The Nora grasped his healthy hand tightly to give him the final push. He had to jump onto two more fins after climbing that ladder. Finally, he was up there. His legs were trembling, and he was quite scared. As soon as he stepped onto the metal, he could feel the massive metal base of the giant moving with each step he took beneath his feet, so he fell to his knees in terror. He tightly closed his eyes and tried to calm himself as sweat droplets bathed his forehead. She sat beside him for support.
"Don't think about where you are. Look outside rather than up at the head, and you'll feel much more stable." Aloy said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Avad sat on the metal base and leaned closer to the huntress to feel safer. Then he gazed at the forest. The treetops were starting to take on a slightly orange hue, a reflection of the crepuscular sunlight. In the background, the mountains and the Spire were visible, diffused by mist and pink clouds, adorned with a flock of birds soaring through the sky at that very moment. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and the real magic of the sunset was still a while away. Gradually, he calmed down, realizing he was still in one piece.
"I can't believe I'm up here!" he exclaimed, euphoric and barely believing it. Aloy smiled, seeing him so happy.
"I told you it was really worth it. Since I climbed my first Tallneck, it's become one of my favorite activities. From up here, you can see the surroundings very well, and the view is... different from anything I'd seen before." she explained "I wanted to share it with you." Aloy admitted shyly. He smiled, and they sat in silence for a few minutes, admiring the landscape.
Aloy sighed. It was time to talk to him. She had debated with herself for a while about whether or not to open up to Avad. After all the situations and rejection she had experienced since childhood, she never showed vulnerability and didn't trust anyone enough to reveal her deepest feelings and convictions. But the journey through the Forbidden West had changed her. She had stopped viewing her feelings as a hindrance, something that separated her from her duty, just as she had initially felt that being a Nora would be more of a burden than a help. She had been rejected from a young age and had always appeared invulnerable to everyone. It was a way to protect herself. She sighed. Despite all that, she felt a strong need to show Avad who she really was, to step out of that role of an invincible warrior she had been forced into. After carrying the weight of her mission alone for so long, even to the point of collapsing, she had relied on her friends, all those people she had met during her journey, and whose help had been crucial. Since she had first set foot in the palace, she had felt a connection with the monarch, which had only intensified over time with each encounter. Moreover, since she had woken up there again, they had spent so much time together and faced grave dangers, that the bonds that connected them had become truly profound. Finally, she turned towards the Sun-King and gently placed her hand on his. Avad, feeling it, interlaced his fingers with hers and held her hand.
"Avad…" she called to him "I... would like to talk with you." she said, fearful, feeling a shiver of anxiety shake her entire body.
"I'm here." he replied, tearing his amazed gaze away from the scenery to look at her with a friendly smile, which Aloy returned before turning her gaze away. She sighed again, visibly nervous, causing him to instantly realize that she had something serious to tell him.
"This morning, when we were with the Striders, you asked if something was bothering me, and... I told you it wasn't the right time…"
"Yes, I remember. Is there something that's bothering you?" he asked, concerned, seeing sadness in her eyes. She took a moment to respond.
"It's... several things, actually." she began. The Nora took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, still torn between two halves: one that pushed her to confide in him and the other that was screaming at her to stay silent. "I was thinking about... my father. I've always tried to avoid the topic because... it hurts a lot, and there are aspects of me that seem very confusing to everyone, which is why I try to avoid it." she explained, ignoring the inner voice telling her not to trust the king. "There was a day when my life took a tremendous turn within hours. You probably don't know that, although I was raised in the Sacred Lands, I haven't been part of the Nora until hours before I left the place. I've been training, hunting, surviving since I can remember, all outside the tribe."
"It surprises me to hear that. You haven't always been a part of the Nora?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No... I've always been an outcast, exiled from the tribe because I didn't have a mother. Everyone called me 'the motherless outcast.' Essentially, I've been rejected all my life. To enter the tribe, if you're born an outcast, you have to take the prove when you come of age. But I didn't want to take it just to be a part of a group that had always hated me. What mattered was that if you come first in the prove, the Matriarchs grant you one request. That was my goal, and I trained all my life for that." she explained, locking her gaze onto the king's eyes. "I wanted to find out who my mother was and why she abandoned me, not make friends with the Nora. The downside to all of this, was that after being accepted into the tribe, I'd have to sever my relationship with Rost, my father, because you can't speak to outcasts; it's forbidden."
