Chapter Twenty-Two: The Sheerside Mountains
With his arm wrapped around her waist, Nil held on.
Heavy wings beat the air, casting sand upwards in billowing plumes. Gusts whipped their bodies as fierce as a sandstorm. The sunwing beneath them undulated, rising and falling in rhythm with its wings, and he felt its claws scratch stone as it pushed off. Through the rushing wind, he heard excited chargers bleating and watched their hazy silhouettes flee deeper into the ruins.
Then the sunwing flapped hard, and the golden shroud that swirled around them fell away. The ancient city, with its weathered concrete and glimmering lights, shrank as they rose. He gazed down at the half-buried buildings, remembering how he had explored them on the back of his charger. How he had sat underneath the shade of their rusted beams as they curved above him like ribs. From high in the pale sky, the ruins took on a new shape where each building wasn't a body but a bone, and together, they lay bleaching in the sun – the articulated skeleton of the dead city.
He felt Aloy shift, her back warm against his chest. Her tangled mane lashed his face, stinging more than it caressed, and when he inhaled, he caught hints of sage. Then her hair relented as she leaned forward, her body hunched over the sunwing's back. He followed, carried forward by the arm that still held her.
The beast must have felt it. The way she shifted her balance or how her thigh dug into its flank. The curve of its wings lengthened, stretching as far as its wingspan let it, and then with another wingbeat, they soared across the desert. Golden dunes transformed into shimmering salt flats. The landscape passed beneath them so slowly, and yet he knew how far they had gone. His calloused feet remembered those days spent hiking. Even on his charger's back, the world never sped by like this.
"How are you doing?!" Aloy shouted to him, her words nearly stripped by the rushing air.
"It's breathtaking!" he shouted back, then he pressed against her, his lips close enough to brush her ear. "I'm thinking about adding wings to Red-Eye. Maybe a couple of thrusters."
He felt her shoulders shake with unheard laughter, and from the curve of her cheek, he could see her grin.
"I don't know if you're joking, or if the next time I see your charger, it'll be blasting through the sky and menacing hapless stormbirds!"
It was his turn to laugh, and it rolled through him warm and bright. But he could also feel himself trembling, and he couldn't tell if it was from the softness of her body pressed against him or if it was from the promise of death that hung in the emptiness below. It felt like the black chasm, the one that devoured glaciers, but here instead it was brimming with sunlight and life. And she was there with him, and he knew there was no way it could swallow them both. They burned too bright – his fire and her ice.
Low desert transformed into rolling hills speckled with spindly conifers as they continued westward. The sunwing climbed higher, and the first nip of chilly air stung him with prickling gooseflesh.
Aloy spied back at him, her eyes twinkling and lower lip bitten. As she turned, he noticed a familiar patch of suede flapping against her shoulder. But before he could reach up to touch it and feel the seam he knew was there, she called out to him.
"Do you want to do something fun?!"
"Sure."
"Then hold on!" she replied, and she clasped his arm at her waist and held it against her belly like a vice. "I mean, really hold on!"
He jammed his feet through gaps in the sunwing's frame and anchored his calves under jutting hardplate. He felt secure, as though his legs were melded with the machine and not even the best delvers could pry him loose.
"I'm ready!" he shouted.
Her grin turned wolfish, and she hunkered down. He didn't catch the signal, but he gasped as the sunwing cupped its wings and barreled into a dive. Crushing weight rolled onto his back, smashing him against Aloy, and she bore it with breathless laughter. The forested ground rushed up towards them, their impending deaths bright and clear yet blurring at the edges. Then the beast's wings unfolded, and they shot upward in a climbing arc. The snow-capped horizon swept past. Then the sky was beneath them, a blue so deep and searing that even the ocean envied it. They hung there for a heartbeat, weightless, and his arm pulled away from her waist as he reached out with both hands and touched the sun like no Carja had ever done. Then it was gone as the descending arc pulled him away with its sinking gravity. He could hear his laughter threading the wind, and his cheeks and chest ached from more than the soaring loop. His joy shook him still as they leveled out high above the craggy mountains powdered white with snow.
"I forgot how much crazier you are than me!" Aloy shouted back at him. "I expected you to fall off, and I'd have to dive to save you! But then you didn't fall off the tallneck either, did you?!"
Memories of old ruins twisted by forest growth pressed its way into his mind, punctuated by the seismic thumps of the tallneck as it strolled through empty streets. He remembered the leap onto its neck and slamming into the machine's gleaming side. His awkward climb, and how he clashed with it as it strode while she sunk into its rhythm. But now they rode together, his body moving with hers in the harmony of flight. When had he changed? He couldn't remember. But perhaps it hadn't been one moment, but many. Each a step towards a new purpose where he no longer lived as a seam ripper but had become a needle and thread.
He chuckled.
She gestured towards a snowy clearing beneath a mountain peak. "I'm going to put us down over there!"
He nodded and began wriggling his ankles free from the sunwing's frame. And it was just in time as the beast swooped towards the clearing and reached out with its claws. Snow sprayed, glittering white, as it touched down and skidded, leaving a trail behind it.
Nil nimbly slid off its back and immediately regretted trading his boots for sandals. Slushy snow enveloped his feet, stinging his toes, and he waded through it up to his knees. She followed him, taking advantage of his trail, then she looked to the south and her boots started to forge their own way.
"The Nora do love the cold," he muttered as he rubbed his arms. "Aloy, if coming here was your attempt to remind me of why I stay in the desert, then you've succeeded. One day the sun might flay my skin with fire, but at least I'll be warm when it does it."
