Chapter Text
In Aloy's first week as visiting dignitary in the Quen Empire, she'd foiled one assassination plot against the Emperor and two against Alva, confronted an Overseer who was trying to extort Seyka's sister, and defended one of the capital's outlying villages from a stampede of wayward machines whose usual patrol routes had been derailed by a dam that had just begun construction.
These events, occurring in quick succession, had given Aloy the unfortunate expectation that the rest of her time overseas would be just as exhilarating.
It was not - as Beta had implied in their daily check-ins - that Aloy craved danger. In fact, Aloy especially didn't like danger directed at someone like Alva, who she loved and who might have been able to convince the Quen Emperor to let her establish a new school of Diviners by now if they hadn't had to waste so much time fending off murderous court intrigue.
By comparison, the utter lack of murder attempts in the following two weeks once Aloy had exposed the traitors was... well, it was good news. It was. Really. Even Aloy could agree on that. But peace unsettled her. She'd been built for doing things, not sitting on overly comfortable chairs while two dozen Quen courtiers argued about the exact verbiage of a Mission Statement.
So when she got the message from Kotallo -
Commander. Found Old Ones artifact at Faro outpost. Something called KRONOS. Sylens very interested.
- Aloy leapt at the chance to escape the Imperial boardroom even if just for a day. Not to mention, if Sylens was interested in what they'd found, well. Even more reason for Aloy to step in and make sure the infuriating man wasn't going to accidentally boot up yet another world-threatening danger from an ancient era. While preparing for Nemesis, they’d investigated scores of corporate tech labs, trying to find any kind of edge against it that would serve them in that battle.
It would be just like old times.
It was such a beautiful day for flying that a part of Aloy didn't want to land at the coordinates Kotallo had sent. She forced herself to ignore the rush of wind playfully tugging at her hair in favor of surveying the area. She had her airdrake - the local equivalent of a sunwing - circle the site twice.
It was little wonder the Quen had not investigated the ruin themselves - it was but a small, dreary outpost built deep in the mountains and largely inaccessible by foot. From above, it didn't look like much. Just a few crumbling buildings perched at the top of cliffsides so sheer even Aloy would have hesitated to climb them. Delvers looking for treasure would have turned around and retreated in search of more promising ruins. It looked like there had once been a bridge to the outpost spanning a wide crevice that plunged into foggy jungle, but now its tracks ended in twisted metal and empty air at both ends.
Didn't look like it would take long to search. Aloy nudged her airdrake into a gentle spiral down and landed on one of the roofs.
Kotallo met her in the courtyard. At first, she thought he was saluting her. She opened her mouth to remind him that wasn't necessary and realized he was just shielding his eyes against the light at her back.
"Commander. Welcome."
"Kotallo," she said with a small smile. Aloy jerked her head towards the gaping hole in the wall he'd emerged from. "Dark in there?"
"Just as Sylens likes it," he replied dryly. Aloy followed him back into the ruin. Kotallo moved easily back into the darkness. Aloy's eyes took a moment longer to begin adjusting. She stumbled on the uneven stairs and was grateful when Kotallo extended out his metal hand out to help her catch her balance.
"Thanks," she murmured.
Kotallo dropped her hand. "Through here," he said, nodding at the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.
The next chamber was massive. In fact... Aloy raked her gaze over it, taking in the massive ring that stood in the middle of the room, the calcified workstations in the corners, and the camp Sylens and Kotallo had set up in front of the ring. She was sure of it. The room was bigger than the buildings outside had appeared from above in their entirety. So they'd carved a lab into the mountain, tried to appear small and unimportant, huh? That was unlike Faro.
Sylens minimized several data projections and gave Aloy and Kotallo an irritated look as they approached.
"I told you Aloy's presence was not needed," he said coolly to Kotallo, ignoring Aloy entirely. She wasn't surprised he was still holding a grudge about the fact that she'd locked him out of APOLLO access after Nemesis, but as far as Aloy was concerned, he still had a while to go before he proved a newfound sense of caution when it came to dealing with Old Ones artifacts beyond their understanding.
"Nice to see you too, Sylens," Aloy said. "Was the Quen hospitality not to your liking?"
