Chapter Text
Day 123
January 28 3042, 1301 Hours
Kotallo has been painting for hours, trying to lose himself in the landscape that unfurls beyond the borders of the small, soft, noise-reducing pad—now encompassing the entirety of the door in his secret room.
He’s more grateful than ever for the silent space, since the rest of the Base has been filled with a mix of song and sobbing all day. He’d paced a while that morning, wanting to work out a plan of action with the others, none of whom seemed equipped for a strategy session yet.
And all the while, Zo’s mourning filled the room. He’d heard of the vigil the Utaru kept over their dead. It would last a full day cycle before burial, and during that period, she would sing… or try to. Her music could sound hauntingly beautiful in one moment, but the next it would devolve into wails of grief before fading into choked crying. Then she’d recover herself and begin all over again.
Kotallo couldn’t bear it.
Nor had he any interest in drinking with Erend, who had drowned himself in ale as soon as they returned. Meanwhile, all Alva’s fidgeting and muttering had nearly driven him mad as she refreshed her connection over and over in a futile attempt to locate Aloy and Beta’s missing signals.
But Zo’s gravesong was by far the worst.
It gave voice to every drop of loss within him, every fallen Marshal he had mourned, every friend who had died too young, a bottomless pit of grief. And now, with Aloy missing… if she was gone too… He would never be able to plumb its depths—did not want to. Kotallo feared he would never climb out.
Much like Varl, who had entered GEMINI, never to return.
Erend had been closest when the signal went dark—it was only a four hour ride south from his assigned Cauldron IOTA. He’d been the one to recover Varl’s body, hoisting his friend up and out from the metal tomb through determination alone, a feat of brute strength fueled by love and brotherhood.
Kotallo had been the last to arrive at the Gate of the Vanquished. His Cauldron had been in the farthest reaches of the clan lands, but he made it there only an hour after Alva, urging his Charger across the valley, over the mountain pass, and into the desert scrublands at a lethal speed.
A full day later and he was still sore from riding for hours on end, hunched forward on the back of his mount, his fingers white-knuckled on the cables. It had been a nearly nine hour ride back after a twelve hour ride there and no sleep all night. The deadly silence of his Focus was interrupted only by intermittent check-ins from the rest of the team, tense and worried.
He remembers the moment Erend had sounded off on the group line, sounding utterly broken. “Varl’s the only one here… he’s— they killed him.”
Kotallo had just made it over the Sheersides, was riding through a copse of trees that he’ll forever associate with those horrible words, seared into his memory.
“Is there any sign of her?” He’d demanded, voice hoarse.
“Nothing. She’s just… she’s just… gone. Her and Beta both.”
Beta’s last check-in had come around four in the morning, reporting that Varl and Aloy had taken down the final round of machines, and they were about to begin the extraction protocol.
Varl’s Focus told them the rest. Alva had been the one to suggest checking it for clues. Erend had gone mute after Zo showed up, and Zo…
Zo was beside herself.
She knelt in the dust, rocking Varl’s limp body in her arms, repeating, ‘We need to bring him back,’ at varying intervals.
None of them had been sure if she meant returning his body to the Base or something far more impossible.
Kotallo had laid his good hand gently on her shoulder before prying Varl from her grasp. He’d wrapped him carefully in his forest green cloak and strapped him to one of the spare Chargers. Erend was far too spent to do it after carrying all that dead weight up the endless caudron ladder. Varl’s blood soaked through the shoulder of his Vanguard uniform and stained Zo’s grass skirts.
It was dusk when they left GEMINI at last, and late when they finally trudged their Chargers up into the foothills toward the Base.
Alerting to the sound of many metal hooves against stone, Rukka sprinted up to meet them at the cliffside as they dismounted—but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the limp figure Kotallo eased off a nearby Charger. She noted the boots of Nora-make, too large to belong to Aloy.
Rukka blinked at the covered body in his arms—one metal, one flesh—before raising her eyes to look bleakly into High Marshal’s haggard face, realizing just how terrible the timing was.
“Apologies, High Marshal,” she began, and Kotallo was not sure she had ever apologized before in her nearly twenty years of service. Her tone more respectful than it had ever been before, she said simply, “I must inform you that Regalla marches from the south.”
