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Part 1

“By All Mother, it’s hot.” a sweaty Aloy exclaimed as she made her way through the jungle that covered the southern region of the Carja Sundom. Clad in her Carja Blazon to try and keep cool, the Nora Seeker was tracking a missing patrol, bow and spear on her back and sling on her hip. The soldiers had failed to report in two days before, but with tensions raising with the Shadow Carja, Sun King Avad couldn’t spare any troops to look for them.

“Someday, I’m going to learn to mind my own business,” Aloy muttered, wiping the sweat from her brow as she followed the trail highlighted by her Focus. “Once I get these guys back to Meridian, I think I’ll finally let Vanasha take me to the spa. Try one of those mud baths she loves so much.”

The redheaded huntress continued tracking her quarry, avoiding machines with practiced ease as she did so. Aloy raised a curious eyebrow as she noticed the patrol’s trail became more and more erratic after they’d veered off from their route. Frowning in concern, the Nora girl picked up her pace, hoping the soldiers were alright. Minutes later, she emerged into a clearing where trail abruptly ended.

There had clearly been a fight; the grass was stained with blood, arrows, weapons and even a Carja helmet where scattered around. However, there was one thing that was off about the small battlefield.

“Where are the bodies?” Aloy wondered as she glanced around the clearing. She reset her Focus to track the blood, only to be confused when the highlighted trail went up the side of a tree. The redhead wondered if one of the Carja had climbed it to escape the massacre below. She soon learned how wrong she was.

Suspended by their ankles from the tree were seven flayed bodies.

Aloy staggered back in horror, her right hand reflexively covering her mouth when she almost retched. The teenage Nora turned away from the atrocity and took several deep breaths.

“Calm down, Aloy, think; who could of done this?” Latching onto the distraction, and careful to keep her back to the bodies, the huntress ran through possible culprits, “Eclipse? No, as bad as they are they just kill people. Anyway, they wouldn’t want to draw this much attention. Bandits? Never came across a clan this vicious...Nil?”

Aloy didn’t quite want to believe the charming, yet murderous, Carja had gone that far off the deep end. Nevertheless, the now calmed Nora rose back her full height, deciding to scan the scene in hopes of finding any new clues. The first thing she noticed was that there was no sign of anyone but the Carja having been there. No destroyed machines, no arrows or weapons that weren’t of Carja design. “Weird, there should be some trace of who attacked them. Surely they tried to defend themselves, and they would of had explosives and at least one heavy weapon.”

Her thoughts were cut off, however, when a message from her Focus appeared.

Unknown Biological Matter Detected.

Curious, Aloy approached the exclamation point icon the Focus was projecting, finding a small puddle of...green fluid...that glowed? Aloy had a brief impulse to touch the substance, but stopped herself, remembering that even her Focus couldn’t say what it was.

“It said this stuff was biological, so this came from an animal?” Having hunted and fished for food all her life, Aloy was very familiar with the creatures of the Wilds and she’d never encountered anything with green bodily fluids, let alone any that glowed. Noticing green in her peripheral vision, the Seeker looked up to see another splash of the mysterious substance. “Whatever left this stuff probably had something to do with...what happened to those men.”

She was about to set off, but hesitated, forlornly looking back up at the unfortunate soldiers. The young Brave knew she couldn't do much for them, but it didn't feel right to leave human beings hanging like meat waiting to be butchered. Pulling her spear from her back, Aloy moved back into the clearing. As she cut down the bodies, the huntress hoped they'd already been dead when they were flayed, shuddering at the thought of helpless men screaming prayers to the Sun as they were skinned alive. With nothing else to be done, she turned back to the mysterious substance and exited the grizzly clearing.

Aloy followed the trail of green liquid further into the steaming jungle, for once not needing to rely on her Focus. The redhead noticed the glowing blood(?) stains were growing smaller and thinner, sighing in frustration when they seemed to disappear altogether. She was about to scan the area with her Focus when a voice whisper-shouted “Over here!”

“Over here!” the voice insisted when Aloy hesitated, reflexively crouching low and drawing her bow. She cautiously approached the patch of tall red grass the sound was coming from. She had just caught site of a man in Carja armor when he fearfully hissed “By the Sun, get down!”

Taking heed, Aloy quickly hid from whatever had the man so afraid in the red grass, as she’d done many times before. Now able to get a better look at the soldier, the huntress could see that he seemed to have been through hell. He’d lost his helmet, and his fancy armor and uniform were tattered and filthy. He had the wild eyes of a man at his wits' end and was tightly clutching his battle axe level with the ground. Looking at the weapon, Aloy noticed some of the green fluid on the blade.

