Chapter Text
Before her, across a barren field, stands a fortress of a man. Tall and broad, his hulking shadow falls over the parched ground, wavering in the blistering wind that’s choked the air with swirls of red dust. He is a towering nightmare in the haze, dressed in ragged armor made of points of sharpened metal, woven with fur, and colored in blue, white, and yellow. He is Tenakth, made plain by the brutal canvas of his body, every inch of visible skin painted and inked with deadly patterns. The tales of his deeds tell themselves in slices of white and smoke along every contour of his powerful body, proclaiming his kills and conquests to the world. No space remains for more.
His face is the maw of a great beast, the grey of a predator’s hide broken by a frame of terrible white teeth. His dark hair is shaved close and harsh, a shock of night carved into claws above his brow and wound into locs rippling in the restless air. Beneath a heavy visor, a pair of cold eyes fixes her in blace, unblinking. At this distance they appear nearly black. Even in the stifling heat they send a chill skittering down her spine.
He stands rigid and erect, unmoving, unwavering, unforgiving. His eyes glitter with hate where they’ve rooted her to the rocky ground, and she feels cold begin to creep up from her fingertips toward her heart.
In his right hand he grips an ugly glaive with white knuckles, the blade wickedly curved in her direction. The sharpened point promises death. His left hand…
His left hand is a scarlet void in the dust, an empty space beneath a frayed shoulder, the entire arm gone and replaced by a waterfall of blood pouring from a grizzly wound where the limb used to be. She can hear it dripping into the stone at his feet, pooling in a thick, red river and soaking the soles of his open-toed boots. Shreds of flesh hang from the ruins of a once-mightly joint, stirred by a hot wind that carries the metallic scent of blood toward her across the field.
Between them a line cuts through stone and dead soil. Little more than an old wood and metal threshold, it is the only thing standing between she and the demon before her. Somehow, she knows this old relic embedded in the earth is her only protection. It divides Here and There, a gate neither can cross despite how seemingly little it would take to simply step over it.
She breathes, and the air in her lungs tastes of decay. Sand and dust coat her tongue, dragging talons down her throat and depriving her of air. She doesn’t dare cough, though her chest seizes in protest and need.
The man doesn’t move, her personal tormentor. She’s stared down stalkers and thunderjaws and stormbirds without flinching, but before this bulwark of devastation the only thing keeping her from fleeing is a dark certainty that she wouldn't get far. The wind moans pitifully, and she swears it’s the wails of the victims he’s left in his wake.
For a long while neither of them moves, kept worlds apart by the simple line in the dirt and close enough for her to feel the cold of her grave crawling up her shoulders to her chest. She scarcely dares to breathe lest it shatter this fragile understanding they seem to have. She has no notion of how long she stands there, only that the sun rises and falls, and snow blankets the ground only to be swiftly followed by a sweltering summer afternoon. All the while the man’s blood soaks the ground, a red ocean now with the two of them standing atop a cresting wave.
At long last the cold is in her heart, and her straining lungs can bear it no longer. She coughs, a tiny, strangled sound.
His eyes flash. His right hand tightens about the hilt of his glaive. He steps over the line–
Aloy’s eyes spring open as her body gives a violent jolt, rustling the blankets pooled at her waist. The sky coming into focus above her is cool and clear and sprayed with stars. Into aching lungs she pulls a deep, fortifying breath mercifully free of dust and the smell of blood. Bracing a hand against the soft mosses she’d bedded down in that night she pushes herself upright to sit before the embers of the fire she’d left burning when sleep had finally claimed her. She looks around, counting hardy green desert shrubs and purple wildflowers beneath the watery light of the moon to chase away the last vestiges of red dust and stalker-black eyes.
It wasn’t the first time she’d dreamt of him, but it was the first time he’d crossed the embassy border. The Marshal appears in her dreams when she needs it the least, rattling her from the first sleep she manages after days of consecutive troubles. She remembers him. He’d been the last to arrive at the embassy with the Carja with Sky Clan’s late delegation in tow.