"I did not cross an ocean to listen to them regurgitating mangled corporate speak," Sylens said dryly. "Now, onto the matter we both know you're more interested in. "This," he gestured at the darkened ring. "Is KRONOS."
The ring sat on an elevated platform about two feet up, and was itself at least... oh, one and a half times Kotallo's height. Lit only by the weak purple flickers of Old One's displays and the lanterns Sylens and Kotallo had placed in a circle around it, there was something strangely cold and imposing about it. Aloy touched her Focus and sucked in a sharp and startled breath as the floor beneath their feet lit up in every direction with circuitry.
"Yes," Sylens said smugly, seeing her face. "That is precisely what captured my attention as well. The barbarian has been advocating that we take it apart."
Aloy stiffened, but Kotallo only gave a lukewarm smile at the insult. "Better a barbarian than a false prophet," he replied evenly.
Aloy gave him a despairing look. She would have assigned someone else to babysit-Sylens-so-he-doesn't-end-the-world duty if she'd known he was still giving Kotallo a hard time. Why hadn't Kotallo said anything?
"I have found Marshal Kotallo," Aloy said, stressing his title, "to have excellent judgement." Sylens' lip curled. Before he could argue, Aloy quickly addressed Kotallo. "Marshal, is there a reason you want to take it apart?"
Kotallo raised his chin. "A quarter of the power cells beneath this ruin would power the Quen's new agricultural system for generations. A single one would fully restore the Visions in the Grove. What other wonders could we bring back to better our people's lives?"
"We do not know where the gate leads yet," Sylens snapped. "You would tear it up into smaller pieces without ever looking to see what's on the other side."
"The war is over," Kotallo said simply. "We have no more need for world-destroying weapons."
A strange argument to hear from a Tenakth, but then, Kotallo was no ordinary Tenakth.
"Is it a gate or a weapon?" Aloy interrupted before they could get back into a fight they'd clearly already had.
"There are references to both in the data we've decrypted so far," Sylens admitted grudgingly.
"The rest has resisted our efforts to access it," Kotallo added as his gaze lingered thoughtfully on Aloy.
She, in turn, looked at the dark and silent network node in front of the gate.
"That's what I'm good for," Aloy muttered. Knocking down walls, overriding security, fighting crazed AIs - all in a day's work. She unhooked her spear and stepped onto the platform. Up close, the empty ring loomed over her even more. "This isn't going to blow up on me, is it?" she asked her companions as she held the end of her spear just out of reach of the override socket.
"The power systems look stable, as far as we can tell," Kotallo told her seriously.
"I will stay out of range and let everyone know of your heroics, should disaster befall us," Sylens droned. He took several steps back and gave them both an insincere bow. ...Had he been spending time with Marad? Aloy shuddered at the thought.
"Here goes -" she began to say as she slotted her override module into the network node. At once, the connection sparked and a low hum began to fill the chamber. Aloy tasted ozone.
"Sylens, do you see this?" Kotallo asked, frowning as he shared some data Aloy couldn't see with a flick of his wrist. The override module was beginning to hum and vibrate so violently up through the shaft of the spear that Aloy's palms tingled. The sensation traveled up to her elbows, made her arms go numb. An answering drone from the ring itself began to grow louder and louder.
"What is it?" Aloy demanded. A cascade of error alerts appeared via her Focus and blocked her view of the node interface. The override was out of alignment - she pushed them to the side and reentered her Alpha clearance. The room was steadily brightening with a cold white-blue light coming from the ring behind her, a light like cruel sunlight glinting off a glacier at high noon. She caught its reflection in Kotallo's horrified eyes as their gazes met, and glanced over her shoulder just once to confirm it was the ring.
The cold glow was emanating from its once-empty center, brightening until it was painful to look at. She turned away and refocused her attention on trying to remove her spear.
"The energy signatures are too high!" Sylens shouted. It was, Aloy realized, the first time she had ever heard him sound afraid. The realization flooded her veins with ice cold water.
Kotallo frantically glanced between them. "Shut it down!" he yelled at Aloy.
She yanked at the spear and wasn't able to budge the override module out of the socket a single inch.
