#sylens left because he wanted to keep his arm | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crankycreates · 1 year

Text

Inevitable

1.8k words Fandom: Horizon: Zero Dawn, Horizon: Forbidden West Pairing: Aloy/Sylens Tags: Older man younger woman, D/s undertones, Frenemies to lovers (ish?), First kiss, Fix-it (ish?)

AO3 link

A little drabble I wrote because I was really annoyed with how Sylens was written in Forbidden West, and also I wanted them to kiss. Honestly, the untapped potential of this ship boggles me. HOW is this a rarepair? Spoiler warning for the end of FW.

~~~

He had been there. That’s the reason she can’t let him go, she thinks. The reason she’s relieved when he opts to stay. He had been there — with her, if not for her — when she learned of the fate of the world, of the role she had to play in its future.

He’s been acting like such a monumental ass, though, she doesn’t know how much any of that should matter anymore.

Yet when he chooses to remain on Earth, the flare of hope in her chest almost blots out the betrayal. Hope is just another kind of pain, and Aloy knows this better than most. But it’s a pain she can live with. It’s far preferable to regret.

He’ll stay on the planet, but not in their camp. They’ve left the Zenith compound, setting up their tents near the beach on the mainland to rest and regroup, before their journeys begin anew. And Sylens, of course, insists on keeping himself apart.

On the second night, Aloy catches up to him as he’s leaving for his own camp. “You were wrong, you know,” she says to his back.

A sure way to get his attention.

He stops and turns to face her, cocking an eyebrow. Blue light gleams in his eyes. “About what?”

“About Elisabet. She wouldn’t have gone. She already made that choice — she chose to stay. You know this, and you know I know it. So why did you say it?”

He makes as if to leave again, but she grabs his arm, makes him turn back to her. Though he stiffens, he doesn’t pull away. Small victories.

“Why try to manipulate me, when you knew I wouldn’t fall for it?” she demands. “You knew it would just piss me off more!”

Sylens sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. “What is it you’re after, Aloy? It has been a very long day. And I am sure you have better things to do than pester me with pointless questions.”

(It is so hard sometimes not to be distracted by the way he speaks; his precise enunciation making poetry out of insults. It is hard not to be distracted by the way the light from the cords sewn into his skin play over his features.)

“Why couldn’t you just tell me you’d like me to join you? You disappear for six months and then act like a complete asshole when you come back — it’s like you’re trying to push me away.”

There is a pregnant pause, and then he says, “Ah.” A single syllable burdened with all the quiet disdain of which he is capable. “I see.”

She bristles. “What?”

“This is what you do. You help people. You fix what’s broken. And now, you think you can fix me.”

She scoffs, shaking her head. “I prefer projects that actually have a chance of succeeding. Like saving the world.”

He gives the smallest of smiles, at that. Then: “So, what do you want?”

And Aloy fixes him with an intense stare and blurts, “I want you to kiss me.”

He is momentarily speechless, his expression blank, wiped clean of any hint of haughty impatience. “What?”

“You heard me.” There are twin spots of red on her cheeks, almost glowing in the gloom.

His face does something complicated; minute twitches of his features suggesting some emotional turmoil underneath. With exaggerated calm, he says, “Aloy, you and I—”

“I know! I know. You don’t have to—” She inhales sharply, flattens her lips together for a moment. Then repeats, “I’d just like you to kiss me. That’s all.”

“Why?” he asks, in a way that makes her think that he’s still reeling, expressing incredulity more than an actual desire to know.

“Does there have to be a reason other than me wanting it?”

Sylens says nothing.

She looks away. Drums her fingers on her quiver. “Okay, fine. You like holding your superior knowledge over my head. So — what if I’m asking you to teach me?” Looking back at him, the ghost of a teasing smile flits past her lips. “Assuming you actually have experience with—”

“I do,” he says, curtly.

There’s a long moment of tense silence. He watches her, impassively, and she looks away again, doing her best not to fidget.

“Ask me again when we’re back at the base,” he says at last. “If you still want to, by then.” His tone suggests that he very much doubts that will be the case.

She hesitates, like she’s about to say something, but then closes her mouth and nods. Without so much as looking at him, she turns away, and stalks off towards the main camp.

She goes to his quarters on the second night after their return. Gestures the door closed behind her and locks it.

“Fine,” Sylens says the moment the door shuts. There is no warmth in his voice, no softness, only his usual businesslike detachment. “I will … teach you anything you’d like to know, on one condition.”

Aloy hides her startlement as best she can, rallying enough to ask, “What condition?”

“That while you’re in my room, you do as you’re told.”

