Chapter Text
I.
Aloy was lost.
Which was odd because as long as she could think, she had never quite been lost, at least not in the way she felt now. It was an unsettling sensation deep inside her, nothing she could solve with her tracking skills or the help of her focus that she still wore stubbornly on her right temple despite the danger of the ancient war machines being over and the peace in the realms of humans restored. She had even found what had turned out to be the closest she had to a mother, finally, after nineteen years of searching. The memory of Elisabet’s body, resting at peace in a triangle of flowers, had mended a wound in Aloy’s heart she had been carrying with her for as long as she could think. But now, that Aloy had found out about her past, she had trouble looking forward, it seemed.
Maybe that’s the problem, Aloy mused over the screeching roar of a Ravager as she dodged its lunge, spun around and smashed her spear against the machine’s head. Maybe it’s because I’ve always had some impossible task to fulfill. Some corrupted monster to hunt down. Some world that demanded saving. And now that it’s saved I feel…
The machine lay stunned on the ground and Aloy finished it with a stab to its core. Instinctively, she started searching it for resources, but after a moment of pulling out wires and sparkers she gave up. She was already more than well equipped and after what happened at the Spire, no merchant charged her for shards when she purchased something. There almost was no immediate need to hunt machines any more, most of them having turned docile after the restoration of GAIA and only very few ever turning hostile on sight, like the Ravager whose parts she didn’t even need.
… useless, she finished in her head.
Aloy chided herself for her morose mood and instead went searching her kill for more valuable machine parts. Not that she needed them, but it was something familiar at least. The Ravager’s heart got destroyed during the fight, molten into its carcass due to Aloy’s preferred use of blast ammunition. She huffed and went for the head. The lens was still perfectly intact and a moment of focused fumbling about in the mess of cables and metal allowed her to remove it. She wrapped the lens into a piece of cloth and stored it carefully in her satchel.
Aloy stood next to the dead Ravager, letting the cool wind blowing in from the east dry the sweat on her brow. She closed her eyes at the sensation. Her hand went to a pouch on her belt to feel for the little pendant in the shape of the world she had found with Elisabet’s body, smooth and cool and comforting. Aloy tried to ignore the nagging voice at the back of her head that kept asking her what to do now, because she didn’t know the answer. She could keep going like she had for the better part of the summer now, travel and hunt down machines only to leave the carcasses behind barely looted, ask strangers if they needed any help and hastily leaving them again when they started to worship her as if she was the Goddess herself. Get spotted by a Sawtooth, bring it down, stare up at the stars and think about Rost, and Elisabet, get up and hunt. Rinse and repeat.
Elisabet would have wanted her to find a new path to follow, Aloy told herself, but that was harder than she had thought.
Distant voices drew her back from her brooding. When Aloy opened her eyes, she saw movement along the road following the river that meandered through the desert. A quick look with her focus revealed it to be friendly humans, no enemies. Since she didn’t have anything else to do, Aloy whisteled sharply and waited for a tame Broadhead to make its way to her. She attached her satchel to the machine and swung herself onto its back, dug her heels into the machine’s flanks and galloped towards the river.
The orange and light brown hues of the desert north of the lush jungles and dense forests of Meridian turned almost red in the evening sunshine, and the wind that rushed past her lost the day’s heat already. In a few hours, it would be nightfall.
Red light, the color of blood… Huh, that thought turned dark, she mused, allowing herself an amused smirk. A moment later Aloy could make out the shapes of the people that marched along the river, and even at this distance she could tell by the animal skin clothes and dreadlocks adorned with feathers that it was a group of Nora Braves. Aloy wasn’t sure if she felt pleasantly surprised at the familiar sight or not, still painfully reminded of the Nora’s attitude towards her before she turned out to be somehow important in the course of history. Still, she decided to stop and ask them if they needed any help.
A short talk later Aloy had learned that the Nora – a group of young hunters – were not yet on their way back to the Sacred Lands in the Embrace, unlike all the other warriors that had survived the fighting. Generally wary of everything foreign and not-Nora, they had followed Aloy into the battle, but warchief Sona and her troops had had no desire to linger after that, either.
