… no."

"Well, I'm glad you're thinking straight, at least." Aloy smiled.

The Oseram looked away. "Don't get used to it."

"Tell me exactly what happened to Ersa. Start from the beginning."

Erend sighed. "No one knows for sure. She left in the middle of the night with a few of her best men."

"Her best men? But she didn't bring you? Or Hammerfall?"

"No... I've been… drinking a lot. Hammerfall's been keeping an eye on me so I don't go on a drunken rampage or something." Erend explained as the aforementioned Sawtooth approached with a turkey in its jaws. "Maybe she thought… ████, I dunno, that I couldn't hack it. Search parties found their bodies the next day, and the corpses of some Shadow Carja cowards. It was an ambush. The Shadow Carja are animals!" He shuddered at the memory. "They-they beat her so bad we can't even show her face before burial."

Aloy was shocked by the news. "I'm so sorry, Erend."

"Yeah, well… when I find the soldiers who did this, they'll be sorry, too." Erend vowed with a vengeful scowl.

"You don't have any idea why she left in the middle of the night?" Aloy pressed for more answers.

Unfortunately, Erend wasn't exactly the most informed man around, so he made his best guess. "No. But it must have been urgent; a message, a report of some new Shadow Carja threat, I don't know."

"Why would the Shadow Carja do this?"

Erend saw the ambush as a personal attack from a grudge against Ersa. "Because they hate us, and Ersa most of all. She teamed up with Avad to kick their ███es out of Meridian. They've been licking their wounds for two years, but… they finally found a way to get back at her."

"Alright. Show me where Ersa fell, and I'll do what I can to help."

"Come on, follow me." Erend took off toward the spot where Ersa died, with Aloy following suit.

"Why would Ersa come all the way out here?" The Seeker asked.

"I don't know. It doesn't make sense."

Hearing the approaching thuds of metal against rock behind her, Aloy weaved out of the way as Hammerfall caught up with them. "Is this Shadow Carja territory?"

"No. They broke the ceasefire as soon as they set foot in the Cleft."

Along the way, Aloy stumbled upon a piece of armor, which she scanned with her Focus. "Must be Shadow Carja armor." Scanning the armor further, she found no traces of damage on it. "Strange. Not a scratch on it."

Erend's voice regained her attention. "This is it; where the… ambush happened. Our soldiers have been over it, but maybe our Focuses can find a clue or something. I need to find the ███████s that did this."

"I understand, Erend." Aloy then looked over the battlefield through her Focus, noticing a trampled, bloodstained thicket in the grass. "These look like… drag marks. Did someone… move a body through here?"

"What do you see there?" Erend wondered as Aloy examined the thicket.

"The stain forms a line, as if blood dripped off the edge of something, like a cart."

Erend's Focus then highlighted lines in the ground. "There. Cart tracks."

"Yes. I think someone moved the bodies here, then scattered them across the field." Aloy surmised.

"Wait. Are you saying the dead found here were killed somewhere else?" The Oseram was quite confused. "But why would the Shadow Carja do that?"

"At this point, I'm not taking it for granted that the Shadow Carja are responsible."

Erend stuck to the facts. "Of course they were!"

"Well, let's follow these tracks and find out."

Almost as if on cue, Hammerfall took the lead, keeping his head low to the ground as if smelling the tracks.

"I've never seen him do that." Erend admitted, perplexed by the Sawtooth's behavior.

"It's not like machines can smell, so I'm not really sure either." Aloy said. "Although, he seems like he knows what he's doing. Let's go."

As the two followed Hammerfall up the trail, Erend was still trying to figure things out. "I get why they wanted Ersa dead, but why fake an ambush?"

"There's more to this, and we're gonna figure it out." Aloy reassured him.

At the top of the ascending path, Hammerfall lifted his head from the tracks and rushed towards something, looking over it with yellow optics. It was a destroyed Watcher with no signs of corruption.

"Ersa must've had some machines with her." Aloy noted.

Erend kneeled over the machine carcass. "Metal and muscle. A solid striking force." His inspection yielded a result almost immediately. "The damage to this Watcher looks oddly familiar…"

This piqued Aloy's interest. "You've seen it before?"

"Yeah. It's like it was hit by a…" Erend trailed off as he noticed some bulky figures step into view up ahead. "These guys aren't Shadow Carja. They're from my tribe, the Oseram! That Watcher was smashed by one of their hammers!"

"Is this how your people usually greet each other?" Aloy asked as the rogue Oseram trained their bows on them.

Before Erend could answer that question, he was forced to fight an Oseram that opted to rush in with a battle-hammer. Fortunately, he had help from Hammerfall in this fight.

