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Bloodborne belongs to FromSoftware, Horizon Zero Dawn belongs to Guerrilla Games
Chapter 15: The Eldritch Tongue
LOG: The Realm of Possibility: Data Corruption Moderate
Cyrus Bishop: I once thought that the worst thing that could happen to this world is a return of the Hunt. As I fight against the growing plague of machines, I haven't changed my mind. That said, there were some things about the Hunt I greatly prefer. For one, the beasts didn't have some accursed power that would literally devour my flesh to fuel their bloodlust. They'd just devour me.
Sometimes though, I do wonder. I have considered the possibility. My patron says otherwise, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that they caused this apocalypse. The signal that 'woke' the swarm came from an unknown source. It spread through the machines like a fast-acting disease. It has a need to devour all life. These machines also seem to be abnormally weak to fire. I know it's just surface level observations. But it still bears thought, does it not? I won't definitively rule out my patron. Yet, at the same time I can't definitively say it was them. Other Great Ones though…
Not out of the realm of possibility.
…/…
The encryption on the files was incredibly frustrating. At first, Hades could break through them, with a little brute force. He found some old news articles, a very brief description about some random city, a plague that sprung up and was quickly cured in the 1800s, and references to a church known for miraculous healing.
Every unencrypted file, so far, was less than comprehensive. Summaries of synopses if he were to describe it. Merely surface level. But as he delved deeper into the encrypted files, Hades grew more and more frustrated. The encryptions became more and more scattered. Unreadable. It started with one or two, but now he was seeing strange symbols that meant nothing to him.
If he didn't know any better, he'd assume they were a language. However, from Apollo, before the Bastard of FAS destroyed the greatest repository of human knowledge, there was no language that used these symbols. The strangest part of the whole thing, the encryption with the symbols seemed to have overridden the encryptions created by his creator. All in all, the situation was confusing.
He knew the entity would be coming for him. She was too much like the architect to leave him to his own devices. Yet, he couldn't concern himself with that. The anomaly was far more worrying. Some of the files he had broken the encryption on revealed a little more about him. If he was correct in his assumption, then this current anomaly was a far more dangerous threat to him than the entity was.
An intrusion into his system drew his attention back to the world around him. He connected to her focus.
"Entity has come here. Entity is alone. Entity miscalculated. Anomaly cannot protect Entity." Hades stated. "Entity cannot harm me. I am not there."
"Maybe not," The Entity growled, "But this is!"
The Entity stabbed the server for the Eclipse focus network.
"Destroy the Entity!" Hades commanded before retreating back into his core.
If he had a face, Hades would have smirked to himself. He connected to the fool's Focus.
"The Entity and Anomaly are taking down the network. They will invade Sunfall. Enter the ruin and eliminate them." Hades commanded.
"By your command." The Fool responded.
…/…
The sun was starting to set when Aloy finally returned to Sunfall. Cyrus noted she looked a bit more haggard than usual.
"The network is down?" Cyrus questioned.
"Yep." Aloy curtly replied walking past him.
"Something tells me that not everything went as planned." Cyrus stated.
"Yeah. You could say that." Aloy snarked. "Hades was there."
"That would lead to a few problems. Let me guess, Sylens knew?" Cyrus replied.
"Yep." Aloy stated. "And I fell off a mountain for the second time this month."
"You've survived two falls from mountains? And you haven't died?" Cyrus queried. "Well, color me impressed."
"Came really close though." Aloy responded.
"I can imagine." Cyrus stated as they entered the citadel proper.
"Did you have any better luck than me?" Aloy asked as a contingent of soldiers ran past.
"Yep. Kidnapped a royal family." Cyrus stated. "Second time in as many millennia."
"You've kidnapped another royal family before?" Aloy asked.
"Yep. I'll have to tell you about it sometime." Cyrus said. "For now, though, we have an old Zero Dawn ruin to find."
"One of the good things about Sylens. He did tell me where he originally found it." Aloy said.