It was like getting the wind knocked out of him. He did not know if he made a sound as the air left his lungs, only that he had no coherent words for the situation they found themselves in.
But that was Rukka’s job. “I shall send word that you are dealing with a crisis of your own on behalf of the Champion and will arrive as soon as you are able.”
He could only nod.
After loading Varl gingerly into the pulley harness to lift him up the cliffside, the remaining team members sat in the common area and stared at one another. No one spoke for a long while, and Kotallo’s sluggish mind spun around in circles, wondering how long he had before Regalla began her assault on the Grove. Even if they had machines at their disposal, an army could only move as fast as its foot soldiers…
They’d all been up for nearly 48 hours, most of them were covered in blood that was not their own, and Beta and Aloy were MIA—most likely captured by the Zeniths. Varl’s Focus had cut out when his pulse flatlined; Erik Visser’s deviant grin was the last thing he’d recorded.
His body lay on a blanket Zo had spread upon the floor, pulled from the bed they had shared just days ago. She knelt beside him, absentmindedly stroking his hair. At long last, Alva led her to the showers.
“We need to get you out of these clothes,” she’d said gently, and Zo did not protest. She’d kissed Varl’s frigid forehead before folding the blanket over him, and left alongside the Quen.
Only Erend and Kotallo remained. Both of them seemed to remember that their last words to one another had been unkind. But neither was ready to face it, both still angry—at each other and the circumstances they’d landed in. And without Varl to break the tension…
Erend stood, chair scraping against the metal floor, and thumped to the bunk room without another word.
Kotallo buried his face in his hand. His stump throbbed after too long wearing the prosthetic, and his head ached even worse.
Regalla was marching. He was needed in the Grove. Aloy was lost. The best and kindest of their allies lay dead at his feet. He didn’t know what to do.
The Base felt impossibly empty without GAIA’s benevolent presence. Kotallo hadn’t realized that he could sense the AI in the room with them until she was gone. What he would give for her to pull up a map made of light and drop a green pin to mark Aloy’s position.
He’d trudged to the rec room to stare absently at the holomap and guess at her location. He manually marked the few spots he’d known the Zeniths had connections to: NINMAH, the HADES Proving Lab, and the island off the coast of the Valley of the Fallen where Aloy said the Zenith base was hidden. The latter seems the most likely, but he knows there is no good way to get to it.
Maybe if they could contact the Quen? Hadn’t they crossed the ocean? Or, perhaps he might get a machine to take him across the channel for a rescue mission? Maybe Aloy had a spare override module in the lab… a Tideripper maybe?
He fell asleep slumped against the map table, catching only a few hours rest before Zo’s song woke him the next morning. Erend was already nursing his first ale of the day, and Alva didn’t have much information about the Quen ships. She asked him to give her more time before they set out for the coast; maybe she could pinpoint Aloy’s location if she just—
No one noticed when he slunk back to the secret room to bury himself in the paints.
If he’s honest, Kotallo couldn’t bring himself to depart, either. He knew in his heart that war against Regalla’s machine army meant inevitable death for him and his new Marshals. As he’d promised his life to Aloy, it felt like a betrayal to leave. And every second he delayed was insubordination, shirking his duties to his Chief.
He was damned either way. And so he painted without truly seeing the landscape that spanned the door to the bunk room. He loses himself in memories of his trip with Aloy down the coast: her straddling him on the beach, soaked in saltwater; the way she’d cried his name when he fucked her with her hands tied; falling asleep together on the beach under the stars; the way she looked at him when he returned to their room after his High Marshal’s challenge; the sound she made that last time he slipped inside her.
His Focus beeps with an incoming call, and his heart lurches—only to fall back into despair when he sees Erend’s name rather than Aloy’s.
“Where the fuck are you?” The Oseram’s gruff voice sounds off in his ear, more lucid than Kotallo expects after chain-drinking stein after stein. “I’ve looked everywhere! Don’t tell me you actually left? ”
“Would it matter if I did?”
“YES, it would fucking matter!! We need all the help we can—”
“What do you want, Erend?”
He harrumphs at the interruption, but says only, “Aloy called.”
“What?” Kotallo’s brush clatters to the floor. He is on his feet in the next second, swiping the door to the bunkroom upwards without caring whether the wet paint will smudge when it slides into the ceiling above.