"But I don't understand, why is Rost an outcast?" he asked, intrigued. "Seeing how you are..." he added, blushing slightly "I can't fathom that he's a bad person."
"No, he wasn't." Aloy responded. At that moment, Avad realized she was talking about him in the past tense and feared that the story was about to take a very dark turn. He squeezed her hand a little tighter and continued to listen. "Not only do they make you an outcast when you commit a crime, but leaving the Sacred Lands is also a punishable offense. He never wanted to tell me why he was exiled, so when I returned to the Embrace just before the war, I asked Teersa, the only person besides Rost who supported me from the beginning in trying to join the tribe, and she told me that it was because he left the Sacred Lands in pursuit of a group of killers who had murdered his wife and daughter, among many other people in the village. To do so, he became a Death-Seeker through a Nora ritual. In that ritual, they say they separate the soul from the body so that if you die far from the Sacred Lands, your soul will remain there, and, of course, you can't return. He's someone who dies in search, and in his quest, he brings death to others. Eventually, he managed to catch up with the killers and made it back to the Sacred Lands, reaching an agreement that he could stay there as an outcast. Later, he was entrusted with my care until... I entered the tribe. On the day of the test, Rost told me he would only be a burden to me, that staying in contact with him would harm me..." She paused there as her eyes began to well up with tears. "He told me he... would go where I... couldn't find him. Just when we finished the final race, the Eclipse appeared out of nowhere and attacked us, ending the lives of everyone who had taken the test, all with the intention of killing me because they had seen me through Olin's Focus." she explained, pointing to her device. "They even had Helis himself, who captured me and nearly slit my throat to throw me off a cliff when… Rost attacked him. It turned out he had been there all along, watching over me during the test. He… he never left me alone. I was severely injured, struggling not to lose consciousness because that assassin had cut my neck with a knife, and I lay there, unable to do anything. When Rost intervened, they fought fiercely. It was... hor-horrible." she said with a distant expression, as if she were reliving that moment. Then, a tear that couldn't be contained any longer rolled down her cheek. "But..." she continued speaking, her lower lip trembling. "Helis won the fight and... he killed him right there in front of me, stabbing him with his weapon and tossing Rost to the ground as if he… were worth nothing... At that moment, I-I gave up. The only person who had ever cared for me was… lying in the snow, completely shattered. I was completely alone at that moment, because... despite having the opportunity to take the prove like everyone else, most of the Nora still rejected me... The Eclipse... prepared some bombs to erase their tracks, and I had prepared myself for that to be the end of my life since after his death... the only place I had ever fit in had crumbled. Those bombs would have killed me if it hadn't been for Rost..." She began to sob. "Gathering his last strength to crawl to me and take me in his arms, then... pushing me away, down the cliff. His last concern before... leaving was not for his own life but for mine, telling me, 'Aloy, survive.' " Large tears ran down her cheeks. "You have no idea how alone I've felt until well into the journey to the West when I realized that... there are people you can trust..." She cried.
"Aloy, I... I'm so sorry." he said, moved, embracing her tightly. "You don't need to keep telling me if it hurts you so much." She remained silent, crying so defenseless and vulnerable, showing him the wounds that hadn't healed yet, which hurt her deep in her soul. She hugged him back, collapsing in his arms for a moment.
"I need... to tell someone, and I-I want that person to be you." she said between sobs. "But give me time."
"Well, I'm here to support you in whatever you need." he replied, trying to encourage her. "Take all the time you need." They remained in a silent embrace for several minutes until she felt strong enough to continue.
"Thank you, Avad." she whispered with a faint smile. "So, the only hope I had left was to find my mother. When I woke up after the explosion, I realized that Teersa, who is one of the Matriarchs leading the tribe, had taken me to the Sacred Mountain, where they say the Goddess resides." She continued explaining after wiping away her tears. "She told me that's where she found me before taking me to be cared for by Rost. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It turns out that the All-Mother is a huge door leading to the ruins of the Ancients. She told me that the Goddess had created me for a purpose. She put me in front of the door, but it didn't open because the files were corrupted. That's why they named me a Seeker, with the intention that I would find out how to fix that corruption and thus gain entry."
"Your mission was to eliminate Hades, right?"