He haunts her dreams as a ghost, now, she’s sure. Very few would have survived the wound he’d taken in the skirmish that followed. She remembers his scream when the bristleback’s saw-blade mandible had ripped through flesh and bone, spraying the dirt with his blood. She might have pitied him…
Had she not grown just about tired of his intrusions on her sleep. It wasn’t her fault he was dead, so why was he prowling through her dreams?
Do something useful and go haunt Regalla, why don’t you?
Aloy lets her head fall forward, cradled by a weary palm that rubs at her puffy, scratchy eyes in annoyance and frustration. The movement feels shaky. Every time she dreams of him, she wakes unsettled.
The distant horizon has gone from black to grey over proud mountain peaks, and Aloy sighs. Dawn will break soon, carrying new trials with it. Silently cursing the poor, dead marshal she hauls herself to her feet and begins to gather her things.
She might as well go find some trouble before it finds her.
The great tower of Scalding Spear rises from the sand before the sun nears its zenith, and she leaves her charger at the gate with a pat to its haunch, leaving a print of her hand in the dust. She passes beneath the village wall, and her footsteps seem to echo. It’s quiet in the capital in the heat of the day. Only the bravest souls risk the sun’s wrath, as well as those whose work is most essential for the Clan. The villagers are huddled in the shade of their homes, lounging on mats or conducting tasks that require little movement beneath platforms and canopies.
“Outlander,” mutters a voice, a trio of children with faces painted with red and yellow stopping to watch her enter beneath the shade of an awning. One child elbows the one who’d spoken, and the three of them chase each other under the nearest ramp, their bare feet kicking up sand as they go.
She’s no stranger to the word outlander . It’s been thrown at her like stones since she left the Embrace, and before that it was outcast that had dogged her footsteps. She’s beginning to wonder if she’ll ever truly be Aloy to anyone. Not Savior, not outlander or outcast. Just Aloy.
She might have expected the goodwill she’d earned by fighting at the side of their new commander to last just a little longer.
A voice echoes to her from further inside the village.
“Desert Flame!”
Speak of the Metal Devil.
“Drakka.”
He approaches her from the commander’s tower, all swagger and grinning teeth. A vulture circles low over his head, but he pays it no mind.
“Back so soon? I knew you’d miss me,” he teases with a hand on his hip. Aloy rolls her eyes, and she can’t help the tiny smile that tugs at one corner of her mouth.
“Don’t get too excited. I’m headed west to the Grove, and Scalding Spear happens to be the last best place in Desert Clan territory to resupply,” she tells him, putting up her hands in as much of an apology as she can offer.
As usual, Desert Clan’s commander isn’t fazed.
“Whatever you say. I’m sure you’ll be back before long. You just can’t seem to stay away. Not that I blame you.”
“You just like having someone else around to help clean up your messes, Drakka.” She puts her hands on her hips, and he puts his over his heart, feigning a grievous wound to his bright spirit.
“Hey, they haven’t all been my messes. I think you just like having messes to clean up.”
She finds she doesn’t have an answer for that.
“You’re in luck today, though,” Drakka tells her jerking his head toward the upper levels of the village. She follows when he leads. “For once, everything seems to be running smoothly–”
At the top of the ramp something clangs, followed by a pair angry voices. In the heavy hush, the sound is especially jarring. Drakka winces, and the vulture above his head gives a gleeful shriek.
“Well… Mostly.”
Aloy follows him up to the next landing past a pair of bickering Tenakth and a smoking heap of twisted metal.
At the next ramp the village begins to shrink, and the sounds from the melee pit rise up to them from below, beckoning her.
“I take it the mantle of leadership has been a little heavier than expected?” she asks, watching two young men grappling with one another in the pit, kicking up sand and scrabbling for purchase. Not so long ago she’d watched Drakka fight his commander in similar fashion, but the two young sparrers below lack a certain… urgency that certain death for the loser tends to bring to a match.
