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"Get off me."
Hands shove at him, and Nil rolls to the side automatically — away from whoever he had collapsed on top of. His back feels like fire and the smell of ash and char is heavy in the back of his throat in a way that reminds him—
Reminds him—
His hand goes for his knife and finds it still sheathed at his waist. He draws it even as he tries to reorient himself and rolls to his feet. Pain rises but settles into a low thrum; injured, yes, but not badly. Not in a way that would stop him fighting, if he had to. If he wanted to.
They're in a jungle, the air is hot and wet and the ground is flush with greenery. There's a machine several paces away, pieces of it scattered around as though they had been flung by an unseen force. Parts of it are on fire and burning.
There's a bow on the ground and Nil is reaching for it before he makes a decision to — it's a familiar weight in his hand, like an extension of himself. He knows its draw-song better than he knows his own voice.
"Strange," Nil says, running his thumb over the smooth finish of it. It's his and yet…
"What is?" says his companion. And she, too, is familiar yet not familiar. She has wild red hair, fine blazon armour and a spear in hand. Deadly. Dangerous. Beautiful.
Her name doesn't spring to his tongue, nor how he knows her.
How we would fight, you and I, he thinks but it only causes a sharp pain in his chest, like sorrow or grief. No anticipation, no exultation, no greedy desire to see death — either in her face or his own.
How strange, indeed.
"What kind of machine is that?" he asks, slinking closer to the largest of the burning pieces. There are arrows fletched with two different kinds of feathers buried in the corpse — his and hers. His arrows have struck over hers, later, almost certainly the ones to strike the killing blow.
She touches the small machine plate on her temple, an odd tick, so smooth it has to be habit. "A new one," she says, voice troubled. She creeps around it, uses her spear to break apart plates, cut wires, pull forth some part or another, as though the skill comes as easy to her as slitting a throat. "This is some kind of… emitter… I think it—"
She stops and goes quiet. Slowly, she looks up and fixes her gaze on him, like a predator spotting prey. Beneath her eyes are painted black circles like the sun below the horizon, ready yet to rise. Familiar.
So, so very familiar.
Nil gives her a long, slow smile. "It, what, huntress?"
He has no head wounds, no injuries or sun-struck-fearfulness that would explain forgetting. Nothing but a machine in parts, a battle that he cannot remember fighting.
"Why are you here?" she asks, voice like a cold blade. Unfriendly. Ready to strike. His huntress is a loner, a drawn arrow, a bristling quiver. Fighting may not be all she knows, but it is what she knows best.
"Why are you?" Nil parries. Words are a dance, as much as blades, though one he likes less. "Where would you say here is?"
"I asked first," she says, though the coldness thaws into a sigh. He has won first blood. "This emitter transmits a low grade electrical pulse. It's too weak to work on other machines — much weaker than even a single shock arrow — so it was probably designed to attack humans. I… would guess that it's what affected our memories."
"And yet, we two lucky hunters emerged victorious," Nil murmurs. So there is a cause. So she is affected, too, as he suspected.
"If you call this victorious," she says, sounding much like she doesn't.
"We live to hunt another prey," Nil says. "It does not. So yes, I think we may call this a victory."
He closes the distance to crouch next to her, extending his hand to take the machine part from her. She gives it without issue, watches as he turns it over in his hands, as though it might reveal some secrets to him.
It is nothing but cold metal in his hands. He cannot even tell as much as she has — would have never guessed this small thing was the cause of their grief. "Now that it is dead," he says. "Will the effects linger?"
Would their memories return or remain lost? Is this a poison that they will heal from, or a wound whose scar they will forever carry?
"I don't know!" she snaps suddenly, like an animal in a trap, biting the hand reaching for it regardless of whether it means harm or help. Anger covering fear. Smothering fear.
The answer to that question matters far more to her than it does to Nil. His memories are no great loss, he suspects.
