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onlythegoodpretzels · 15 days ago

Text

Forced Choice

Next bit of the Rost-taken-by-Carja fic I posted earlier in the month. First chapter here if you want to see it with the beginning.

As with the last one, burns and a wonky sense of self worth under the cut.

______________________________________________________________

“Nora?” Burnsetter moved so soft in his sandals that Rost barely realized he was there until he blocked out the light.

Pain prickled angry across his back. Instead of hazy and crushing, now it set him shaking, aching to move. Follow Helis. Rost was alive, and so was he. And Aloy wasn’t. He had to think, plan the hunt, find a way to kill him.

Holding still stung now, chillwater biting in.

“You’re seeing. Listening? Do you hear me?” Burnsetter leaned down. His face focused too quickly. Rost didn’t want to see Carja faces. A desperate lurch of rage stung his eyes, hitched his breathing.

No. No more questions. He wanted his oath back. Rost dug his arm into the sand, trying to lift his chest.

“No, don’t roll. Down here it’ll be worse.” Burnsetter caught his wrist. He was strong even with his shoulders hunched in. Rost grit his teeth. He felt gouged open, bare and easy for harvest. He didn’t think he could pull many more times. So instead he blinked, forcing himself to focus. Burnsetter’s garments creaked and bent, soft. Unarmored? If he could move, he would be able to dispatch this one quickly.

If he could move.

Burnsetter hissed, frustration in his curt movements. “Dirt first. Sun above, and he opened them twice! For the love of -- !” He caught Rost’s forehead. “Come on, Nora. Just a little.”

Rost tensed, a half-involuntary growl tangled in his teeth. But he allowed Burnsetter to lift his head. Choosing made it taste a little less sour. So did how slow Burnsetter moved, like he was being careful. The contrast with Helis’ frenzied blows before rattled somewhere in Rost’s neck, ready to flinch even though no swing came.

“Good.” Burnsetter let him down on something red and smooth. That slickcloth from before? Rost’s skin crawled at the unnatural texture. “Sun witness us.”

“Aah! S ---” Rost tried to recoil from the quick hands reaching under his chest and gut, but he couldn’t. He managed not to protest in words, but syllables came out anyway, sharp and hard. Burnsetter shoved, forcing him up off the ground, and Rost scrabbled. He couldn’t hold himself up! Even just lifting him this far was a threat. “Khh!” He pushed at Burnsetter’s knee. Let him down!

“Whoa! Well that’s a good sign, too.” Burnsetter barely flinched, and didn’t shift. Rost gasped, shoulder and back clawing into him from the attempt. Goddess…goddess, he couldn’t even fight a healer.

“Easy, ok, down.”

Rost couldn’t brace, only fall. But he hit down strangely slow, Burnsetter clumsily steadying him. More of the hissing cloth caught his chest and side, red spreading around him. Slick, blood colored. Surrounded. He lay there gasping, stretched and torn in places he couldn’t find.

Every time he thought All-Mother had taken everything she needed to show his shame, she took something else.

Burnsetter left him there. Rost watched his sandals hurry amid a thicket of crates and parcels and barrels hemming in the close, cluttered walls around them. From down here he could make out the small, close room. The red-draped platform in the center looked hunched and claustrophobic.

Strange. Weren’t Carja supposed to be all grandiosity about other people’s suffering?

The platform was lower than Rost had thought, and the knowledge settled sick in his stomach. So easy to reach when he was strapped to it.

Burnsetter returned with jars and a bowl, arraying them a careful arc.

Anticipatory twitches ran through Rost’s scalp, as if the actual pain wouldn’t be enough on its own. He’d never seen sear preparation, so he couldn’t be sure, but the smell was too familiar.

Burnsetter held out his hands, red-ringed with beads. The clear brown of his eyes felt unreliable after Helis’ frenzied face. “I need to work your back. It will hurt. But in the Sun’s view you earned your choice: Will you hold yourself or do I tie you?”

Rost blinked. Choose? What, like the Carja cared how they made him scream? His pulse thundered in his fingertips. Goddess he wanted to fight again, grasp for some proof he could. Do something with the rage eating in his ribs.

But he was a Nora hunter. No matter what he saw, how close the Ravager brushed to him in the grass, he had to stay in position and wait.

Rost uncurled his fingers, breathed as deep as he could, and pressed his chin into the slickcloth. He tried to look open and resigned. He could cooperate, even with Carja, if that helped his hunt.

Burnsetter hissed. “Fine. Don’t talk. Me, it won’t kill you.”

Rost hated the splash of searwater. The smell cluttered up his mouth, trying to make his retch. Still. Ripples. Let the rest go.

He should be able to do this. He was Oathbound. He’d let so much go.

He’d tell Aloy -- a new test meant new parts you needed, just like any hunt.

“Sunstrong.” Burnsetter pinned his wrist. Rost didn’t pull away. “Sun forgive our disobedience. It wasn’t this burn’s doing.”

The first wet bite hit his shoulder like a blaze arrow, the drips over his neck hot as blood. Rost howled into the slickcloth. His weakness worked for him, so even where he failed to hold completely still he didn’t pull enough to make a difference. It felt like the dirt cut streaming down, even though he couldn’t feel it on his back.

Without something in his mouth his cry sounded wrong. Too close to words.

He didn’t want Aloy’s name to get out of him.

The next splash lit up the back of his neck. Rost rocked forward, clenching his eyes shut, heaving in half-sob half-gasps. A-at least that was quieter. It felt like he was trying to dig into the ground, like it could save him.

“It’s normal to curse.” He’d stopped feeling Burnsetter’s grip on his wrist, but it resurfaced, squeezing. “Even exalted ones try to fight the Sun. You don’t have to do better.”

Curse? Rost scraped at the smooth, trying to claw. He didn’t think he could even hurt this damned weave. What curse did he know deep enough for what these Carja did?

This time the heat pressed into his back, right in the center where his breaths caught and churned. Rost couldn’t. He bucked, pain lancing up and down his spine, every part of him overwhelmed with ‘stop.’ It felt like a spark straight through him, too fast to understand, think, remember he wasn’t supposed to -- !

“Don’t tell me Nora don’t curse!” Burnsetter stopped him like it was easy, palm flat to his forehead, slowly levering him back down. Rost choked, still twitching, but the two grip points easily kept him in place. Trying dug into his back and his neck in sharp jabs, hurting more each time he couldn’t stop.

“Calm. Calm, that’s the worst of it.”

It took three tries before Rost wrestled his self control back. As soon as he had it his arm collapsed like the bones turned to water. Fighting and being so easily stopped churned low in his chest, and he fell.

Except he didn’t. Burnsetter cushioned his head, braced his chest, and he hit the ground with an odd sort of hiss from the slickcloth. Only half the force he should have. It hurt, it hurt, but it should have hurt more.

“That’s it. The rest are still closed. They won’t be as bad.” Burnsetter blurred in and out of focus, leaning close. “Good. Ok, deep breath.”

Stinging moved over Rost and he was too tired to buck now. His side. His spine. The lower reaches of his back, twitching his feet in the dirt. Wet trails meandered down his skin, over and over. Such strange rivers. It did hurt less, maybe, in the way it could rain less. You’d still be soaked eventually either way.

He should have worried how much of it didn’t feel real. But the thick sear smell blotted out the dust, and he was too tired.

No curse. At some point the pain-drunk decision clicked in place, a wire turned right. He knew of no curse to use. He would live long enough to be it.

______________________________________________________________

“It’s too early.” Burnsetter muttered, talking to himself. Rost glanced away from the featureless red drape and saw Burnsetter’s short fingers, tracing the mouth of a closed jar. Around and around, pensive. “But if he will move you anyway…”

His right arm twinged sharply. A jabbing pain. A different pain.

Rost slowly closed his fingers in the fabric. The cold before that freed his elbow enough to bend?

