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Aloy turned the override module over in her hands, running her fingers down the glowing blue seams of the metal container. She tossed it in the air and caught it in a reverse grip, holding the butt of her spear upwards and clicking the module securely into the attachment point. It gave a satisfying click and Aloy twirled the spear to face upwards, watching the blue glow climb up the machine components of the lance.
She touched her Focus gently and inspected the spear, tapping on the small blue notification that popped up in the corner of her vision.
OVERRIDES UNLOCKED
Frostclaw, Fireclaw, Scorcher
Aloy smiled to herself and stood up to stretch. It had taken nearly five hours of tinkering, hacking and manipulating the corrupted code, but she had finally managed to shake the last of HEPHEASTUS’s control over the EPSILON override. Finally something good would come out of the Firebreak facility.
She ran a hand over her hair, brushing snowflakes off of the braids and loose waves. Her ears were beginning to go numb, and her hands still stung from the cold. The Cut would always be a ruthless place, no matter what protective armor she wore to negate the frigid temperatures.
Aloy stood by her fire woefully for almost fifteen minutes before she grew restless. The licking amber flames were doing nothing to warm her blood. Aloy needed to move, to hunt, to do something- anything- active. What better way than to try out her new overrides?
She didn’t exactly have a location in mind. Aloy packed up her camp and hopped on the back of her Charger, forging a path through the snow-dusted roads. She ran through a forest and a field, past numerous camps and hunting parties and the herds they chased. She didn’t stop until the sun began to peek past the mountaintops, bathing the glittering white landscape in exuberant tones of rust, gold and pink. The drifting snowflakes became embers, for a short time, before the white-gray clouds that perpetually hung over The Cut snuffed out the warm glow of sunrise.
Aloy really didn’t mind the Banuk territories. She preferred the violently snowy weather to the oppressive heat of the Carja homeland, or the dense and humid jungles just below Meridian. She was used to the snow and the cold, and the forests here were achingly familiar of her old home with Rost. However, she had never felt cold quite like the cold here. It drove people to do crazy things; she remembered a friend from here telling her once that she had drank paint to survive a blizzard. Sekuli, maybe?
Aloy couldn’t fathom that this place used to be lush and warm. Firebreak had been put in place to prevent the catastrophic eruption of a volcano, sure, but the surrounding landscape of the facility used to be green and beautiful. So much had changed between the time of the Old Ones and now, thanks to the FARO plague.
A loud crash alerted Aloy to a nearby threat. She swung her head around and dismounted immediately, letting her mount run forwards in front of her for a few strides as she slipped into the holographic HUD of the focus interface. About 150 strides away, two Scorchers bore down onto two hunters. Aloy found herself slipping into hunting instincts as naturally as breathing, relishing the burn in her legs as she ran and the flood of adrenaline that shook her limbs. She slid into a bush of scarlet grass and watched as the Scorchers circled the two hunters- both Banuk, one significantly younger than the other; she would guess a father and son. The hulking machines snapped their mechanical jaws, their razor claws sinking into the snow that hadn’t yet melted from the flames that shot occasionally from their bodies.
Aloy noted with a hint of relief that neither of them were of the hunter-killer variety. She hadn’t yet hunted in this area, so HEPHEASTUS probably wasn’t too concerned with reinforcing it.
Aloy watched with rapt attention as the two machines drew closer together, the hunters backing themselves unknowingly against a rock face. She smiled as the machines paused- just for a second. It was all the time she needed to notch an arrow and send it flying into one of the Scorcher’s ears. The metal component went flying off and clattered onto the rock face as the Scorcher’s head snapped around to face in the direction of the shot. The other one followed its gaze and began to slink towards Aloy as the damaged one hung back and monitored its buddy. The two hunters, who should have been running by now, were frozen in place just like the machine next to them.