"There has to be—" She springs to her feet and stalks away. Her hand goes to her temple again. "It had to have come from somewhere. I can track its path back to its Cauldron. Then we can— I can—"
Nil rises to his feet too. "As fine a plan as any," he says. What she might do if they do find its lair, he couldn't begin to guess. The idea of hunting machines holds little appeal to him, but leaving appeals even less. If he does not follow her, where would he even care to go? "Lead the way, huntress. I follow in your footsteps."
"I'm not sure I want you at my back," she says, giving him an odd measuring look.
Without memories, with only this strange half knowledge of themselves and each other, who could blame her?
"Oh, I never attack from the back," Nil says, certain as the sun rises. "You have my word on that."
Her odd measuring look doesn't fade. "I think I knew that," she says. And she does turn, leaving him staring at the unguarded expanse of her back, as though it might tempt him to change his mind.
That place in his chest only aches, as though it has been struck by the sun god's invisible arrow.
They head south with such a surefooted certainty that Nil would almost believe his huntress was a native of this land, that she knew it like the back of her hand, although everything about her tells him otherwise — this is his land, not hers. She must be a tracker beyond compare, though, because though there are points where Nil can tell a great machine had passed through the forest, he could not have led them along this path.
And most certainly not with this speed and accuracy.
"It's still miles away," she says, as the sun begins to dip low to the horizon. Her voice sounds frustrated, as though she had truly thought the chase would end so swiftly. "We should be going faster."
Nil doesn't do anything so garish as wheeze but he's short of breath and the tell-tale throb of pain in his back is singing a distracting song. "Good things come to those who lie in wait," he says. If she makes good on such a threat, he might end first, before the hunt does. And that would be a terrible shame. "And the Jewel only grows more dangerous by night. If we mean to make camp, it would be wise to do it now."
Her jaw clenches, but she gives a short nod. "There's a traveller's campfire up ahead," she says, though he doesn't see how she knows unless she can see through the trees. Perhaps she has been this way often, before. "Just after the river branches. And there's a herd of Chargers further along."
"Better Chargers than Stalkers," Nil says, though he doesn't fear either one now that he's named them. "Shall I catch us some game, then?"
That, at least, makes his fingers itch for the bowstring, though a turkey is hardly a challenge. He bleeds it and guts it, and by the time he makes it to the camp, the huntress has a fire going and a canvas lean-to strung up and is carefully mashing chunks of flowers and their roots into a paste. There's a heavy piece of machine plating, scooped like a bowl and blackened on the underside like it has been hung over the fire before, that she pushes towards him.
"It's clean," she says, so Nil sets it above the fire and finishes preparing the turkey. It's not the most exciting of meals, but he's hardly carrying any spices in his pockets.
If he did have any gear, it's long lost now.
"I don't suppose any of those are for flavour," he says, chin propped into his hand as he watches the huntress work. It's… easy. Domestic. Is this familiar to them? Do they camp like this often? Or is it but a rare treat that he enjoys?
"That depends on what you consider 'flavour'," the huntress says. "I wouldn't consider adding them to improve a meal, though, no."
A meal without seasoning will hardly have been the worst thing Nil has ever eaten, but he looks around the camp regardless, out into the darkening forest. This is the Jewel, richer and more plentiful than even the royal maizelands. If only one knows where to look.
He slinks back off into the trees, not straying too far from the camp. Down by the river there is a bush with small goldenberries. When he bites into one, it tastes tart and nostalgic, like something he hasn't eaten for a long, long time. He picks them and moves on, trying to let his body recognise what his mind may not. By the time he returns to camp, he has an arm load of produce to liven their meal.
There's a red and spiky seedpod that stains his fingers yellow when he digs the seeds out of it to add to the cookpot. It tastes peppery and earthy, more than anything, but it's better than nothing.
"Here," he says, plucking one of the purple apples from his haul and moving to sit beside her. He splits it in half with his knife and holds both halves out to the huntress, so she can see.
"Oh, it's a little star inside!" she says, as though charmed by it. There is another fruit of the Jewel that grows shaped as a star on the outside, though Nil doesn't know where it might be found.
"These were my mother's favourite," Nil says and then goes still.