He swallowed, throat ragged and dry. “Tie me down.”

Burnsetter looked down at him, face drawn. Rost was too tired to parse the dark lines around his eyes for emotion. It could have been surprise or suspicion or just annoyance being interrupted and he’d have known as much as from a machine’s eyeplates. Shivers ridged up Rost’s neck as he kept going. “He won’t wait. I need…”

He needed to move. To be able to move. And he needed to understand the restraints they kept him in.

Don’t, he knew better than to try using words again. The rush of fear was disorienting after so much anger. A Carja wouldn’t care if he died, but Burnsetter seemed to care about some Sun rules. Helis opened the burns, and he was angry. Rost twisted his hand, trying to gesture backwards. “If I can move, I can protect them better.”

Burnsetter sighed, slow and light. He looked away, up at one of the sputtering candles. “Your test is extensive, Nora.”

Only if cruel healers didn’t make it it very, very short. The loss of eye contact rushed sour on Rost’s tongue. Like it wasn’t even him Burnsetter was considering. His pain, but the Sun’s choice. Hatred for the candles, this room, loomed black and thick inside him. Rost held onto it for later.

“You would rather Helis have his way with you than die of the Sun’s judgment? I’d give you an honorable burial.” Burnsetter finally looked down again. The curiosity on his face set Rost’s blood boiling.

“Yes,” Rost spat. Was that what Carja thought someone should want? To die to teach a murderer piety? Devils if he could just force them through one Nora winter, just one! Let the Goddess beat it into them. “I would.”

Burnsetter nodded and stood. “Well, you are Burned. Until the Sun says otherwise, the choice is yours.” He pulled bright red rope out of a basket, piling it on the platform like bloody braids. “Not how I’d choose, pain for pain.”

Rost bit back anything he might say about Carja and what they knew about pain. But Aloy’s hair had been bloody when he held her, and he could still feel her sag against his grip, weaker than he felt right now. So Rost watched the ropes and rested. They were heavy and bright, no signs of fraying or water damage. They were dyed, probably purpose-braided for this spectacle. The thought twisted his stomach.

“But, then, I’ve known the Exalted Champion…long enough.” Burnsetter shook his head as he crouched, keeping the ropes carefully out of the dirt on the drape with Rost. Rost grit his teeth, bracing not to flinch away from them. Maybe it was his imagination but they smelled like sear.

Instead of treating each of Rost’s legs separately, Burnsetter lashed them together at the ankle. Moving them into position dragged jabs of pain out of Rost’s lower back, but Burnsetter seemed to guess them, pausing each time Rost was about to hiss. If Rost had wanted proof he was too weak to fight, Burnsetters hands on him in his blindspot not even driving him to pull was more than enough.

“That’s not awful.” Burnsetter shuffled, kneeling by Rost’s head. Rost scowled at the lick of slickcloth around his wrist. But the texture let the line slide, still with some play even as Burnsetter added more unfamiliar knots to the cuff. Rost tested his finger motion. Could he maybe twist?

“Stop.” Burnsetter pressed on his knuckles, pinning the fingers down. “I’d rather not add joint locks, but I will.”

He definitely didn’t want to know what that was. Rost froze.

“Thank you.” Burnsetter tugged the cuff, pressure rough and precise. The feeling of being a spear on a workbench surfaced again, intensified by the slow loss of his ability to move. The Carja had so many paths to to treat people like things. Rost focused on the ground under him, its hard packed pressure up through the slickcloth. It wasn’t as good as water, but it helped him when the Goddess’ will demanded he accept. He’d found it with his knees enough times.

It felt worse without his greaves.

Burnsetter crossed to the platform, unwinding rope each step. When he drew the slickcloth drape back, a chiseled edge flickered stony in the candle-cast. Small pinpoints of metal glinted. Wrought iron rings?

Burnsetter fastened the rope to the metal. The heavy immobility of it in Rost’s wrist was familiar. This was the anchor that held him for sears.

He could find a way to use that.

Burnsetter was back too fast, nudging his other arm. Rost hissed, accidentally pulling at the other cuffs as he tried to help. Not because it hurt less; the tearing in his shoulder jabbed just as deep. He didn’t want to give up the little freedom he had any faster than he needed.

Because he needed to. He needed to do this.

“This is the best I have.” Burnsetter knelt next to him. His proximity ached in the burning center of Rost’s spine, the wounds prickling in sharp awful waves. He couldn’t see the his face. He couldn’t turn his head enough.

His pulse thudded in his sternum, aching against the ground.

This time the cuff at his wrist dragged him back. Rost could barely make out the edge of a red loop around Burnsetter’s knee. As Burnsetter shifted, the motion tugged into Rost’s arm. He’d tied Rost to him.

“Not ideal, I know. Don’t try to hurt me. They’ll forbid me feeding you.” The jar clacked. Rost twitched, a kind of desperate laugh bubbling queasy in his chest. He choked it down into a shuddering cough. If he weren’t burned, the things he could do to someone this unbalanced, even without a weapon.

It hurt. He didn’t try.

“As you said.” Burnsetter settled his weight, nudging Rost’s arm back. “No time to wait.”

Clinging cold stabbed into Rost’s lower back. Not like searing. Slow waves of kneading pressure, sharp pain that burst and congealed into a deeper aching underneath. He hadn’t known he could feel anything else under the skin screaming.

He…he didn’t want to feel it. It felt like reaching through, like it might catch his insides.

Then it moved. Rost gasped, fighting the ropes despite himself, as the crushing feeling moved a careful path along his hipbone. The ropes felt rough and sharp even through the wraps.

“Good.” The kneading stopped. Rost slumped, full-body shaking. But the cold lingered somehow embedded, raw and biting. Breathing into it felt heavy.

W-wait.

Rost forced himself not to flinch away from the choked edge that he hadn’t been able to breath past since waking. His gut coiled, anticipating the pain. His sides were just as strained and stretched as before. But --

But stinging erupted through his back instead of blazing fire. And he could -- he could take a deeper breath!

Burnsetter’s sigh shook him out of his stupor. Frigid sweat prickled on Rost’s arms. “This hurts more than it should. I’m sorry, Nora.”

This time, Rost felt hands through the cold spearing into his side. He couldn’t make himself breathe into them, the pain like a shock into his chest. Burnsetter kneaded up, cold gnawing into Rost’s mangled skin. Rost dug his face into the ground, teeth grit. It had a smell, sharp and murky in his mouth. Sting lingered cruel in the path of the touch.

It felt like being a blade on a whetstone.

“But it will -- it should help.” The ointment had a rich mutter when Burnsetter paused to gather more. Rost forced his jaw to unlock. He could understand what was happening this close. It shouldn’t be worse.

But he could feel the hand on his spine, pain crackling all the way into his lungs as it dug in. Pinned, scream knotting in his chest.

Again, when Burnsetter pulled away a fraying tearing feeling lingered. Small, constant, like a thousand tiny splinters. The burn sear was blunter. Less like a blade stabbed in. The pain migrated slow. A machine on one of Aloy’s routes. Up his side. Across his spine. Down again.

The more of him it touched, the more parts of him filled with needles. The slickcloth wouldn’t scratch the way he needed it to when he dug his face into it. Lightheadedness fuzzed at his vision, everything slanted and red.

He -- he wasn’t bleeding. Or…he shouldn’t be?

Red, a line across the sun-splattered floor.

“Nora?” Something tugged his wrist. “You still with me?”

He would never be with them. Rost choked down a short shred of air.

“I can’t do this if you pass out.”

Red. Rope. His pinned, useless arm. The Carja Burnsetter, knee holding him down. Rost blinked sweat out of his eyes. He turned his wrist, feeling the shift in the rope, and the bones behind it. Everything was simple, then. He had to stay awake.

He signed the ‘go’ hunting signal. Hopefully his hand wasn’t shaking too badly for it to show.

