« Reporting for duty, commander. I’m coming with you. »
Very impressed with Kotallo. Such a charismatic and intelligent side character, and I was pleasantly surprised when he expressed his desire to join Aloy’s team. Now his is one of my favorite character of the game!
The first two chapters of my new Kotaloy longfic are up on AO3!
The prologue is below; ~2000 words. Kotallo POV, and some angst/gore.
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He woke to the sound of howling.
All around him, from every quarter, he heard a mad howling cacophony of noise. Machine screeches, the battle cries of his people, the agonized screams of the wounded, the desperate commands of the fleeing Carja.
He was confused. How…? Why was he pinned, why was he lying here, the battle was still happening, he needed to rise, but his legs… by the Ten, the damned Bristleback—
“Kotallo!” A hand grabbed his shoulder.
Agony. Agony like he had never felt before, a bone-deep agony in his left arm as a pair of tattooed hands tried to pull him free from the dead Bristleback that was crushing his legs—
Athunk of arrow in flesh. The hands left him, and a hot rush of rage swelled in his chest. Not like this. I will not go down like this. He snarled and shoved at the Bristleback with both arms.
The Ten save him, that pain again, pain in his left arm so sharp and hot that it was blinding, but there was no arm. His arm was gone, his arm… He was trapped under the Bristleback that had devoured his arm, ground it up like it was nothing more than dirt—
Not ten paces away, a Bristleback slammed to the ground and skidded, uncontrolled, across the churned-up grass.
Alarmed, he craned his neck to look. Its rider, one of Regalla’s rebels, flew off of the Bristleback to land clumsily on her side, and before she could rise, an arrow appeared in her throat.
“Varl, to the left flank! Help the Carja!”
“I’m on it, Aloy!”
The outlanders, Kotallo thought, and he shoved at the Bristleback again with his good arm. He shoved and twisted his hips, trying to lever the dead machine off of his body, but he couldn’t lift the damned thing and free his legs enough to kick his way out. He couldn’t lift the machine, he couldn’t… with only one arm, he couldn’t free himself. He couldn’t defend himself, he couldn’t fight, he couldn’t stop Regalla’s rebels from killing his fellow Marshals, he couldn’t… with only one arm, how could he — how was he supposed to—?
A strange metallic hum and a clash of blade-on-blade drew his attention once more. With some difficulty, he twisted his shoulders and craned his neck back to look at the field.
The battle was over, and a duel was happening instead: a duel between Grudda and the outlander with hair like blood. For a few seconds, Kotallo was compelled to watch. The blood-haired woman was holding her defense quite well, but Kotallo had no doubt that she would die. Grudda’s skill had been renowned even before Kotallo became a Marshal, and he appeared to be equipped with some sort of… a shield made of light, it seemed.
The woman will die, Kotallo thought, and he turned back to his immediate problem. He shoved at the Bristleback fruitlessly, frustration and pain rising in tandem as he failed to free himself — I must get free, I will not go down this way, I can’t—
“Your turn! Come down here and face me!”
He looked up once more. The bloodhaired woman was… by the Ten, she was alive. She was breathing hard and spattered with blood as she stood over Grudda’s corpse, her chin lifted high as she challenged Regalla to a battle one-on-one.
It was no good, though, Kotallo knew. The outlander did not know their ways, and she didn’t know that her victory over Grudda meant that her life was hers to keep for now — and thus that Regalla would refuse to fight her on this day.
And now Regalla was riding away, her remaining people following in her wake on their cursed red-eyed mounts, and all that was left was the pain.
The pain. It was not just in his arm now, but in his legs and his torso too: pain from being crushed by the metal beast that had devoured his arm. It was an overwhelming and exhausting sort of pain, and it was travelling up to his ruined arm to throb like an angrily-beating heart. The pain was an angry pulse, a pulse of failure, a pulsing reminder of everything he did not do. He did not help to broker Chief Hekarro’s peace. He did not protect his fellow Marshals from Regalla’s unprecedented attack. He did not even manage to die with honour on the battlefield.
“He’s alive! The Marshal, he’s — by the Ten, his arm.”
“Don’t just stare, soldier, pull him out.”
Leave me. The thought swam vaguely in his mind, but he couldn’t find the strength to make it leave his mouth. A few soldiers were surrounding him — he wasn’t sure who, because it was hard to see. The weight left his legs, and hands were hooking under his armpits to pull him out.
