Living Antiquity

~3~

"So you talked to this guy for three seconds and now we're helping him kill a herd? Is that what I'm hearing?" I ask, genuinely curious, "I get it about the water. But there's got to be better ways than to die for it."
Aloy raises an eyebrow as we run, the Desert Tenakth in front of us bursting out in laughter.
"I like her, flame-hair! You keep good company. Easterners might just be what we needed."
"I'm.... not an easterner, but that's not a story for right now." I frown, knowing he probably thought I was from one of the east tribes.
"We have time. The canyon isn't all that far way," he stated bluntly, "But if you're not up to a day's travel or so-"
"Funny. You ever been frozen in a pod for a thousand years? Cause I have. Aloy woke me up a month ago." I return, equally bluntly, and he skidded to a halt, "It's why part of my hair is f/c, why I look so pale, why I'm stiff. I was sick back then and my surviving family chose to have me frozen so that the... spirit... that was going to heal the world could also work on healing me. I say spirit because what she actually is would be very hard to explain to someone eith no technological experience."
"Spirit, huh?" He raised an eyebrow.
"The machines? They are all part of a system that is supposed to heal the earth from something that happened a thousand years ago. Twenty years ago, the spirit was made sick and split apart by something that... Well, would be absolutely impossible to explain to someone that knows nothing about old world technology.... It is a lot... The spirit herself so that everyone else could be spared, and Aloy is is turn related to that, believe is or not. But with that spirit gone, the Derangement began. When she says she's trying to fix something? She is working to re-instate the spirit over the system. The pieces that left the original spirit could now help her fix the new one. Or, she could just not, and the entire world dies of blight in... say, five months?"
"Wow..." he frowns, folding his arms.
"Why are you telling him this?" Aloy groans, rubbing her face.
"We have time." I say bluntly.
"Never caught your name, Ancient One," he smirks.
I roll my eyes, "I'd say I'm not that old, but people won't take being frozen into account. I'm Y/n. And you?"
"Weren't paying attention, huh? Drakka." he grins.
Was he by any chance related to Rukka?
"So then the relics you two have...?"
"Ways to see things left behind after the end. Pieces of information, ways to examine old technology. Even allows us to track blood trails, footprints and other things. If people back then knew how useful these were for that kind of thing, physical crime would have ground to a halt, but I guess they probably already knew about that, I just wasn't a police officer or a detective," I said, walking past him, "But didn't we need to go hunt some machines?" I asked.
"Right, right..." he frowned and ran alongside us again, "Would those things be able to lead you to water?" Drakka asked out loud.
"No, not directly, though I understand why you asked. They could track pipelines- now ancient metal lines that would have carried water for somethings hundreds or thousands of miles- though. That is a possibility. Of... hmm... I'd have to tamper with the programming, I'll get back to you in that one." I say, tilting my head. They might be able to scan underground topography if I were to adjust the scanners properly or write in code for it... Find aquifers and underground lakes? Definitely a possibility...
"Got it." Drakka audibly smiled as the three of us took off running again.
Aloy caught up with me and shot me a glance, before activating her focus and sending me a text, since I had showed her how a few days ago.
/Flirting, Y/n?/
I roll my eyes and keep running, responding by typing intermittently, /No, why?/
/You've got his attention. You didn't even notice./
/What was that about focusing all of yourself on the mission?/
"You girls doing something?" Drakka asks, raising an eyebrow when he looks over and sees our faces.
I shake my head, "It offers silent communication as well, through written text. She's badgering me about something."
"Oh? Like what?"
"Something I forgot to show her in the system storage menus, which would make it harder for outside influences to spy," I say, lying easily to cover my irritation with Aloy's sudden liking for bullshit.
"Ah. Well, come on, canyon's still a few hours ahead of us," he says, frowning.
Because of course the people of this new era were strong runners... Nothing like running across the better part of a continent to make yourself right at home, yep yep yep.
Eventually, the light began to die out, and we had to set up camp. The distance was too great, given the fact that we didn't currently have any machines with us to ride.
It would probably unsettle the locals, anyway. Aloy said she hadn't been down this side if the mountain yet...
Still, it would he so, so much faster.
I sigh in exasperation as we find the tents. Annoyed.
"Something wring over there?" Drakka raises an eyebrow. Not that the caked on machine oil face paint gave much of his expression away.
"Missing some of the technology we had back then. You see those?" I gestured at the rusted out, broken remains of cars along the gravel that was left if the road we were next to, "They're called cars. The big one was a city bus. They were for travel. They would have made this day or days long trek take just hours," I drew in the sand, and began to babble, stressed out, tired, and a bit sunburnt.
Good old immune systems, and resistances and such, gotta let it all grow back...
"-and that would turn the wheels at speeds that allowed them to travel vast distances in short periods of time. Nowadays, the only way to travel that fast is to override a machine, and ride on its back. But there are only a few that can serve that function. Chargers, clawstriders... Uh..." I scratch my head, frowning.
"Striders, Broadheads..." Aloy offers.
"Oh, those moose machines from the database?" I perked up, "I, like... I WANT ONE."
"Uh... Why? Besides, they're only in the Sacred Lands and around the Claim, usually..." Aloy frowns.
"Want." I look at her, eyes wide, "I want a machine moose to trample people that piss me off."
"No." Ally frowns.
"What'd be really, really cool is if I could get on one of the ones that can fly," I grin, "The pterosaur ones!"
"Sunwings?" Drakka said incredulously.
"Yes! Imagine being able to fly on one's back!" I said excitedly, bouncing on my already rusty and weakened seat.
"Y/n, don't do that..." Aloy rubs her face, "Anyway, best sleep until tomorrow, we've got work to do."
I nod, and relax, thinking, as I slog over to a tent and crawl in, relaxing.