At her side, he shrugs. The vulture banks toward him as if to land on his shoulder, but he swats at it, forcing it back into the air.
“It wasn’t like I thought it would be easy , but there aren’t many problems these days I can solve with a few well-placed arrows. Worst of all is just how smug Jetakka looks every time I see him.”
She hears another sound, then, rising up from the lower level, and it occurs to her that it’s a new sound for Scalding Spear.
Laughter.
She turns a fresh set of eyes on a man who can’t be much older than she is, though the Tenakth face paint always makes it hard to decipher age. He carries the burden of an entire clan’s futures in his painted palms. There had been no laughter in Scalding Spear while Yarra commanded. She wonders if he realizes just how much good he’s already done for his people.
“Has the Wound refilled with water?” she asks, watching him. His eyes are fixed before him, his expression uncharacteristically troubled.
“Yeah. It’s almost as full as it was before. And we’ve ended the practice of selling water to outlying villages for machine parts. Instead they each choose two kids to come and train as recruits here at the capital. That way, the villages get a voice here, and we get their support without holding their water hostage.”
No. He doesn’t seem to see it at all.
They stop at the next platform, and Aloy lays a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, brows furrowed in surprise.
“You know, I didn’t hear anybody laughing the last time I came through this place. Whatever you’re doing, it seems to be working.”
Set in banners of black paint, his amber eyes flash golden in the noon-day sun, the expression in them unfamiliar. She reads gratitude there, a little awe, and an ember in their depths she can only turn away from.
Not you, too .
It’s a spark she’d seen reflected in Erend’s eyes, and Avad’s only a few weeks ago. It’s different in an alien face painted in sharp points of red and black and yellow, but it sits no less heavy in her stomach. Like Avad, Drakka’s marked face is handsome with expressive eyes, a smiling mouth, and a strong jawline. In another life she might have been thrilled at the attention, but there’s just too much at stake.
Isn’t there?
She looks away, and the moment breaks. When she looks back he’s all smiles once more, hands on his hips, surveying his kingdom of sand.
“I guess you’re right, Desert Flame.”
High above the rest of the village, the two of them watch the goings-on in companionable silence for the span of a few heartbeats.
“So, I know you’re headed for the Grove, but that’s a long way off. Think I could talk you into staying the night? Won’t be any place better for it before you hit the Lowland.”
She moves to decline, but he heads her off at the pass, darting in front of her and holding out a pair of imploring hands.
“Look, it would mean the world to the Pit Master if you were to show his first batch of village recruits what a good soldier looks like. It’s not every day they’ll get to see a spear like yours in action.”
Aloy hesitates, again feeling the call of heavy footfalls and grunts of exertion, the spear-on-spear rattle in her bones, and hard-earned sweat dripping down her nose. He grins, knowing he’s got her. She scowls, hating that he already seems to know her so well.
“Fine,” she says, crossing her arms against Drakka’s triumphant whooping. You’d think he just downed a scorcher with the radar ears still intact. She may be thanking him in the days to come if his assertion that Scalding Spear is the last true settlement on her long journey to AETHER’s coordinates holds true. Not that she’s interested in inflating the man’s ego any more than it already is.
“Just tell me where I’ll be sleeping so I can get my resupply and a meal out of the way.”
Oh , how his eyes do glitter at that, and it’s then she realizes the mistake she’s made.
“I mean, the commander’s quarters are just through there,” he gestures at the hide-covered opening in the tower wall behind him. “If a few little pit matches aren’t challenge enough for you.”
He’s bold, she’ll give him that much. It burns her that he seems to understand the things that reach for her. Was there a reason she’d spent more time in Desert Clan territory than was strictly necessary? Was there more than one reason she’d taken up for him in the duel against Yarra? Was there more than one reason she’d agreed to stay?
Questions for another time. As it is, she can’t afford to fan the ember she’d seen lurking in the depths of his desert-hot gaze only moments ago. She can’t give him what he wants. At least, not all of it.
“I have every faith in the skill of your soldiers, commander.”