“We want to hunt down one of those big machines, with guns all over”, one of the Braves announced. “For trophies to bring back to the Embrace.”
“A Ravager, you mean?” Aloy asked. “It fits the description. Guns all over.”
“Are they big?” another Nora hunter wanted to know.
“Like a Sawtooth, but heavily armed,” Aloy supplied.
“No, bigger! Like a house on two legs, that’s the trophies we’re after” the hunters insisted, and Aloy had to fight rolling her eyes. Boasting her kills had never been her motivation to hunt, but ever since entering the Hunters Lodge she knew for a great many people it was something like a hobby.
“A Thunderjaw, then. Are you sure you are up to it?”
“Have you killed one of them already, Anointed?”
Aloy winced when a young woman called her Anointed, but decided to let it pass, tired of reminding people that it was unwanted, just like bows, kneeling or curtseys. “As it happens, I have.”
Trying to quench the chorus of questions and praise that followed, Aloy agreed to meet with the Nora Braves in two days, at the gates of Meridian, to hunt with them. It wasn’t that she had anything else to do, and sending the group of youngsters off to kill a Thunderjaw on their own was as good as shoving them down the next best cliff. So she agreed to help them.
At least I didn’t have to tell them I killed at least five Thunderjaws. Don’t even want to think about their reaction at that, she thought as she rode her Broadhead through the rising darkness to the west, towards Meridian. It was the only location the hunters knew by name in this region of the world, so Aloy had suggested it as meeting point.
They are all going back to the Embrace, she mused. Soon, all Nora will be there again, in the Sacred Land. All but me. Not that I’ve ever felt welcome there in the first place.
She huffed. Aloy of the Nora? More like Aloy despite the Nora.
Should she go back to the Embrace? Besides visiting Rost’s grave, there was nothing that kept her there, and right now the pain was still too fresh to bring herself to make the journey. Sure, there were some nice people, like Matriarch Teersa, but she had her duties, and the other Matriarchs still changed between holding a grudge against Aloy for being born and dropping to their knees as soon as they caught sight, and Aloy wouldn’t have any of that. There was Varl, but he was always surrounded by a group of Braves that did the same as the Matriarchs. Not very inviting. Then there was Teb. Aloy blinked. Teb had always been nice company, but she didn’t even know if he still had his hut or if he had settled down somewhere else, if she was welcome. And as a Stitcher he would be in the centre of Mother’s Cradle, surrounded by tribe members. So much for that.
Aloy shook her head and spurred her Broadhead to a gallop. Where else was she to go?
Meridian. Everybody went to Meridian, anyway.
Maybe she could visit Erend, Aloy mused as the cold desert wind rushed past her, dust and stones kicked aside under the machine’s metal hooves. The towers of Meridian already poked out of the pink mist at the western horizon, where the last rays of the sun tinted the sky the color of ink and copper. If she rode the better part of the night, she might make it by dawn. After checking the large open mesa behind Lone Light for a Thunderjaw and actually seeing one patrolling the grounds, Aloy made a short stop to catch a rest. After a quick meal of turkey meat roasted on a hastily lit campfire and a short sleep under the stars, Aloy mounted the Broadhead again and continued her way. As expected, by dawn she had made it to Meridian.
Aloy had agreed with the Nora Braves to meet at the margins of the capital city that perched on the rocks like a Stormbird’s nest with its imposing towers and bridges, since nothing could bring the Nora to actually enter the town itself. To build so tall is to invite the fate of the Ancients, warchief Sona had scoffed disapprovingly, and Aloy had quietly asked herself whether Sona meant it or whether she was secretly impressed by how much higher than a Nora hut even the simplest Carja warehouse was, and kept her comments to herself. Aloy still had a day’s worth of time before the meeting and was thankful for it, taking the chance to enter the town to deliver a small Banuk statue of a Grazer to a collector.