His huntress reaches out, not taking the offered fruit but cupping his hands in her own. Her eyes are soft. "I'm honoured," she says, quietly, as though she knows this is not something Nil meant to say. Something he would not have said, if he knew the words were lurking behind his tongue.
Perhaps letting his instincts guide him is less wise than he'd thought. It's unsettling, as though he has betrayed himself, the one avenue through which he had failed to guard.
"Only this part is edible," Nil says, stilted, trying to move on. He pushes one half into her hands and uses his knife to pry out the pulp surrounding the seeds. This too, tastes like something he'd eaten a long time ago, in another life.
"It's sweet," his huntress says, still soft and quiet. "I like it."
She leans gently against his arm, no weight just the warm presence of another person beside him.
His chest aches, deep inside where nothing short of a fatal wound would reach.
The food cooks and they eat, chasing down the turkey with the rest of the sweet fruit. The sun sinks below the horizon and his huntress hums something he doesn't recognise — it is not the same liturgy of the setting sun that springs to his own tongue — but it's pleasant to listen to.
Nil fletches arrows, hands moving with certainty that his mind doesn't have, using the feathers from his earlier hunt to fill both their quivers.
His huntress runs her fingers over one, as if that's something strange, but there is nothing wrong with his work. Then again— had their arrows not been fletched differently? Perhaps she simply prefers another style. Maybe she will show it to him.
"Why do you think we were there?" she asks, suddenly.
Where else should they have been? "We had to be somewhere," Nil answers. "Why not there?"
That doesn't please her. "Doesn't it seem strange? The two of us alone… getting attacked by that new machine…"
"Perhaps we were hunting it, instead," Nil offers. "You tracked it this far, intend to track it even further. That is a skill few can dare lay claim to. Perhaps we were simply chasing the scent of blood and oil."
She touches the machine plating at her temple. "That's me," she says. "Why were you there, then?"
Nil had thought that part of the equation was rather obvious. "Certainly not for the hunt," he says dryly. A machine, new or not, can't fear death. Doesn't struggle for life. Doesn't make his heart quicken in anticipation for the kill.
She glares at him, knife quick. Always so sharp. There's a joy in that, having all her sharp edges turned on him, like she sees him, and yet drawing no blood. Like catching a ray of sunlight in hand, precious and terrible.
If he tries to hold her close, he will immolate as she struggles to be free, and yet — how tempting a fate.
"Tell me," Nil says, lifting one hand and resting the point of his index finger gently beneath his eye. "What marks do I wear?"
She sketches the shape out in the air, head tilting to the side as curiosity overtakes suspicion, even if only temporarily. "Why?"
"What marks do you wear?" he asks, again.
"I don't have any," she says, quick and sure. Then she pauses, and raises a hand to her own face, like she might be able to feel the untruth. It settles on her cheek, too low to touch what she does wear.
"Sun-marks that pass from teacher to student, father to son," Nil says. "Husband to wife."
She studies his face like a hunter after prey, searching and searching, and raises a hand to trace gently across his sun-marks. His skin feels like fire beneath her touch, beyond heated, aware of all those agonising inches between them, as impassable as cold miles of the Cut in winter.
"I don't know," she says, hesitantly, as though nothing is as clear to her as it seems to him.
Nil dips his chin and presses his lips against the inside of her wrist — chaste, almost courtly — as though this might help her to know, to feel what he feels. Or perhaps it will spike her anger once more; the gamble is no less sweet for the danger.
She gasps, soft and almost soundless, and goes still. They remain like that for a long second, and he can feel the warmth of her skin, the pulse of her blood beneath it. Her fingers linger on his cheekbones.
Then she's sliding forward, closing the distance between them. Her thighs straddle his, as though she's pinning him down, going in for the kill. But when she leans in, it's tentative and uncertain, the barest touch of lips against his own, before she's pulling back.
Nil lets his hands fall to rest on her hips, barely brushing the exposed skin of her stomach, and she shivers. He wants to thread his hands through the blood-fire of her hair. He wants to map the constellations of her freckles and the stories of her scars.
And then — maybe he leans the wrong way, or the extra weight is too much and pain stings through his back. Nil hisses before he can stop himself, and his huntress spots the weakness.