He’s still grinning as she heads back down the ramp toward Scalding Spear’s vendors. That answer wasn’t exactly a no .
Scalding Spear juts out of the barren, yellow desert like a shard of broken bone jutting through skin. Its walls of scrap and hide and Old World ruin are painted the red of blood and scabbed over with ancient rust. Sharpend spikes of wood and machine metal pierce the sky beneath a blistering white sun, turning the entire village into a weapon. At the center is the melee pit, a rough circle carved in the rocky ground, thick with dust kicked up by the competitors, painted the same red and black as their village. Around the pit rises the village structure, a bowl woven between the bones of some ancient facility. She’d seen it in her Focus’s vision on the rise to the east, once gleaming white and shining and new.
Ramps made of scavenged metal and sun-bleached wooden scaffolding carry her down among the Desert Clan, their homes open to provide shade and air in the heat of the day. Craftsmen and homemakers work beneath red canopies and the platforms of the structures above them. The shadows grow as she descends, sound trapped and thrown back at her by the village’s high walls. Some watch her with open curiosity, others with begrudging respect for the good she’d already done their people in far-flung reaches like Salt Bite and Arrowhand.
Word travels the Clans more quickly than she would have guessed for people without access to the kind of technology she keeps attached to her right temple.
Shaking off the weight of the eyes on her back, she approaches the workbench and hunting goods trader at the bottom of the ramp. Nodding graciously, the woman gestures to her wares with the pike in her hand, offering her high-value resources at a far better price than Aloy had been offered in Plainsong. She paws through her own resources to trade, picking bits of ancient jewelry and apex machine hearts for the trade and taking shards for the rest.
What doesn’t fit in her pack she takes to the workbench, fletching arrows and tying off slingshot bombs until sweat has soaked through her clothing and longer shadows have begun to angle across the lower levels of the village. When she comes away her pack is full, her shard purse is heavy, and her hands are aching and content. It’s only then that her stomach gives a roar worthy of a thunderjaw, and Aloy remembers her last meal of rabbit jerky before the sun had risen.
After that awful dream.
Any relief she might have felt with a full pack of supplies and a challenge ahead dissipates with the early evening heat. In the depths of the desert ice prickles at the pads of her fingers. Quiet and slow as a stalker, she casts a glance over her left shoulder, half expecting to see a pair of night-dark eyes boring into her from across the sand. She sees nothing but the villagers beginning to emerge from their homes with the fleeing of the sun.
It should bring a measure of relief, but it doesn’t.
Hoping something light to eat will settle the butterflies in her stomach, she haggles with the cook over a dish of scorpions and vulture. He assures her that this dish is a favorite of the Desert’s finest warriors for its invigorating ingredients. It’s also the only dish he seems to have available at the moment. When asked why his response makes her heart shudder.
“Many hunters have been lost to the rebels, Nora.”
Aloy graciously accepts her meal of scorpions and vulture wings.
It’s terrible, as expected, but less expected is the way it does seem to fortify her. Some of her strength returns, and some of the lulling effects of the desert's heat slough off her shoulders. She leaves them in the sand with her vulture bones when she at last seeks out the pit master.
When she approaches the ring is empty, and Lirrokeh is waiting for her along with a cluster of young-looking Tenakth leaning against the fence. More villagers approach and begin to occupy the ring of sand around the pit, their red and yellow and black painted faces tracking her like a pack of foxes, wary, and eager. Unlike the Marshals she’d met at Barren Light what seems like a lifetime ago already, these Tenakth are lean–thin, even. She can see bones beneath skin, but they still move with the easy cadence of paws over sand. They are silent and deadly.
And they are all here to watch her perform.
She sets her spear and her bow at the entrance before she steps up to Lirrokeh, inclining her head in greeting. He returns the gesture.
“Welcome, Champion of the Desert. Have you come to test your mettle against Scalding Spear’s finest warriors?”