Making her way to the market where about everything that existed in the world could be bought, sold or traded against something else, Aloy passed a weapon stand, a resource supplier and the shy scholar that collected vessels of the Old Ones, giving him a short wave as she went by. She soon found the collector of Banuk artifacts. The collector was thrilled about the statue and paid her a generous amount of shards. Aloy didn’t know what to do with the payment, though. Not that she needed any. The amount of people offering her a shower of gifts every time she showed her face made her feel awkward and accepting them after getting shunned and looked down at before felt just wrong, so she tried to dodge every person calling out to her as “The chosen one!”, “The gift of the sun!” or “The Anointed!” while weaving her way through the crowd in the market.
Among all the all-but-shouted praise, Aloy flinched when she suddenly heard her actual name.
“Aloy!”
The voice was familiar.
Aloy spun around and scanned the crowd for the person that had called out for her, and couldn’t quite believe when she saw a young man in Nora clothing waving to her from a market stand.
“Teb?”
“Aloy, over here.”
Aloy elbowed through the crowd as politely as she could muster until she arrived at the stand. It was small compared to the other ones, but situated in a calm corner of the market, next to where the high walls opened up to a generous terrace overseeing the jungle below the city. Aloy instantly felt less fenced in than before in the throng, and the fresh wind blowing in from the open made her breathe more deeply. She slowed down, relaxing a little, and finally turned to the young man at the stand.
It was Teb the Stitcher, of all people. When Aloy came closer she realized he was selling Nora clothing, armor and attire, the familiar mixture of cured animal hides and machine parts, painted with blue patterns and decorated with clay beads and colorful feathers. Teb looked just like she remembered him from before, a shaved head except for some nut-brown dreadlocks on his crown and a blue tribal tattoo curving around one of his gentle, golden-green eyes, lean and slim, about half a head taller than her, still not wearing any heavy armor, just a simple sleeveless garment decorated with blue and red wires.
He greeted her with his familiar soft smile as she came closer, radiating excited surprise. “Hi, Aloy.”
“Teb, what are you doing here? I thought all other Nora had gone back to the Embrace already,” Aloy remarked.
Teb’s smile turned into something almost shy. “All but for me, it seems. And you, of course, if you want to count yourself.”
Aloy had to smirk despite herself, noticing Teb’s careful reluctance when including her in the term “Nora”. She appreciated it. “You are selling Nora armor?”
Teb nodded eagerly. “Ever since your work here at Meridian, the Carja attitude towards the Nora has improved a lot, you know. And since you are, well… erm…”
Teb hesitated, as if wanting to use a term that he knew Aloy wouldn’t like and now desperately trying to find something to say instead. Aloy had to smile, the first honest smile in weeks, she realized.
“The chosen one? The one the Goddess sent?” she supplied sarcastically, but there was no spite behind her words, just humor. Teb certainly picked up on that and gave a short chuckle.
“… Famous, I was about to say. You can’t argue with that.”
Aloy laughed. “Well, I guess I can’t.”
“Overall, due to your work here, Nora style has become incredibly fashionable. There is a high demand for armor, accessories and garments even among Meridian nobles, and me being, as they said, an authentic tribal artisan… I can barely keep up with the amount of customers! Of course I had to tweak the style a little here and there to make it suitable for this warm climate in the Sundom.”
Aloy raised her eyebrows in amazement. She had never thought her influence would actually turn the other tribes’ attitude towards the “feral savages of the east”, as they used to call the Nora, into something this positive. Now that Teb had told her, she spotted some Carja wearing Nora symbols and designs, one even sporting a headpiece made of Strider parts like she had herself. Seeing that warmed her heart in a way she had missed for a long time.
“That’s wonderful, Teb. I assumed none of the tribe members would actually enter the city.”
Teb smiled shyly at her compliment, but then a slow grin spread over his face. “To be honest, that’s the first thing I did when coming here. Browse the market for new materials. There’s still some I’ve never seen before every time I go looking.”