"You're injured," she says, voice sharp. It isn't a question.
It still makes him want to retreat. "Hardly a mortal wound. And anything less than that… well, a little pain keeps things refreshing, don't you think?" he says.
"No," she says, flatly. "I don't. Show me."
She's already pulling at his vest, hands moving with much more certainty but much less… enjoyment than a moment earlier.
He could still leave. Could unseat her easily enough — she's hardly expecting it — and retreat. The notion is so compelling it makes his muscles tense with the intent to move but…
Would he trust her with everything but this? Why? If she wishes to see, why not let her see? He has nothing in particular to hide.
He shrugs off his vest. His huntress rises and moves so that she can see his back, and her small hand drifts over his skin. "It doesn't look like anything is broken," she says, as though she has the skill to assess such things. "Just bruised. And burnt. This is from the machine, isn't it?"
"I could hardly tell you if it were otherwise," Nil says. "Though that seems the most likely source."
"You should have said something," she says. There's a bite in her voice, but it almost doesn't sound as though it's directed at him.
"Would it have changed anything?" Nil asks.
She moves away, picks up the flowers she had macerated into paste earlier. "Of course it does," she says as she spreads the salve over his back. It feels cool, and her touch is soothing, gentle and without force. It doesn't sting, though part of Nil feels that it should.
"You shouldn't be chasing after me if you're injured," she says, defensive again, cold again.
"Oh, but that's half the fun," Nil says, amusement bubbling up. "You'll have to do far worse if you wish to be rid of me, huntress."
"I'm not trying to—" she cuts herself off, which is good. There's no need to lie about it. "I really don't understand you at all."
That stings in a way the salve hadn't. In a way even her distrust hadn't. "Well, we are operating at a disadvantage there," he drawls. The sun hidden behind a cloud is still the sun, but if you had never seen it, how would you know?
She snorts. "Yeah, that's true," she agrees. "Just… we'll find the Cauldron tomorrow. Then everything will be better."
That sounds overly optimistic, but who is he to judge? "Tomorrow," he agrees.
In the cramped space beneath the canvas lean-to, it is difficult to put space between them though his huntress tries. Nil lies on the outer edge — half an instinct to defend them both from danger outside and half so that if she means to leave in the night… he will wake.
'You're impossible," she grumbles as though she notices, and goes to sleep with her back turned to him.
"In the morning the hunt will begin anew," Nil says, "no need to gnash your teeth to taste the blood."
Whether that stays her hand or whether she simply decides not to test her luck, she's there when he wakes in the morning. They tidy the camp, replacing the firewood for the next unfortunate travellers to have need of it and continue their path south. The ground starts rising into hills and mesas but they stay low, winding between them on the ground instead of climbing to reach the sun.
"This way," she says eventually, staring down a narrow pathway. "But—"
These signs, Nil can read as well as she can. There are too many tracks on the ground for somewhere this far from civilisation. "But some festering filth has made this their lair," he finishes. "Hiding in the narrow crevices where the sun does not reach, where eyes cannot see. Biding their time, trying to prey on the innocent. How unfortunate for them…"
He runs his fingers over the fletching of his arrows, the soft barbs bending under his touch. Anticipation sings in his veins.
The huntress huffs. "They could be…not a problem," she says, stilted like she doesn't believe it's possible either. Is she hopeful, or just eager to argue?
"You could introduce yourself, if you like," Nil suggests. To walk directly into an enemy camp would be a glorious way to start a fight, to be sure.
She stalks forward, keeping to the shadows of the cliffside, hand raised to her temple and steps as soundless as air. The camp comes into view and Nil is disappointed to find that she might have been correct — it is less bloody than he seems to expect, practical and barren.
Almost… military.
And yet, his huntress draws her bow and shoots in a flash, taking one of the patrolling men through the eye with her arrow.
And all without signalling to him that they were going to fight. "No need to be stingy," Nil says, taking down another now that battle has been called. "There's death to spare."
She slinks low, almost disappearing into the red grass and blows through the camp with such brutal efficiency that he's torn between fighting and watching her. This, he knows, is what caught him, why she makes his chest ache. This is what she is when she isn't holding back.