Champion of the Desert sits uncomfortably on her shoulders. She doesn’t belong to the Desert any more than she belongs to the Carja and still less than she does the Nora. The Tenakth trickle around the edges of the melee pit, crouching in the sand and perching upon rocks, their rapt attention as oppressive as the heat of the late afternoon.
“Uh, yeah. I guess I have.”
Drakka stands on the other side of the pit, his arms folded over his smug chest, a smirk at the left side of his mouth. She fixes her eyes on Lirrokeh, a much closer target.
“I was told your people wanted to watch me fight,” Aloy says
“Just so,” answers Lirrokeh, gesturing to a trio of wiry soldiers at his back. Each holds a sparring staff and looks like they haven’t had a decent meal in a month. “Kebarra, Unakk, and Rellakka,” he names them. They incline their heads in turn.
Lirrokeh continues, raising his voice for the benefit of their growing crowd of onlookers. “These are three of the Desert Clan’s most skilled soldiers, each having completed rigorous tests of endurance, strength, and cunning, as well as receiving battle notches from some of the deadliest machines to be found in all of Tenakth lands.”
Thin as they are, Aloy has no doubt they’re tenacious enough to put her on her back if she’s not careful. Even a weakened Tenakth is deadlier than most people could ever hope to be.
“Alright,” she says. “So how do we do this?”
“Our ways are simple. Take a staff and enter the ring. When you are given the signal, you will fight. Our three soldiers will try to overpower you. The match is concluded when you yield, or they do.”
“All three of them?”
“All three of them.” Lirrokeh gets a coy glint in his eyes and gives her a slow smile. “Though, if what Commander Drakka has told us of your abilities is true, I’m sure this will be no challenge for you.”
She detects a sardonic tone to the pit master’s voice and takes a staff in her hand without looking away.
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Lirrokeh steps aside, and Aloy enters the ring.
The ground outside GEMINI had been all rock and a little dust, but this is debris buried in fine desert sand. It shifts beneath her feet as she makes her way to the center. She’s less steady here, and she’ll have less purchase on the ground, making her reactions slower.
The three Desert Clan warriors begin making wide arcs near the edge of the pit, moving to her left and right like a pack of jackals, sure-footed and quick.
No. This will not be an easy challenge.
A horn sounds, sharp and gritty, and before she can so much as blink her opponents leap into action.
There is no sizing up of their mark, no circling while studying her movements for openings and weakness. She has no time to carve a buffer between them from which to examine how to best take down her prey. The three Desert Clan Tenakth are quick as vipers with fury in their fangs. Lean muscle carries them over rock and sand with terrifying ease, and in less than a heartbeat she’s fighting to keep her feet.
Aloy barely has enough time to lift her staff before the first blow comes, inches from her face, rattling her shoulder joints. Two more follow swiftly on its heels, and she misses a concussing strike by mere inches. With the last parry she moves to twist away to the right, but Unakk is there, vicious and close. He goes for her ribs, and her block leaves her left side open. Rellakka seizes the opportunity, landing the first strike with the end of her staff. Aloy stumbles, grunting as air rushes from her lungs.
They’re on her. This is a fight for bruises and broken bones, and she isn’t about to suffer any more willingly.
The next blow comes from Kebarra, and Aloy’s Focus is picking up on the beginnings of a pattern. It doesn’t have enough information yet, so she’ll have to keep the fight going while it analyzes. She ducks beneath the swing aimed at her head and rolls into Unakk’s left leg, having noticed that he grips the staff tighter with his right hand. The leg buckles with the weight of her body, and she rolls away before springing to her feet and dropping into a hunter’s crouch.
The three of them are before her now, with enough separation that she can see more of the field. Her Focus identifies points of data, conducting rapid-fire calculations even as Rellakka charges toward her once more.
No time to breathe, no time to study. The woman pushes off a rock in the pit to propel herself forward, and Aloy’s wrists ache with the effort of deflecting her next blow.
Still on the back foot, Aloy dodges a flurry of blows from her right and sweeps the staff aside to strike one of her own. The knee she’d been aiming for disappears and reappears in the next instant, colliding with her stomach and sending her sprawling into the dirt. Unakk descends, and Aloy kicks out with both feet, answering him in kind. He lands in the dirt with a satisfying oof .