It’s a challenge. He’s always been so frustrated with her proclivity for independent thought and decision-making, and now he thinks to use it against her. The way he’s looking at her now, intently, eyes very slightly narrowed — and, she suspects, a triumphant smirk hiding behind his closed lips — he expects her to back down, beg off.

(For once, Aloy, submit to the inevitable.)

Her cheeks feel very hot all of a sudden, a heat that quickly climbs towards her ears. She hates her complexion sometimes, knowing he can see her blush so easily, even without using the heat vision of his Focus.

“Fine!” she says, before she can think better of it. An echo of his own grudging acquiescence. The word snaps between them, a crackle in the air like lightning.

If Sylens is surprised, he hides it well. He merely raises his eyebrows a fraction, and gives her a curt nod before turning away. He pulls off his jacket, tossing it onto his bunk. “Very well,” he says. “Tell me again why you want me to kiss you. The real reason, not some thinly veiled attempt at manipulation.”

Shit. It’s a command, not a question. And she’s agreed to do as she’s told. She paces the room like a caged beast, tugging restlessly at the soft clothes she’s so unaccustomed to wearing. Sylens watches her, arms folded over his chest. After her third pass she comes to stand before him.

“Because when you live constantly at the edge of oblivion,” she says, voice low but as fierce as he’s ever heard it, “when just one slip of your fingers could mean the end of the world, you don’t want your nights haunted by regrets.”

“Regrets?”

Aloy swallows. Finds herself unable to continue.

(Why are her needs and desires suddenly interesting to him now, when he’s always been so keen to stress their relative unimportance, in the grand scheme of things? Then again, the whole point of this ridiculous endeavour is to set the grand scheme of things aside for a little while. Perhaps even Sylens recognises that.)

He relaxes his arms and steps closer to her, and she almost jerks back from him, as though having forgotten he was even there for a moment. Funny, that — she’s so used to him being a disembodied voice, it’s like the flesh-and-blood (and blue-light-cord) apparition in front of her doesn’t quite register as Sylens. But now Sylens is reaching out and cupping her jaw in one rough, calloused hand, and she feels her breath drawn from her lungs like atmosphere vented into a vacuum, her eyes ticking up to his face.

(Or perhaps he recognises the futility of denying this … this thing that has grown between them, like a blue cord stretching through the aether, something intangible and powerful that thrums just below the surface whenever they speak—)

Brows drawing together slightly, he parts his lips as if to speak. Hesitates. Closes his mouth again. And she realises that this is it, this is a moment of no return. They’re about to pivot in some unknown direction and if she wants to pull back, it has to be now.

Aloy doesn’t pull back. And Sylens lowers his mouth to hers. His lips are like fire against her own and she wonders how she could ever have imagined that she knew what warmth is until this moment. Her eyes close of their own accord and he shifts his stance a little, hand sliding into her hair as he shapes his lips against hers in a cadence as silent as his name. The opposite of a disembodied voice.

He exhales through his nose as he pulls back, and she thinks she hears a slight tremor in that slow, controlled breath. She opens her eyes to find that his are blacker than ever.

“Wow,” she breathes, a slow grin lighting up her features.

Sylens rolls his eyes at her and she can’t bring herself to care.

“Would that be enough?” he murmurs. He sounds like he’s trying to be curt, dismissive, but there’s a smile playing on his lips, a purr in his voice, and he hasn’t let her go.

“What is it they say, about repetition and learn—”

He pulls her into him this time, fingertips pressing into her scalp like he wants to burrow into her brain as he crushes his mouth against hers. She hears herself whimper into the kiss and then his tongue runs along the seam of her lips and she parts them for him as if she knows what she’s doing. Somehow, she does. Somehow, it works.

They moan into one another and she realises she’s clinging to him, tugging at his clothes. He lets out a growl and in the next moment he’s pushed her back into a wall, capturing her wrists and bringing them up over her head. Aloy whimpers.

And then he pulls back. Still with her wrists pinned against the wall, and his other hand pressed against her breast bone, fingers resting on her throat. Holding her in place, preventing her from chasing his lips. His nostrils flare with each rough inhale, forehead almost touching hers, eyes dark, intense.

“This is why, Aloy,” he says quietly. “This is why I keep pushing you away. This is a distraction neither of us can afford.”

“Distractions aren’t always a bad thing,” she says, a breathless almost-smile on lips swollen with kisses. She could free herself. He is a scholar first and a fighter … maybe third, after tinker. What she lacks in size, she more than makes up for in speed, flexibility, and far, far too much experience for her years. But she came here for a different sort of dance.

“You know better than anyone that we don’t have time—”

“Maybe it’s time we took some time, Sylens. For ourselves. We’ve earned it.”

She stares up at him with a challenge in her eyes: submit to the inevitable. For once. Sylens returns her look … and smiles.