Aloy waited impatiently as the machine drew closer. Finally, unable and unwilling to wait any longer, she closed the gap between them with one smooth stride. As its optic lights shifted color to an angry red, she drove the end of her spear firmly into its mouth, locking it into the closest override port. She held tight as the machine twitched and writhed, twisting the spear sideways and leaning into the machine’s body. It gave a final shudder as the override was complete and Aloy lurched backwards into the brush. Its blue gaze scanned slowly over the clearing before landing on the other machine a few paces away. It was awkwardly still for another second before giving a low, keening cry. The two leapt at the same time, Aloy’s overridden one moving with a strong grace uncharacteristic of a wild machine. Its metal jaws found the throat of the other one with crushing force. It twisted its head sharply, tossing the body of the weaker machine to the ground with a smooth pull of its mechanical muscles. Aloy looked away as the two began to tear into each other.
She crossed the clearing towards the rock face, extending her hands to the Banuk hunters. They blinked at her, eyes clouded with fear.
“You have to go,” She said clearly, projecting her voice. “Those things will kill you if you don’t go now.”
The older hunter, most likely in a ‘fight, flight, freeze’ mode, only gave a stiff nod before he was grabbing his child’s hand and stumbling into the woods. Aloy watched them go, making sure they were a safe distance away, before turning to face the machines. Torn parts riddled the clearing, armor lain shattered over the snow. Aloy notched another arrow and sent it cleanly into the gullet of the non-overridden Scorcher, who was already sparking and limping on one paw. The arrow buried itself firmly in the neck of the beast. A burst of flames emanated from its corpse as it fell to the ground in a heap of leaking blaze and sparker.
Aloy stood for a moment, watching to ensure the machine was truly dead, before letting out a breathy laugh. She watched the Scorcher, virtually undamaged by the scuffle, turn around and walk a few paces away as it returned to surveillance mode, scanning the wilds for threats to protect Aloy from. She brushed a rivulet of sweat from her brow. Nothing like a hunt to get her blood pumping.
She looted the other scorcher quickly, stashing the materials in her belt. She hadn’t realized how low on blaze she’d got; she ended up using way more blaze in the north than usual, since starting fires tended to be hard when all of the branches were soggy and cold. Blaze, of course, made an efficient and accessible fire starter. She made to stand up before freezing when she heard a low mechanical whirring behind her.
Aloy turned around to see the overridden Scorcher lurking a few steps away. She blinked at it, waving a hand like one would with a stunned child. To her surprise, the machine’s optic sensors followed her hand, and it shifted on its feet. The unit on the machine’s back was shifting side to side in an oddly animalistic behavior, and its ears twitched in a similar fashion to a rabbit.
Now, Aloy had overridden a lot of machines since her first strider in the Embrace. She knew that overridden machines gained access to a number of functions that weren’t available to normal machines; they were capable of processing and responding to orders, and she noted that they occasionally displayed behaviors that she didn’t see in the wild. They became almost playful, neglecting their normal natural duties in favor of following Aloy domestically and inspecting the world around them. Aloy only ever saw machines interact with animals after they had been overridden, almost as if some of the code in their system was preventing them from doing so normally.
So, she wasn’t entirely surprised to see the Scorcher exhibiting unique behaviors. However, this was on a scale she hadn’t seen from other machines before. She watched as the Scorcher bent down on its front paws, ‘tail’ still wagging back and forth in the air. It let out a series of short mechanical yips that Aloy had never heard before, and cocked its head at the same time she did.
Amused, Aloy grabbed a component off the ground- an empty blaze canister- and waved it in the air. The machine followed her movement, snapping its teeth. Aloy smiled, tossing the component into the air a few paces away.
She laughed as the Scorcher leapt into the air, jaws clamping around the canister midair. The machine looked back at her expectantly, component still in its mouth. She cautiously held out her hand and the machine paced back to her, dropping it in her outstretched palm. The canister wasn’t damaged at all, even though she knew that a quarter of the machine’s bite force would crush it instantly.
Aloy repeated this about five times, watching in amusement as the Scorcher ran further each time to gently bring the component back to her. She feigned a throw and laughed again as the machine started to run in the direction she had aimed, before turning back to her halfway and tilting its ears downwards in a pleasantly expressive gesture. It was like it was sad, or disappointed.
Aloy vaguely remembered reading something in GAIA prime that mentioned how HEPHEASTUS’s machines would have been based on modern animals from the time. She wondered what the Scorcher had been based on, and whether they had exhibited the same behaviors. It was pretty endearing, as far as machines went.
