Chapter Text
HADES’ distorted voice echoed into Sylens’ ear. That terrible, grating voice hadn’t rung out across the entire HADES network in months, and it jolted Sylens out of his tinkering.
“System threat detected?”
He brought up the list of hacked Focuses and found the source that sparked HADES’ attention in his holo-display. He had most of the lowest-ranking underlings hacked from the get-go; any higher clearance within the Eclipse, like Helis for example, and HADES’ firewall would lock on to Sylens’ location and broadcast another kill order. HADES’ didn’t bother with the rabble; they were disposable, and Focuses changed hands faster than shards. From one dead underling to a new recruit, clumsily fidgeting through the user interface like a shaking dolt.
What could HADES possibly consider a threat? It had wrapped the Shadow Carja around its proverbial fingers in moments and convinced them all it was some sort of god in their idiotic, prattling faith.
An Oseram delver, one of the Eclipse's plants into the Sun-Court, or near it at least. Sylens pinged the location instantly. The Nora Sacred Lands. What in the world could HADES fear in the Nora lands?
Two swipes later and he’d brought up a live-feed from the Oseram delver. He was talking to a young Nora woman. Sylens noted that her hair color was unusual. Red like copper, it seemed, but it could be hard to ascertain specific hues through the holo-default violet. He could even concede she was pretty; her brow strong and could probably scowl something severe, her eyes bright and curious about the Oseram delver. Slender, short, but the straight, proud posture of a soldier. Then her…. Focus pinged.
”Who says I’m like other Nora?”
A most apt question indeed. A Nora with a Focus. Sylens would have been less perplexed to see a boar take flight. The Nora were notoriously technophobic. Where had she found it? How had it occurred to her to put it on? Did she realize what a marvel she adorned herself with?
… Why was she a threat to HADES? And more importantly; if she held the secret to HADES’ destruction, she also held the key to Sylens’ own survival. Working in obscurity was Sylens’ preference, but a bounty on his life was far from ideal.
Using the Oseram’s Focus as a proxy, he hacked into the Nora’s device instantly. She had no firewall? No protection at all? It was laughably naive and Sylens chortled condescendingly as he began to download her recordings and scanned files. Later, he would peruse them to ascertain just what about her had HADES put out a network-wide alert. A system-wide threat when she didn’t even have the sense to guard herself. Pitiful. And she’d just signed her own death order. This needn’t be a bad thing; it could buy Sylens a reprieve from his own persecution.
A glance at the download made Sylens double-take once more. The huge amount of data downloading indicated she’d had a Focus for a considerable amount of time… or taken it off someone who had. That was more likely; like a true Nora, she’d killed someone with a Focus and taken the “jewel” to put in her hair like all those beads. Her records would show the way of it.
The Oseram’s feed cut out, and Sylens connected seamlessly to the Nora’s device and turned her camera to live-feed. She was talking to another Oseram now. Some bumbling fool towering over her, looking at her like a meal. This woman had no notion of the Red Raids, the Derangement… nothing at all. It was almost enviable how sheltered this person was; to not even have noticed the mass murder that defined the generation.
Tuning out their tiresome conversation, Sylens perused the downloaded files. She’d had the Focus since she was little. “Happy birthday, Isaac.” Somehow she’d fallen head-first into a mass grave, picked up the most powerful tool in the world and scanned suicide letters as she climbed out. Dark, but not entirely unlike he himself had found his first device, all those years ago. Skimming as he went, he found the most important bits; her learning to read glyphs at a galloping pace (though not as fast as himself, of course), her training to win a tribal competition to learn the mystery of her parentage.
Ah. Maybe there, the answer lay. He scanned her biometrics and started a search through his own extensive archive. After all these years, Sylens had perfected the search engine to almost intuit his search parameters. He also placed a command to discreetly search any Focuses where he’d placed his various Trojans.
He also saw years of shunning; of children throwing stones and calling her Nora slurs, if they spoke to her at all. A man Sylens assumed was her father, stern and devout enough to rival any Sun-Priest.