~~~~

Yes, Aloy's "wow" is taken straight from Seyloy (call it a homage), because that's totally how she'd react to her first kiss.

#aloy x sylens #horizon: zero dawn #horizon: forbidden west #sylens #aloy #aloy horizon

5 notes · View notes

stormikins · 1 year

Text

@chronic-ghost wanted to know about two wips from this list. hfw/varl is basically varl/aloy in hfw. I don’t know if im gonna have them get together before the events of the hfw or not buuuuuut... i do have this little angsty piece for you

“You almost died Aloy!” That causes her to look away. There’s more than just anger and exasperation there. She can deal with anger, has made him angry, but the concern- the raw worry gnaws at her.

“I almost die all the time,” she throws back at him, because it’s easier to deal with anger than anything else.

His jaw moves, his mouth twisting in the corner. He takes a deep breath. “You would have died if I hadn’t showed up. Think about that for a second Aloy.”

She doesn’t want to.

But he’s right. There are many times where she’s almost died but she got herself out. But there was Rost and then- as much as it pains to admit -Sylens. Now Varl.

“And I’m grateful for that-”

“Are you? ‘Cause I didn’t do it for gratitude obviously, but all you have done is argue with me.”

“All you’ve done is argue with me!”

“Because for some reason, you took two giant leaps back from learning how to not only work with others but to trust them too! All of those people joined you- from all over -risked their lives for you. And you left them without even saying goodbye. I realize you had a very different, and difficult, upbringing but damn Aloy. Are you really gonna a save a world but have no place in it?"

It doesn't matter, she wants to scream. Elisabet did it, so can I!

As for Endless Freckles: its Rex/Obi-wan and its Rex putting aloe on Obi-wan’s back in a nice moment of domestic peace after a beach day, this was written for rex/obi week but i did not actually finish nor post it but here is some

Rex rubs the excess aloe on his sides and plants a gentle kiss on his shoulder. It tastes like aloe but Obi-wan smiles softly in the mirror, eyes crinkling and fuck, does his chest swell.

He slides his hands up his back once more, running them from his shoulders, and down his arms, stopping on his waist again. He presses another kiss to a mole on his right shoulder. Raising his eyes, he meets Obi-wan’s in the mirror.

“Are you done?” Obi-wan asks.

“I don’t know.” He wraps an arm fully around his front, keeping the other on his hip. He noses behind his ear. He can smell his shampoo. “Am I?” Rex presses his front to his back, kissing the warm skin behind his ear.

“I just took a shower.”

“And now we’re both not sandy; much better. I do not want a rash. I’m not Fives.”

“I don’t wanna know.”

"Let's just say he learned that there are places where sex isn't as desirable."

"Oh, that poor fool."

"Yeah, that’s what I said." Obi-wan shoots him a disbelieving look. "Okay, that’s the point that I got across with what I said." He head leans on Rex's shoulder as he laughs. He doesn't hesitate to press a kiss to his bared throat. His hand goes lower around his waist, edging the top of the towel.

#my writing

0 notes

phthalology · 7 years

Text

HZD: Winter’s Bargain Chapter 1

Read here on AO3. Rescued by Aloy and now under the watchful eye of the Carja court's many spies, Sylens reluctantly helps put Meridian back together after the attack on the Spire. Someone seems to want to keep the Carja nervous, and Sylens needs to find out whether they're an enemy or an ally. The one with Marad’s spy shenanigans. Aloy/Sylens, 2300 words.

He must have been thrown onto the ice.

That would explain the hard surface underneath him, the concussed confusion as his eyesight blurred. Shamans stood over him, songs distorted behind heavy wire-and-cloth headsets. Their voices cracked and reverberated. Sylens had done something terribly wrong. Of that he was certain. The tribe had decreed this cold vengeance for what he had done.

Aloy said, “If I had known you were the person who needed rescuing, I wouldn’t have come.”

Sylens opened his eyes.

Red desert dust caked his hands, the orange blankets in front of him, and Aloy’s jacket. Heat washed off her. It felt like the desert sun, but something metallic too, like the HADES unit. She looked more muscular than he remembered, heavier, as if she had been given gravitas by her conquests.

The red-and-gold battlement walls around him looked Carja. Not ice at all; heat and heavy blankets covered him. There were more people in the room than he had seen in months, more than he cared to see. Three masked guards were arranged behind Aloy like nervous Watchers. They were extraneous, a sign of a nervous sovereign. Aloy could have attacked him while he was asleep if she had wanted. The guards did serve to partially hide a man dressed in the lighter finery of a Carja noble, who waited patiently beside the closed wooden door.

Until now, Sylens had imagined that he could have walked through Meridian at almost any time unobserved; although his markings might be memorable, most people who knew his face were dead. In the course of their business he and Bahavas had met once at a shrine near the edge of the city and once in the holy circle near the apex. On other days, he had gone to the markets on the outskirts with his arms and head covered, to forestall questions from Carja who found Banuk memorable.

He had certainly never been here before.

“Why did you bring me to the palace?”

Aloy ignored the guards as surely as Sylens had done. “You were hurt. Do you remember the Vantage near the prison?”

The prison? Ah, she meant the one in the Sundom. Sylens still had a feeling that exile should be cold. Maybe that was why the avalanche-prone cliffs of the Alpha site had sometimes been a comfort. Now, though, the palette of his life was not blue and white but shades of green.

He had had months wandering in deserts to disprove his fear of the cold, not to mention the time spent here, in the humid forest. The idea had never departed, though. When he had been a child he had seen an exile taken onto the ice, the shamans singing in praise to the justice of the rime. The man had been half-mad with poison, but he had been alive enough to weakly struggle.

That wasn’t what Aloy was talking about, though. “Yes, of course I remember. The Vantages are made to be difficult, and this one was no different.” The cache up in the mountains would have been a good place for a relay signal. Not an essential part of the plan, but something in him had wanted to take a journey that long. He needed to stretch his legs, to ride without needing to go anywhere. Maybe, he needed to look at the mesa and wonder whether Aloy was in Meridian.

“Someone yelled. It turned out to be you. Avad’s people wrapped your arm, but it will take a long time for the bruises to heal.”