Aloy, on the other hand, had to deal with the soldiers staying back with bows. The metal plates on her armor seemed to deflect the incoming hail of arrows. She would have to thank HEPHAESTUS later.

As more hostile Oseram joined the fight, Hammerfall let out a loud roar, echoing into the night. Something responded.

"I think Hammerfall just called in reinforcements!" Erend exclaimed as a pack of Ravagers leaped into the fray.

Wondering about how Hammerfall called for the Ravagers, Aloy remembered something Rost told her: the machines communicate with each other. Hammerfall had an antenna array on his back that broadcasted a signal and alerted the pack!

Several Ravagers charged at some Oseram to maul them, while a good few stayed behind, rapidly firing pulses of electricity at the warriors, who were torn to shreds and riddled with energy shots. The survivors didn't stand a chance.

Once things calmed down, Erend took a moment to inspect the bodies. "Oseram. Not Shadow Carja. Looks like I was wrong about everything, as usual." He said. "Let's put our Focuses to good use. We have to know what really happened."

Aloy nodded in response. "I'm on it." She then took notice of the Oseram's sparking companion. "Hammerfall's taken a beating."

Erend looked back at his Sawtooth, who was holding a leg up and walking on three feet. "OK. No more fighting until you're patched up."

"Cauldrons create machines, but it seems like they're not equipped to repair them."

"[{Deploying_Control_Towers_To_All Allied_Tribes.}]"

Schematic files appeared on the pair's Focuses. "Control Towers!" Aloy exclaimed. "HEPHAESTUS just figured out how to protect his machines from the corruption and he's combining it with a local repair field!"

"So Hammerfall just needs to sit near one of these things and he'll be good as new, right?" Erend asked.

"Knowing how HEPHAESTUS prefers to keep his units in tip-top shape, I'd say so." Aloy then began her investigation of the area, finding a pile of stone fragments. "Those rocks… are shattered." Giving the pebbles a closer look, she found that they were oddly broken. "Something hit these stones. Something I've never seen before. Got anything, Erend?"

"These look like Vanguard weapons." Erend replied, holding one up. "No blood on them. Looks like Ersa's men didn't fight back. But why?"

"I don't know. Wait… What are those leather straps?" As Aloy examined the strips of leather on the ground, she could tell that these were made to hold together something heavy. "Armor straps, cut with a knife. And a rock with blood on it."

"I'm gonna head up to that ledge. It looks like they mounted some sort of equipment up there." Erend called out

"Got it." She then noticed a big patch of bloodstains on the ground. "So much blood. A lot of people died here. A massacre."

"Found a used power cell by the tripod." Erend then saw something down below. "Is that…?"

"What do you see, Erend?" Aloy asked as the Oseram climbed back down and grabbed something off the ground.

"This is Ersa's helmet. I thought she died in the field below, but… must have been here." Erend rose to his feet, looking lost in thought. "All this… trickery. For what? Feels like it's just to torture me."

"I have a theory." Aloy offered. "But it takes a little imagination."

Erend seemed to be all ears. "So far, your theories are better than other people's facts."

"Alright." Aloy began compiling the evidence. "From the used power cell you found, I think the Oseram ambushed Ersa and her men with a new weapon. They mounted it on that tripod right there. It fires waves of force, maybe sound, similar to a Longleg. Looks like it cracked the stone there. I think it paralyzes people instead of killing them. It dropped the Vanguard right there. As you said, no blood on their weapons. No fight."

Erend still couldn't figure some things out about it. "But why paralyze them if you're only gonna move them and gut them?"

"They were trying to hide something." Aloy went back over to the rock and the leather straps. "Look here. A bloody rock."

"That they used to smash Ersa's face in."

"Or someone else's." The Seeker pointed out. "These leather straps have been cut, as if they took the armor off someone."

"That can't be. Her body is-is lying in state in Meridian, I saw it!"

Aloy had more details to share, this time from the Oseram's own mouth. "You said she was unrecognizable. Maybe they switched another body into her armor, someone around the same size, and mutilated it enough so it could have been anyone, even Ersa." She explained. "Go back to Meridian, take another look at that body. If it's really Ersa, of course I'm wrong. But if I'm right…"

"Then-then my sister could be alive! I-I-I'm going! Meet me back there when you can!" Now emboldened by the possibility of his sister's survival, Erend rushed to leave, only to stop in his tracks as he recalled his wounded companion. "Come on, Hammerfall. I'll stick by your side, like you stuck by mine."

Sorry about taking so long, everyone. It's just been a rollercoaster of worry. I mean... My grandmother's in the hospital and she's... starting to pass away...