“Ha. Alright.” Burnsetter sounded relieved, so Rost must be really drifting. He blinked dully at the rope snaking under the platform across the room, trying to understand the sounds over him. The stone peeked past the drape, tugged by Rost’s trembling. Under the needling agony, something nagged him.

An anchor like that…ornate…purpose-made. It couldn’t have been in this mess of a chamber originally.

The pressure worked into his shoulder, and Rost howled. The ropes hissed around him, biting all at once. As the slow kneading moved down onto his arm, the distinct fingers began to register, the drag and push of them as they dug into his skin. By the time Burnsetter reached his elbow Rost heaved and tremored, drenched with sweat, barely able to think of anything else.

What felt like cruel gouging in his back was barely a brush at the edge of the wound, quick and sure in his unbroken skin. Fingertips skimmed down the crook of the joint, below the burn. “Not too low…” Burnsetter muttered. “Near the outer edge…no infection.” His touch throbbed, but Rost knew that must be him, the slow pulse of the wound.

Dizzy, unwelcome dislocation swept over him. Last time…last time someone felt along a pain edge like this, it had been Aloy. Aloy’s fingers, her unfollowable mutters from her Old World tool. He’d held his tongue then, too, swallowing the pain-sharp demand for her to take it off. At least take it away.

He’d let her keep it. That was his burden to bear. Scrounger claws or no.

Rost choked. D-devils. He wanted to hear it again. So badly.

Burnsetter twitched away. “Easy.” He sighed. “All right. That’s all I can do.”

The tingling ate over Rost in sharp arcs, triggered each time he breathed. He blinked past the tear-blur. T-that wasn’t as much of him as a sear burned. Not his neck or his left shoulder.

Burnsetter watched him. The sharp attention made Rost curl his fingers, the sensation of someone behind his back eating in.

Usually he didn’t remember sears ending.

“Good.” The rope pinning Rost’s wrist spat him loose. He froze, fingers aching. H-had he been pulling? He hadn’t thought so. “Good…I wasn’t sure that would work.” The other ties snapped loose, red chiming tongues hissing in the dust. And Burnsetter was up, moving around him. Rost shuddered, feeling surrounded all over again. The sensation dragged his knees against the hissing cloth.

W-wait. His---his knees? He could shift his legs? The tingling flared agonizingly, sharp individual stabs all across his lower back. It hurt. Goddess, it hurt, but it didn’t stop him. Rost gasped, scrambling. His arms trembled but obeyed him. The tearing feeling was blunted when it gnashed into his side. He could move!

“Whoa, slow down!”

Hands on his wrist. Rost snarled, dragging against it. Let him get up! He had to get out of here!

He managed to startled Burnsetter back, but as soon as he tried to lift his chest the white searing pain burst out of his neck and upper back. Rost shrieked, clawing at the slippery surface. No, please! He was so…so close! Pain curled him down, sparking through his neck. Sh-shit…

“Wait!” Burnsetter, hands on Rost’s chest, catching him before he fell. “Wait, with just one treatment, it won’t be enough on its own.” Rost panted, trying desperately to growl, get the Carja hands off him. “I couldn’t even do the upper half, the burns aren’t closed.”

No effect. He was too trapped to recoil. Rost flinched as Burnsetter set one hand under his jaw and the other flat on his sternum. “Slow, ok? It’ll only work slow. With me. Try again.”

A-again. How many days had it been since he told Aloy that in the Sawtooth pit? Not knowing welled tears of rage in his eyes.

Rost tore a creature-sound from low in his chest and pushed. The tug of thousands of stabs along his back felt like the scrape of lake ice, hungry for blood no matter where it touched. Burnsetter pushed with him, forcing his chest and neck straight instead of buckled. The force hurt in his jaw, enough for Rost to grit his teeth.

He could feel his legs through the needles. His arms screamed but answered him. Whatever Burnsetter had done, the pain bent now, instead of bending him.

Rost heaved broken gasps and collapsed on his knees. I-it worked…

“Yes!” Burnsetter’s astonishment nicked at Rost’s anger. “That’s earlier than anyone’s tried, Nora!” Not enough. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t fight. Rost groaned, trying to parse through the overwhelming overlap of grip pain and burn pain and moving pain. If…if this was all he had tomorrow, he’d be useless!

He…he wasn’t all the way on the ground. He was slumped, but he was…sitting? He dug his hands into the slickcloth and tried to look up.

The platform. He could see it, as Burnsetter’s feet moved around it. It was heavy wood, with bolts like it might be reinforced with metal. Carja glyphs carved in its edge. Rost shuddered, even though it hurt. He…didn’t want to know more about it.

Burnsetter paused two paces away, watching, his face distant and painted. “They really must do something to you in the Savage lands, that you can endure this…”

Rost closed his eyes tight. He knew plenty of what the Goddess could do to someone unworthy. If the Carja Sun were to kill him, it would only be on her terms.

Footsteps closer. “Here.”

Rost started, and groaned at the jolt it dragged out of him. Burnsetter stood too close, looming over him. He tried to look up, but his neck speared alight at the motion, forcing him down, rushing his breathing ragged. All he could see was Burnsetter’s hand, offering three small balls of charred yellow fluff. “You need to eat while you’re up.”

Food. The warm smell hit Rost like a punch, completely unfamiliar and so clearly edible his mouth watered miserably and he started to shiver. Sudden crumpling pain from his stomach competed with his back. Rost lurched forward automatically.

And regretted it, jarring to howling stop as his back stabbed him, his ribs twisting. Punishing him. N-no!

“No, keep your head still!” Burnsetter sounded shaky. “You…you need to find where it lets you move…”

It was like his body was fighting him. Rost grated out a mangled sound, trying to move anything separate from the starving rush shaking in his limbs.

A-a test. Burnsetter wanted to know what a screaming savage could do.

Rost flinched. There it was again, blurring his vision. He felt Lansra’s gaze biting into his back. Needling impatience as he carried Aloy past her. Automatically shielding the child wit his body, even as he scolded himself -- Lansra wasn’t watching to punish her mistakes. It was his. He’d made it. She was right to remind him…

Hunger gouged him, and he forced himself to breathe. He would always pass the Goddess’ tests. Penance for the one he failed.

His arms felt steel-coiled, wired to the ground. Rost lifted them anyway. He could only move them together. Any tilt felt like a slash straight across his back. But if he accepted the awful stinging, he could defy the dragging weight, and reach. Slow, shaking so badly it felt like watching someone else’s fingers reacting to his directions.

He bumped Burnsetter’s hand, and has a split second panic. There was no way he could grab.

But Burnsetter set the bites in his palm, deft and fast. And they were so warm Rost forgot he was afraid. D-don’t move…he thought about holding his chin perfectly still. Lining up a shot. Don’t breathe. Don’t duck or tilt. So miserably painful as he dragged his hands to his mouth. He shook so violently trying to focus his vision hurt dimly in his face.

But he could reach.

Rost moaned, hiccuping he swallowed the puff balls so fast. They were warm and grainy, the strange taste mild and fading. Biting something that gave, that had heat in it instead of hard splintering edge made him whimper. Gone almost before he tasted them, so easy to swallow it let him shocked and trembling.

Rost slumped, arms too heavy to hold up anymore. Panting, giddy from the aftertaste. Goddess he was starving. He could -- he could eat!

“Incredible…” Somehow Burnsetter was crouched in front of him now. Rost weaved, too tired to try to lean away. Water sound called up thirst in his gut like a machine on a lure. He moaned again, blinking in the blur. H-he didn’t even know how to fall now, the burns a tense and choking net across his back. He--he couldn’t…

“Easy.” Butnsetter caught his arm just below the burn. “I won’t make you spill everywhere. That was enough.”

Rost flinched from a cold edge brushing his jaw. Burnsetter let go of his arm and held his chin instead. “Drink?”