“You brought me to Meridian?” He lowered his voice, both for their secrets and because he was angry. Afraid, too; he doubted that Carja justice was any kinder than Ban-Ur’s.

Aloy nodded, her lips pressed tightly together. She knew it was a weighted decision.

“Foolish. I suppose I should thank you for saving my life, but I didn’t think you had any particular love for this city.” Sylens sighed. She might have saved his life. It had been a careless fall, and now that the tattered dreams were clearing, his left arm ached fiercely.

Instead of asking anything further, Aloy turned away fast, the beads in her hair jangling against the metal sewn into her clothing. “Let me talk to him alone,” she said, talking through the guards to the nobleman still half out of sight behind them.

“A minute, no longer.” The man had a clipped voice full of confidence. It sounded familiar, but Sylens had intentionally stayed out of bloody Carja court politics when he was luring Bahavas and the other members of the gang that would become the Eclipse. The king had only mattered as much as Helis’ revenge demanded he did.

Aloy nodded. Sylens sat up as the guards walked out, leaving him with a better view of the single door in the little tower room and the bench on which they had placed him. Aloy folded her arms, looked like she considered sitting down and then decided against it.

“There were bandits near the Vantage,” Sylens said. “Some of them caught me on the cliff and must have fled when you came. I did not just fall off the ledge.”

Aloy smirked, did not directly reply. “I haven’t told Avad and Marad who you are,” she said.

“And why not?”

“You gave me the tools I needed to defeat HADES. And out last conversation was … unusually civil. Now we’re even.”

Sylens chuckled. She didn’t know that the spear had included the virus a virus that was meant to send a version of HADES, caged again, back to his new hideout. There was something appealingly reasonable about the exchange of debt, though. Hadn’t they all been paying the debts of the Old Ones, all this time? Hadn’t humanity deserved what it got, for Faro’s sin of erasing APOLLO? Sylens wasn’t sure. Aloy, though, was the only other person likely to understand any of that at all.

“In fact, that’s why I was in the forest in the first place, setting up relays. If we could use Eclipse equipment to speak to HADES, we could learn so much more,” he said.

Aloy was taken aback. “You’re just … telling me that? You trust me with that? Did it not occur to you what HADES did last time? Did you want to do that again?”

“I was in the desert. I thought that if the Faro robots rose up out of the ground it would be a terrible loss but at least I wouldn’t be around to see civilizations destroyed again.” He shifted, found that his arm ached only slightly less if he tucked it against his side. “We make scant few pieces of information now. For them to be consumed again …”

“But now you’re telling me you want to do that exact same thing again.”

“No. Not to unleash it. To control it. To talk to it, as you talked to GAIA. With the spear, with the Alpha Override, I think we could do it.”

“I was here.”

“What?”

“I was here, in Meridian, when the world almost ended. You know that. I would have had to watch innocent people die, not just myself. I will not face that again if I can prevent it with my own hands.”

“Exactly! Exactly.” Sylens sat up, swinging his feet to the floor. It didn’t hurt to move that far. How had she carried him here? Drugged with hintergold, on the back of a Strider? “Aloy, if we learn what HADES has to tell us we can find out more about the kind of technology that created GAIA in the first place.”

“I can still work with GAIA, in the Nora lands.” She uncrossed her arms, sat heavily down on the side of the couch where his legs had been.

“Then you understand the knowledge they both could give us.”

“I heard the recordings. Quantum processing, was that the one? That’s what you would have destroyed us all for.”

“That is what I trust you with now. We could remake the Earth, Aloy.”

“I won’t allow it. The Kestrels won’t allow it.”

“I know. So I’ll help you. Whatever you’re working on here … I don’t doubt my knowledge of the city will help you.”

“Locked together by a bargain again. I’m beginning not to regret rescuing you, if this sort of fight results. Too few people …”

“Even though the world is at stake?”

“It won’t be. Because you won’t leave my sight.” She stood up. “This is good timing. Marad has me working on some things in the city. We can both stay out of trouble.”

“Good. You deserve a place as Avad’s investigator. You deserve Marad’s place as advisor, really.” It was a guess, based on the name she had used, but it was also honest. Sylens did not doubt that Aloy was more intelligent than any of the Carja courtiers.

Aloy pushed a sigh out in a loud burst. “I won’t tell them who you are. I’m saving that one for when I might need it.”

“To use against me? A good decision for both of us, I think.”

Aloy rapped on the inside of the door.

The guards hadn’t gone far. Almost immediately, the door opened and the man in the robes, the one Aloy had called Marad, walked in. Sylens carefully stood.

Aloy looked between them. “Sylens, this is Blameless Marad. Sylens helped me … prepare for the attack on the city.”

“Greetings. You come highly recommended, and Aloy … I’m sure you know how much she did for the city.”

Was he probing, wanting to know where Sylens was during the attack? Aloy had seemed to think everything would go smoothly. “Blameless. That’s a … notable name.”

“Is it? Some people certainly say so.”

“…Do they.”

“Right now, my advice is that Aloy consider her work,” Marad said. “After the attack, some people are rebuilding and others are taking advantage of the chaos. The Hunter’s Lodge has been taking in scared farmers. There’s plenty to do, if you want to help us while your friend recovers.”