Now that he said it, Aloy remembered Teb mentioning his visit to the markets when they met before the battle, while the other Nora had immediately concentrated their forces at the Spire, carefully avoiding any contact with the Carja and expressing their distaste at having to spend time in their territory. Teb had been all but expressing his awe at all the new things surrounding him.
“Why didn’t you want to go back to the Embrace?” Aloy wanted to know.
At that, an odd look crossed Teb’s features, a shadow passing by behind his eyes. It was over as quick as it had come, and when he turned his head to gaze over the terrace, the jungle spread out like a sea of green waves below the red bricks and golden fences of the city under a rising sun, his expression turned almost wistful.
“There is such a big world, beyond the Embrace. It couldn’t be any more different from the Sacred Land, could it? Still, I… I wanted to see. I wanted to know more than what lies between Mother’s Cradle and the main gates. I know I’m not a Brave, and I thought my chance would never come to leave the valley, but now… It’s so big, isn’t it?”
His voice turned so quiet it was almost a whisper at his last words, and he made a vague little gesture towards the horizon, as if trying and giving up to express his wonder upon seeing this new world. Aloy just smiled.
“I know what you feel like.”
Teb turned his gaze back on her and smiled back. “I’m sure you do, Aloy.”
There was a short pause, none of them speaking in comfortable silence as they stood and gazed out of the market stand into the vast land surrounding the heart of Carja territory, once an enemy, now an ally.
After a moment, Teb cleared his throat and spread his arms a little in a parody of a market pitchman. “Well, young lady, can I interest you in a new Nora gauntlet? They are the latest fashion! The one you are wearing looks like a Snapmaw has chewed it!”
Aloy laughed. “If you only knew how close to the truth that is, Teb.”
Teb’s expression turned worried and he looked her up and down. “A Snapmaw bit your arm?”
“A Glinthawk.”
Teb nodded, now honest concern in his eyes. “Joke aside, if you really want to keep your limbs you should let me repair your armor. That shoulder plate looks a little worse for wear, if you don’t mind me saying, and you could do with a new breastplate, honestly.”
Her armor had seen better days, Aloy had to admit. She always carried as many spare outfits with her as she could fit in her satchel, but her favored Nora Protector armor certainly looked like it had seen a fair share of almost-deaths.
“You would do that?”
Teb nodded, that gentle smile back in place. “Of course I would. I just need to finish this dress here, the customer wishes it done this evening. I’m lacking an essential piece, though, and I’m not sure where to get it.”
Teb gestured to a dress that looked like an elegant fusion of the avian Carja style, stylized feathers and flowing ribbons, and the more robust Nora style with fur and triangular patterns. He had managed to capture both designs and merged it into something new, Aloy acknowledged.
“It looks gorgeous. What are you lacking to finish it?”
“Something quite rare, I’m afraid. A Ravager lens. The Hunters Lodge merchants don’t have any, and I’d rather grow wings and fly than going out to kill a Ravager myself,” Teb admitted quietly.
“Well, as it happens, I have one,” Aloy said, setting down her satchel that she had carried on her back.
Teb’s soft green eyes went wide with surprise. “A Ravager lens? Really?”
Aloy rummaged around in her satchel and handed Teb the bundle of cloth that he carefully took from her. He unwrapped it and inspected the lens by holding it into the sunlight.
“It’s in perfect condition. Aloy, this is just what I need! Do you think you would sell it to me?”
Aloy huffed. “I don’t want any shards from you, Teb. Just keep it.”
Teb’s soft eyes settled on her once more, searching her. “Are you sure? You are just giving this to me?”
Aloy shrugged. “Believe me, I have more resources to craft ammunition than I would ever need. People drown me in free goods.”
Teb nodded, understanding in his gaze. “After shunning you for the better part of your life before you turned out to be useful, huh?”
“Yep.”
“I see.” He carefully set the lens on his working bench next to the dress. “Well, if you don’t want any payment, would you instead do me the honor to share dinner with me this evening?”
“Of course. I’d very much like to,” Aloy heard herself say, and found that she meant it when he smiled widely.
Her visit to Meridian had turned out to be a better idea than she had anticipated, after all.