Chapter Text
Aloy must be dreaming. She’s younger—a small child, really. She isn’t wearing her Focus, and she’s just…watching, hidden… Quietly crouching in the bushes, Aloy observes other children gather berries for a beautiful Nora mother whose voice is like honey as she sings their praises.
"Oooh, that’s a lot of berries. You are quite the gatherer, aren’t you, little Bast? Now, go and see if you can find some more." The blond boy obeys, running along to get the most berries. "Well done, that’s a good boy," she warmly tells another child as he adds to her basket.
Shy and smiling, Aloy tries approaching the woman, her hands cupped and filled with fresh-picked berries. They tumble from her hands and fall to the ground as the woman’s face contorts, twisting, turning into something purple and hazy as the figure crouches before her, a cone atop his head, a noisemaker in his mouth.
“Happy birthday, Isaac! Daddy sure does love his little big man.”
The figure in the holo transforms back into the Nora mother, no longer solid nor of the Earth but an untouchable flickering image, the mere representation of something once human and alive, now long deceased. When she opens her mouth to speak again, the chilling voice that emerges is mechanical and hollow, as though it, too, has died long ago.
“CHILDREN. COME WITH ME. SHE’S AN OUTCAST. TO BE SHUNNED.”
Aloy’s hands fly to her ears, her eyes widening in horror.
“ENTITY…HAS FAILED. UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE.”
She doesn’t know why, but she’s shaking her head, still covering her ears as she turns around. She’s running, running away, crying, and now she’s falling, falling, falling…
Aloy opens her eyes in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by metal walls like those built by the Old Ones, though intact and untouched by nature. Dimly she wonders if she'd somehow been transported back in time, then shakes her head at her own lack of sense. Or she tries to, anyway, finding she can barely move it from side to side. It feels like her bones have been weighed down with stone and a Strider has been sitting on her chest while she slept. She feels somehow both bruised and numbed all over. It’s as though only her eyes have woken up; the rest of her body still sleeps.
So she lies there like that for a while, watching the flickering candlelight cast shadows that dance on the walls around her. There’s a fourth wall that Aloy can’t see. The room she’s in opens up beyond the area where she lies motionless, willing her limbs to move while a prickling, tingling sensation slowly starts to creep down her arms.
Aloy has no idea how long she stares at the ceiling, but eventually she finds the strength to lift her head from her pillow and prop herself up on an elbow. She looks around, instinctively lifting a finger to her temple, and is surprised to make contact with the thin membrane of skin—where is her Focus?
There’s a heap of unfamiliar armor on the low table in front of her. Behind her, shelves are filled with vials of health potions and lidded pots of salve, bunches of leaves and berries from plants she can’t identify. To her right sits an ornately-carved chest, a row of potted plants, and some sort of training dummy that makes her heart jolt when she first thinks it’s a stout person standing against the wall.
Her eyes continue traversing the room, and she tries to sit up properly to peer further around the corner when she notices a light flurry of movement much closer in her vision.
What she thought was a pile of armor turns out to be a large figure slumped over the desk in front of her, sleeping.
“Rost?”
“Hnnngh.” The man's head snaps up from where it'd been buried in his folded arms.
Aloy sits up the rest of the way, gets a lightheaded rush, and bumps the back of her head against the shelving behind her.
“By the forge, Aloy, you’re—oh, shit, be careful!”
All in one motion the man unfurls himself from his slumber and moves around the table, a gloved hand reaching towards her as he nears.
Aloy, desperate to keep a safe distance between herself and this strange-haired man who knows her name, feels helpless without spear or bow, but her instincts kick in.
Without looking away from him, without so much as blinking, Aloy reaches backwards, her hand finding a glass vial. Gripping it firmly behind her back, she smashes it against the upper shelf as she whips her arm back around, extending it out in front of her, the jagged edge of broken glass pointed menacingly at the man's approaching groin.