Horizon Zero Dawn Short Stories

Short Story #1 - The Glow

Aloy's POV

I was digging around in the sand, looking for my arrowheads. I'd only dropped about ten but around these parts you could walk ten paces to the left and be swallowed whole by a snapmaw, which by the looks of the fellow a few meters away, isn't pleasant.

His eyes had rolled to the side, boring into my skull. I kept myself distracted, sand slipping through my fingers. I was used to the broken lights of machine carcasses, but not the frosted eyes of a corpse. It still made me shudder.

One, Two, Three.

I scooped them into a small bag I had tied to my waist.

Four, Five, Six.

A low growl of thunder.

Seven, Eight - I rolled to side just quick enough to avoid the swiping claw of a sawtooth. It's red lights searched for me within the reeds, a hint of danger if you got within even a kilometre. A sawtooth doesn't care for which blood it hunts. Be it machine or human, it kills what it sees.

Machines will never be humane. Even overriding them meant shutting down their aggressive combat systems, but you can't get rid of core programming. It has the ideas to kill you. It just waits a while.

Unless, of course, you destroy it first.

I pull an arrow from my quiver hanging low on my back among my other weapons. Grabbing my tools from my pocket, I slam the flint and steel together and catch a spark on the arrow head. It leaps into flames as I do from the reeds, bringing the arrow into the nocking point and pulling back the draw string. I roll, take my aim, and let the arrow fly into it's blaze canister.

It drops to the ground. I use the time while it's down to get to higher ground. The sawtooth will be completely useless against me.

I rush through the undergrowth until I find a ledge jutting out of the moss covered rock face.

Perfect.

I swing my legs over the ledge, nearly dropping my flint, and take aim at the sawtooth struggling below me. It's limping, a metal paw held close to it's body. I take careful aim, once again nocking the arrow and pulling back the draw string. I rest my eye just past the yellow strip of paint curled around my bow.

Releasing the arrow, I hit it right where the heart would be, if it were alive. It fell to the ground in a heap of metal scrap.

I was looting it's carcass until I felt a small prick in the back of my neck.

Then everything went dark.

i know its short but alskfjskajdjds don't be angry pls. yeeeet