Distracted, he heard the blunt tool of an Oseram make his clumsy attempts at flirtation, and the young woman was entirely clueless to his overtures. Sylens didn’t know who he pitied more for their ignorance. Either the Nora was dumber than he thought, or supremely good at pretending she was. It finally occurred to Sylens to take note of her name, even though it was hardly the most intriguing part about her. Aloy.
Alright, Aloy. Let’s see what makes you special enough to issue a death order on sight. Helis and his thugs were probably halfway to the Sacred Lands already, spurred by zealous fervor. The poor girl would be dead within three days if she were lucky.
That night, Sylens perused this… Aloy’s records more thoroughly, scanning more intently for the secret to her that scared HADES so. She was naive in conversation with others to be sure, but she wasn’t as dull as Sylens had first assumed. She learned fast, was intuitive, bright, bold. Having acquired her Focus at such a formative age when her brain was plastic enough to absorb data at breakneck speed, she’d taken to the Focus like a fish to water, and used it to the fullest potential that was available to her. With no one else around her with one, it was no wonder it never occurred to her to safeguard the device that carried all her most private moments.
The girl talked to herself too; a scar from being shunned. No one to talk to but two religious dolts and a paranoid bootlegger. All outcasts themselves.
This Aloy, much like himself, seemed to him a person outside her own time, and certainly out of her own culture. She reminded him of himself at that age; though not cunning enough to make use of the power and knowledge at her fingertips. It was noble, he supposed, to not even consider using her upperhand to advance herself at the cost of others. But nobility had never served Sylens, and that is why he was smarter.
Come morning, he watched with rapt attention as Aloy ran her silly tribal gauntlet, treating it like the climax of her life. How pathetic. Prattling with a silly competition, as if the world beyond didn’t beckon with far more intrigue.
Still. When her competitors destroyed her trophy, he snarled with disgust, despite himself. But true to herself, she wasn’t deterred or discouraged; only more resolved. She took the route less traveled and when she threw herself off of a rappel point before securing a tether, Sylens actually heard himself suppress a gasp.
When Aloy braved the collapsed route and bested the others, he felt a reluctant admiration. Of course she had won. She was better than them, after all. In every way.
When the first fire arrow fell upon them, Sylens watched Aloy make her first human kill — an Eclipse cultist — as effortless as breathing. A natural born killer, no hesitation at all.
Good. Then she might stand a chance of surviving this assault. Might.
When the cultists were felled, Sylens watched her pick up another Focus from a dead soldier, and then Helis’ ice cold eyes came into view as he hoisted her into the air and put his wicked blade to her neck. It was like watching a premonition of Sylens’ own death, seeing it through Aloy’s eyes. Helis would soon return to hunting him and finishing him the same way.
”Turn your face to the Sun, child.”
Then came the side swipe as Aloy’s foster father stepped in to her defense. Another exercise in futility, but he put up a good and honorable fight before Helis sunk his blade hilt-deep into his guts. Not once, but twice. Aloy lay gasping for breath, crying out his name, as the snow around her turned red with her own blood. After giving her all at the competition, after killing so many cultists, after half her blood spilled into the snow, she hadn’t the strength to stop Helis from his gruesome craft. Not to save her father, or to save herself.
But the feed showed the Nora man crawl to his foster daughter as the Eclipse activated the bomb that would send the mountain side crumbling, leaving his guts on the ground in his wake, and saw his hands turn Aloy’s face to his own, tears of pain and desperation spilling down his face. Something in Sylens’ gut twinged. Sympathy. Useless. They were both dead already. There was no running. Their heartbeats were numbered and drawing near the end.
But the man’s dying eyes set with determination and he pleaded two final words.
”Aloy… Survive!”
He shrank rapidly out of view; he must have pushed Aloy off the edge of the cliff. Then a firestorm blew him into All-Mother’s memory, and Aloy’s Focus-feed cut abruptly short as she died.