Chapter Twenty: The Stillsands, Part Two
Nil sat, straddling his charger, and waited.
A makeshift starting line carved the ground across the breadth of the trail in front of him. At its ends, it arched overhead into a jagged frame made from sutured debris and slathered with bright colors. It creaked under the weathering wind and loose bits of metal chimed melodiously with every gust, proving it as beautiful in its transience as Carja stonework was in its elegant permanence.
Considering them both felt like the nexus between the raw and the refined, and its essence beat within his heart. Like the seamless engineering purring from the motors around him, he idled among others who lusted for the race. He felt their ratcheting excitement pulsing between them like arcing electricity.
He breathed in their hunger.
The raw desire for battle and conquest. It thundered in his chest and sharpened his teeth. But in his ears, above the hum, he heard the pitched tune of his charger. He felt its scorcher motor thrumming beneath him and its rollerback hardplate under his grip. The refined product of his craftsmanship which had all begun with a needle and thread. Like a meal meticulously made and ravenously consumed, he reveled in both experiences and mourned their loss when they ended. Never satiated.
It reminded him of her.
He could see her in his mind as she waited at the rear of the pack for the signal. He could feel her fierce eyes on his back. His neck itched and his flesh prickled across his shoulders. Her glare tingled with desire, but he knew she didn't feel it for him. She felt it for the victory that could only be won with his defeat.
Attah climbed onto a broken slab breaching from an overlooking dune, her body haloed by flickering neon brilliance. Starting from the rear, she scanned the pack, checking their positions, and each rider signaled back their readiness. When she reached Nil, he gave her a thumbs up and she replied with a knowing smirk. Then she pulled a cylindrical device from her pocket, scavenged from a longleg throat, and put its mouthpiece to her lips.
The tension crackling between the riders surged, aching like lungs deprived of breath. And ahead, Nil could feel the gravity from the starting line pulling at him, the flight through which promised a gasp of air.
Motors whirred.
Sweat dripped.
And then the horn bellowed.
The pack burst forward in a rushing mass, bodies clashing against each other with showering sparks. They tore across the starting line, sand spraying from hooves as they jockeyed to break away and take the lead. But in a sea of jouncing blue lights, it was the red light that charged ahead.
Arrows clinked against his charger's hardplate as Nil pressed his lead into the backstretch, then he felt one brazenly thump against his shoulder armor before spinning off into the night. Josekk's work if he had to guess. But it was the sharp ring and flaring heat of a fire arrow glancing off his mount's shielded blaze canister that told him she was there, too.
He grinned as he heard more ringing canisters. Then one began to hiss. Its rising pitch shivered through him, a nightmarish sound that belonged to the red desert and its bloody dawn. Elottak cursed, and he knew she was out. He imagined her leaping from her charger before its canister burst. A boom echoed over the rolling dunes, and then there was one less rider between he and Aloy.
Metal bodies ground and clanged behind him as they barreled around turns, weaving through the ancient ruins whose former magnificence glimmered in a kaleidoscope of light. As he glanced up at the brilliance, he wondered in a way he rarely did about the Ancient Ones. Did they ever race through their unbroken streets like he was now but over the sand? Did they ever look up at the same brilliant lights that guided them towards victory? He felt it. This tenuous connection that shared space but spanned centuries. It's nothing he'd ever searched for before, but in this moment, it pulsed through him. Time in its vastness yet it was still intimate and tangible.
It reminded him of her.
The pack poured around the bend, whooping and shouting as they rounded towards the homestretch, and he spied a growing blue glow to his left. He knew it was her before he spotted her whipping, red mane. Needle-like arrows decorated her charger's flank and chest, casting off sparks that flew away in swirling, blue embers. She rode her charger hard, kicking its flanks when it threatened to flag. And he could see the warmth of its overheating motor rippling the air as she pushed it. As she demanded every ounce of its power even if it meant their mutual destruction.
But that's what it took to run the gauntlet. It was the difference between riding a machine and being a machine rider. It was a secret she hadn't learned until she had to breathe it. And now that she had become it, she lusted to win.