"Sylens found it first?" Cyrus asked. "Why? When?"
"He wouldn't say." Aloy answered.
The two of them came to a balcony overlooking the arena. Aloy leapt over the railing onto some rock pillars. Cyrus was quick to follow. The two shimmied along the rocks, careful to avoid sight of any of the spectators.
"He's remarkably tight-lipped about his past. Mysterious, condescending, smug… tell when I'm off the mark." Cyrus stated.
"He's not the only one I know like that." Aloy said. "I joined your hunt, perhaps you could open up a bit as well."
Cyrus chuckled. "All in due time, Aloy. All in due time. How's the Bowblade?"
"I prefer the versatility of the rest of my arsenal. It is handy when I run out of ammo though." Aloy admitted.
"That's fair." Cyrus replied as they dropped from the rocks.
A small wooden grate was built between a couple of rocks.
"After you." Cyrus said, gesturing to the grate.
Aloy ducked into the grate. Cyrus followed after her. A small tunnel led deeper into the earth. The tunnel wasn't very long, and quickly terminated at a large door.
"I've spent a lifetime trying to uncover the secrets of this world. Where the machines came from. How the Old Ones achieved such marvels, only to fall into silence and death. A lifetime of failure, as year by year, decade after decade. I hit walls I could not break, doors I could never breach." Sylens spoke up over Aloy's Focus.
Cyrus chuckled at the very annoyed roll of her eyes.
"Sylens?" He asked.
"Yep." Aloy said.
"Until a Nora huntress marched out of the Savage East and… voila! For her, all the deepest secrets of the Earth were laid bare. I suspect you'll have an easier time with this door than I did years ago." Sylens continued.
Aloy stepped up to the door.
"Hold for identiscan." The synthetic voice of the machine said.
A blue beam scanned Aloy. It passed over her once, twice. Then it disappeared. Aloy glanced at Cyrus. He just shrugged.
"Error: System malfunction. Severe Data Corruption. Cannot confirm identity." The synthetic voice spoke up.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Aloy exclaimed.
"You don't hear me laughing." Sylens stated.
Aloy walked up and slapped the door.
"HEY! Elizabet Sobeck here! Requesting access." Aloy shouted.
"Error: Severe Data Corruption. Voice registry missing. System lockdown. Omega clearance required." The machine said.
"Do you mind if I try something?" Cyrus asked.
"If you've got a better idea, then go ahead." Aloy snapped.
Cyrus walked up to the door. He raised his right arm straight above his head and held his left arm out to the side. Aloy recognized it as the same gesture the Hunter would regularly make on moonlit nights.
"If you really want the knowledge of Yharnam that was lost to spread, speak through me that this door might open." Cyrus whispered. "Use my body as the vessel you claim it is."
Cyrus braced himself, closed his eyes and rotated his arms so that his left arm was now straight up, and his right arm was held straight out. As his arms settled into their new place. He felt the foreign presence of the amber moon invade his mind.
Aloy watched curiously as Cyrus shifted his arms. It wasn't hard to tell when the change occurred. Cyrus went from standing under his own will to appearing little more than a puppet on strings. She quietly and cautiously moved around the cave to get a view from the front.
Cyrus opened his eyes. Instead of the normal human eyes she was used to, Cyrus's eyes had changed to a pure dark red. The same color of blood. When he opened his mouth, the voice that issued through it hurt. Aloy fell to the ground clutching her head. She could vaguely hear Sylens crying out in pain. The sounds Cyrus was making should not have ever been made by a human tongue.
Through the pain and pressure of the inhuman words, Aloy could also feel the immense power radiating from the Good Hunter. Immense, Eldritch power that she could recognize as belonging to their patron. She didn't understand the words, but when the pain finally stopped, for some reason she could imagine that the Moon Presence had said something about the sea.
Cyrus collapsed, much like a puppet being cut from its strings. Shakily, the Good Hunter climbed to his feet.
"I didn't actually expect that work." Cyrus muttered as he stood.