"Magnificient."
And that isn't enough for her — she leads him onwards still, into tunnels carved into the side of the cliff, where the men have retreated like cockroaches fleeing a fire. But there's no escape for them, not from her, not even as the wooden planks and stone walls of their construction become something… other.
Unnatural metal. A lair of machines.
"This was a Cauldron once," his huntress says, softly. More to herself than to him. "But the wild got in. Then the enemy."
The enemy. Nil would not have named them so seriously. But the hunt calls to him all the same and who is he to object to the spilling of blood?
At the heart of the place, is a machine made of light — a machine making out of light. At first the wonder of it stops him cold but the huntress walks past it as though it is nothing and Nil begins to… notice.
There are wooden structures built around the clean metal, ropes and pulleys of more familiar make. The machine moves clumsily, jerkily, like a child mimicking an artisan's brush. There are half finished machines, twisted parts and incomplete, disjointed forms littering the ground.
"They're trying to use it," his huntress says,voice grim, as though this is the worst kind of blasphemy. He thinks the sun priests would agree, if possibly for different reasons. "To make what they want."
She puts the end of her spear to some other structure, one that seems to breathe cool fog into the air.
"Machines to erase memories, perhaps?" Nil asks, though he doesn't even begin to understand how. A different kind of lack of understanding — this, he thinks, is something even his memories would not help with.
"Probably, yeah," she agrees. "Though how to fix it…"
Nil circles the room, picking off any reinforcements that arrive as she investigates. He feels unsettled, doubtful of himself for the first time since waking. What had seemed obvious now seems murky, muddled, confused. The clouds may have been obscuring the sun but also the moon, the stars, the sky.
"I think I've got it," his huntress says eventually, scrambling up one of the supports to put her spear to the light-maker. The pointed end, this time.
The machine jams to a halt, light sparking once, twice and blowing out and filling the room like a sunflare. It winks out, leaving nothing but darkness behind.
"Ah," Nil says. "The traditional Oseram maintenance technique. I am familiar with it."
"Funny," she says, and he can hear the scowl in her voice. He can also hear the clang of metal on metal as she hits it again. "I still don't remember anything. Do you?"
"Not yet," Nil says. "Though that… performance would have been particularly noticeable. If you have other methods to try, I would suggest doing them quickly, or you'll miss the carnage."
She slides down to the ground again and joins him, which is as good an indication as any that that had been her last attempt at a solution.
"There's nothing else here," she says, confirming it. "Let's get out of here."
Considering the number of the enemy they had killed on the way in, it's awfully generous of so many reinforcements to have shown up to greet his arrows. The Stalkers are less welcome, though he supposes that the light-pulse had been noticed by more than just men.
Still, they eventually wind their way back through the pathways of the Jewel, leaving nothing but bodies behind them.
"Nil," his huntress says, something strange in her voice.
Nil is turning before he even realises anything is awry about it. That at no point in this last day has his huntress used his name — he had neither told it to her, nor had she asked.
And the reason he does not know her name—
Is that at no point in their acquaintance has she told him, nor has he asked. Not at Devil's Thirst, where they met, not after at any of the bandit camps they'd laid bare together, not at the mesa where he'd—
"Your plan worked, it seems," he says. Memories, there as though they had never been gone. Indeed, it is the last day that now seems strange — conclusions logically made but without substance or backing.
Her face twists. "That's all you have to say?" she barks, her disbelief giving way to a hot burning anger. "Why are you even here? Were you following me? Going to ambush me?"
Her hand raises, not to her bow or spear but to her face — fingers brushing beneath her eye to smear her paint. It makes something in his chest crack open, an old wound split to bleeding.
Her last arrow was, indeed, the cruellest.
"Wait," Nil says, hand reaching up like he might stop her. But he won't, doesn't dare reach out and cross that line between them.
To his surprise, she does wait. Just a little, still glaring at him, still angry, still so poised to wipe him from her skin.
But she pauses. Because he'd asked.