Aloy mourned the fact that overriding the Scorcher had disconnected her override to the Charger she used to get here. She placed her hands on her hips and regarded the forested road just past the clearing. Aloy looked over her shoulder to the Scorcher, who was sitting rather placatingly on the ground. Its paws were tucked in front of itself, and it watched her as she moved around the edges of the clearing.
She frowned as she regarded the machine. One of the only components of its that had been damaged was the unit on its back, between its two front limbs. Where it should be was a mess of smooth wire and uncomfortably shifted metal plates. As she drew closer to the Scorcher, she noted that its ears perked up and the component on top of its rear limbs began to shift side to side again, as though wagging.
“Stay.” She commanded, praying to GAIA that the Scorcher would be able to comprehend her order. To her satisfaction, it stayed sitting as she leaned over its back and wedged her spear under the loose plating. The armor popped off smoothly, and the machine didn’t flinch. She climbed on top of the machine like she would a strider, nestling by herself around its midsection and grabbing the exposed wires like reins. Her legs fit nicely against the remaining plating. It actually made quite a nice mount, when she disregarded the fact that she’d had to rip off its entire back in order to make it work.
She kicked off and began the trip back to a town or shelter- whichever she found first. The Scorcher didn’t ride as smooth as a Strider or Charger, but it was pretty good for how bulky of a machine it was. Its movements were almost reminiscent of a Broadhead. At the very bottom line, it was better than when she’d tried to ride a Trampler.
Aloy rode past what must have been at least eight shelters before she felt sleep begin to weigh down her eyelids. It was the middle of the day, but she had been up all night trying to get the damn override working, and she hadn’t slept much before that. She also made note of the dull pangs of hunger in her stomach that she had been tuning out since she left the shelter that morning. She could probably afford to stop and sleep for a few hours.
Aloy didn’t like the fact that people tended to treat her like a cryptid, though she supposed her almost-nocturnal sleep schedule might have lent itself to that reputation. It wasn’t like she liked sleeping during the day, but it was safer this way; people were less likely to attack her in broad daylight, and her focus let her see easier in the dark than most people. All the same, she felt a little disappointed in herself as she veered off the road and trotted a few hundred paces into the forest to a shelter. It was backed up against a cliff face, with a waterfall carving its way down the cliff next to the fire. Bright flowers jutted from the rock, but that wasn’t what caught Aloy’s attention; painted all across the rock was a beautiful Banuk-style mural of the old volcano, back when it was still spewing ominous clouds and fire. However, hanging from a mess of ropes and pulleys directly on the mural was a young Banuk girl, who was painting over the gray clouds with a brilliant blue color. She looked down as Aloy drew closer, and Aloy was surprised to see that she recognized the face.
“Sekuli?” She called from the base of the cliff, craning her neck to see her friend.
“Aloy!” The Banuk yelped, waving a hand. Aloy squinted as a drop of blue paint landed on her forehead.
“What are you doing out here? I thought you were still based in Song’s Edge?” Aloy pulled back on the Scorcher’s reins to back up and get a better view of the girl. Paint supplies were stacked on the ground under the mural, and more were stashed in the shelter just to the right.
The girl pulled on a series of the levers that floated, suspended, around her. Aloy watched as she dropped expertly to the ground, setting her brushed down on the snowy ground. She undid the clasps hooked onto her armor that secured her to the pulley system. Brushing off her hands, she pushed her hood off and grinned brightly at her friend.
“I was! I mean, I am. But, as you know, there’s only a certain amount of rock to paint in one city.” She gestured vaguely at the mural. “I used to come here, sometimes. This isn’t my mural, but I used to quite like it.”
Aloy glanced at it and then back at her.
“So why paint over it?”
Sekuli pursed her lips.
“This one depicts a particularly dark time in our history. Normally I wouldn’t change it- the more to remember it by, the better- but I figured there was enough documents of this time already, and the people here could use a bit of hope. I’d rather a beautiful landscape be pictured on this cliff than a foreboding promise.”
Aloy quirked her eyebrow at the Banuk, leaning forward on her machine.
Sekuli scratched the back of her head before gesturing at Aloy’s Scorcher.
“And this…? I didn’t expect you to ride Scorchers through The Cut. Then again, I shouldn’t expect anything less than shocking from you, at this point.”