“She said she’s on her way back.”
“From where,” Kotallo demands, the words barely above a growl as he turns the corner into the common area.
“I—I dunno. I didn’t ask! I was—”
“She called you, and you failed to ascertain her location?”
Erend whips around when he hears the Marshal echoing both in his ear and in the room, and fumbles to disconnect the call.
Alva jumps in to save him, adept enough with a Focus to track her coordinates without GAIA’s assistance. “She’s backonline, heading north fromthejungle,” she offers nervously in the face of Kotallo’s fury, speaking so quickly the words blur together.
Kotallo blinks at them from the top of the stairs. Zo is still kneeling beside her lover’s body, but she has stopped singing, and stares up at him with fierce eyes.
“We thought you left,” she says.
“I would never leave her,” Kotallo snarls.
“Yeah, well you weren’t in your bunk, or in your stupid map room, or the lab, or the basement, OR up in GAIA’s loft, so where the hell have you been?!” Erend snips, counting off the places they’d searched on his fingers. Zo only stares up at him.
Kotallo ignores the question. “What did she say?”
“She asked where we were. I told her everyone was here, but we couldn’t find you!”
“What happened to her?” Kotallo says, his patience thin. No one seems to understand that Aloy is the only priority now.
“I asked, and she said it would be better to tell us in person.”
“She’s probablyeighttoten hours out, ifshecanfindamount,” Alva supplies.
“Then she’ll be back tonight?” Kotallo says, hope rising in him.
“Ithinkso—or, atleast, sheshouldbe!” Alva nods vigorously.
“What else do we know?”
“That’s… that’s everything,” Erend confirms, rubbing the back of his neck.
“So we wait.” Zo says flatly, turning back to stare down at Varl’s closed eyes. With the blanket folded over the bloody hole in his chest, he looks almost as if he is sleeping. Almost. His face is too blank, too ashen.
No one says anything. When Zo begins singing again, Kotallo stalks back to the bunk room and through the hidden door to his secret room. His mind loops on the only question that will play in his mind for the remainder of the day.
Why had Aloy called Erend and not him?
***
Aloy finally finds a mount after an hour of trail running, but rides straight into a squad of rebels not long after emerging from the swamp. Her Charger rears on hind legs, throwing her bodily from its back. Winded and coughing badly, she rolls just in time to avoid a hammer strike from an enormous, masked warrior.
Arrows whiz from the trees, and she thinks she might actually be done for—but they strike the rebel, not her. He falls to his knees, and Aloy scrambles to her feet, drawing her spear to slice open his throat.
All at once the jungle crossroads is filled with fighting, and she realizes that she’s arrived at the front lines of Regalla’s march north. She hurls herself into the battle without a second thought.
It’s a full minute before she realizes that the ringing in her ears is a Focus call, not her adrenaline. She declines it without looking and switches rapidly to her bow.
Half an hour later, the ground is littered with fallen soldiers, and a dark skinned Lowland woman with a kind face picks her way across the battlefield, raising her arm to hail the Champion.
“Hair as red as the blight. I knew my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me!” She calls out. “You’re Aloy, Hekarro’s Champion. My name’s Gattak, leader of Fox Squad of the Lowland Clan. Sorry for our unannounced entrance,” she grins ruefully.
“No apology needed,” Aloy returns distractedly, scanning for her mount.
“Are you here to take back Fenrise?” Gattak asks, eyes bright.
“Fenrise?”
“A Lowland village just south of here. It’s been taken over by rebels. I assume the Chief sent you to reclaim it.”
Aloy pauses. “I’m just… passing through,” she says, heart sinking when she realizes her Charger was struck down in the scuffle, likely confused with one of the rebel machines.
Fuck. She needs to find another mount, fast.
“Well, the rebels captured it two days ago. It’s a crucial resupply point in the war effort if they’re going to try and take the Grove. We’ve been cutting off supply lines where possible… but we’ll have to attack the village directly.” Gattak looks her up and down. “We could use a soldier like you.”
Aloy chews her lip. “How far off are they?”
“All paths from the desert to the jungle lead through this village.” The soldier gestures to the fallen rebels. “This is just the first wave headed north. The rest could come any day now—but if we control Fenrise, they’ll have a much harder time taking the capital.”
“And if Regalla controls Fenrise?”