"I asked and you answered," Nil says, though he still thinks their fight would have been an experience worth dying for. He's… not sad to have missed it, however, because then there would not have been this. "That is the end of it. I respect that. You know me better than to think I would ambush you."
If his voice is reproachful, well, it's true. She had even challenged him, knowing that he would not. Try to shoot me in the back as I go. It does her no favours to pretend ignorance now.
"Then why?"
Nil shrugs, weight shifting uncomfortably. "I was heading north," he says. "And I saw you fighting. I hardly intended to interfere but… you fell. A shock attack, I thought."
She'd fallen and hadn't got back up and Nil had been so startlingly sure that she was going to die. She was going to die and he was going to see it and—
He had moved to stop it.
"So I contributed an arrow or two to your hunt," he says, as though it was a small matter. As though the decision hadn't shaken him, as though realising that her survival mattered to him wasn't a revelation all of its own. As though that hadn't proven that she had made the correct decision on the mesa — that even if they had duelled and he had won… he would not have been satisfied to live in a world without her.
And that, perhaps, if she had won and taken his life… neither would she.
She frowns. "You… helped me," she says, as though testing the words out, as though they don't make sense. "And that's— that's how you got hurt."
"A machine that can take you down is a ferocious one indeed," Nil says, though he had been particularly reckless about it, even for him. It had been more important to get to her, and then shield her from harm, than it had been to keep himself safe.
"Why?" she asks again, baffled.
That… Nil can't answer. Or… perhaps he has answered already, over this last day, through his own actions and misunderstandings. Strip away the past and the pretences, and what had Nil been left with?
"Why are you wearing those sun-marks?" he asks, instead.
She hadn't been wearing them at the mesa — her face had been as blank as ever. So she had walked away from him, denied him, left him reeling, and painted her eyes with his markings.
Why, huntress?
She stiffens. "A hawk at the Lodge gave them to me," she says, stiffly. "Said that they were good for hunting. A Carja Stalker, he called it."
"That's true," Nil says, and dares to take a step closer to her. True, and hardly answered his question at all.
"It's not," she says, voice biting, "because— it's not the reason you thought they meant."
"They're a connection," Nil says, because at the heart of it that was what they meant. And she had wanted a connection to him, even as she walked away. Had left him, but had not forgotten him.
Some of her defensive fire fades. "Something like that, I guess," she says, eyes turning away from his. "Don't read too much into it."
He had known, the first time he'd seen her, that they were kindred spirits of battle and bloodshed. She had tried to hide those parts of herself, restrain them and pretend they weren't there.
Now… he wonders what parts of himself she might see, things he pretends don't exist, things that makes her proclaim I see there might be a need for you in this world. Parts of himself he had thought were burnt out in the sun-fire of war, gone under the gleeful blood-tide, only to be woken by the sour tang of childhood fruit in the jungle forest.
"We're the same, you and I," he says, but thoughtfully.
"Not that similar," she pushes back, as she always does.
"Because you do more than fight bandits," Nil says. She had dropped hints, here and there, and outright told him in the Gatelands that she had her eyes set on the Eclipse. He had turned aside, uninterested or trying to be, because he could not trust those who cried for war to sing the same song in a month, a year. Two years in Sunstone Rock had been enough for a lifetime. "Murderers raising an army of machines."
"Yes," she says cautiously. "That was them. What, did you change your mind about it being nothing but politics?"
"Something like that," Nil murmurs. "It is difficult to remain single-minded when someone insists on showing you there is more to the world than you thought."
Eclipse and the Shadow Carja mean little to him, even with the promise of bloodshed. But he will follow her lead, and this is — clearly — where she will lead him. Deep underground into machine lairs built for no human, and to stop those who thought otherwise.
It will be… interesting.
"Just like that?" She asks, with a frown, as though this is too simple a reason to change his mind.
"There is one question I would ask," Nil does say. It is easy to remain detached when there is nothing to attach oneself to in the first place. Asking, caring enough about the answer to ask, is not something he would have done when they first met. Or anytime since. "What is your name, huntress?"
She blinks, startled, then laughs. "My name is Aloy."