W-what?

Blinking dumbly, Rost let Burnsetter lift the bowl to his mouth and pour. Rost gulped messily, wincing at the bitter taste, choking when he forgot to pause to gasp. W-was that salvebrush making him hazy? Or was he too seared not to be?

By the time Burnsetter lowered the bowl, lightheadedness softened the edges of Rost’s vision. Clouds, flickering just out of sight. After-hunt exhaustion. No escaping it, no matter how long you chose to push into it. It would swallow you.

He’d never been this hurt with that hovering over him. Rost shuddered, dread deep in his bones. Small pathetic noises kept slipping out of him. He couldn’t help it! He could move. He could! But something else in him was trapped and broken. And if he didn’t fix it, fast…

He had to be able to strike. He had no other purpose now!

Burnsetter crouched, arm held between them. “Lean. I’ll help you.”

S-stupid. Rost coughed, the force scraping across him in needling waves. Even like this, he could probably hurt someone. At least enough to mean something. He was a Nora brave, even if a broken disgrace of one…

But until he could finish his hut, he didn’t get to care about that. Burnsetter had food. Had water. Could make him scream and needle his burns until they loosened enough to move. Rost needed everything he had.

It had been been so many winters since he’d had any pride. The Goddess cut it out when he left her.

So why did it still hurt?

Everything hurt…

Rost thought about holding his neck straight as he set his head against Burnsetter’s shoulder. He shivered as Burnsetter’s hand dug into his gut. How easily the man could reach his back and its easy searing pain. His arms still moved when he tried. His grip was weak, but Burnsetter’s robes had loops that caught his faltering thumbs.

Burnsetter took his elbow in his other hand. “Good. Now.”

When he lifted pain reared white hot in Rost’s shoulders, and he screamed. It felt like he was melded to the floor, his back trying to tear in two. He clung, stumbling without any awareness of his feet, his entire chest a cracked wound.

F-falling?

Thud.

The platform creaked under Rost’s hands and knees. He weaved, dangerously close to blacking out. He -- he couldn’t -- no air came when he tried to breathe ---

“That’s it. That’s it…”

Warm. Pull across his chest. Bracing him. Rost managed a moan as the pressure shifted, unlocking his lungs only to settle searing in his shoulders. T-too much. He c-couldn’t… Words bled out. “N-not…c-can’t…”

Panic strangled him. Stop, don’t talk! Talking made everything worse! He’d tried to explain to Aloy, she couldn’t speak to him. Anything he said -- he wasn’t -- !

“Okay, okay. Come on, Nora, let’s get you down. The burns I seared need to close.” The hands on Rost fluttered, confusing number of places too fast. His face. His sides. His shaking hands. Words, too many words. Rost barely understood them before more rattled in. “I’ll see range of motion tomorrow, see if I can treat…”

Down. Down was the important word.

Rost let himself slump toward his hands. How long had it been since he wanted to curl this badly? He…he remembered Aloy doing it when she fell too far, bruised black training.

He…he hoped it hadn’t hurt this much.

He never felt hitting down.

#whumptober2024 #no.23 #forced choice #horizon zero dawn #fic #burns #forced medical care #my stories #whump #rost #hzd rost #captivity #tw: burns #hzd

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onlythegoodpretzels · 28 days ago

Text

Burnsetter

Ha well I was going to draw for Whumptober but NOPE instead I fell in love with HZD and HFW and now all I want to do is write fanfic.

So here's a whumpy Rost-survives-the-proving scenario. Burns and a wonky sense of self worth under the cut.

I'm on A03 here if you want to see the further installments as I post them there.

Start

Hurt.

It hurt!

F-fire. Burning in his ribs. His mouth. His --

“Snow! Bring snow!”

The fire speared down into his back.

Aloy! Where was Aloy!

______________________________________________________________

Screaming.

Rost came to already screaming. Drowning, fighting for air. Pain covered him like a blizzard. Everywhere. Impenetrable. Buried.

Something scraped his face. Rough, cold. Suddenly he had a face, something not just the blot-out pain. Rost recoiled, or tried to. But even that much motion dragged him back into the whiteout, barely hearing his hoarse scream.

“--ra. Nora!”

Sharp stinging pulled him out. Force on his head, wrenching until awful light seared his eyes. A shadow loomed in the burning, someone close.

Hand. A hand pressed his jaw, digging in his beard. More of him registered as he slumped. Heavy something pinned his hands together. Enormous, devouring pain gripped him from behind. The figure’s face flickered red.

They dragged him. Rost’s vision spattered dark. It hurt.

“Drink, Nora.” Hard edge at his mouth. “Or die. Your choice.”

Red. Wrong. Not --- A-Aloy! Where was -- !

A tug and he was drowning again, but this time for real, choking, cold trails on his neck. The spasms lit his bones on fire, every gasp wrenching the awful swallowing thing clenched over him. C-couldn’t…breathe…

But clawing just as deep, desperate thirst he’d never felt before. N-no. He needed -- he needed to find her. He… Even choking, Rost gulped the cold down, each motion dragging him deeper and deeper into the white.

He was back in the drifts when the water stopped. Swallowing still, maybe screaming still, if the pain in him sounded like it felt. The grip pinning him vanished. So did he, buried under.

Chapter 1

Chime.

M-mother’s breath, it hurt. It smothered him. He barely had flashes of anything else. Rough hands that angered it. Rattling light that stung it. Water, forcing him to swallow, anger it again.

Chime.

That sound. N-not wood. Metal?

N-no, the knife -- Aloy!

Rost lurched alert to stabbing pain in his side. Blade-pain, recognizable, not like the crushing agony that still choked him. He gasped, trying to reach for it, hold the weapon before the man tore it out. Before he lost, before Aloy ---

His arms snapped to a stop and the white pain crackled up, threatening to swallow him. When he coughed, something hard jabbed at his teeth. A-and he remembered -- he had lost. He’d crawled to her there, bleeding in the snow!

Stab again. Sharp. Small. Rost grit his teeth on the hard edge, fury black and dark in his chest. Enough to brace, try to get his hands under him, make them stop.

Force snapped into his wrists and legs, holding him prone. Worse, fresh pain reared out from it and layered into the rest, gnawing in. Trying to bury him under again.

Sharp. Stab.

No! No, he wasn’t going to let them…!

Rost couldn’t breathe deep. But he tried for holding his breath, clawing through the white for things that weren’t pain, weren’t fire. He -- he had…he had to…stay awake!

Pressure at his wrists. Feet. Fiber hiss. Clammy heat pressed under him. Wood smoke, but acrid. Flowers? Burning?

Rope, creaking.

The stab had a tug. A drag in his skin. And rope pinned his limbs, forcing him facedown in the hot floral haze.

A sudden hand closed in his hair, pulling his head down. “Don’t.” Footsteps with muffled edges from close walls. “Kick at me again and I’ll save us all the time.” That a-accent. Carja!

Rost coughed, testing the tension. Had he kicked? Carja deserveD that and worse! Mother’s breath they lied.

The shift jostled the wedge in his mouth and something slid near his ear. Wood. It was wood. The grain scraped his tongue as he tried to growl. He couldn’t move it. Leather ties threaded through it, forcing it in place between his teeth.

Stab. Sting. Stitches. Someone was stitching the wound that awful stranger left, where he’d gouged Aloy’s blood deep into him. Rost panted, finding his fists, trying to pull. Carja. That murderer wore Carja colors under his black-tar plates. The curve of that knife, the twist of it in him, the cruel rip on its way out all bubbled up, memories fighting for feeling under the sewing pain. Hot fingers on him there, threading into his skin, set everything screaming to roll away.

Chime-chime.

The ropes didn’t give. His captor dragged his head up. “Nora, what did I ---”

Rost didn’t hear more. The tug at his neck opened the gates, a jagged crack of pain spearing from it all the way down his spine. White haze crashed over him, scream rattling in his ears, the world smoky and gone.