Aloy did not hesitate. “Yes. I already know a few places where we could help out with supplies. The Nora have already left, but … like you said. Lots of refugees.”

“You know where to find me,” Marad spoke with clipped authority, like a teacher telling a child how far they were allowed to stray. When he went out, leaving the door open behind him, he conspicuously gestured for the guards to move out onto the next lower balcony, far enough that they could see the doorway but not so far that they were obviously watching the tower. Sylens watched him go. He had a feeling that Marad was more than an advisor; someone so effortlessly practiced at giving out no information at all was more likely a spymaster. Sylens could admit when he was outclassed — to himself, at least. Unfamiliar with the city as he was, Marad would be able to track him easily.

Aloy nodded at the door. She always looked ahead, didn’t she? Always forward.

“You’ll be able to stay here in the palace,” Aloy said, and led him out. “But I have work to do. Machines are all out of their usual territories after the attack.”

Years ago, Sylens would have thought that he might never walk the streets of Meridian again. He had little use for the city itself as long as he could lure people like Bahavas out of it. The chaos in the court had worked to his advantage. Now, Sun priests did not walk in bloody-minded procession but hunched their shoulders on their way to shamed and profaned alters. Sylens almost laughed at how unlikely it was that someone would recognize him. As soon as they crossed the bridge from the palace, people crowded them. Farmers from lands shelled and shredded during the attack, hunters who had made their way to the Spire to seek their fortune, and thrill-seekers now seeking no more than hot food and passage north thronged the streets.

People recognized Aloy, though.

Vendors called out to her, not to sell but to thank. She greeted some people with clasped hands and a nod toward the Hunter’s Lodge. “Tell Talanah I say hello.” Soon enough, though, Aloy found her own apartment door and opened it onto a large, cool room. Sylens shut the door behind him. The trap door on the left side of the room had recently been broken, and sharp pieces still stuck out from the edges of the stone passageway. Otherwise, the room was decorated in Carja finery.

“They gave me this place,” Aloy said bluntly, setting her bow and arrows down beside the door. She followed them with the spear Sylens had given her, and met his eyes. “The last owner is gone.”

“How convenient for you.”

“He was a complicated man.” She let the spear go, moved to sit on a cushioned bench beside it. “But now we have a chance to do more. Let me explain what we’re working on here.”

“Wait.You kept my secret, for now. The thing that could put me in greater danger than any other person in this city. You trust yourself with it. Why?” Sylens did not hesitate to be blunt.

She looked down. “Because we’re the only ones who know.” She stood, faced him furious. “If I told Avad that you had helped call HADES down on this city, they could kill you. I don’t know if Avad would, or if Marad would sway him. And then our last piece of information is gone, a lifetime worth of research. You’re wrong about so many things, Sylens, so very many. But you did the work. And I won’t see the only other person who understands that work destroyed.”

So fierce. So … he watched the line of her jaw as she tilted her face up toward him. The thin, white scar was barely visible from one side of her neck to the other, like a terrible smile.

He nodded. “And what is our work?”

“First, we’re going hunting.”

#Horizon Zero Dawn #writings #Aloy/Sylens #Aloy #Sylens #Blameless Marad

9 notes · View notes

fablehaftbios · 4 years

Text

⊰ Anselm Damaske ≬220 ≬ Dark Elf ≬Water ⊱ ⊰ Fencer ≬Male≬ Sexuality≬ Open ⊱

Biography:

Once upon a time....

He was born without the well known brand of the dark elves; he had no white hair nor did he tower above others. Instead he took after his human father with his muddy hair and chocolate eyes. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for a mixed blood Dark Elf, but still Anselm thought it nothing but a beacon showcasing his half heritage before he could even open his mouth.

He grew up resenting himself, the way he looked, his father for his genetics and his mother for cross-breeding with filth. He felt as if he were lacking, like he had to work twice as hard to prove he belonged. He felt both shunned by his own people and hated by the outsiders whom thought nothing but ill of the Dark Elf species.

It was all mostly internalized self-loathing and paranoia; maybe he’d gotten a side glance or two from his fellow dark elves, maybe the other kids had decided he wasn’t worthy of befriending, but they never considered him filth as he assumed; he was just…lesser.

Whether it was by his choice or not, Anselm had become an isolated child, prone to spending most of his time exploring the forest around his home.

As he grew older he grew more brave, venturing further and further out until he one day he found himself closer to a light elf village and met Moira. They didn’t look at him with the contempt he’d grown accustomed to, assuming he was one of their kind and thus someone to be trusted. They never asked and he decided it was for the best to keep quiet.

As a kid he was mostly free to do as he wished, but slowly his teachers started to push ideals down his throat. He was taught how weak the light elves were, how they nearly led their entire species to extinction because of their softness, that dark elves were the superior race and others were nothing more than tools to be used.

He wasn’t sure what to think; after all Moira wasn’t the least bit soft - they could knock him on his butt in thirty seconds flat if thy so wished. And his father, human as he was, wasn’t less. Just different. But despite everything, he was still just a kid that wanted to belong and so he started spouting off opinions as if they were his own, convinced if he said it enough times that maybe one day he’d believe it.

He focused on the negative emotions, remembered the looks he received, how badly he used to wish for white hair - would wish upon every star he saw every night - and turned all that internal hatred outward.