Gattak grimaces. “Then our defense effort would be FUBAR. We’d be totally reliant on the Desert Clan to hold them off. Fox Squad is going in tonight to try and save it.”
“Sounds like trouble,” says Aloy grimly.
The Lowlander scoffs. “That’s putting it lightly.” She lowers her voice. “We were informed it was likely a suicide mission. We all signed on anyway.”
Aloy sighs. She runs through the alternative in her mind—and it doesn’t bode well for Hekarro. Not to mention the Tenakth as a whole if Regalla has sold the clan’s remaining army to Sylens as a shitty diversion tactic against the Zeniths.
After a moment, she nods slowly. “Send me in first. Alone. I can infiltrate the camp, take out the biggest threats. Once I drop the gate, Fox Squad finishes the job.”
Gattak grins. “Then you’d better come with me. I can walk you through the layout of the village, so you’re not going in blind.”
Aloy holsters her weapons and follows Gattak deeper into the jungle—back the way she came.
***
Kotallo paces in the secret room after Aloy declines his call. After mulling it over, fretting incessantly over why—out of all of them—she’d chosen to call Erend, he’d finally decided to reach out. The wait had been endless before the line went dead.
But if she was back online and returning to the Base, why wouldn’t she speak to him?
He remembers her distance upon returning, the way she’d shrugged him off the night before they left.
“I should, uh, get focused. Y’know. Make sure… everything is in order.”
It was a flimsy excuse after that strange, final night together in the foothills. The change in her had been noticeable, but he’d shoved it down, finding reasons not to worry—thinking she’d come around like she had in the past. After all, hadn’t she been the one to hesitate that night, not wanting to return? Hadn’t she said that she desired him… the one to initiate their final fuck at camp?
But the moment they stepped foot in the Base, she wanted nothing to do with him.
He had told himself that he was prepared for it to be no more than sex. It happened all the time among the Tenakth: just another way to blow off steam. That was what he had offered her, wasn’t it? A chance to relax.
Nothing more. That had been his promise to her: “This is enough for me. There is… nothing more I want.”
She owed him nothing, he reminded himself. His life was hers to do with as she pleased, and if she wanted nothing more of him, then that was well within her right.
What they had on their… trip (not a Ten Day) had been enough for a lifetime. More than he was ever supposed to have after losing his arm.
It was enough. It was enough. It had been enough.
He breathes deep, turning back to his painting, and some small part of him is relieved that it is unmarred after opening the door. It contains all the memories he holds of her—a winding panorama of every campsite they’d shared together following that first night in the cave: the cliff at the Cold Rushes, their hidden bit of beach shielded by ruins, the special little slice of untouched horizon visible from the edge of the Sentinels.
He begins mixing the right shade of peach for the sky, keeping his eye on the time. She’ll be back tonight. Just eight hours, if she can find a mount. He can hold on that long. Hekarro can hold on that long.
And though the time moves slowly, it does move. The painting takes on form and depth as he focuses all his energy on what he can control right now: capturing the color of the sky; the contrast between sand and sea; the way the light had shone on the water. Before long, it is after ten o’clock. Over eight hours since Erend had called him.
She’ll be back any moment. Maybe she already was, and they hadn’t bothered to look for him this time. He puts the paints aside and sets out for the common area, pausing to pull a string of sausages from the food prep station he’d built beside his bunk. Aloy would likely be hungry. He supposes none of them have eaten in some time.
Returning to the main space, he notices at once the absence of song or talk, but the air is heavy with anticipation. Not yet. She’s not here yet. She could walk through the hallway from the west at any moment.
He descends into the silent living space, coiling the sausage links into a pile on the counter. Looking across the recessed common area to the doors on the opposite side of the great circular room, he wills them to open and reveal her to him.
“Any word?” The Marshal asks the room.
“Keep it down, will ya? Zo is sleeping,” Erend chides him, but he eyes the sausage all the same.
Alva looks up to answer his question, and her face is puzzled. Regretful. “No… but her location hasn’t moved in hours. She’s still in the jungle.”
Kotallo’s face crashes into frustrated confusion. He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it. They don’t know any more than he does. It is pointless to ask them anything. He marches swiftly up the east steps to the rec room, closing the doors behind him.
His heart is racing. What is she doing?