His charger tossed its head as it galloped, eager to fly like it hadn't done in days.
"I know," Nil said warmly, and he loosened a hand to give it a soothing pat on the shoulder, "You're tired of being a tease. And I promised this was the last race where we'd make her chase us all the way to the finish line. But if you're hoping that means you get to kick it into high gear, I'm sorry to disappoint. I'll make it up to you, I promise."
He grabbed a pair of cables linked to brackets on its head and drew them back.
Red-Eye snorted and tossed its head again, resisting his pull. But its defiance was only a token objection, and after another tug, its motor wound down in revolutions.
Aloy surged forward, her heels slapping against her charger as she urged it on, and seized the opening. For a stride, they were even, riding together. The lights from their chargers illuminated the ground before them in icy blue and burning red, and then they touched, overlapping enough to create a ribbon of rich purple. He wanted to linger there. To pretend they were raiding bandit camps again and sharing meals afterward to celebrate. To feel that intimacy where their lights overlapped.
But the battle, as it always seemed to be, was between them.
Her blue light swept forward as she shot ahead. He caught her profile as she passed and smiled at the grin growing on her lips.
In the distance, he spied the finish line. It loomed, rattling in the wind, its pull greater than it had been at the start. It stood as a portal leading to the thrill of victory or the disappointment following defeat, but more than anything, it was an ending.
She rocketed through it with fist-pumping joy, and he narrowly chased after her, the sand kicked up by her charger's hooves spraying him in the chest. The rest of the pack followed, thundering across the line as they each vied to place better than the last. And once the final charger crossed, Pekka and Elottak sharing a mount, they all leapt down and rushed towards Aloy. Whoops and cheers filled the air as they urged her off her charger. Then when her boots hit the ground, they descended on her, clasping her by the shoulders and shaking her as though her victory was theirs as well.
Nil rode past them, smiling wistfully, and headed for the craggy alcove where he hid his pack and its tools. He passed by Attah still perched on her slab, and she gave him a nod. He returned it with his own, acknowledging their shared secret.
When he reached the alcove, he slid off his charger and pulled out the pack. He uncinched the flap and began fumbling through its contents, pulling out an assortment of wrenches and a satchel bulging with hardware. Other than a normal post-race check, he was certain he'd felt something rattling during the ride. The scorcher motor produced an extraordinary amount of torque, and even the bolts harvested from the black machines sheared under its power.
He knelt on the ground, and with a ratchet wrench in hand, he reached behind a panel and began to loosen it.
Red-Eye bleated.
And he felt someone trudging up the dune behind him.
"Good race," Aloy said.
He removed his hand from behind the panel and set his wrench down beside the other tools. A familiar knot tightened in his chest. He'd spoken to her more than a dozen times since she had shown up again. Whenever she wanted to race amid the lights, he was the one she had to ask. He'd been encouraging and poetic, cheering her onward while extolling the virtues of bloody battle. He was a consummate Carja but with a penchant for violence. So, he was still surprised that she hadn't recognized him, but then who expects a ghost to rise from the dead?
"It was," he agreed, and he rose to his feet. When he turned, she was staring at his charger. He held his breath as she examined it, remembering the days he'd spent getting the paint right on each plate. The effort he'd made to render its distinctiveness invisible to even the most expert eyes.
Her hand absently rose, reaching for the device floating on her temple.
He swallowed dryly.
Then she withdrew her hand and shook her head. "I hadn't noticed before I took the lead, but your charger's light is always red, isn't it?"
He sighed, the relief in it only filling his ears. "Since the beginning."
"I've never seen one stay in the red without reverting back to blue. Usually, it's a sign they're angry and angling for the attack."
He chuckled. "Oh, I'm sure it's always angry and angling for the attack." Then he gestured to the spear slung across her back. "Especially if you have that near it."
She scoffed. "I'm not going to stab it."
"It's not the pointy end that can fill it with rage," he assured, and he motioned towards the device strapped to its other end.
"The override module?"
He shrugged. "Nothing like being forced to lose your autonomy so that you become a tool in service for another being's aims." He paused and licked his lips. "Even when their efforts are for the greater good… And you are the key destined to save the world."