It scared him how easily the anger came. It scared his parents too.

But he still couldn’t bring himself to fulfill the one thing keeping him from everything he wanted; all it would take was one little spell and he’d be considered a full dark elf. He’d belong, he’d be accepted. It was what he’d been longing for his whole life wasn’t it?

In the end it wasn’t a decision he consciously made but an accident; an innocent Kitsune that had stumbled across him and Moira while he was in one of his rages. He’d been shell shocked, couldn’t even tell what had happened for sure until Moira had fixed his mistake for him, healing the fox and sending him away.

He’d finally done it but the weight in his chest felt no lighter, in fact it was heavy with an overwhelming amount of guilt. He could say nothing as Moira left for the last time, deciding the two were too different to keep pretending otherwise. He stumbled home and cried in his mother’s arms for the first time, ashamed of himself and tired of carrying around so much hate and pain.

After that he left, bidding his parents goodbye and leaving the Dark Elves behind for good.

He went through job after job and couldn't hold any one for very long; it seemed he had no discernable skills to speak of. Even his attempt at joining a crew had failed him - the leader took one look at him and declared him not ready before shoving him out the door. He'd gotten lucky however, there was someone in the crew who took pity on him and told him where he could make some money.

There was more money in the trade of selling and trading stolen goods than he realized and soon enough he was making more than enough money to afford eating more than once a day. He was grateful for the opportunity even if it did require forming lots of connections with the buyers in order to win their trust. He'd never intended to, but when the war started the requests for weapons went up and soon enough he was selling more swords than anything else and it didn't matter to his suppliers which side it went to as long as the price was right.

That pesky emotion surfaced again; guilt was not a feeling he was fond of. He'd been on his way to turn himself in for aiding the cause of the Damhan when the Curse struck and he was transported to New Naraya with noone the wiser as to why he'd been in Fabledale in the first place. With no enemies to worry about benefiting from his job, Anselm went back to fencing stolen goods.

Connections:

❖Moira❖ They once felt like two sides of the same coin but he should’ve known differently; after all didn’t they spend most of their days running away from what was expected of them while Anselm spent his running towards what he was meant to be? He’s sure they changed his life for the better but he regrets that he couldn’t do the same for them.

❖Robin❖ Neighbor. They remind him of Moira in so many ways but Robin hasn't accepted his attempts of friendship nearly as readily as Moira had. Not that he really cares to befriend them, but sometimes they look so lonely and he feels bad. For now, he'll keep bringing over the extra Chinese food and pizza he orders in an attempt to thaw them out a little, but he isn't going to worry himself to death over them.

❖Sylense❖ Annoyance. He'd met the guy one time before he'd decided that Anselm was nothing more than the dirt under his shoe. Sylens looks down upon him and turns his nose upward anytime he even walks into the room, but interestingly enough he'd never seemed to mind Anselm when there was something that needed to be sold or made to disappear. Story goes that Sylens has been asleep for the past twenty years and Anselm Hope's it stays that way for another twenty.

Possible Plot Ideas:

❖ Anselm is no stranger to stolen goods; after all he sells the stuff for a living. But there’s a particularly determined Faun investigating a certain stolen Museum Artifact and he’d gotten too close for comfort at least once. Of course Timothy was none the wiser and had no idea, but still Anselm knows it’s unlikely he’s going to give up anytime soon.

❖

Gifhunts for Francois Arnaud: X X X

#francois arnaud fc #darkelf #water #male #open #francois arnaud #rp #rpg #roleplay group #rp group #writing

0 notes

phthalology · 7 years

Text

HZD: Winter’s Bargain Chapter 2

Read here on AO3

The lance in Aloy’s hands glowed as she edged through the tall grass in Meridian’s parklands. Morning fog had given way to a humid afternoon, highlighting the green of the plants and the red plateau.

“Over there,” Aloy murmured.

Sylens had already seen the Fire Bellowback. It was difficult to miss on the other side of the narrow canal. The liquid cargo on its back swayed and splashed inside its transparent casing as the machine seemed to sniff along the river bank. Were its movements aimless, or did it follow some new track, one given to it in panicked reaction to the Spire’s signal?

“Marad says he thinks someone drove them in,” Aloy whispered. "We’ll look around the gates later. For now, they’re certainly not in their usual territory, so … we drive them out.”

“Do you trust Marad?” Sylens said.

“I thought you didn’t care for trust.”

Sylens almost laughed. “I speak of the currency you spend, not my own.”

Aloy’s affect was frigid. Maybe she had labored over the words he had said to her in the jungle, turning over and over that idea of mutual self-interest. It would explain the sudden chill she exuded. Cold was part of both of them, the cold caverns of what they had discovered beneath Sunfall and the storm after. All of GAIA’s creations had broken in that forest at once: a Strider dead, the winds ripping at the earth, Aloy and Sylens on a narrow patch of dry ground asking one another for permission to be warm. He had awoken beside her and driven himself out into the rain to look at the living Strider and wonder what machinery had gotten under his skin to make him feel so loyal to the very person most likely to understand his need to leave.

They had been bound to one another, surely as the chips of metal clipped to their ears were were bound to the network, and the signal made their coldness to one another glint like frost on spring buds.