"I can't!" Aloy shouted back. "I - it's like it's stuck!"
Movement by her jaw made her startle. It was her own hair, floating gently up around her head like she had plunged underwater. With every jerk she made trying to wrench the spear out the movement rippled through her floating braids. Distantly, she was aware of Sylens turning tail and running. She couldn't even blame him.
"Get out of here!" she yelled at Kotallo without looking up. The spear would not budge no matter how hard she yanked. Turning didn't seem to do the trick either. What was she missing?
"I will not leave you!"
She startled to hear Kotallo's voice so close. He joined her on the platform and pushed her aside to grasp the spear himself. Aloy glanced back at the ring as he braced one foot against the base of the network node and grunted as he leaned his full weight away.
The ring had begun trailing sparks of electricity through the air. Aloy could taste it on her tongue, a scent like burning metal, feel every hair on her arms stand up. She understood now what would lead someone to call it a gate, more so than she had when it had stood dark and empty. The blinding swirl of light at its center beckoned like an open doorway.
Aloy took a step towards it.
It was not a choice she made, but rather like the floor had suddenly pitched beneath her, like a sunwing in a storm. Her body tilted towards the ring as the feeling of being pulled toward it only grew stronger.
"Kotallo!" she cried. "Get out!"
Even as she gave the order for him to run, her hand reached out for him against her will. He turned to look at her, and she saw the horror on his face illuminated by that brilliant white-blue light as she began to fall towards the ring.
He loosened his grip on her spear. "No!" Aloy screamed.
He reached for her outstretched hand with one of his - the one of flesh. Their fingers brushed. A violent spark of lightning arced in the space between their palms.
And then the gate swallowed her.
Aloy gasped and choked for air as she resurfaced, feeling like she'd been plunged beneath the churn of an icy waterfall and dragged along the bottom of a rocky whirlpool before she could get free. It was an apt metaphor, considering she'd experienced it a few too many times.
She fell to all-fours, one of her palms landing in something warm and sticky. As she caught her breath and the black spots at the edge of her vision fled, she realized it was blood. Blood on red-gold sand. A body in Carja armor lay on its stomach a few feet away, unmoving, its back pierced by arrows.
Aloy staggered to her feet, her head still spinning. She was...
She was at Barren Light again, at the Embassy. She couldn't be. She was years into the future and hundreds of leagues away across the ocean, in a forgotten room full of rubble and Old Ones tech. She couldn't be back here, and yet -
She remembered this. The cries of Tenakth and Carja soldiers alike as they moved too slowly to regroup after Regalla's attack and were cut down before they could close the gap. The dust kicked up by stampeding machines, hanging thick in the air and mingling with smoke from the dry grass the fire arrows had set alight. The bodies of Hekarro's Marshals lying still where they'd fallen. Aloy staggered forward. Machine hooves thundered past somewhere on her right, but she did not see them through the haze of dust and smoke and her ears were ringing too badly to pinpoint them before they were fading out of earshot. Distant screams. A horn blew.
Somehow, through all the noise, she heard quiet gasps of pain. Kotallo.
"Kotallo!" Aloy yelled. She ran for the pair of bodies pinned beneath the bristleback carcass. High Marshal Javveh was gone already. Kotallo had once told her, late at night during watch when they'd both been too exhausted to guard their hurts, that Javveh had died before they'd hit the ground, that his sacrifice had been for naught.
But Kotallo was still alive, his eyes and mouth open wide towards the sky. He flinched when Aloy dropped to her knees next to his head and cradled his cheeks with her palms, smearing blood over his jaw.
"It's okay," she promised. "It's going to be okay, Ram squad will find you soon -"
She glanced around wildly as she spoke, as though she'd see Kivva leading the charge through the clouds of drifting dust and ash any second now, but the distant clash of metal and indistinct shouting told her the battle had not yet ended. Blood began to soak into the knees of her armor. There was so much of it. How had Kotallo survived losing so much? Aloy cursed and tore one of her belts off, tossing aside the pouch she'd hung on it.
"Regalla -" Kotallo choked out.