"Yes... but I didn't know that yet. My purpose was to go in search of answers, clues to lead me to my mother, and thus be able to meet her, to know why the Eclipse wanted to kill me because our similar appearance, and why she abandoned me. But I found something I didn't expect. You see... as I investigated, I discovered that my paths of inquiry led to a dead end... my mother never abandoned me because... I wasn't born to a human being, so I actually never had a father and a mother like you, and that... broke me because I had spent my entire life looking for someone who... who didn't exist." she continued, her eyes filled with tears again. "I don't know if you'll understand this... I... am a clone of Elisabeth Sobeck, a researcher who lived in the time of the Ancients, and I was born to defeat the metal devil and fix everything... the climate, the corruption, the madness... She and the Sacred Mountain are the closest thing to a mother I have, and that's where I went after the war." She said with a crestfallen look. "I managed to locate Elisabeth's house, and I deduced that she had died there, thanks to some recordings I found. I went to see Elisabeth's body while listening to a fragment of her diary... And then I continued to search... because not everything ended in the war in Meridian. That was the reason for my disappearance after the war... Even though we had won the battle, I felt an immense sorrow inside me... I needed to see her, and... move on. I'm really sorry for not staying at the party you organized... I... It must have upset you."
"Don't worry, it doesn't matter now." Avad interrupted. "I understand that you had more important purposes than attending the party. We can go out and celebrate together many times, while there are matters that time worsens and can't be postponed." She smiled at him, grateful for his understanding.
"Thank you…" she continued after that pause "But my family history gets even more complicated... fortunately, during my time in the Forbidden West, I realized that, even though I was the only one who could fix everything, I didn't have to do it alone... well, it was Varl, to be more precise, who insisted on that, following me from Meridian when I sneaked away…" she explained, lowering her gaze "Without his support and the support of the other allies I made during that time, I wouldn't have been able to continue my mission... I wouldn't have been able to see that I'm not alone, and during my task... I would have died trying. In fact…"Aloy took a deep breath "with the mission well advanced, we had to go to a cauldron, the Gemini Cauldron, to sabotage it in order to capture an artificial intelligence called HEPHAESTUS. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones involved; there were also the Zenith... a group of people who came in a ship from among the stars. I know it sounds impossible... but that's how it was." she explained, seeing Avad's surprised expression "We were in the cauldron when we were attacked. Varl went to defend us, but…" Aloy stopped talking and gripped the back of her arms with her hands "they killed him... exactly l-like they did to Rost…"
"Oh…" he exclaimed in surprise and sadness as he wrapped his arms around the huntress and pulled her closer. After a few moments, she gathered the strength to continue.
"One of the Zenith members, Tilda, sided with me and defended me, saving me from the others, but... she couldn't save Varl. Something I haven't told you is that... with us, there was another person... Beta…" she explained, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
"Was she part of your allies?" he asked.
"Yes... At first, she was with the Zenith, but she wasn't really free to be part of them. They... created her with a machine... Just like me…" Aloy looked down at her feet "And when I say just like me... I mean she's exactly like me... we're identical, clones of the same person, so... I could say she's my sister."
"A sister... I didn't know you had a sister... Incredible." he responded astonished "And you say she's exactly like you?"
"We're like copies of the same person... Physically, she's like me, although she has short hair. I have to acknowledge that aside from appearance, we're actually very different people because we've had very different lives, although... I must say it's very strange to see... someone who is just like you... it's like seeing yourself... but it's not you…" she paused "At first, I didn't like it at all... She was very pessimistic, acted opposite to how I did, and constantly said we wouldn't make it. Moreover, when I met her, all my insecurities about my cloning, about being just a tool that could be replicated as many times as wanted, became real, they were embodied in her. At that moment, I felt that my life, that I was worth nothing... If I died, they could make me again." the Nora made a brief pause "But eventually, Beta found the courage to fulfill her duty and helped us, and... now she means a lot to me... In the end... she's like family. She is my family."
Afterwards, she didn't know what else to say. Avad remained silent, observing her. That story had impacted him a lot. The last thing she had explained escaped his understanding, but he didn't think it appropriate to inquire, at least for the moment. Besides, the name Tilda sounded familiar... Wasn't she the one who was supposed to have kidnapped her when she woke up in Meridian or something similar? He stayed there, assimilating everything he had just heard. Her words had truly surprised him, especially when considering that she gave her all in her mission to the point of being willing to give her life for a humanity that had rejected her from birth. He remained in silence, holding her close.
She had opened up to him. She had shared that complicated story about her past. He felt a strong urge to tell her his story as well. Despite the pain of looking back, he wanted to share it with Aloy, just as she had done with him.