Horizon: Project Eden

3rd Pov

An hour later Aloy was sitting in the cockpit of a new and improved wyvern with stronger defence and attack systems, behind her Erend curiously poked at the myriad of holographic buttons. Finally riding above the wyvern Edith in her non-combat form stood attached to small panels on the wyvern's back.

Looking over the myriad of data being broadcast from the wyvern and the surrounding scout birds Aloy begins making her own infiltration plan for the Eclipse Cultist camp. Turning in her seat she gets the meat headed Oseram's attention.

"Erend you can stay by the wyvern, I'll tell Avad you came with me." – Aloy

"No can do Aloy you're my friend and I owe you for saving my sister, even if Avad didn't order me to come with you I still would of." – Erend

Sighing Aloy can only relent to the large man's confidence, tapping a few buttons a small panel opens up next to Aloy and she grabs a small device from it. Passing back the spare focus she gives basic instructions on how to wear and use it to Erend.

While at it she also transfers over a detailed battle plan that automatically begins to play, turning back to the displays in front of her she notices she's approaching the drop site and presses a button. Instantly the lift elevator begins to rise as the top of the wyvern opens and a hard light shield protects the inside.

Turning back Aloy quickly shouts to Erend before she fully leaves.

"Erend the wyvern will automatically land outside the camp, from there follow the instructions on your focus." - Aloy

Seeing Erend nod Aloy turns back to the front and holds onto a handle that sprouts from the top of the elevator, looking at her focus she watches from a crouched position as a holographic display counts down her jump time.

Tensing her legs she waits for the right moment before launching herself off the wyvern, behind her Edith activates her stealth system and detaches from the wyvern. As Aloy boosts herself from the wyvern small motors in her armour activate and use the energy built up from her random movement to propel her higher.

Backflipping in the air the wyvern flies out completely from under her and she begins to fall through the dark sky, as she falls a small transparent panel drops down from inside her helmet and allows her to she clearly by blocking the wind.

Looking at her focus she follows the instructions Edith sent and tucks her arms in, soaring towards the ground Aloy can vaguely make out small lights from within the trees far below her. Eyes nervously drifting between her focus and the distant ground she clutches the handle of her spear tightly.

After falling for close to a minute her focus indicates it's time to deploy her glider and so, holding her spear tightly small hooks extend from the wrists of her armour and attach to groves on her spear. Then with a barely audible noise a bright crimson and purple shield opens from her spear and she begins to slowly descend.

Reaching the ground, she rolls to lessen the impact of her fall and jumps into a nearby clump of tall grass. Crouching low she stealthily looks out from within the bushes, watching inside the camp she begins to tag all the cultists she can see.

As she works she suddenly feels something tapping her shoulder and startled turns to the source, breathing a sigh of relief she realises it's only Edith. Looking at the barely visible parts of the robotic woman highlighted by her focus she gestures at the cultists nearby.

In response Edith reaches over before tapping Aloy's holographic focus screen, instantly her focus splits to a new screen labelled armour controls and Edith taps a button labelled stealth. Suddenly without much warning Aloy's armour hums slightly before it shimmers and disappears from view.

Looking down towards where her arms should be Aloy can only see a faint projection tracing across her invisible body. Twisting her body Aloy tries to she herself from different angles to confirm her invisibility.

Tapping her shoulder Edith pulls Aloy from her distraction and gestures at her own arms, looking down Aloy watches as two 60cm long blades sprout from within the machines forearms.

Moving back to the task at hand Aloy receives a ping on her focus that changes the colouring of the marks on her focus, understanding what the machine wants she begins slinking out of the bushes towards the closest cultist.

Behind her the large machine woman rapidly blurs away from her previous location, working in union the two begin silently slaughtering every cultist in sight. Eventually after a few minutes spent assassinating the cultists Aloy arrives at the front of the camp and finds an exhausted Erend panting while surrounded by a pile of dead cultists.

