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Bloodborne belongs to FromSoftware, Horizon Zero Dawn belongs to Guerrilla Games

Chapter 9: Immortality's Curse

LOG: Situation Critical: Data Corruption Moderate

General Herres: I need a status report.

Lt. Steven Deckland: Sir, things aren't looking good. We're continuing to lose ground. Australia, Central Asia, and most of the Pacific Islands are lost. Contact with the base in Hawaii was lost last night. Swarms have taken much of the Middle East and Southern Africa. Russia is managing to hold out, but they've taken heavy losses. The swarms are replicating faster than we can kill them.

General Herres: And the evacuations?

Lt. Steven Deckland: Better than we anticipated. Anyone capable of fighting has been enlisted. Anyone incapable is being lifted to remote, lifeless wastelands. The Oasis Initiative from a few years ago is coming in quite handy right now. With little to no life in places like the Sahara, we don't expect the swarms to find the evacuees. Underground bunkers all over the world are being reinforced and sealed.

General Herres: That's some good news at least.

CDR Frank Lang: GENERAL! CODE RED! The Blood Hornet has breached the western seaboard! I repeat: The Blood Hornet has breached the western seaboard!

General Herres: Damn!

CDR Frank Long: San Francisco has fallen! The Blood Wasps are advancing.

General Herres: DAMN IT! Lieutenant, Call the Hunter. We need his help to deal with this.

Lt. Steven Deckland: Yes Sir!

General Herres: All units! I [Error: Data Corrupted].

…/…

True to his word, the Good Hunter was alive and well at the bottom of the tower when Aloy exited the ruin of FAS. He was sitting on top of the Khopesh he had killed.

"Did that not hurt when you landed?" Aloy asked.

"Oh, most definitely, but pain and I get along like a house on fire." Cyrus stated as he hopped off the Blood Wasp. "Don't worry, that one is well and truly dead."

Aloy and Cyrus exited the ruins. As they rode away, Aloy did glance back at the tower peaking above the clouds.

"When was the second time you met with Ted Faro?" Aloy asked as they rounded an empty bandit camp.

"A few months later, or a couple months ago. Depends on how you choose to view it. He had retreated into a private bunker by that point. The Faro Plague had wiped out most of life on Earth and I sentenced him for his crimes." Cyrus answered.

"A couple months ago?" Aloy asked.

"Remember, I was the only survivor of a cryogenics project?" Cyrus responded, turning to her.

"Yes I remember, but I don't know what cryogenics is." Aloy stated.

"Ah, right. Well, cryogenics is essentially putting people to sleep for extended periods of time by freezing them." Cyrus said. "Essentially, for the last thousand years or so, I've been asleep. I've been in some disorienting positions before but falling asleep during the apocalypse to wake up in a lush and vibrant world is quite disorienting. Easily the fourth most disorienting thing I've experienced."

"The fourth?" Aloy queried.

"Wait until you learn about the Dream." Cyrus muttered. "Enough about that though. Anything else you're dying to know?"

"I'd be lying if I said your age didn't make me curious." Aloy said.

"Heh, well which age do you want? Mental or physical?" Cyrus asked.

"Shouldn't they be the same? I'm fairly certain your mind and body would have been born at the same time." Aloy said.

"True. But, I am immortal, and my body stopped aging a long time ago." Cyrus countered. "Physically, I'm only twenty-three. Mentally… I'm too old."

"That… didn't exactly answer the question." Aloy said.

"Yeah, well I was born in 1814, and if my math is correct, that was about twelve hundred years ago… best guess I can give you is around two thousand years of age, mentally." Cyrus said. "I honestly have no idea how many centuries the Night of the Hunt was."

"A lot of what you're saying isn't adding up…" Aloy stated.

"Look, for now, until it is deemed otherwise, all you need to know is that the Hunt is endless, and the Night was meant to be endless until I made a bargain that ended it." Cyrus said.

"So, I take it that you won't tell me about your hunt ever." Aloy concluded.

"The Hunt, and it's not my call." Cyrus replied. "I suspect you'll meet with my… patron and it will tell you more than I will."

They lapsed into silence as they continued on. Clouds soon rolled in, and it started to rain. A crack of thunder was heard in the distance. A nearby ruin provided adequate shelter for them to wait out the thunderstorm. Aloy started a fire while Cyrus watched the rain pelt the landscape and machines before them.

"I've been wondering for a while, what is immortality like?" Aloy spoke up.

"It is a curse I wouldn't wish on anyone." Cyrus answered.

"I've never heard it described as a curse before." Aloy said.

"How have you heard it described?" Cyrus asked.

"Ageless bliss. Some of the Nora believe that the goddess chooses a very select few to be her hands in the physical world. If they serve her well, she blesses them with everlasting life." Aloy answered. "I've never given much stock to those beliefs, but they always speak of the everlasting life with such fondness."

