The Sweet Escape |Part 1| The Carja

Chapter 9 - Blur

First it was Ultan, and his hating blue eyes, dark as a stormy sky, clouded with a drunken furor. Erend felt a sharp pain in his left arm when his dad twisted it so hard that it snapped with a cracking noise. The little boy had never cried so much before that day, but unfortunately it was still the dawn of his life, and there was going to be a lot more to come.

He was too loud, he knew it. His sobbing screams would just poke the monster even more. And as expected, Ultan punched his face again and again, just to make him shut up. He heard Ersa pounding against the door of the bedroom where his old man had her locked up. Fire and spit, if she didn't stop... Soon it would be her turn.

His arm broken, his head a ball of torn-up flesh, his brain turned off. Just to help deal with the pain. With the torture...

Ultan's terrible and mighty fists were raining on him relentlessly. And then it stopped.

His dad's deformed face merged into Dervahl's evil black eyes, and all he could hear now was a high-pitched deafening sound. He found himself squirming on the floor of Avad's Palace terrace, covering his ears with such force that his hands hurt, helplessly trying to prevent his brain from melting into a mushy mess. He vaguely saw a wave of flame-colored hair running past him but couldn't do anything else than just roll on the floor, like the useless bung he had always been...

He squeezed his eyes shut, so hard that he was seeing stars. When he finally managed to open them, it was to see the canons of an augmented Deathbringer locking aim at him. At them. Varl, Talanah, they were here, by his side. His companions ran to take cover behind the remnants of a fallen balustrade, shooting at the cannons while tentatively repelling the ongoing assault of a herd of metal monstrosities.

His body reacted by itself, he did not control it. His warrior reflexes hauled him up on his feet, and he grabbed his war hammer and just charged into the heart of the battle, against the last wave of machines that were running towards them.

He hit, dodged, hit again, took a blow, crushed a few more machines on the way. He looked around, checking on the other fighters. They were overrun by enemies. He needed to help them, or they would never survive. Doing the only thing that he was able to do well. Take hits. And hit in return, as hard as he could, until they stopped moving.

That's when he spotted the wave of flame-colored hair again. The Nora Huntress, Aloy, was here, diving like an eagle from the top of a column down on the back of a corrupted Sawtooth, her spear spiking through its head as easily as if it were a rotten fruit. She bounced again to the floor, landing gracefully, and they locked eyes.

It was like he was seeing her for the first time.

Her greenshine gaze was burning with a raging fury that he never saw before. It was not the first time they fought side by side, but this battle was different. He knew it, she knew it, everyone knew it. It was the Life or Death outcome for every tribe, every living soul in the known world and beyond.

Aloy. Her armor magnetic shield was flickering around her, like an aura from another world. Her protective headpiece looked like a queen's crown. A queen at war. She was a creature from another realm, another reality. She was accomplishing physical prowess that was only achievable by a handful of elite warriors. She had demonstrated the sharpest mind he had ever been exposed to. And, by the blazing Forge... She was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.

She nodded to him, full of determination, and he nodded back. The Deathbringer unleashed hell on her and she swirled around the plasma and missiles in a deadly dance, before disappearing in the smoking chaos.

The metalburn was consuming his skin to the bones. The blows he took on all his body will probably bruise him for days, or weeks. He would surely earn at least a dozen new scars from this battle, that he will proudly show his companions during the nights of drunken euphoria that will undoubtedly follow.