The apparent survivor of the massacre Aloy had discovered, nervously scanned the area, looking up toward the trees. “I don’t think it saw you.”

Aloy also glanced up at the trees, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, looked back to the half crazed Carja soldier. “What didn’t see me? What’s going on?”

“There’s...something out here in the jungle,” the soldier explained, “It butchered my entire patrol. We found some mutilated bodies, bandits maybe, and then some kinda monster came at us from out of the fuckin’ trees!”

Aloy was about to question the man further then she noticed three red dots, forming a triangle, moving across the man’s chest. Moment’s later, a blue-white blast flew over the Nora girl’s right shoulder, close enough to feel the wind as it passed. Seemingly in slow motion, she dropped flat on her stomach as the blast struck the soldier in the center of his chest, blasting a hole big enough to fit her arm through clean through him.

The redheaded Brave quickly rose into a kneeling position, spinning on her heel and raising her bow to where the projectile had come from. At first, Aloy couldn’t see anything, but she could hear a strange clicking sound from above. She followed the sound to see what seemed to be a vaguely humanoid shape standing on a large branch some twenty feet up. It seemed to shimmer, making Aloy think it may of been a trick of the light and heatwaves, until a pair of yellow eyes flashed at her.

Aloy’s blood turned to ice when she noticed the same three dots moving up her bow arm, across her face, and finally settling between her eyes. She could swear the translucent figure locked eyes with her before it grunted a single word.

“Run.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Aloy leapt to her feet and sprinted away from the creature into the sweltering jungle. She weaved through the trees, zig-zagging, jumping logs, and doing anything she could to put as many obstacles between her and the creature as possible. Nevertheless it still somehow felt like the thing was right on the sweaty redhead’s tail. This would prove to be more then mere paranoia when another blast hit a tree she was heading toward, forcing the girl to abruptly change directions.

Spotting another patch of the red grass that had hidden her so many times before, an increasingly desperate Aloy slid into the tall foliage, hoping to simply let her pursuer pass. After scanning the treetops around her for what felt like hours, she finally spotted the tall-tale shimmer, looking right back at her. The clicking that fallowed seemed to take on a mocking tone.

“The son of a bitch is playing with me!” Aloy grumbled as she again desperately sprinted through the jungle. The Seeker’s mad dash took her toward a cliff overlooking a raging river below. Spotting a thick tree growing out over the side of the cliff, the kind she often used to rappel, Aloy sprinted toward what could be her last hope, slipping her bow onto her back. She rushed for the Y shaped tree, not even breaking stride as she ran the length of the tree itself and jumped off. Despite the dire situation, Aloy felt the familiar rush of adrenaline as she twisted in midair and tossed her grappling hook back at the tree.

Just before the rope could become taut, another of the blue-white blasts flew toward the tree the red haired girl had anchored herself to, leaving Aloy to watch helplessly as the tree exploded in a shower of sparks and splinters. A terrified scream ripped forth from Aloy’s mouth as she plummeted to the river below.

Aloy slammed painfully into the river, feeling a shock to her system as she was submerged in the cold water. Suddenly deprived of air and yanked along by the fast current, the girl frantically tried to follow the air bubbles around her to the surface. She finally burst up above the water, just managing to take a deep breath of air before she was dunked under the cold water again. She just managed to avoid slamming into several rocks before mercifully surfacing again. Just in time to see a fast approaching waterfall.

Aloy braced herself and managed to orient herself to fall feet first as she plummeted down. Surfacing again and near exhaustion, she allowed the current to pull her along through several hundred more yards of rapids, culminating in a second drop over a waterfall.

The huntress was relieved to find she’d finally passed the rapids and swam to the bank. Spotting an inviting patch of muddy beach, the young Brave took a breath and swam toward it. She tried to crawl up onto the riverbank, only to slip and suddenly find herself submerged in mud. Grasping at the edges of the mud puddle, Aloy clawed her way out and belly crawled to somewhat more stable ground, coughing and spitting muck. Sore, physically and mentally exhausted, and covered head to toe in mud, but happy to have escaped the creature, Aloy sighed in relief and collapsed on the muddy ground.

Then she heard a splash behind her.

Springing up and looking over her shoulder, Aloy could see a ripple in the water casually approaching. “Oh. Come. On.”