Moving up to him she drops her invisibility and coughs to get his attention, startling he quickly picks up his hammer but freezes mid motion when he see's it was only Aloy. Breathing out he rests against his spear as Edith silently stalks up behind them.

"Come along now, we've killed most of the cultists but we still have to kill the war machines and cultists guarding the Tall neck. You can rest when we get into position." – Edith

Groaning Erend reluctantly swings his hammer over his shoulder and straightens up, Aloy also groans slightly but reluctantly pulls her spear from where she stabbed it in the ground. Following behind Edith the group of three move deeper into the camp, passing by the dead cultists as they go.

After a few minutes of walking the small group reaches a sheer cliff and begins climbing it, at the top the humans of the group rest against some rocks while the Ai activates her stealth features and slinks off.

Gathering their breathes the humans wait in silence for the Ai to return, a few minutes later Edith comes back and transfers a file to both their focus's which automatically opens. Instantly a bunch of pings appear in their vision each with one of three colours.

"Aloy you take the light blue marks, Erend you take the orange marks and I'll take the purple marks." – Edith

"Yes ma'am" – Erend

Receiving general acceptance from the humans Edith activates her stealth again and disappears, a few seconds later one of the purple marks disappears. Breathing deeply Aloy twirls her spear before jumping from the edge of the cliff and activating her glider.

Left alone at the top of the cliff Erend can only grumble to himself as he trudges towards the edge and begins climbing down.

1st Pov

Slicing through cultist after cultist I continuously run a hardware analysis of my secondary body, pushing it to the limit it falls short of reaching the potential of my main body. Still, it works for assassination missions and politics.

Slicing another cultist's head off with my mono molecular blades I begin slinking towards the first machine on my kill list. Moving behind the corrupted watcher I slice right through it's power supply killing it instantly.

Moving from there I approach a Corruptor while checking my human companions, they are making decent progress taking out their targets but are falling behind a bit. Focusing more on my targets I approach till I'm right under the Corruptor and using this bodies thin blade tail I impale it.

Squirming around the Corruptor doesn't die on the first hit and I'm forced to repeatedly stab it till it dies. Removing my tail from its corpse I quickly move to a close corrupted watcher and kill it as well, continuing my way through the camp I kill a few more Corruptors before reaching my first real challenge.

Slinking around I reduce my energy output to fully mask myself as I approach a Deathbringer, silently moving beneath it I calculate the ideal spot to destroy as many vital components as possible. Stabbing up with my tail and slicing out with my arms I make a fair bit of damage but don't pierce deep enough through its main body armour.

Quickly dashing away, I take cover as the Deathbringer turns around, two of its legs leaking hydraulic fluid from where my blades hit vital lines. Scanning the area, I do my best to stay out of the way till it turns around again, then I strike again.

Dashing up above it I land on top of the large war machine and begin rapidly slicing at it, aiming for hinges I quickly cut off some protective panels and expose its cooling rods. Slicing them up I begin to rip out as many pieces as I can before I have to jump away.

Dashing behind cover I narrowly dodge a volley of missiles from a second Deathbringer that smash into the one I was on, calculating ideal strategies I begin to run invisible through the camp. Reaching the untouched Deathbringer I flash my energy signature quickly to get the damaged ones attention.

Using the untouched one as a shield, a rain of missiles bombard it as the faulty machine targets its own ally. Waiting the missile barrage ends and I agilely dash under the machine I was using as cover, now in front of it I target the damaged armour that was weakened under the missile barrage.

Dashing back, I narrowly dodge a critical hit as machine gun fire causes damage to one of my arms, parkouring around the camp I springboard my way on top of the first Deathbringer. Now atop it I quickly use my functioning arm to cut off the damaged armour and stab my tail into its core.

Jumping off the falling machine I quickly run anticlockwise in a circle around the final Deathbringer as machine gun fire trails behind me. Performing a quick scan, I find a few enemies approaching the area and run towards them.