Aloy shook her head as she tightened the belt around the bloody stump that remained of Kotallo's arm. A strangled groan of pain escaped Kotallo's clenched teeth as she drew it tighter. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know it hurts. Kivva will bring you to an Utaru healer, and then -"
And then... they'd already won this war. Had Aloy hit her head? Was this a dream? She hadn't been here, in the aftermath. Varl had dragged her back into Barren Light after she killed Grudda, insisting on the Carja seeing to her wounds. She'd never knelt here in the dirt with Kotallo.
But it was more vivid than any dream she'd ever had. She could feel the smoke scrapping her throat raw.
"It's going to be okay," she told Kotallo in a slightly hysterical voice.
"I am already dead," he rasped. The whites of his eyes were growing red and watery from the smoke. Paint smeared with blood, with dirt and machine oil. He looked a mess and yet he blazed with a righteous fury she had never seen from him before, not even at Stone Crest, not even in the first few days she'd seen him. "Drown her in her own blood, outlander."
Aloy was already shaking her head. "You avenged them yourself," she said tightly. "I was there, we saw you." In the arena. The sun as witness overhead.
A shadow fell across Kotallo's face. His eyes widened further still.
"Outlander-"
Aloy'd lost her spear. She grabbed for Kotallo's sickle, lying abandoned in the dust at his side. She twisted to raise it over her head just as a massive greatsword came swinging down. The impact rang through the bones of her arms, rattled her elbows and sent them tingling. She wasn't strong enough to hold back the blow, especially not at this angle, not with a weapon she wasn't used to, but she managed to deflect the edge of the sword away from them both.
She surged to her feet and swung the sickle, but Grudda's shield flared with blue light, blocking her at the last moment.
His eyes glinted at the shock on her face.
"I killed you," she whispered. "You're dead."
Grudda's answer was drowned out by the rising hum of machinery in her ears. The world went white-blue again and she pitched helplessly into another impossible dream.
She landed ankle-deep in a river.
The air here was still and clean. As she caught her breath with hitched sobs, it soothed her smoke-rough throat and filled her lungs with enough oxygen to make her head spin.
Aloy stumbled to the bank of the river, blinking furiously to clear her vision of the dancing spots the brilliant white light had left upon it. Grudda was gone. Barren Light was gone. Kotallo's body bleeding out at her feet was gone... but her knees were still stained with his blood. She was holding his sickle in her hand so tightly that it took her a second to remember how to relax her grip.
She continued to draw deep breaths of air into her lungs as she spun dazedly in a circle, taking in the landscape. The trees were in full autumn bloom, shades of red and yellow and everything in between, leaves littering the shaded ground beneath them. It took her a moment to recognize the territory. She'd never seen the Sky Clan lands in autumn before.
There was no one nearby, not machine nor human, no sound of battle, just the gurgle of the river she'd landed in and -
- so muffled and quiet she almost missed it... sobbing.
Aloy activated her Focus. Little burrowing creatures beneath piles of fallen leaves were suddenly alight with purple silhouettes. A turkey meandered on the other side of a lichen-covered rock and bowed its head to peck at the ground. And there - the shape of a human child crouched between the roots of a dense bush.
The crying abruptly stopped as she circled the bush. She heard a single hiccup as she knelt, trying to make herself seem less imposing.
"Hey," Aloy said softly to a small, trembling back painted in magenta and white. "Are you all right? I'm Aloy."
The child raised his head from the protective cage of his arms just enough to peer at her over his shoulder with one reddened eye.
"Outlander!" he hissed, hiding his face quickly.
Aloy let out a dry chuckle. "Yeah. I get that a lot."
Slowly, the single eye returned.
"Are you supposed to be out here alone?" Aloy asked. "Where's your squad?"
The child shifted in his hiding place, and Aloy swallowed back a gasp as the rest of his face was revealed. He was at least twenty years too young and wearing paints she'd never seen on him. The headpiece strung through his hair looked comically huge when she was used to it sitting on a much larger forehead. But it was him. It was the same eyes beneath the familiar headpiece.
"Dumb outlander," Kotallo said scornfully. "We don't get squad assignments until we're ten."
Aloy stared.
Well. At least telling her off had distracted him so much he'd forgotten to keep crying.