The opportunity is fleeting, so she makes the most of it, going on the offensive and striking out at both Rellakka’s and Kebarra’s staffs with her own, all the while watching the way their hands and arms absorb the blows, the way their cores tighten and their thighs tremble with the effort of maintaining their footing.
Then Unakk’s on his feet again, and all at once her Focus comes alive with patterns and projections and weak points, and Aloy nearly smiles.
The point of her staff hits Kebarra’s exposed right shoulder, making her cry out as she drops her weapon into the sand. Unakk hits back at her left temple. She ducks beneath his staff, and it becomes a dance.
Dodge, roll, swipe, parry, sidestep, backstep, shoulder-check, roll, aim for the throat. Backstep, leap, charge, sweep the leg, dodge, heel to the solar plexus.
Not a single Tenakth strike lands, Aloy following invisible lines hanging suspended and violet in the air, taking every hit at the digital yellow coloring her opponents’ bodies that she can. Limbs are shaking now, bodies tensing to protect softening bruises, and they give her a wider berth than they did before.
Distance. Time. A fletched arrow with a wicked sharp point and the cover of rippling red grasses. She has none of these things, and still she chips away at her opposition piece by piece.
After taking a fist to his temple, Unakk goes down and does not rise again. Kebarra roars in impotent rage and charges Aloy, berserk with frustration and fatigue. It is her undoing. With her staff Aloy takes the woman’s feet out from beneath her, and she hears the air rush from her lungs. Kebarra, too, lies spent.
Rounding on her final quarry, Aloy is arrested mid-lunge by Rellakka’s throwing down her staff and yielding, blood from a split in her brow dripping into her eye.
The horn sounds.
The fight is over.
Her last Tenakth opponent inclines her head, thumping a hand over her heart before turning to aid her comrades. In the silence that gathers with the settling dust, the onlookers regard her. She drops her staff, staring down each of them in turn as if daring any of them to challenge her victory.
None do.
Instead, one smile breaks out, and then another, and before she knows it a wave of applause sweeps the Tenakth, peppered with shouts and raised fists. A sea of red and black and yellow, it’s dizzying, and she finds herself ducking her head beneath the praise.
It’s Lirrokeh who comes to her rescue, appearing at her side and clapping her on the shoulder.
“A fine match. I expected no less from the outlander who defied Regalla and vanquished her champion. The Desert Clan produces some of the tribe’s greatest warriors. Only an equally great one could have defeated them. We thank you for sharing your skills with us.”
“That’s right,” she answers, panting. She can barely hear him over her heart pounding in her ears. “Drakka told me they were both of the Desert Clan. I’m surprised. If they were yours I would have thought they’d be receiving a lot more support from you.”
Lirrokeh blinks, looking taken aback.
“In her single-minded desire to see Chief Hekarro brought low, Regalla has slaughtered our Marshals and brought chaos and death to our lands. With blight and storms and poisoned waters plaguing our people, we can no longer afford to be at war among ourselves. Hekarro brought us peace. The Desert Clan stands with him.”
With that, he turns on his heel and departs, the people of Scalding Spear already beginning to disperse back to the work that can only be done in the cool of the evening. She isn’t alone for long, however. A voice sounds from her left, and she doesn’t have to turn to recognize it.
“Don’t mind him. He’s a loyalist through and through,” Drakka says.
At that, she does turn to look at him, her gaze withering in the growing dark.
“And you’re not?”
“Hey, I didn’t say that. I’m just not about to go getting my clan involved with Regalla and Hekarro’s dick measuring. It’s all we can do to keep ourselves alive as it is, and her forces have machines on their side. Dangerous ones.”
Aloy huffs, more than unimpressed by his answer.
“So the Desert Clan backs down from fights, then, is that it?”
Drakka looks at her for a moment.
“Only fights we know we can’t win, Desert Flame.”