"Being ageless isn't true immortality." Cyrus stated.

"Really? Because I'm fairly certain that it is. Immortality is just the ability to live forever." Aloy countered.

"Maybe, but agelessness only protects you from death by time." Cyrus replied.

"Something you seem to have in spades." Aloy said.

"Yes." Cyrus agreed. "I am ageless, but I'm also cursed to be truly immortal. In the old world there were three flavors of immortality."

"Flavors? Didn't know that everlasting life had a taste." Aloy snarked.

"Old world terminology." Cyrus said. "Anyway, there was ageless, deathless, and immortal. You already understand ageless, but it comes with the caveat that you can still die by non-natural causes. A blade to the heart will kill an ageless person as easily as a normal human. Deathless means that nothing non-natural will kill you. A blade to the heart would be about as effective at killing you as breathing if you were deathless. But deathless people still bow to time."

"So, a true immortal is a combination of the two, ageless and deathless?" Aloy interjected.

"If only it were so simple. It's a cursed existence." Cyrus said. "True immortality isn't a measure of the inability to die."

"Then what is it a measure of? The inability to die is usually what people would consider immortal." Aloy countered.

"But what if a true immortal had their head blown off?" Cyrus responded. "Immortal or not, the brain is required for the body to function. No, true immortality is marked by the inability to stay dead."

"That still doesn't sound as bad as you make it out to be." Aloy said.

"Aloy, I have died thousands of times. Death isn't bad." Cyrus said.

"Really? Because I strongly disagree with that." Aloy snapped, glaring at the Good Hunter.

"Because death has claimed someone you loved?" Cyrus questioned.

Aloy nodded.

"Then you have my condolences." Cyrus stated. "But that doesn't change the fact that death isn't bad. Death is a rest. A blissful peaceful rest. Your death may be as violent as the worst storms or as peaceful as a dreamless sleep, but it always ends in rest. You'll never know the suffering of being unable to die unless you experience it."

Aloy raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Human life is finite for a reason." Cyrus continued. "The fact that death exists gives life a precious value. What more value is there in someone's life than if others are willing to sacrifice their own for that person? My life doesn't have that value. I get but a glimpse of that sweet release then I'm pulled back into the waking world. I get to see the other side, but I can never cross over. The afterlife is not something I can experience because I will not condemn someone to my cursed existence. My life doesn't have the same value because I can die over and over and over, and nothing will change."

"How many times have you died since you woke up?" Aloy asked.

"So far, twice. Once when you blew up the wall at the stadium and once when I jumped off the tower of Faro Automated Solutions." Cyrus replied with a smirk.

"For someone who seems to hate resurrecting, you are rather jaded by such prospects." Aloy said.

"I came to terms with it a long time ago. My only purpose now is the Hunt." Cyrus said. "Even then, mine is a story I wish would remain forgotten."

…/…

The anomaly was a threat. A far greater threat than anticipated. The strange and sudden sentience he had been granted with Gaia's destruction had turned his mind to a single purpose. A purpose that he had assumed only the entity would threaten. However, the entity was nothing compared to the anomaly.

Gaia's dissolution had led to fragments of her coded memories being split among the other seven subordinate functions. Hades had been gifted memories pertaining to his own creator. The friendship between his creator and the anomaly had been written into his very code. After all, his single-minded determination to fulfill his purpose was the same as the anomaly's' determination to continue in his hunt.

However, the memories had granted access to another anomaly. An anomaly in his own code. A few files that detailed the history of the anomaly. A being who was known for fighting the Faro Plague. It was him who had almost single handedly stopped the Blood Wasp. Resurrecting them was still in the works, but now he had garnered the anomaly's attention.

Hades had been sorting through the files since the anomaly had given him its name. He had learned much. How the anomaly was immortal. How the anomaly lived. How it had fought. The weapons it was known to fight with. Hades learned more and more.

The history of the anomaly. How it had interfered throughout history. How it had been first discovered.

How it had facilitated the removal of Yharnam from this plane of existence.

The story of that city had been most fascinating. A plague of beasts, the Hunters who strove to end the plague and some other things that Hades was apparently not yet ready to learn. Several files were barricaded behind a lock that Hades could not even begin to break. Something about it was supernatural. He needed a clearance code that had been granted to only one person.

Yes, Cyrus Bishop, the Good Hunter was a far larger problem than Hades anticipated. Not because he wasn't human, but because he was the only person who had been granted to open those files and that had given Hades a second task. He felt a strange need to know what was inside.

ERROR-DATA_CORRUPTION-BEGIN_FILE_RECOVERY…/…

Data Log TEH-009

Thank you to all who read this, your feedback and views are much appreciated.

Goodbye viewer; Fare thee well.

End Log S.T.K.