Not submerged fully. The same pain jagged in his neck when came to, wet, burning, and raw. His howling garbled around the gag, and dimp pulsing pain strung every part of him together. The ropes held him steady as much as they held him down.

“Please, Exalted, he’s secure enough now.” Rost flinched when fingertips touched his wrist. He recoiled but couldn’t move. “I used these ties on you for your anointment. It won’t happen again.

Ties?

Rost’s pulse thrummed in his mouth. What sacrifice started with gagging him, stitching his closed? None. Carja sacrifices didn’t receive anything before their ends. And they were supposed to beg the Sun’s mercy and be denied.

What did they want?

Chime.

That…that sound. It happened each time he tried to move. Even with just one hand on him, he could barely slow his slump against the grip in his hair. It stung. Everything hurt. He could barely breathe. Stop. Kill him, he didn’t care, but stop playing.

Chimechime.

“I accept the Sun’s purification, Burnsetter Mallah.” A hard, hungry voice. Rost bit down on the gag, bracing for what he couldn’t see. “Not like this savage. Look!” But instead of a blade or a blow, the whiteout lunged up, sudden exploding pain from behind him. Rost twitched, choking, waves of red-hot, blue-hot, no-stop crashing through him. Every part of him shook and sweat seared down his face and it kept going.

Until…until the pain retreated in slow, reluctant pulses, coiling smaller and smaller. Until it centered in his right shoulder, in pressure dug in, fingers dug in. Fingers that somehow made him quake and howl. H-how? What did they do to him?

“Exalted.” Something pulled the fingers back, leaving sharp aching relief and a stinging shadow. “No one can match your piety. Let alone a creature of the dark.” Above him, Rost could make out two blurred forms. Dark metal. Red beads. “And still, the Sun cannot be stopped. He alone chose this Nora to purify or not.”

Chills scraped up Rost’s arms even under the heat. Carja purification. That was the last sort of thing he ever wanted to know about. He thought everyone not their own blood was only food for their blazing god.

“Now we do the rites and see what else he chooses.”

Rost breathed, trying to find some part of him moved. He couldn’t just let them…

Someone growled. “Wait quickly, then!” Heavy footsteps rattled up into him. Rost winced, trying to catch a glimpse of the shadow on its way by. Flickering light pressed dizzy on the wall, much too close. Lantern light.

The gust of a tent flap parting felt hot and dust-laced.

He froze, a hard core of dread pressing in his ribs. He wasn’t in Nora land now. Now he was sure. How far had they taken him?

Did they have Aloy? Was she alive?

A hand loomed toward his face. “I suppose that woke you for sure.” Rost flinched away, eyes watering from the sting in his neck. A Carja swam into focus, an arc of machine spines jagged around his face. Black marks trailed from his eyes like wires. The Carja leaned closer, and Rost blinked, dizzy. He-he must be raised, on a platform, maybe? The ropes chimed again, afraid. S-stop sh-shaking.

“There you are.” The Carja frowned. Maybe he could see the hatred in Rost’s face. This wasn’t the one who slit Aloy’s throat, but the rest wore masks. He could have been there. That was something to hold onto, keep the grazer-flee panic under wraps until Rost could get loose.

Something shifted in the Carja’s face. “Hmm. Maybe that’s why the Sun chose to test you. We know little of what your people burn with.” He set a small ball down by Rost’s head. Carved designs in the wood crisscrossed so small Rost couldn’t follow them. “I am Burnsetter Mallah. This is the Second Sear. You know what that is?

Reflex, so fast it cut some of the fear. Even in this much pain, Rost held to his ripples through the question. The cold water in the snowmelt streams, loud enough to drown out the loud questions of the Embrace forest. He wasn’t an answer. He let words wash past him and he stayed still. Silent. Ripples, spreading forever away, and he let them go. They weren’t for him.

Don’t react.

These were Carja. His oath wasn’t for them. But neither was he. Holding still hurt less. He’d give them nothing.

Burnsetter nodded, like silence wasn’t completely surprising from someone with wood tied over their tongue. “No. Or you don’t know the High Tongue. Doesn’t matter.” He reached for Rost’s head. Wood grinding in his mouth, Rost leaned away. His growl broke around the gag when the Carja ran fingers across his scalp. It felt too much like edge-finding on a downed quarry’s body. “Sun-willing, you won’t remember much of this. If you survive.”

Rost dragged at the ties again, but they chimed and held. He had no choice. He’d find out what a sear was whether he wanted to or not.

“Yes. The Sun covers everything, your fear included. Everyone feels it at this step.” Burnsetter pulled a cord forward. It tugged at the straps holding the gag, attached to them behind his head. Burnsetter threaded it into the wooden ball, which rang a low harsh crack from some metal clapper in its core.

When Burnsetter stood, the ball clacked again, marking Rost’s jerky twitch trying to keep him in view. Chimes and clacks. Like his flinches were pulled so large anyone could see them. He felt surrounded by the dull, overwhelming murmur in the air, making it hard to hear Burnsetter’s steps. Mother’s Heart had never felt this much like being hunted.

Water hissed in a stone vessel, close but out of sight. Rost swallowed convulsively, throat sand-dry around the block.

He had to find Aloy. Whatever happened.

“Sun that sees all, even in shadows. Today we witness your demands and answer them.” Burnsetter’s tone dropped to the same reverent one the Matriarchs used. Goddess, the Carja god was watching? He only watched for slaughter. Rost threw himself against the ropes, but all he managed was a dull clang somewhere under him before the choking pain lit up blaze-hot. The awful crushing scream of his back was too much. He couldn’t pull.

“This and the pain after witness your mark on us.” Wet fabric nudged Rost’s cheek. Its smell pierced jagged, like the pain made it sharper. “We offer them to you. Show us your might. And if you choose, your favor.”

H-hintergold flower? W-what?

“Well met, Nora. Sun’s luck.”

Pulsing, blinding sparks tore through his neck. Clawed out, like a machine’s light. Rost shouted so he wouldn’t scream, suddenly glad for something to bite. Dimly he felt impacts and rough texture scraping unbearably in the white-blot-pain. Drips slid down his neck but he couldn’t feel them start. The heat, the choking. It-it wasn’t on him, it was in him.

A pause. A faint splash. The pain came again, stabbed down lower.

Rost wanted to howl, but he swallowed it down.

Memory tore up instead. A blow of sound and force like a Strider kick. Heat so white-hot it swallowed everything else. An incorporeal spear hurling him into the white sky, white snow, alight like a proving lantern, until scream-melt snow was all he knew.

Floral smell choked him, forgetting how to breathe past the garbled weight on his tongue. Dragging him back. Pressure set his left shoulder on fire all over again, every tiny tremor like being skinned alive. Rost panted, trying to hold the writhing thing in his throat that wanted to get out. He-he didn’t want to give the Carja Sun what he wanted.

The-the blast. Sun marks. It hadn’t killed him, it had done this.

Burnsetter moved slow. The cloth splashed back in its basin. It--it couldn’t be touching him. But Rost still heaved and hurt, something stinging and rough lingering in its wake. Something in the -- they must be burns?

Again. Slow, melting heat, at the top of his arm. The drips bled down over him to the platform, thick with wound smell. His vision blurred dangerously. A-All mother, it hurt! He -- he couldn’t -- he tried to fight even though he couldn’t.

Chime! Clack!

He flinched when real skin-feeling burst through the crushing heat. Tapping at his knuckle, hard. “Turn your head. The sun forgets we need to breathe.” Anger reared out somewhere far below fear and pain. Help? Help him or help their bloody sun?

He didn’t have time to snarl. The next press speared into his back and it devoured him. White-enormous, burning, no -- the knife! Rost twisted, trying to reach it, but he couldn’t! And it moved, fell again. The snow burned. He was fighting and burning and --- he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t -- Someone screamed.