Aloy smiled, sliding off the machine.
“I wasn’t expecting it either. Truth be told it took me all night just to figure out how to tame it, and I had to make a lot of… modifications, for riding it to work.”
Sekuli nodded. “So, I assume you’re here for food?”
“You jump to conclusions fast.”
“I can’t think of another reason you’d stop other than food or sleep.”
Aloy shrugged.
“Bit of both.”
“Fair enough.”
Sekuli walked with her back to the shelter. Aloy sat cross-legged on the edge of the fire, facing towards the mural and Sekuli as the other girl dug through her stash and pulled out a bundle of berries and dried meats. The Scorcher followed Aloy and settled down directly next to her, making an attempt to nestle its head on her lap. She laughed and pushed it away and to her surprise it let out a whiny, high-pitched whirring and angled its ears down and backwards. She almost felt bad.
“I don’t suppose you have any to share?” Aloy asked playfully, grinning as Sekuli gave her an incredulous look.
She took her portion when the other girl handed it to her, tearing into the dried fish. Sekuli ate slower, but a smaller portion, so the two finished eating around the same time. Aloy wiped the valley’s blush juice off of her mouth with the hem of her skirt, shifting so her head was leaning against the neck of the Scorcher so she was facing the other girl.
The two chatted until Aloy’s thoughts began to scramble and she couldn’t keep her eyelids open any longer. Sekuli watched in amusement as mid-sentence, Aloy trailed off and her head shifted to lay flush with the blue cables of her machine. The Scorcher gave an animalistic snort and curled its limbs in closer before the glow in its eyes began to dim, almost as though it were sleeping just like its friend.
Sekuli gathered up her equipment and returned to the mural, taking care to move quietly so as not to disturb her jumpy friend. She ascended the cliff face and continued painting for almost three hours before she was inevitably disturbed.
The sound of loud, mechanical squawking filled the air. Sekuli glanced up in alarm to see a flock of glinthawks barreling down towards her camp from the top of the cliff. She yelped and made an attempt to undo the pulley mechanism and get onto solid ground, but screamed as a burst of chillwater rained down on her from above. She yanked her hand out of the way as the freezing cold liquid doused the lever, freezing it in place.
She looked down, eyes narrowed in fear, to see that Aloy was already moving and on her feet. Of course.
Aloy took stock of the ambush. There were at least five glinthawks- four, she thought, as a lucky shot nailed one in the beak and it went down. One of them hovered around Sekuli, who was attempting to wrench the lever down.
That leaves three for me.
As one descended within eight paces of Aloy, she notched an arrow, but didn’t get to let it fly before a large blue-gray blur leapt into the air and brought its gnashing jaw down on the wing of the Glinthawk. Aloy changed targets just as fast, sending a frost arrow into the fuel sac that rested under one’s chin. As the sac began to leak, Aloy shot a ropecaster tie into its talon and reeled it away from Sekuli, grinning as the sac finally exploded in a rain of chillwater. Another arrow sent it spiraling into the cliff and falling to the ground in a freezing heap.
The last glinthawk still hovered a safe distance away. Aloy switched bows, aiming towards the one terrorizing Sekuli. Her first shot missed, glancing off the cliff face, and she cursed. As she steadied her hand, attempting to hit a lucky shot, she concentrated fully on her aim. Time seemed to slow around her as she squinted, hand steadying on the bow.
She was so focused on her shot that she missed the fact that the other Glinthawk had ascended and was now barreling down at her. She didn’t see the flash of cyan-silver plating until it was on top of her, knocking the wind out of her in a puff of frosty air. She hit the ground hard, cracking her head on the icy dirt, and for a moment her vision went black. It was back just as fast, and she barely had enough time to put up her forearm as a barrier between the Glinthawk and her bare throat. She was grateful, for once, that she had opted to use Stormbird plating for this armor; any other machine plating would have been rended to scrap by the Glinthawk’s sawing beak.