He can’t wait anymore. He calls her again. The call is declined almost immediately, and his insides burn as rage fills him.
Kotallo paces the room, clenching and unclenching his fist. Why won’t she talk to him?
He forces down the bile that rises in him, searing his throat. He makes himself take deep, steadying breaths the way he used to in the empty barracks in the weeks that followed the Embassy, when hopelessness and despair had threatened to overwhelm him entirely. But the anger won’t subside.
Didn’t she know how important this was? Didn’t she know that Hekarro was at risk, his entire tribe, while he stood here, useless, waiting for her like a fool? Hadn’t he proved himself loyal—essential even? Didn’t he deserve an explanation?
He picks up one of the figurines from the map, the one he’d used to mark the Zenith base last night, and hurls it across the room. It gives a tin thunk against the metal wall and clatters broken to the floor. It doesn’t make him feel any better.
The only thing that might… is painting. So, Kotallo ducks into the vent, forcing himself bodily through the small passageway and back into the secret room where he picks up what is left of his paints—not to return to the great work he’s finalizing on the door, but instead, turning to the shorter span of wall next to it.
Kotallo mixes black and blue and a little white together for a muddied, bruised color that he mashes helter-shelter onto the metal wall, canvas be damned. Taking up the red, he adds flashes of lighting to the hulking thunderhead, a swirling AETHER cyclone like the ones he once watched roll in across Runner’s Wild—back before he knew what caused them.
It is the best way to describe the feeling inside him: hideous and unnatural. Powered by a force beyond his control, something he had no way to understand before Aloy came into his life and turned his world upside-down. The chaotic spiral is filled with a dangerous electrical current that he now knows runs through him, too. It is a raw power that lives within him, channeled into lightning by an ancient, man-made tool that nearly cost him everything to procure.
Everything. She is his everything , and he stands here now with nothing.
And he lied to her, he realizes now. Because this is not enough.
***
The sun is just beginning its decline when Aloy crashes into a shelter only twenty miles north of Fenrise. She’d made so little progress towards the Base in the last 24 hours, but she can’t keep her eyes open another moment—and if she runs into more rebels on her route east, she knows she’d lose the fight.
Kotallo had called her last night (for a second time, she discovers now, reviewing her call log) while she stalked silently across the suspended bridges of Fenrise, completely unseen by the rebels below. She’d been forced to decline the call so as not to give away her position.
Hours later, with a string of dead rebels in her wake and sunrise not far off, she’d unloaded a Deathbringer gun into the Sons of Prometheus operatives at the heart of the Fenrise’s central compound. She could hear Fox Squad battling the rebels outside; she’d dropped the gate before plunging deeper into the village. The rebel grunts screamed for backup that would never come.
As dawn broke, she searched the holdout tower for clues about Regalla’s warpath. Alongside the war maps, she’d found a holo of herself and an angry broadcast from the Sons of Prometheus leader: “I want her found, and I want her dead. And bring me her Focus when you’re done! I bet Sylens would hate it if I got hold of all that data…”
Scanning the maps, Aloy had committed the name she heard on the recording to memory. Asera.
At least now she has a name. Maybe Erend would know who she was. They’d need to put down the Sons of Prometheus once Regalla and her rebels were dealt with… and Aloy got the sense that the data-hungry Oseram cult had the potential to become an even bigger threat than blood-thirsty Regalla. Though their numbers were fewer, their networks appeared far more insidious.
But none of that was important now. She has more pressing matters closing in upon her—and she had promised Beta she’d be there in a week. She has only six more days for this plan of hers to come together. And she wasn’t even back at the Base yet.
Speaking to Gattak in the morning light, she had suggested Aloy stay with Fox Squad to get some rest before traveling north with them to the Memorial Grove that night. Three more squads would arrive in the evening to hold Fenrise, but their special operations team would be needed for the battle ahead.
Aloy declined. “Sounds like you can take it from here. I should get going.”
The Lowland squad leader had frowned. “If you say so, Champion. But be careful out there. It’s going to be a long war—longer, perhaps, if you don’t get any sleep.”
Not if she could help it, Aloy thought.
All the same, when she hadn’t been able to find a mount all morning, she’d collapsed into the first shelter she stumbled upon that afternoon. She is about to call Kotallo—if only to tell him she is safe and still on her way—when her Focus beeps with an incoming call that connects before she even accepts it.