“Marad has plans,” Aloy said. “I think most of them don’t have anything to do with us. He cares about Avad.”

“Then they have little to do with us indeed. Why stay in this city, Aloy?”

She shifted on her toes. Sylens crouched slightly behind her, bending low into the grass to keep out of sight of the machine. Aloy's hair and clothing were much more suitable to this type of hunting ground than his own. If he had been on his own he would have set traps instead of walking close like this, entangled the machines in chains before he approached with his lance for the killing strike. Aloy seemed to prefer stealth and close-range fights in the long grass common in the east.

Aloy shushed him. “Another Bellowback. See?”

An Ice Bellowback wandered through a field of cut grass on the other side of the canal. Sylens was about to whisper to her a plan to separate the two machines when Aloy darted forward. The sway of the grass resolved into her easy hunter’s jog, and she slipped away toward the bridge. Sylens edged toward the second Bellowback. Aloy was more well-equipped than he by far, and he paused to watch how she began her work.

She slung the bow into her hands, loosed two arrows at once into the beast’s belly. As soon as they hit she moved again, loosing two more that sent delicate crystals of ice against the Bellowback’s bulbous top. Sylens turned and crossed the bridge. What he wouldn’t give for traps, or for a tearblaster or grappling cord, but most of his equipment had been taken by the Carja or left when Aloy found him at the bottom of the cliff. Of course he would be thrown into a fight without proper weapons. Of course the Carja would not know —

He blinked his Focus on and saw the violet path of the Bellowback’s programmed steps. The path extended back into the woods, but part of it was broken and flashing. The creature’s programming had been disrupted, its GAIA-given instincts jogged out of place by the Faro robots rising out of the ground. He sat back on his haunches on the far side of the bridge and began to examine the Focus’ controls, wondering whether he could set the machine back on its course through the interface without having to touch it at all.

It seemed he hadn’t hidden well enough. The Bellowback’s head came up, metal cords creaking as they swung beneath its neck. The shadow of it swayed across the river like its own creature. Heavier than three Striders, the Bellowbacks reminded Sylens of armories. Hit them in the right place and it would all go up in ice, but the Bellowback’s weight alone would propel it toward its attacker with crushing force even in death.

It reared up at the sight of him. Sylens ducked to the other side of the trellis, then down into the canal. Water splashed cold on his hands but did not soak through the insulated soles of his boots in the time it took for him to lever himself up the other side. Closer to the Bellowback than he wanted to be, close enough to be within the sweep of the extruded steel tail, he stabbed the lance into the Bellowback’s near eye.

The machine raised its head and roared, spilling shards of ice. Sylens ducked under its neck, rested a hand for one precarious second on the metal plate below the other eye before angling the spear and wedging the point in. He pushed down and levered out the other eye. The Bellowback turned, furious, to try to crush him between its neck and shoulders.

Sylens ran. Ice showered around him and he dodged sharp shards pelting his head. The lance heavy in his hand tipped toward the ground so he swung it up in an arc to maintain the momentum, tilting the point back at the belly of the swaying Bellowback. If he threw true and the cargo conduits exploded he could retrieve the blackened spear afterward —

Machine noises behind him forced him to look around. Footsteps slammed onto the ground and leaves from the distant treeline flew through the air as two Ravagers emerged sniffing and furious from the shadows of the forest.

Shouldn’t throw the spear.

On the other side of the field, Aloy was still working her way around a Fire Bellowback struck by ten arrows and limping. Sylens saw her hair whip across her shoulders as she turned around to see the two Ravagers.

She charged forward, tucked her lance under her arm, and pressed the sun-bright interface against the Bellowback’s flank. The override would take some heartbeats to complete, and meanwhile Sylens needed to work his way around the only barely wounded Ice Bellowback before the Ravagers did more than stare. Were there not Carja guards watching, no well-trained disciples of the Sun to provide aid? He shook his head at the idea of Kestrels clustered like eyases on the clifftops, observing.

He had not broken the Ravager’s lines of sight yet, so he headed around to try to cross the canal at the nearest bridge.

Aloy’s voice in his ear was tense and authoritative. “Go north. The Fire machine should cover you.”

He crossed the bridge as quietly as he could on the creaking planks. In the field, machines clashed with the creak and scream of stressed metal. He found himself in a maze of fields near the plateau’s southeastern wall, the lance gripped tight in his hands and a Ravager stomping on the other side of a row of beanstalks.

“West,” Aloy muttered. “I’ve got this one.”

He thought he heard the shushing pull and release of the arrows in the Focus-sound. He moved further west among the stalks. Some of the maize grew taller than he was, sharp-edged and whispering. Aloy’s breathing occasionally murmured through the Focus. How many times had she and Sylens done this, guided one another connected just by voice? Sunfall. Everything came back to Sunfall, and that shift after he hadn’t been able to hear her any more. They had started to count on one another’s voices, hadn’t they?

“Don’t take too long,” he snapped. The Ravager stepped over the canal, its legs as long as the lowest struts of the Oseram elevator.

“So impatient.” She laughed low, and he almost stumbled.