Her head snapped up and her green eyes bored through the hood shrouding his face. He met them with his own eyes, cool like quicksilver.
"You know me, don't you?" she said, her brow furrowing. "Who are you?"
He glanced to the side, eyeing the others as they lounged around the campfire swilling ale and roasting the lizards they'd caught scurrying in the sand that afternoon. Attah patrolled their ranks, chastising anyone who cast even a surreptitious look in his direction. Satisfied, he loosened the ties on his hood and lifted it over his head. The chill night air felt fresh, tingling his scalp through his short-cropped hair.
She stared at him for a long breath, her expression puzzled as though she were piecing his features together through the messy warpaint that smeared his face. Then her eyes widened, and her hand flew up, covering her gasp.
"Nil?" she whispered.
"Hi Aloy," he replied.
She shook her head. "On the mesa in the Spearshafts… I thought…"
He gestured to the thin scars carving his chest and abdomen, their lines still pink with youth. "I survived. It appears that fire arrows don't always penetrate deep enough to kill, though the infection afterward did make a worthy effort to finish me off."
She swallowed, and he watched her hand slip behind her back, reaching for her spear.
He waved at her, palms out, and soothed. "I'm not interested in a rematch. What happened was my own doing, and I don't hold any ill will towards you, though I understand if you don't feel the same way about me."
She froze, staring at him, the shaft of her spear at her fingertips.
"I give you my word, for whatever it's worth, that I don't intend to fight. I'm unarmed and if you wield that spear against me, I'll have no choice but to die."
She continued to stare.
"Truce?" he offered earnestly with an open hand.
At that, she breathed out a heavy sigh and left her spear where it hung.
"It's good to see you," he said. "And to be seen by you."
She began to pace, her hands resting on her hips. "I don't know if I'm in the headspace to deal with you right now. GAIA is incomplete, and the world's environmental systems are collapsing without her care. HEPHAESTUS is running amok, churning out hunter-killer machines faster than we can destroy them. And it doesn't help that GAIA needs it to boost her heuristic power if we hope to stand against these Zenith assholes that are trying to end the world faster than it can end itself."
"I'm sorry," he apologized.
"Sorry?" she repeated.
"Yes. For all that… And for what I did."
He watched as something in her eyes snapped, and she stormed towards him. "You're sorry? You tricked me into fighting you in a duel. I trusted you, and you betrayed me. You knew. You knew that when someone asks something of me, I always follow through. No matter what. And you knew that my real purpose was so important that the fate of the world rested on my shoulders. But you still tricked me. You still used me. You only cared about what you wanted, and the rest could burn."
He thought about that night in Brightmarket when he rejected Helis, and said, "I might have tricked you. I might have betrayed your trust. But you could have left. That duel was a request and there were no lives hanging in the balance if you denied me. You could have said no. The worst it would have done is break my heart."
Her face darkened with rage, and a stinging flash of pain seared his cheek as her hand struck him. He accepted the blow. The cost of his words. With her hand still balled into a fist, she seethed, her shoulders shuddering and tears welling in her eyes. Through all the horrors and tragedies from the Sacred Lands to the Forbidden West, he'd never seen her break. No one had.
And as she teetered on the edge, she spun on her heel and headed for the chargers.
"Aloy!" he called out to her.
She ignored him, pressing on through the sand.
"Aloy!" he called out again. "I just need to know. Do you hate me?"
She paused in her step. He watched her shoulders rise and fall as she filled her lungs with a few steadying breaths. Then she whispered. "I don't know. I don't know if I hate you or if I hate that you ruined the only good thing in my life after I had lost so much."
He looked away, his eyes downcast.
"But I'm glad you're alive," she added. "And that's far more than anything I've felt for those I hate." She turned her head, revealing a wet cheek. "Goodbye, Nil."
He looked back up, but she was already gone, leaving him with just the fading hoofbeats of her mount as she rode away.
"Goodbye, Aloy," he said after her. Then he pulled his hood back on over his head.