She bared her teeth and struggled under the weight of the pressing machine. She could only spare one glance up to see, horrifyingly, that the Glinthawk up by Sekuli was diving repeatedly at the Banuk and lashing its talons. Aloy’s focus slipped and the machine on top of her overpowered her, and for a single terrifying moment she felt the beak begin to tear through the soft flesh of her neck-
The weight was suddenly lifted off of her by a familiar dark shape. The Scorcher slammed the Glinthawk against the cliff, immediately crushing its head like a Scrapper crushing a heap of shards.
Aloy took a heaving breath, hand going up to trace the gouge on her neck in a too-familiar spot, and for a moment she was back on that cliff during the Proving, a blade sinking into her neck.
But you’re not.
Right. She needed to focus.
Her eyes flickered from the Glinthawk, to the Scorcher, to Sekuli. Aloy usually trusted her aim, but right now, her arms were shaking too much to justify sending arrows near Sekuli. She glanced at the metal bird and watched as it dove at the Banuk again, hitting the cliff. A spray of rocks rained down on Aloy and the Scorcher. Her eyes lingered on the five or so well-sized pebbles that landed at her feet, and an idea came to mind.
She grabbed a rock and whistled at the Scorcher, who snapped to attention. She waved the rock at the robot, smiling softly.
“Like we practiced?”
The machine almost seemed to nod with the way its ears locked onto Sekuli. Aloy took rough aim and tossed the rock, watching as it landed it Sekuli’s lap. The Banuk stared confusedly at it. In almost the same motion, Aloy lobbed an explosive bomb about twenty paces above Sekuli, at the pulley system. It detonated on impact and Aloy’s friend screeched as she plummeted. Aloy silently sent up a prayer to whatever deity she could think of- the Sun, All-Mother, the Blue Light, the First Forge…
The Scorcher leaped and at the apex of its jump, clamped its jaws securely on the rope right where it joined to Sekuli’s armor. Its jaws, controlled in their strength, gripped her carefully as it scored its claws down this cliff to slow its descent. Aloy aimed at the remaining Glinthawk and sent it falling into the trees with- yes- yet another lucky shot.
The Scorcher gently placed Sekuli down in front of Aloy on her back, and Aloy couldn’t help but let out a breathy laugh at the artist’s petrified expression. The Scorcher sat on its hind legs, mouth open as though panting as its tail component wagged. Aloy hesitated before she doubled over laughing, and Sekuli managed to snap out of her shock just enough to give Aloy a withering glare.
~~~
Sekuli applied the ointment carefully, wrapping Aloy’s neck in soft, flexible bandages. Aloy held still, sitting cross-legged as she gently stroked the head of the Scorcher in her lap. She locked eyes with the dark-skinned Banuk, smiling gratefully.
“Thanks.”
“Least I could do.” Sekuli said with a shrug. “That save was something straight out of a scroll.”
Aloy smiled. “Yeah, I, uh, tried something new. Probably first and last time that’ll happen.”
“Well, I’m grateful it was me and not some random hunter, in that case. I’d be traumatized.”
Aloy gave Sekuli a guilty look.
“Yeah… it was a kind of my fault.”
Sekuli pitched her brows.
“How could a Glinthawk ambush possible be your fault?”
Aloy hummed.
“Acquisition machines like that aren’t programmed to see a difference between a still machine and a dead one. They probably assumed the Scorcher was dead since it was sitting right under me and not moving. They were trying to scrap it.”
“No,” Sekuli shook her head. “There’s no way that you could have predicted that. If anything, you’re the only reason I’m alive right now. You’re a master with that spear.”
Aloy shrugged.
“I’m just a hunter. Or a survivor. Take your pick.”
“Leagues better than me. Or our monks, or artificers, or shamans, or chieftains. I’m convinced at this point you could take on the whole Banuk tribe.”
There was a still silence for a seconds before Aloy jerked her hand towards the forest.
“I need to…”
“I’m assuming it’s time for you to go galloping off into the sunset and go change more lives.”
“… more or less.”
The artist pursed her lips and sent Aloy off with a wave and a promise to visit sometime, which Aloy loosely agreed to. Sekuli watched her go, gaze lingering on the animal-like machine that the legendary huntress rode.
And, if a few days later a local hunting party would see that a mural had been painted over the cliff face of a copper-haired warrior atop a blazing scorcher, well… it wasn’t like anyone would be getting word to Aloy any time soon.