He expected a scoff or a teasing retort, but there was only silence.
"Aloy?"
He turned and spotted her perched at the edge of the clearing where it met a steep precipice. Her back was to him, and he slogged through the snow to join her. And through the crystal-clear air, he could see forever. Sheer mountains gave way to lush, lowland jungles and towering conifers. Then there was the sea, dark blue mellowing to turquoise as it crashed against sandy beaches, its smoothness disrupted only by the city of spires hidden by wispy fog off the coast.
"Well, this might be worth the cold," he sighed with a soft smile.
Again, he felt her silence, and when he looked at her face, he found it somber and her eyes gazing into the distance. It was then that he followed her line of sight and saw it.
It was a vessel, gleaming white and floating on the bay. Its hull appeared smooth and tapered at one end, streamlined like an arrowhead. Rows of globes blanketed its deck and behind them jutting towers pierced the sky. Smoke billowed from jagged fissures where violence had sheared it like claws. In whole, it was an ugly thing, clashing with the world flowing around it.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Another extinction averted," she murmured, "Or is it just delayed? I can't tell anymore. What's the battle and what's the war? When we fought the Zeniths there and destroyed them, it felt like it should have been an ending. But instead, it's only a respite in what seems like an endless fight."
"That's the trick about war," he said with a hum, "It's never finished. There are always reasons for spilling blood and stealing bodies, and they're constantly changing like reflections in faceted glass. Each distortion is a new power who demands weapons for its purpose. And slaves for its whims."
She turned towards him, eyeing him critically. "This is a fight to keep another mass extinction from wiping us out like the one that killed the Old Ones. It's not trivial like a clan dispute …Or the senseless crusade of a mad sun-king."
He smirked at her jab. Her words needed to cut deeper if she wanted to bloody his nose. "Dead is dead. Whether you're slaughtered by rebels or cultists. Or by bandits or space monsters. War always persists. Only the players change."
"And what's the solution?" she asked bitterly. "Walk away? Turn my back and watch people die? Let the world end?"
"That's the only way out if you're looking for one. That or dying."
She blew out a breath. "Well, I don't have that luxury. GAIA made me for a reason, and I have to see it through." She hesitated. "There's… no one else who can do it."
"It's your purpose."
"Yeah, it's my purpose. It's literally in my blood. Even if I wanted to walk away and race chargers across the desert for the rest of my life, I'd be dooming the planet. It'd be selfish when I'm supposed to be selfless." She shook her head. "Sometimes I envy you. Having the freedom to choose what to do with your life."
He snorted. "Perhaps because your purpose is so literal – the key to saving the world — you don't realize that others have had as little choice as you. My entire existence was being a weapon. The Sundom's Arrow. I breathed it for years, and its purpose still defines what I am. It gave me value when I was worthless. You speak of luxuries and envy, but you were born with a glorious destiny. And I was birthed without a name."
Her brow furrowed. "I don't understand. You have a name."
"Oh, you mean Nil?" he said, touching his chest. "Or am I Red Teeth now? I can't keep them all straight. I'm a man with a dozen aliases, and if you speak a few of them in any tavern across the territories, you'll see what being known as a weapon does to other people. How their bodies quake as they reach for their swords. But a name? That I don't have. Because my mother was a slave." He tapped his cheek, his finger pointing to a silver eye. "And the man who gave me these raped her whenever he pleased."
Aloy swallowed.
"I don't fault her for not giving me a name when she birthed me out onto that dirty floor. Even the milk and warmth she must have provided my infant self was more than I deserved. But when the violations caused her belly to swell again, she tore out her own throat with a seam ripper. And it was then that I knew what I meant to her. What I represented to the world, and a purpose blessed with matricidal blood."
"You didn't kill your mother."
"No, my existence did."
"That's not true," she countered vehemently, and she cut the air with her hand. "That man who raped her, he was the one responsible. You were a child. You had no control over anything that happened to you. Or to her."
"No control, huh? Same as you then. In many ways, we're mirrored reflections. You, motherless. I, fatherless. Then the one parent we each had died, though their suicidal intentions couldn't be further apart. One was selfless and the other selfish. So again, we're mirrored. Though, how selfless are you, Aloy? Because the deeds you perform always reap a reward. And you loot every enemy you slay."
"How dare you?!" she snarled, and she jabbed finger at his chest. "I have sacrificed everything to save this planet from one extinction event after another! I've been used and exploited! I've almost died I don't know how many times! I've damaged my relationships!" She took a deep, shuddering breath. "And I lost a very close friend!"
"When all you are is your purpose, then that's what happens to you. You become a tool wielded by others. A slave to their aims. No matter how much you sacrifice, they will always take more. They will always have more demands and more requests. And more pouches jangling with shards."
She turned away, eyes glossy and red, and she stormed towards the sunwing.
"What do you want, Aloy?" he called out after her.
"I want to save the fucking world," she spat, her voice breaking at its edges.
"And that's all? You hesitated when you said there's no one else who can save the world. Are you truly the only key? Is this the only purpose you're allowed to have? Do you really have no control over your destiny?" He paused as he watched her climb onto the back of the sunwing. "Are we both not allowed to be anything other than what the world demands us to be?"
"Fuck you, Nil," she swore, tears streaming down her face.
Then with a heavy gust of wind, she took off. The sunwing soared high into the sky, circling upward until it disappeared into the blue.
Nil looked around at the empty clearing laden with slushy snow. And a wintry chill blew through him, its iciness penetrating all the way down to his numb toes.
"Fuck."