A-Aloy, no!

“Nora!”

Calling. A blow to his hand, someone kicking him down in the snow. N-no, st-stop. He -- he couldn’t get up. He had too - !

“So much!” Wait…not a kick. Too soft, tapping on his hand. Someone wrestled his face out of the snow. Rost coughed, but balked, choking, when it tore something in his back. C-couldn’t… “The Sun demands so much of you. Come on, breathe!”

The snow was…was on him. Not under. And it burned too deep to be cold. Something jabbed his tongue. Hard. Wood. The room, the ropes, the Carja slammed down over him like downpour. Burnsetter held his head, pushing his jaw wide enough for space around the block. Enough to gasp, sputtering and shaking.

Chime chime chime.

He’d screamed. It had been him. Shame wired tight in Rost’s chest.

“That’s it. You won’t breathe trying to stay quiet.” Fingernails dug into his cheek. The rough surface pain, stark and clear through the burning, tore a quiet sound out of Rost’s grip. S-stop. It hurt enough!

But then he was gasping, quivering, and the half-there whimpers wouldn’t stop. Like the first cry opened a river in his mouth ready to drown him when he tried to block it. Rost bit the gag, tremoring, as Burnsetter let him go. “Good. I can’t tie your neck. The Sun claimed there.”

Water splash, with the same bitter smell. Rost flinched, and the pain slithered out in a low creature moan. Shit he sounded like a dying thing.

“Try to follow the chimes.”

The chimes were too loud. Constant. Chime chime chime. Rost hadn’t felt shame in so long he barely recognized it. He didn’t want to die for Carja entertainment, but like this? Trussed and seared from the inside out?

“We still have a long way to go.”

Water splash, with the same bitter smell. Rost flinched, and the pain slithered out in a low creature moan.

Then it began again. The burning dug into his side, and Rost tried not to scream. Instead it slid out strange, the creak of dying machine. He’d never felt like one like this. Carved out and mined. Time bled, sluicing over him stinging. Slow chiming as the fire swallowed more and more of him, hooking into his chest, his arms, his spine. It must be dug into his spirit by now.

Carja were the only people who harvested pain. How much more…did they want…before they were done!?

At some point Rost screamed. He clawed at the platform, desperate. No warning, no way to know where Burnsetter would sear him next. All he could do was hurt.

At some point he couldn’t, each horse attempt grating broken in him. Unable to stop but unable to hear himself now. Pulse stampeding in his ears, like the sound dammed there unable to escape. He couldn’t feel his hands. His face. Anything that wasn’t burning.

Digging. Searing. Deep deep into the root of his spine. Everything blotted too hot and heavy to move, to blink.

A-all Mother, p-please --

H-he was empty. Tainted. Taken. The Goddess wouldn’t save him.

P-please -- !

But Aloy. Everything they carved out of him was one more they didn’t take from him. Please. Please protect her.

______________________________________________________________

“---so you didn’t bite through your tongue.”

Loud. Too loud. The air thick with gasping, overloud voices. He -- he felt -- split, every breath a sharp knife through his chest. Rost shuddered, trying to see. Everything felt sluggish, heavy. Crushed.

Fingers on his face. His ear. Pressure shifting in his mouth. Something hissed at the back of his neck.

“There. Calm.” A hand pinned his chin. Something tugged at the corners of his mouth. Rost coughed, a flash of pain in the base of his jaw, before the hard awful edge on his tongue pulled loose. It was gone! He could breathe! Tears and spit itched across his face as he worked his jaw, tremoring. W-why was he still alive? That hadn’t been to kill him?

“Nora, stay awake.” Harsh, sharp pain dug into his forehead. Fingernail. Rost winced, a tiny angry ember flickering in the exhaustion. S-stop h-hurting… Too much hurt already. Breathing. Thinking. The wooden block hazed into focus too close to him on the platform and he was too weak to flinch away from it. Blood spattered one of its corners. Red beads melded in farther back. The anger snuffed out, flame underwater, but it was enough to drag him closer to the surface.

“Come on. You didn’t survive Second Sear to die starved by those brutes.” A face rippled into form above him. Burnsetter’s soot smears. Carja. Burnsetter held a dripping cloth between them. “Drink.”

Rost grit his teeth. Even the tiny moment stabbed into the back of his neck, gummed up his eyes with pain tears. T-too much. D-don’t give them what they want.

Burnsetter had dark eyes, firelight clawing in the edges as he leaned close. Crackling pain ran through Rost in waves, aching to pull away but physically unable to. “Drink or you’ll die. You want Helis to succeed in your kill?”

S-succeed?

Sudden awareness bit vicious in his wrists, the rope strangling and scraping still. Cold, snow, strangling him, holding him down. The snow had bound him just as tightly on them mountain. Down among the boots, the shouts, cold seeping into him to swallow him. “Burn it all.”

The voice over him, as he choked and bled. The man who’d attacked Aloy.

He had a name?

Rage hurt. It bent Rost’s ribs, pulsed in his back. And he needed it. He clung to it, pulled himself out of the cold enough to snatch the fabric, bite into it as hard as he could. No. No, he couldn’t die yet. Not while that man was alive.

Bitter taste stung his gums. S-salvebrush? Rost forced it down and winced through the next rush across his tongue. It was…harder than it should be. The choking white wound in his neck tried to stop him each time.

“That’s it.” When Burnsetter tugged, Rost let go, surprised by how hard he panted with it gone. Just this was almost too much? He…how bad was it…? When Burnsetter offered the cloth again, Rost took it without growling. The liquid oozed down his cheek as he drank slowly, too weary to swallow without resting between.

“Almost there.” This time when he let go Rost slumped, breathing shallow. Just like a winter hunt. Don’t take in too much air too fast, it’ll freeze you. You have to be ready.

“Here. Don’t bite.” Fingers prodding at his mouth. Rost flinched, growling, but even though he bared his teeth he didn’t try to use them. He had to cooperate enough to survive this. To not have given their Sun enough suffering to be finished.

With a strange practiced twist, Burnsetter reached just far enough into his mouth to scrape a soft smear onto his teeth. “Can you swallow?”

Sweet? Rost froze, a sudden crushing wave of hunger barreling through every part of him. He whined, gulping down as much as he could unstick. Honey!

Burnsetter chuckled. “Strong ‘yes’. Hunger’s a good sign, though probably it doesn’t feel like it right now.”

Rost shuddered. He was too tired not to open his mouth, sick with awful churning hope in his stomach. Goddess it hurt. How - how long since he’d eaten?

Burnsetter left another gob on his tongue. Rost held rigidly still, afraid if he breathed he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from trying to catch more or follow. Only once he could close his mouth, slump gasping through the taste, did he lick the sweet off his teeth, quivering.

“No more. Later, if you keep it down.”

If…if he…Pain and hunger closed over him, knitting together. Rost shuddered, struggling against them. He…he’d already lost so many answers. A-Aloy was…where was…?

Hard wood nudged back into his mouth. Too heavy for him to fight, like the rest of the hazy dark.

He couldn’t.

It took him.

Chapter 2

There were many sears, Rost learned in flashes and jolts. They were to clean and close the wounds, or that’s what Burnsetter said. He drifted from burn to burn, scream to scream, short broken moments of water or sweet in his mouth between the taste of wood. For a while that’s all he had.

But only a little while. Slowly, more slithered in. Sounds in the air changing to voices he could understand. Ache from the rope points even beneath the disturbingly smooth fabric Burnsetter wrapped there. Awareness that he was stripped, his skin bare and chilled where it was whole, and the way that made him shudder.

Facts he could use when he woke desperate and confused: the pain was burns. The Carja took him. They tied him here to hurt.

“Burnsetter, it’s time. No more waiting!”