“Just to let you know, I’m now patched into your Focus network,” comes Tilda’s cold, smooth voice.
“Great,” Aloy snarks on instinct. She does not like being blindsided. “I take it the other Zeniths can’t hear us?”
”Of course not.” Tilda answers, sounding annoyed she has not received a warmer greeting. “And they don’t know about your base either, in case you were wondering.”
But apparently, Tilda did. Aloy is struck dumb, terror turning her veins to ice. She recognizes the veiled threat in her words.
Tilda continues, as though she’s being helpful, “I’ve sent you data on the Horus energy cells you can use against Regalla’s forces. Reach out to me when you’re ready to acquire one.”
“Understood.” Aloy answers, recovering herself.
The connection ends with a beep, and Aloy trembles. She hadn’t even been given the option to decline her call. Tilda just sounded off in her ear, as if she had every right to come and go as she pleased.
She’d hacked their network in under a day, found the Base. What else had she found? If Aloy had been unconscious a full day after being taken, had Tilda installed some undetectable Zenith spyware on her own Focus? Was she watching, listening even now? Is that how Tilda had known to call, now, as she was settling down to rest? And if she could force a call through, could she force her way into other calls?
Aloy closes the call log, deciding against contacting Kotallo. She has no idea what he might say to her, no way to warn him against revealing… whatever lies between them. Tilda could not know—it would only put him in danger.
And the only thing Aloy knows for certain now is that she won’t be able to go on without him.
***
Yet another day goes by with no word from Aloy. It’s been almost four days since she disappeared, and three miserable days of milling around the Base with only periodic updates on her location from Alva.
She’d informed them this morning that Aloy appeared to be moving slowly out of the jungle, at a pace that seemed to imply she had yet to procure a mount. Kotallo had prepared a full meal yesterday, while Zo and Erend had spent a painstaking day burying Varl out in the garden.
He’d even provided a vegetarian option he’d seen Zo make and knew she would like. As angry as he is, they all needed to eat, and he needed to feel useful in some way. Everyone ate listlessly at their table, and in the silence, the empty chairs between them seemed to be the loudest.
Kotallo hadn’t tried to call Aloy again that night, but he remained in the common area or else in the rec room with the door open, knowing she could show up at any moment. He’d slept fitfully on the floor behind his map again, keeping his Focus on, in case she might call. But he knows she won’t. He’d surrendered to the inevitability of her silence the day after his second declined call.
Most of the time, he glared at the map, trying to place the location of Regalla’s army. He estimates they are somewhere in Desert Clan territory by now, depending on how much of a fight Drakka was giving them. But he knows he doesn’t have much longer to wait.
Alva announces that afternoon that Aloy’s pace has significantly increased, suggesting that she’s found a Charger. They all gather in the common area, awaiting her arrival.
It is evening when Kotallo finally snaps, after sharpening his weapons for hours in the tense silence. If she does not arrive tonight, he cannot wait another day.
He throws down his curved sword and slashes at the steel countertop behind him with his Marshal’s knife. Every hit of his blade is as useless as he is and only dulls his hard work. If he must be thwarted, then who cares?
Outburst finished, he lets the blade clatter to the table. “When you’re wounded, you have to strike back. Draw blood.” The Marshal hisses, turning to face the others.
Slumped over the counter, Erend makes some drunken complaint about not being able to do anything but mourn his friend.
“Regalla is going to slaughter my tribe to overthrow Hekarro! The Zeniths have Beta and GAIA!” He yells, all patience gone at last. His careful composure has finally unraveled. The Marshal leans over the surface of the counter, bringing his face close to Erend’s, dropping his voice to a quiet, dangerous growl. “We can’t sit around wallowing in our losses!”
To everyone’s surprise, Zo is the one to agree. They’re the first words she’s spoken all day, direct and decisive. “Kotallo’s right. We must fight.”
Erend stands, knocking the stool over behind him, hands curling into fists. “Alright, So what’re we gonna do, huh?” The Oseram says, mostly to Kotallo, his tone almost mocking. “Take on all of Regalla’s rebels?”
“Not to mention the Zeniths.” Alva interjects from the far side of the room. “What can we even do? Throw ourselves at their Base?”