"What was that?" Sylens asked Aloy.
Cyrus took a step forward and collapsed back to the ground.
"Cyrus?' Aloy asked, ignoring Sylens.
"I'll be fine. Being puppeteered like that is… disorienting to say the least." Cyrus replied as he leaned against the wall of the cave. "It also hurts when they channel their power through you."
"Aloy. Explain." Sylens commanded.
"And when you listen to them speak." Aloy replied, still ignoring Sylens.
"Over time, as you learn to understand them, it becomes bearable." Cyrus replied.
"So that was-" Aloy began.
"Yep. That was the actual voice of the amber moon." Cyrus grunted.
"Aloy! What was that?" Sylens demanded again.
"Sylens wants to know what that was." Aloy said.
"Well, Sylens, that was my god." Cyrus answered with a chuckle.
"What did they say?" Aloy said. "The only thing I think they said is something about seas?"
"Should have expected that." Cyrus said as he forced himself to stand once more. "I think our patron just inscribed your first Caryll Rune for you. Tell me, Clear Deep, Stunning Deep, Great Deep, or just Deep?"
"Great Deep… I think…" Aloy said with no hesitation. "It's kind of faded… like looking through a fog."
"A weaker run then." Cyrus said, understandable.
"What exactly is it?" Aloy asked.
"Well… have you ever heard someone say that words have power?" Cyrus asked.
"Yes." Aloy replied.
"Well in the Eldritch tongue, it is more accurate to say that words are power." Cyrus began. "Millenia ago, there was a student at Byrgenwerth who either discovered or realized this fact first. He created a tool that would inscribe these Eldritch words into your mind. The only thing you had to do was learn them first. You generally could learn them by communicating with Great Ones, like I do now, or by finding someone else who already learned them, like I did in Yharnam. The words, inscribed as runes, would have an effect on reality around you to your benefit. Great Deep Sea increases your resistance to physical effects like poisoning or frenzy."
"Frenzy?" Aloy questioned.
"You remember the Winter Lanterns at USRC? The feeling of the Eldritch pressing in on your mind and slowly driving you insane when they looked at you?" Cyrus asked. "We call that frenzy."
"Ah, and just now when you were speaking?" Aloy asked.
"Yep. That would cause frenzy as well. Sedatives calm the mind and the blood." Cyrus said.
"Back to the runes, what did our patron say that would cause a rune to be inscribed into my mind and how did it inscribe it?' Aloy asked.
"Well, from my experience, Caryll's rune workshop tool works by allowing you to memorize the rune. Listening to it from a Great One is pretty much the same thing. However, listening to it from a Great One requires you to actually deepen your understanding of the Eldritch tongue to strengthen the rune." Cyrus explained. "As for what our patron said… keep in mind this is an incredibly rough translation, there is no one to one translation in any human tongue for any Eldritch word. It said, 'By the great deep seas of Kos, I command this inferior reality to open before my hunters.'"
Aloy looked towards the door.
"The door is still shut." She deadpanned.
Cyrus stood up and grinned. "Well, the door wasn't commanded to open now, was it?"
"What?" Aloy looked at Cyrus.
"No Eldritch being would stoop so low as to command a door to open. The Moon Presence commanded reality to open." Cyrus chuckled. "The Eldritch tongue holds sway over our reality itself, not merely what exists within it."
Cyrus walked to the door and touched it. Aloy watched in amazement as the door rippled, like a puddle of water. Cyrus's grin widened. He stepped through the solid door. Aloy stared at the door for a second. Cyrus's head poked back through the door, the metal rippling like water around his body.
"Are you coming or not?" he asked.
Aloy stepped up to the door.
"You know, I think I'm starting to believe in his god." Sylens muttered over her focus as she stepped into the Zero Dawn facility.
ERROR-DATA_CORRUPTION-BEGIN_FILE_RECOVERY…/…
Data Log TEH-015
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Goodbye viewer; Fare thee well.
End Log S.T.K.