That voice? Hearing it sent lightening through Rost’s chest, goosebumps ridging excruciating across his back. How did he know it? He’d been laying still as he could, trying to spare the rope points at his wrists and ankles more drag. But now he twisted, trying to see.

“Exalted, it’s been barely three days.” Burnsetter’s red robe blocked him. Fingers fidgeted on his wrist, like he was a bow to work on. “The burns have barely sealed. It’s too soon.”

“You know nothing of soon.” Marching metal snarled around the platform. A soldier? “Every day banished from Meridian my blood boils.” A airy hiss and the room darkened. A lantern, snuffed out. “The Shadow demands what even the Sun can’t.”

Wait.

“Untie the savage, Burnsetter.”

Rost’s heartbeat thudded in his burns, fast and throbbing. Burn it all. The murderer. The one who attacked Aloy. What he wouldn’t give for his spear.

Burnsetter paused at one of the knots. “Helis, I’m not even sure he speaks Carja.”

As if this monster cared, had cared at all if the proving hopefuls understood as he slaughtered them. Rost growled, the sound cracked around the gag, twisting the tiny amount he could. Let him loose. See how Nora treated monsters.

Helis laughed. “Then this might be a short conversation.” His armor creaked, hungry metal too close. “Do you need help?”

Cold blade edge pressed into Rost’s heel past the rope. Shit! He couldn’t pull away!

“No, sir!” Burnsetter clattered to Helis’ side. Rost had never been relieved to feel the tugs of his work before. He held rigidly still as the lines hissed and peeled back. Helis withdrew the knife after long dragging seconds.

Rost didn’t try to watch Burnsetter moving to his arms. He kept his head bent, toward Helis in his blindspot. He needed to know for sure.

A jar clattered. Familiar hands dug hard into his wrist. Rost grunted, startled, when something cold stung sharply at his elbow. It dragged and he flinched, swallowing the surprise pain down. W-what?

The ropes dropped. He was free. “Try…try to use that arm, Nora. Try not to --”

“I thought he didn’t understand, Burnsetter. Out of my way.”

Rost scrambled, trying desperately to find the footsteps clanking too close. Or he tried to. Only one of his arms bent right, and as he pushed, something stabbed in his back, arrow-jab pain straight through him. Rost gasped, halfway between falling and holding, pain ridging across his spine like a spray of blaze sparks. He -- he couldn’t -- he’d never make it to his feet!

“Still no respect for the Sun’s might.” A familiar cruel grip caught his hair, dragging him up. Rost snarled, clawing at the platform, trying to take some of the weight so he wasn’t dangling. His neck and shoulder felt like they were tearing in half. “You are Seared, Nora. Only the Sun breaks men like this.”

Him. It was him. Helis grinned, eyes dark and painted. A dark bruise curved on his lower lip from the butt of Rost’s spear. It shifted with his smile, a ghastly dark trail form his mouth.

Fight-flash tore through Rost’s chest so hot it felt like he burned all over. The same face gouged in his memory, his hands, struggling to hold back the arcing knife as this man forced it down. The fear, sharp and cold in his chest, knowing he was weaker than the force bearing him down. Hatred strength gave him just enough to dig his knees into the platform, clench his fist as he steadied himself.

“Ah, so you remember that fight I won.” Helis yanked Rost’s head violently down before tilting it slow, side to side. Rost panted, eyes watering from the sharp sting, but he didn’t blink. Fury locked his chest. He could feel his pulse in his fingertips, in the entire reach of his burns. Hatred tasted so cold and rough it must show on his face.

“To think, a Nora dreaming he could rob me of my kill. Now look at you.” Helis let go abruptly. Fall-feeling twisted panicked in Rost’s chest as he focused, trying to fight through his own weight to stay upright. The pain split and gouged and screamed and all he could do was sit with it. Swallow it.

My kill, he said?

Dizzy finality teetered at the edges of Rost’s broken balance. Just like he would fall eventually, inevitable. If…if Aloy was dead…

She was alive when he crawled to her. Most of the blood as he held her was his, or he thought so. He’d thrown her as far as he could, but he was broken. It couldn’t have been far. She’d been bleeding out, even then. And the blast… He’d be dead if the Carja hadn’t taken him.

If -- if…

“Speak, Nora.” Rost recoiled weakly from the hand at his throat, but his hands didn’t move when he tried to reach for it. Helis lifted him easily, holding him pinned as sparks burst across the back of his neck. Rost choked on them, then gasped as the gag snapped out of his mouth, thrown aside.

“My kill with the red hair. Who was she?”

Certainty froze in Rost’s gut. Like the moment before a fall, the climb grip missed. This man had killed Aloy. And Rost was going to kill him.

“Answer!”

The backhand slammed sparks across his vision this time, strung through to the blazing screaming pain it dragged out of his back. He couldn’t absorb the force, like metal plates were lashed to him, dragging him down. His arm skidded and crumpled, too weak, and he lost all the air he had hitting down.

Rost coughed, head aching. That was faster than just trying to twist the knife. Why…why did they want to know?

He couldn’t think. Water. Ripples. Don’t react. Let it go. Silence stuck in his wounds themselves after so long.

“I’m a busy man. Understand?” This time Helis’ grip dug into his windpipe. Pain had strangled Rost so much recently he’d forgotten the awful pressure of hands, pulse punching hungry against him through the thumb dug deep into his jaw. Too weak to pull or kick. He couldn’t even reach Helis’ wrist before his shoulder dissolved in fire.

“Exalted! The Sun’s test isn’t finished!”

N-no. Rost shuddered. He couldn’t survive this with silence. And he couldn’t move, much less stand. He had to last long enough to make his kill.

“N-Nora b-brave.” His voice rattled, raw and unrecognizable. “One of the many you k-killed.” The shudders ridged excruciatingly through him, the old fears awake now too. Don’t answer. Speaking always made things worse.

“Ha. So you do have words.” Helis slowly scraped his thumb across the ridges in Rost’s neck. Disappointed? But finally, he let go. “See, Burnsetter? No need to underestimate a savage.”

Surround feeling prickled along Rost’s skin as Helis paced easily around the platform, eying him from more directions. The best he could do was lever up on his responsive arm, trying and failing to bite back a bark of pain. He couldn’t check his jaw, but hopefully the jumbled pulsing ache meant it was bruised not broken.

“Tongue, then, for words. And your hands and feet, since none of your kind could bear a sear willingly.” Helis moved too fast. Lazily, he caught and dragged Rost’s sluggish arm. The force burrowed instantly up into the tearing, burning center of Rost’s shoulders. His vision sputtered as he howled. Helis’ grip on his hair was almost a relief, something keeping him stable as he slumped. He -- he had to ---

Knife cold nudged behind his ear. “But don’t worry. We have plenty to work with within the Sun’s rules, if you won’t follow mine.”

Rost stilled, a cold wire threading through the tremoring in his chest. The threat helped. He needed all his advantages to do this.

But they couldn’t want Aloy’s past for good reasons.

May her spirit forgive. “Vala.” Rost tried not to think about the dead girl’s bloodied body on his way to Aloy. “H-her name is Vala.” Damn, he couldn’t force ‘was’ out of his mouth, or stop the soft frayed sound that dragged out instead. Vala was dead when he reached the field. He hadn’t had a chance to save her, not like Aloy. Her story was safe, even from the Carja.

How could these monsters be hunting what Aloy had died trying to find?

Rost blinked, forcing Helis’ face into focus. “Why…ask…now? She’s dead.”

It hurt more to say than the searing burns across his entire body. Fury shook him until they reared white, howling, and still it hurt more than that.

The knife pulled away and Helis’ face smoothed, intent and focused. A creature chill slithered up Rost’s stomach. “Let me explain simply, for a savage.” Calm. Almost chatty.

Shit.