"Right," she said to herself. "I guess you get more respectful when you're older."
Kotallo wiped his face with the back of one hand, smearing snot and paint together. "You haven't got any tattoos. Have you done something worth respecting?" he asked in a voice implying that he very much doubted it.
"A few things, I think," Aloy said with a wince. She wasn't sure she should tell a child this young and free with his words that she and his future self were going to blow up a hole in the Bulwark. She suspected the knowledge wouldn't make growing up with Tekotteh any easier. "So what are you doing out here? Are you lost?"
"Not lost!" he snapped, glaring at her. To Aloy's alarm, his eyes began to water again. "I was tracking... my parents..."
"...Oh."
She wasn't great at judging the age of small children, but... she knew they'd died when he was young not long after Hekarro had begun trying to unite the Clans, but before he'd succeeded in stopping them from killing each other. She was afraid she knew the reason of their disappearance.
Her throat closed in panic. She couldn't do this. She couldn't be the one to explain this to him.
"I heard that... Gerrah is a really good tracker!" she lied brightly.
Kotallo's suspicious stare was almost identical to the ones he'd given Aloy twenty years older. It was uncanny. "Gerrah?"
"Yes! How about we go find Gerrah and ask her for help?" When Kotallo continued to look suspicious, she quickly added, "That's what Chaplains are for, right? Even Commanders and Chiefs ask them for help."
"I guess," Kotallo muttered. He crawled out of the bush he'd been hiding in and stood, brushing dirt and dry leaves off his palms. He was of a height with Aloy when she remained kneeling - a surreal experience. He stood uncertainly in front of her, swinging his arms a little. "I don't..." he mumbled so quietly Aloy had to strain to hear. "I don't know the way home."
"It's okay," Aloy said, standing slowly. "I do. I can lead you."
As she was wondering if a Tenakth child would take offense if Aloy offered to hold hands, Kotallo's eyes zeroed in on Aloy's belt. "Do you know how to use that?" he demanded, pointing.
Aloy glanced down to realize he'd fixated on the sickle hanging on her belt. She suppressed laughter.
"You know what?" she said. "I think it suits you better."
She took it off and held it out hilt-first.
"Mama wields a sickle," he said quietly as his small hands reached out. Like the headpiece Aloy was used to seeing on his adult self, it looked comically huge in his grip. His arms dipped beneath its weight and he had to use two hands to raise it up, but the look of reverence in his eyes as he took in the battle-worn blade and the faded cloth wrappings around the hilt would have made anyone think Aloy had just handed him a treasure.
Offering him the sickle knocked down the last of Kotallo's walls. As Aloy led them to a dirt path along the river she vaguely remembered walking with him when they'd gone to test his machine arm for the first time, his child self told her all about the training he'd done so far without a hint of shyness or self-consciousness. It was startling to see the seeds of the man Aloy would meet later, the one who would leap into battle without hesitation and rouse squads to defy orders.
They were within sight of the Bulwark when Aloy began to feel the ground beneath her shift. Her stomach began to sink, but at the same time, it was almost a relief that she would not be here when the news of his parents broke his heart.
Kotallo stopped a few paces ahead and squinted at her when she stumbled. "What?"
"You're almost home," Aloy said, trying to smile. "Just keep going. You'll be all right."
The last thing she saw before the light swallowed her again was his eyes widening in shock.
This time Aloy fell into dusk. She lost her balance and rolled down a grassy hill. Dew soaked her bare skin and long, thick stalks of grass cracked beneath her weight until she caught herself at the base of the incline.
She stood unsteadily in a cloud of lightning bugs.
Aloy had no time to catch her breath before an impact to her side shoved her back into the grass. She rolled on instinct and came up in a crouch, her hand reaching for -
Fuck. She was still missing her stupid spear, and she'd given away Kotallo's sickle. She only had her bow to defend against the silhouette already charging towards her in the dimming evening haze.
She ducked beneath the weapon that swung for her head, hearing the blade whistle through the air. A well-placed elbow to the ribs of her attacker brought her a second to scramble a few steps away and take her bow in hand.
"I am not in the mood for this," Aloy snapped as her attacker turned to face her.