Dashing behind them, the Deathbringer doesn't differentiate between ally and enemy and they are turned into a sieve by high powered weaponry. Continuing my dash, I use the ancient war machine to my advantage and clear out a few more enemies as I make my way closer.

Finally, the last of the approaching enemies is turned to a sieve and I get in range of the Deathbringer, jumping high I soar into the machine's blind spot and land atop it. Quickly before it can attack me I finish it off by stabbing my tail through its core.

Riding the machine down I jump off when it fully collapses on the ground, looking around I detect no more life signs in the nearby area and decide to assess the damage I'd taken. Looking down at my arm it suffered minor surface damages with one deeper attack hitting a power line.

Checking my shields I confirm they were able to resist the bullets but weren't able to get sufficient power to fully stop the bullets because my other movements were straining the power system. Adding it to my to fix list I perform another scan before slowly walking towards my target.

As I walk my functioning hand unfolds to reveal tools within the fingers of my hand, reaching up I begin rerouting the power in my arm whilst patching the superficial damages. As I walk I drop my stealth systems to give more power to my other functions.

A few minutes later I'm performing basic tests on my hand when my human companions show up, looking them over Aloy seems mildly exhausted while Erend looks like he just ran a marathon. Seeing the damage to my arm Aloy sports a worried look and moves closer to look at it.

"What happened how did you get damaged, isn't your shield meant to protect you?!?" – Aloy

"This body isn't designed for combat, so with all my systems running at full throttle I had to lower the power consumption of my shield to improve my agility. Unfortunately, my calculations were wrong and the Deathbringers machine gun fire was able to do some damage to the weakest part of my shield." – Edith

Nodding Aloy continues to look over my arm for a few more minutes as we continue to walk, knowing she won't be happy with a basic explanation I send over a detailed file for her to read through.

Seeing the file Aloy's attention switches instantly and she peals away from me and moves to the back of the group, obviously seeing an opportunity Erend steps forward and tries to make conversation.

"So, uh… what's it like being a machine?" – Erend

Turning to look at him I offer a small smile before connecting to his focus, with control I make little holographic unicorns flit across his view. Then when he relaxes slightly I jump scare him, flying back Erend lands on his arse as he tries desperately not to blush in embarrassment.

Chuckling I walk over to him and offer him a hand up whilst answering his question.

"It's nice, I can control anything with the slightest bit of code. Besides the way I think is so different to you humans I couldn't explain it to you properly." – Erend

Nodding Erend falls silent as we turn a corner into a cave and see the remains of a Tall neck. The problem though is there is barely anything left of it, brought down to a pile of scraps the original machine's legs and body were removed and it was reconfigured with a pile a scrap parts.

Running a quick scan, I notice that the signal is roughly 400 percent stronger than a typical Tall neck, but not too interested I approach it to disable it. Jumping up the pile I reach the Tall neck node within all the jury rigged parts.

Reaching into the pile I connect my hand to the system, using my spare body as a network connector I begin to delve through the Tall necks systems trying to shut down the entire focus network. Boosting the progress as much as possible by using my stronger servers back at the Gaia prime facility I eventually find what I'm looking for.

3rd Pov

From the ground below the tall neck transmitter Aloy and Erend watched as Edith worked on the system, suddenly the pile lights up a deep evil red as a metallic voice echoes around the chamber.

Recognising the voice as belonging to Hades, Aloy begins looking around for the source. Not finding it her gaze turns back to the top of the pile and Edith, though she starts to worry when she sees Edith sparking violently as different coloured lights flash from beneath her artificial skin.

Suddenly in a shower of sparks Edith tears herself from the pile ripping her arm off in the process, stumbling down the pile Edith continues to malfunction for a few seconds before expelling a deep red cloud of energy.

Coalescing in the air the cloud hovers for a second before diving back into the machine, walking over to the two humans Edith sports a grim look as she begins overclocking her shields. Breaking into a sprint Edith reaches them and extends her shield to surround them microseconds before a massive blast levels the cave.

{A/N: Check out my extra chapters at patreon.com/TheFudgeNPC}