--
The next morning, we eat a quick meal of rabbit and continue the jog to the big canyon, keeping an eye out for rogue machines.
And then, finally, we're there.
Time to play with the bow Aloy and Zo gave me. A careful mix Nora and Utari craft that I watched them make over the course of a week. It was interesting... It made me miss Travis, he would have loved to see the weapons people in this era use.
Especially considering how much he loved the idea of death and destruction. Hades was Travis' best work... Too bad Hades became a real piece of work, no thanks to the extinction signal.
Taking a deep breath, I scale the wall of rocks, a bit annoyed that we had to at all, when Drakka had clearly stated that his people were capable of putting the rocks there to trap the machines in.
This was probably going to take a while.
But I guess it beats letting his entire village go thirsty.
It took only a few minutes, especially once we gave up the ghost of sneaking about.
We gathered enough machine hearts to get them plenty of water...
"Two Fanghorn hears and two Ravager hearts..." Drakka rubs his face, "I want to go get my soldiers' tags where they fought the Thunderjaw. They deserve to be honored."
Aloy nods as I loot another hidden chest, both of them raising an eyebrow when I yelp upon finding a fucking pacemaker.
"Why are you scared of the ancient sculpture?" Aloy asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Its not a sculpture. It was a mechanical heart. Looks like one if the newer models, this one was capable of actually pumping blood instead of just strengthening the real heart of the host and making it keep time..." I examined it, then hold up a mechanical eye, "And a prosthetic bionic eye!"
"Uh... what?" Drakka raises an eyebrow.
"A false eye that could be tapped into the original optic nerve to allow someone to see out of a formerly blinded eye." I say, looking at them with a grin, "It would be placed in the socket in place of the damaged or otherwise impeded eye.
Aloy walks over, scanning it curiously. "I'll have ti talk with Gaia about that, it sounds..."
"It might help Korreh, yeah." I say with a grin.
"Oh, the missing soldier from Eagle squad?" Drakka tenses.
"He got blinded by acid. He's living in Plainsong to keep him safe." Aloy says through gritted teeth.
"Easy, I get why he'd need to stay there. Probably has more water there anyway." Drakka holds his hands up, before looking at us, "Ready to head out?"
I nod, stuffing the items away in my pack. They'd be worth some shards, according to Aloy, might as well.
Following them back out over the rocky, sandy terrain, I groan as the sun beats down, "How do you even live out here..."
"It proves out strength. But without water, that strength won't last long..." Drakka frowns.
"Yeah. Hey, Aloy. I was studying the data you had on Thunderjaws... Plenty of weaknesses if you can avoid getting trampled... If it shows up, we should try to collect its heart, too," I point out, looking at the two of them.
Drakka almost trips over his own fest, staring at me, "It'd make for a nice mark, and I'll be able to bag and tag the soldiers we lost out there... You sure you're up for that?"
"It'd get your village the water they need."
He takes a breath and nods.
Off to hunt down a Thunderjaw, and acquire the tags of the soldiers it killed...

--->
Sorry for the long disappearance to everybody that was following this story!
I just couldn't get past the writer's block every time I tried to write for it.
I'm hoping to get over that now! I'll be trying to cover and follow the story as accurately as possible- minus places where the reader info-dumps about ti past to people that she feels need the informatipn
I hope you continue to enjoy the story!