Her grip on her bow loosened in shock.
"You are on Tenakth territory," the figure told her in a low, familiar growl. "I do not care if you are in the mood to lose your life or not."
The moonlight washed everything in shades of blue and gray, but even in the darkness, there was no mistaking the paint on his skin and armor for the magenta and white of the Sky Clan, or the blue and pale yellow of Hekarro's Marshals. It was far too dark to be either.
"Kotallo!" she cried out.
The rebel froze.
"How do you know my name?" he growled.
"How can you wear her colors?" Aloy demanded. "She killed your friends! She maimed you! Tore your tribe in half! Have you lost your mind?"
Kotallo's eyes glinted in the moonlight, black and bottomless in the darkness. There was no recognition to them. No kindness.
"How dare you?" he snarled. "I am not maimed."
"She cut off your arm!"
He gave Aloy a broad and mocking gesture with both arms. "As you can see, I am whole, and you are speaking nonsense."
Aloy rubbed at her temple with one hand. "Okay, it wasn't you, exactly. Look, something happened with an Old Ones artifact and it... put me here, somehow, only everywhere I go, things are weird and different." Her voice rose and wavered. "But you allying with Regalla, after everything she's done? She maimed you! Not you, my Kotallo," she corrected as he opened his mouth to protest. "Something is seriously wrong, but I don't want to fight you. I need to figure this out." She had to get back...
Back overseas to the Quen Empire? How, if she kept being pulled into strange visions every few minutes?
Kotallo's face hardened again. "You overstep, outlander. There is no version of me that is yours." He raised his sickle again.
"Stop it!" Aloy hissed as he charged her again. She dodged once more and managed a glancing kick at his leg, but he danced out of reach and immediately he was back in her space, driving her backwards with savage swings of his blade.
In a friendly sparring match, Aloy could drop Kotallo decently often, even given the difference in size and strength between them. But in those sparring matches, he wasn't usually trying to kill her, and she wasn't usually trying to hold him off with nothing but a bow. She feinted as if she was going to try to charge him. When he dropped into a low crouch, Aloy swung her bow like a club and struck him in the throat.
He stumbled back with a choked sound, one hand clutching at his neck. She took the opportunity to bring the end of her bow down hard on his other wrist, making him drop his sickle.
"Will you slow down and listen to me now?" Aloy panted as she bent to retrieve his sickle. "I don't know how I -"
The only warning she had was a scrape of metal and a blur at the edge of her vision. Then Kotallo was right in front of her. She felt his ragged breath on her face a second before she registered the sharp pain in her side - a pain that drove all the air from her lungs and burned cold even as hot blood trickled from the wound.
"Kotallo?" Aloy asked in a small voice.
He clenched his teeth and drove the knife in deeper.
Aloy's knees gave out. Distantly, she was aware of Kotallo's hands lowering her to the ground, of the grass snapping and bending beneath them.
He crouched over her. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Tell me."
Aloy grasped weakly at the knife hilt buried in her side, felt a distant sting on her fingers as she accidentally nicked the edge of the blade. He kept it sharp. She vaguely remembered Zo telling her that was a good thing, that cuts made by sharp blades were far easier to stitch than those from a dull or notched weapon. It didn't seem that good when it hurt so much.
She stared past Kotallo's head at the swirl of lightning bugs against the darkening sky.
"You're going to be so upset about this when I get home," she said faintly.
The lightning bugs flared brighter and brighter until their light eclipsed the moon and swallowed Aloy yet again.
She collapsed into snow. Her lungs burned for air, but her body drew air only in quick, shallow pants. Breathing deeply hurt. Aloy pulled a trembling hand away from her side and confirmed that there was, in fact, a knife still buried in her flesh.
Drops of blood fell from her fingertips and splattered, red and stark against a dusting of snow on stone.
Someone nearby was shouting. Quite a few someones nearby were shouting. Aloy was too dizzy to make out the words. She raised her head, trying to blink away her lightheadedness. To her surprise, she found that she recognized one of the faces staring at her in shock.
"Oh!" she said breathlessly, "Erayyo. How are you?"
And then she pitched sideways onto the floor of the Bulwark's melee pit.