”Something like that.”
Aloy.
Their heads snap to face her at the top of the steps. After all that time waiting, they hadn’t heard her come in over Kotallo’s onslaught against the countertop. Some part of him feels ashamed that she had arrived to find him in such a state, but a much larger part of him is too angry to care.
Kotallo’s attention narrows to Aloy as she descends the stairs looking exhausted, battered and bruised. She does not meet his eyes, and he hates her for it.
“Zo…” is all she says, almost a whisper.
The Utaru woman rises to approach Aloy. Kotallo watches them hold one another, and jealousy surges in his gut. She won’t even look at him.
They break the embrace, and Zo steps back to ask what they’ve all been wondering for days. “After we lost contact with you, we regrouped and went to GEMINI. What happened? The recording we found on Varl’s Focus cut off when that Zenith, Erik…” she trails off.
“The Zeniths were tracking HEPHAESTUS. When GAIA trapped it in GEMINI, they… they knew where we were. After…” Aloy trails off too, not able to say it out loud either: After Erik killed Varl.
She turns away, shaking her head. When she faces them once more, tears shine in her eyes, but she starts again. “After Varl tried to stop them, they took Beta and GAIA. I only survived because one of the Zeniths turned against the others to save me.”
Zo takes a step closer. “One of them?” She asks, disgust plain on her face.
All Aloy can do is nod. She knows the feeling, the sense of betrayal—had barely swallowed it while she sat through that hideous breakfast with Tilda.
“Well… at least we didn’t lose you, too,” Zo says, resigned to their reality.
Kotallo is forced to tear his eyes away. He has lost her. She is in the room, yet miles away. And now he must leave to die by his Chief’s side.
Zo sighs, shoulders slumping. “So, what do we do now?”
“We’re going to defeat the Zeniths and get Beta and GAIA back,” Aloy says firmly. She’s had a lot of time to think about it on her journey back—when she wasn’t fighting off rebels or caught out by Stalkers. The latter had nearly killed her this morning on her way out of the jungle.
“But first,” Aloy says, and she looks to each of her friends in turn, skipping over Kotallo. “We’re going to stop Regalla.”
”How.” He demands her attention, and he cannot keep the seething fury from his voice.
She looks up at him for the first time in days, and his heart feels as though it will burst. She is so beautiful, even now.
And the way she looks at him, at last… it is not what he’d expected. There is no frigid distance in her gaze. On the contrary, her heart is in her eyes.
He hardly hears the words. Not that it matters much. At this point, there is little to be done. All Aloy will say is that she has a gift from Beta that she needs to do… something with. It could prevent the bloodshed. But it won’t. It might have worked days ago, but now there is not enough time. The rebels must be practically at the palace steps. It is futile, he knows. Even if he leaves now, he still may not arrive in time.
But to see her one last moment before he leaves… to look into her eyes and see some kind of certainty there… he hadn’t known how much he needed it.
Kotallo does his best to keep his voice steady, placing a hand on the counter to ground himself. “Word is, Regalla’s readying her army for an all-out assault on the Grove. I… need to be there.” It is a desperate, hateful plea for dismissal. A broken pledge.
He gave his life to her cause, but now he must end it in Hekarro’s service.
Aloy nods. “I know,” she says, and her voice is heavy with understanding, as if she truly comprehends what she’s put him through. If anything, she is grateful he’s still here at all. After declining his calls, leaving him completely in the dark, she half-expected that he’d have left for the Grove already.
“Go. Stand with Hekarro, and keep an eye on the sky.” She looks at him with that same solid fierceness he’d fallen for a hundred times—and something else.
In her eyes swim a million unsaid things, endless compassion, and… could it be? Or does he only imagine it, desperate as he is for it to be true?
Love.
Had it been there all along? That mix of curiosity and wonderment and respect and concern for him that he’d been unable to place each time he saw it rise in her these last months?
He dismisses the questions that churn inside him and ducks his head, bringing his hand to his heart in a Tenakth salute. “Strike true as the Ten.” He says, as composed as he can be.
Kotallo knows these are his last words to her. He does not want them to be angry ones. Instead, it is a blessing in battle, before he is lost defending his Chief.
And with that, the Marshal takes up his blades and leaves swiftly through the west exit.