The muddy redhead desperately crawled away from the approaching invisible menace, only to find herself in the roots of a fallen tree. To tired to run again, Aloy reflexively reached for her bow or spear, only learn she’d apparently lost them somewhere during her river ordeal. Whimpering in fear, she backed as far as she possibly could from the strange being as it casually approached the riverbank.

At first, all Aloy could make out was the same shimmer she’d spotted before, but suddenly, electricity began to shoot up around it, almost like the beast had triggered a Shock Trap. Whatever the thing was using to hide itself seemed to flicker on and off, giving the mud shocked human quick glimpses of the reptilian creature underneath the small bolts of electricity streaking across it’s body. Once the creature was fully out of the water, stepping up onto a rock, it casually adjusted something on a device mounted on it’s left wrist. In moments, the electricity disappeared and Aloy got her first good look at the thing.

The beast was huge, easily seven feet tall with a muscular build and clad in armor, making Aloy wonder how it (he?) had kept up with her, jumping from tree to tree, no less. His skin was green and reptilian, with clawed fingers and toes. The teen gulped when she noticed a pair of cruelly serrated blades mounted on his right wrist. His face was covered by an armored mask, though the young huntress could see long braids, or perhaps huge single hairs, hanging to just below his shoulders. The girl noticed primitive embellishments, such as a necklace of bones and what Aloy thought might be talismans.

The redhead’s heart skipped a beat when she noticed a human skull in a small mesh bag hanging from the creature’s hip. It was wrapped with blue wires, the kind Banuk Shaman weaved through their skin. Moments later, Aloy noticed several of the long red feathers Carja soldiers wore on their helmets also fastened to the creature’s belt. The large brute was wearing an Oseram gauntlet and a type of shoulder pad popular among Nora Braves, though they looked more like decorations then actual armor.

How many people had this beast killed?

The way the items were displayed, like a hunter showing off fresh trophies reminded Aloy of her last visit to the Hunter’s Lodge in Meridian. A comment about the heatwave had prompted an amused Talanah to tell her stories about a beast that came in the hottest summers to hunt humans and take trophies the way hunters of The Lodge took trophies from machines.

The Sun Hawk had laughed, assuring Aloy it was just a silly ghost story.

The Nora girl was snapped back to the present when the creature, quite casually, scanned the riverbank. Aloy gripped the roots around her so tight her knuckles white under the thick layer of mud as the beast looked directly at her.

And passed by.

Aloy barely had time to be bewildered before something did indeed catch the creature’s attention. She watched as some kind of metal device on his shoulder unfolded itself. The odd little gadget followed the creature’s gaze as he looked to Aloy’s left. The three dots she had quickly grown to fear sprang forth from the monster’s mask. Moments later, a blue-white projectile shot out of the tube like device, seemingly at nothing.

The blast seemed to explode in midair, sparks and debris flying through the air. Willing herself to remain perfectly still as the shrapnel rained around her, Aloy watched as a Stalker decloaked, it’s head blown to bits, and collapsed into a heap. The creature growled, a deep, menacing sound and scanned the surrounding area, his shoulder mounted weapon following his gaze as he did. Seeming to find nothing, the creature let out what sounded like a disappointed huff and his weapon folded itself neatly back into place. With that, the monster took it’s leave, not even glancing back at Aloy.

After waiting a short eternity, Aloy allowed herself to breath and move again. The creature was truly gone, it wasn’t toying with her anymore, as she’d initially feared. She breathed a sigh of relief, softly muttered, “He couldn’t see me...but how?”

She moved to wipe the mud away when it suddenly occurred to her; had the mud hidden her? But how? The beast had easily spotted her time and again, tracking Aloy seemingly by sight from the treetops and easily dispatched a cloaked Stalker. At that thought, Aloy glanced at the ruined machine, seeing that the burnt wreckage of it’s head was just cooling down.

Cooling down.

Heat.

“He sees heat,” Aloy stated, falling back on her habit of running through her thoughts out loud. “That’s how he could always see me before but not now. And how he spotted the Stalker.”

Filing this new information away, Aloy quickly searched the nearby riverbed, managing to recover her weapons, though most of her ammunition was lost. Deciding against washing the mud off, she ventured away from the river into the jungle. The tired huntress found a well shaded area and sat down, leaned against a tree to rest and think. The creature had lost track of her, and she’d found a way to hide from it. Escape was an option. But then the creature would still be loose in the jungle, preying on anyone unlucky enough to cross it’s path. With that, Aloy’s mind was made up.

“I’m going to kill that bastard.”