His stomach turned. “Aloy.” She might have broken the Focus connection. Hurry up, Aloy. Say my name, give me proof of this thing that changed the night after Sunfall. He was going to go mad or be eaten by a Ravager. He turned to point the lance at the approaching machine. Say my name —

Aloy whispered, “West.”

The Ravager hit the wet ground on the near side of the canal. Dirt sprayed into the air and pattered down again. Sylens planted his feet for the throw, then saw the mountainous tanks of the Fire Bellowback behind it.

The Ravager turned. Claws dug into the dirt as the Bellowback tackled the Ravager, swinging its long nose into the other machine’s chest. The Ravager held its ground, clawed with one foot in frantic scrapes against the Bellowback’s belly. Sylens took three steps forward and drove his spear into the Ravager’s chest, trying to tear down one of the vital fluid lines on the way to the load-bearing joints of the one front leg pinned by the Bellowback. The other leg kept kicking, shaking the machine dangerously toward him, but he could see pieces he recognized in the Ravager as similar to those in the Sawtooth. If he had been stripping this machine for parts on an ice field instead of here in the sun he would have pushed his weight down here —

His angle was bad because he was stabbing upward instead of down into a corpse, but the Ravager’s leg sparked and loosened on its hinge. The machine yowled, a high-pitched growl breaking into static. Sylens wrenched the spear free and took long steps back, unsure of whether the Bellowback would push the Ravager down onto where he stood or onto the nearby trellis —

Pulling the spear out at an angle destabilized the leg further, so that it fell under the Bellowback’s weight. Sylens turned away and covered his eyes, scowling as dirt and maize fell. The overridden Bellowback paused, and when the sounds of creaking and screaming steam quieted down he turned back to see the blue-wreathed machine slowly backing off the wreckage. Aloy climbed up after it, the lance slung on her back, and patted the plates on the Ravager’s back carefully before pulling herself up to crouch between the pieces.

“Sylens?”

There. The shush of the syllables echoed, trailed off while he steeled his expression.

“You must have seen how the trails are broken,” he said. She was more than observant enough for that. “These machines were disturbed from their paths and unable to return.”

Aloy’s hands flicked to her Focus. Had she been waiting to hear anything in particular from him? How strange, for her to be watching the battlefield from a clearer vantage while he fought in the middle with the machines. He had moved quickly where she told him to go, as she had done when he had lead her to Sunfall and the Alpha site and the Eclipse’s Tallneck. Such a quiet exchange, such silences —

“The Kestrels are going after the other Ravager,” Aloy said, and flung herself away, down the other side of the mountainous machine.

So, the Sundom had finally decided to help. Sylens crossed the bridge again, shaking his head at Aloy’s unstoppable level of energy. The Ice Bellowback lay in pieces on the field, blackened and trailing black smoke from its partner’s fire. Kestrels formed a half-moon around the snapping, pouncing Ravager. Aloy’s Ravager stalked forward, taking the canal in one leap. Sylens, wary, watched a tall woman, black-armored, wave the Meridian archers back toward the paths up the plateau.

Vanasha, the spy who helped Aloy recover the queen at Sunfall. An unnecessary errand, but impossible to ignore now that it has been done. Nasadi and Itamen will influence Avad, who will influence Marad, who I must try to keep from influencing me …

The Kestrels moved in practiced arrow formations back up the hill while the blue-maned Ravager broadsided the other with laserfire. Strikes stitched down its sides, lit its power cell up with sparks until the canister popped and took part of the Ravager’s shoulder with it. By the time the machined turned, the cannon and the arrows had combined to do their work. Aloy’s Ravager approached, shooting, and the other crouched and tried to come down on its foe with a desperate swipe of blackened claws before falling to pieces as it lunged. The thunderous sounds of the fight died into the tick of the living Ravager’s joints and the quiet beep of Aloy’s armor as the shield reset.

She had followed the overridden Ravager, and now patted it on the ankle before sketching something in the air with her Focus. Sylens couldn’t see the command she gave from his own Focus images, but it seemed to have repaired the Ravager’s own path. The machine padded off into the forest, headed out past the Spire and away from fields planted by Meridian’s farmers.

Aloy looked up at him. The Focus on her ear glinted slick like the metal of that terrible doorway, like the cords in the throat of a Cauldron. He could imagine her crawling from the Earth like a machine, oil in her blood as blue as the veins on the insides of her wrists — daughter of the Earth, meant to read invisible signs. She had been born to the challenges he had clawed his way into, programmed as surely as the machines — but no. He could consider his own frustration without also being galled by her victories. She insisted on her own humanity (even though to be born of a machine was a blessing, the Banuk shamans once said, and if the false spirits of the blue light lived in anyone it was in this reincarnation of Elizabet Sobek’s most ambitious future —

The other Banuk instinct he could not remove: do not shame another by offering excessive help.)

Vanasha said, “Look at this.”

Aloy and Sylens moved to her. On the muddy ground between the high plateau path and the opening of the planted fields there were tracks on the path to the east, separated from where the Kestrels had marched. The machines had been diverted from their paths, but they were not the only factor: someone had left not only deeply cut boot marks but the circle-and-dash mark of the Eclipse cut into the gate.

#Horizon Zero Dawn #writings #Aloy #Aloy/Sylens

0 notes