Helis’s fist and the blade pommel slammed into his gut too fast to dodge even if he’d been able to. Rost howled, crumpled by the force and blinded by the incandescent explosion it tore through his back. No chance to catch himself. Careening, falling, breath torn out.

CRASH. A hard edge snapped into his shoulder. This time the fire cracked out like a shock trap, every joint spasming. The next blow hit from below, across his chest and side at once. Or…no, no, the ground. Boots lunged toward him. He was d-down. Rost choked, trying to roll off his burned arm.

Pressure, sudden and stinging, jabbed into his side. Something under it tugged and slid, stabbing shock-feeling up into him. Rost screamed, too weak to move, only feel the tip of Helis’ boot jab deeper. N-no!

“Exalted!”

“Don’t fret, Burnsetter. This wounds mine, not the Sun’s.” The stab feeling stopped and Helis crouched, massive and black over him. Rost froze, barely breathing. St-stitches. He’d jabbed the stitches.

Helis traced Rost’s paint marks, slow and measured across his cheek and across his eye. “Nora, you don’t ask questions. You answer my questions. So the Shadow decrees. And so I make true. Understand?”

Rost twitched, heaving in air. Could he force out words? So much of him hurt his chest kept locking, jolting and making it worse. The fingertips on his face were distracting and frightening in confused tangles, and his ears pounded like they hadn’t stopped echoing the hit to the floor.

He had to. No choice. Rost slumped still. “Aah. Aah. Y-yes.” He blinked, forcing his hands to stop trembling. S-stupid. In his anger he’d forgotten understanding wasn’t his anymore. He was tainted and Aloy was dead. Whatever else happened here was outside him. Even speaking, he could hold still in the water, let his rage settle thick and heavy around him like the silence, the rest passing by.

Helis grinned. “I like that about you Nora. Your men know how to break.” Rost didn’t fight as Helis pressed his head down to the floor. He gasped for the thin shreds of air so the pain couldn’t bury him fully. He had to answer and he had had to lie and he had to survive. That was starting to be a lot of parts. “Already half there even before the Sun touches you. Now tell me. Vala, you said. Who sired her?”

The word turned Rost’s stomach with its casual mother-hate, disgust bark-bitter on his tongue. “No one knew.” That might be true. The Matriarchs wouldn’t have given her to him if he asked, so he hadn’t. Don’t speak. Don’t argue. As always. “A--a foundling.”

Helis’ face smoothed, sharp attention across his sharp features. “Convenient. A nowhere child, hidden in a tribe with no Sight.” Dangerous. His thumb dug into Rost’s temple, pulsing painfully. “I don’t think so.

A cold searing point roared alive in Rost’s back. Clear even through the constant strain of the burn. Rost choked, flinching only for the grip on his head to stop him short. “No.” Helis leaned closer. “Don’t move. Answer me. Where did she come from?”

The pain moved, slow and unbearable, like a tracing spark across his shoulder. Rost’s cry felt like the explosion, the crack in the blaze that destroyed a grazer from the inside out. Come from? What Aloy died to find? What lie could he have for what never existed?

“Exalted, please, the Sun…” Burnsetter whispered, voice so trembling it barely existed. “The burns…”

“Shh, I’m barely a scratch deep.” Fingers scraped Rost’s throat, setting the choke bruises tingling again. It dragged him into the water again, able to focus. Able to let go. The knife. The knife tip was skimming in the burns, setting him on fire again. Like in his side, in the snow.

Snow.

Rost forced his tongue to move. “N---aaagh! N-north. Of Devil’s Grief.” The pain stilled. The space left by it filled with numb shaking. The image of the towers chilled him even now. As if the ruins would reach out, try to take Aloy for good this time.

But no. They couldn’t. She was…

Rost grit his teeth, hoping few strangers paid for this. “Th-the road north. To the Grave Hoard.” It was so easy imagining her there, wrapped in blue on the snow. A pang cut off his breath. He’d never let himself imagine Aloy in a specific place before he saw her in Teersa’s arms. “Abandoned.”

Never a place. Just over and over again, imagining how she felt clutched to his chest and how putting her down must have felt for whoever left her.

“There. Not hard even for a Nora.” The knife pulled back, maybe? Rost couldn’t tell, just that the pain changed and Helis relaxed. Helis stared down at him, like he hadn’t blinked during the entire ordeal. Rost shivered and groaned at the spark it dragged loose in his neck.

“Abandoned you think? Or hidden.” Helis flipped the knife lazily, the curve biting the light. He let go of Rost’s hair only to flatten his palm across his cheek, thumb pressed to his ear. Clear threat. Don’t move. “Who left here there?”

The cold point nudged, burn-bright, into the back of Rost’s neck.

Rost whimpered, barely managing not to buck. It hurt -- it hurt -- she always wanted to know-- he never could convince her not to try --- “I -- I don’t know.”

The pain slid, a wire-line of fire climbing down his spine. Rost screamed, then choked when Helis crushed his hand over his mouth, muffling the sound. Fingernails carved hungry into his cheek and jaw, scrabbling. Rost blinked, suddenly aware of the slow tears on his face. He heaved, forcing himself rigidly still. How long had they been there?

“That’s really your best answer?”

Goddess the number of times that had been the best answer he could give Aloy. Never enough. Never ---

Rost screamed again, and this time he didn’t stifle it. He ground his hands into the dirt, too weak to fight and too furious to stop. And he let Helis hold the sound, take his fury and pain and feel them in his old-one-wicked hand. Rost didn’t care about what the monster wanted to tear out of him, so long as Helis kept him. It would be his head in the end.

It ended, thundering heartbeats later. Helis pulled the knife back, sighing. “I’ll give you a day to make a better one. Burnsetter’s glare might burn though me now.” He dropped Rost so quickly dizziness skidded at the edges of his vision. He--he was back at boots, so close to the hard leather tips. Rost flinched, exhaustion tremors wandering through him like branching twigs.

“Get up.” Helis nudged his stomach.

Rost tried to scoff, but the motion was too much for his chest. He couldn’t move his left arm at all, could barely breathe. His right arm was so spent he couldn’t lay it still without spasming, dragging more pain out of his shoulder burns. He gasped, testing it. The flare in his back split open, a chasm, and he collapsed instantly.

Helis’ smooth face, watching, waiting, flickered over him.

Th-there…there was…memory intruded, pain-drunk, slippery. Lansra, looking down. And down as he knelt off the path. And down as he averted his eyes, keeping his tainting away from her. How slow she walked by, how close to him in the brush. Her eyes tingling on his back. Watching to see if he’d falter, look up.

Rost shoved it aside. Lansra would be disappointed enough he was still alive, when they lost so many true Nora.

Still, he didn’t know what else to do. His limits, the failings he’d carved into himself. They were for seeing. At home, by right, they belonged to the tribe so they could see the warning and not repeat his mistakes. Rost settled against the dirt. “I…can’t.” He tried to speak loud enough to hear. He tried to uncurl his fingers, meet Helis’ gaze as best he could. Oddly comforting, to be allowed to watch this one’s face. He didn’t get to hide his fractures. “I…can’t move.”

Helis’ smooth expression woke back up, eyes narrowed. He smiled, slow and thoughtful. “Well. I didn’t think a Nora could admit to weaknesses.”

Rost didn’t bother to correct him. He wasn’t a Nora now, twice past the sacred border. He closed his eyes, trying to level his breathing. Clear show, as much as he could. I know I can’t do anything if you decide you aren’t done.

Except Carja never liked attacking a resigned opponent. Helis stepped away, Rost felt the rattle of his steps. “I’ll know next time we speak you’re clever. Certainly enough to answer…informatively.” Sharp, fast steps. “Burnsetter, tend ot him.”

Helis left him down in the dust.

A-Alive. He was alive. Rost let himself slump completely limp, focused on the rattle of Helis’ steps out into the hot din. So easy to track, down here on the ground. Soon. Soon he’d plan his hunt.

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