Leave me. I should have died. His vision was swimming. His arm was thumping, a hot dull pain like an ailing heart.
“Marshal! Marshal Kotallo, sir, stay awake!”
“He’s lost a lot of blood…”
“Get him to the camp!”
Leave me, he wanted to yell, but he couldn’t move his lips. He could barely keep his eyes open. He couldn’t… his arm, his honour, left behind on the battlefield…
I should have died, he thought.
******************
He did not die. But the life that was left to him was a pitiful shred of what it once had been.
The remains of his arm were cleaned. The dead flesh was painfully cut away, and the wound was stitched shut and hidden with a bandage and a scarf. He was given medicine to stop infections and more medicine for pain, and the wound eventually knitted itself together.
The herbalist and stitcher at Scalding Spear were surprised. His wound had healed up faster and better than they had expected — especially since they had really just expected him to die. Still, this brought him no comfort. What use was a healed wound when what it really meant was a gaping absence that could never be restored?
When he returned to the Memorial Grove, he was put to trial-by-combat to prove that he had the strength to continue his duties as a Marshal. He fought a Bristleback in the arena — the same type of machine that took his arm, to prove that the same mistake would not happen again — and when he finally felled the thing, all he could think was that Hekarro had let him off too easily. It was just one Bristleback. Any Tenakth warrior worth their salt could fight a Bristleback on their own. He was meant to be a Marshal, the strongest of Hekarro’s warriors and lawkeepers, so why was he permitted to keep his life and his station after such a feeble trial?
He wanted another trial. He was convinced that Hekarro was pitying him by pitting him against such a basic machine in the ring. When he brought his concerns to the Chief, however, Hekarro disagreed.
“If you think that a Bristleback was all that you faced, then you need to look closer,” he said. “You faced more than just a machine in the ring that day.”
“I don’t understand,” Kotallo said.
“You will. In time.”
“That is not what I mean,” Kotallo said. “I don’t understand… how could you still want me by your side? I am…” He glanced in disgust at his arm, then gestured at the bandaged stump. “I’m maimed. I am a shadow of the warrior I once was.”
“Your trial-by-combat would say otherwise,” Hekarro said.
“I am of no use to you anymore!” Kotallo snapped.
Hekarro raised his eyebrows, and Kotallo was instantly ashamed. To shout at a superior, to reply with such insubordination… it was unbecoming of a soldier. It was unlike him. What was he becoming?
He took a deep breath and bowed his head. “Apologies, Chief.”
Hekarro waved him off. “Your service is still needed, Marshal. Now more than ever. In fact, I have a special duty for you.”
He frowned. “A special duty? What is it?”
“As you know, Commander Tekotteh has yet to send his warriors for the Kulrut.”
Kotallo sighed. “I am aware. And unsurprised.”
Hekarro smiled faintly. “I thought that would be the case. You will speak to him on my behalf.”
Kotallo gaped at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“You will go to the Bulwark and convince Tekotteh to send his challengers to the Kulrut.”
For a moment, he was dumbfounded. Hekarro wanted him to convince Tekotteh to send challengers? He wanted Kotallo to convince Tekotteh of — well, of anything? And with only one arm?
I can’t, Kotallo thought. It is impossible. It cannot be done, and certainly not by me. He bowed his head. “Chief, with all due respect—”
Hekarro cut him off. “I know what you’re going to say. But you know as well as I that you have no choice. You are the only one who can do this.”
“Because I am your only Marshal,” Kotallo pointed out.
“Yes, but that is not the only reason why,” Hekarro said.
Kotallo said nothing, but he was displeased. Hekarro was undeniably wise, but he could also be infuriatingly mysterious at times.
The Chief chuckled as though he could hear what Kotallo was thinking. “You will not be conducting this duty alone, Marshal. I will be sending someone to assist you, so your missing arm should not be an imposition.”
This displeased him even more. It was bad enough to suffer the absence of his arm when he was alone with his thoughts. It would be even worse to suffer it with someone else around to stare at his stump and ask him if he didn’t feel like half a man, like half a warrior, without his arm. Or worse yet, to travel with someone who would purposely avoid looking at or talking about his arm, as though it was a rotting corpse in the corner that no one could dispose of.
“I don’t require assistance,” Kotallo said stiffly. “I will make the journey alone.”
“You will not,” Hekarro said calmly. “You will have a partner for this, and that is my final word.”
That was it, then. If the Chief was putting his foot down, there was nothing Kotallo could do about it. “As you say,” he gritted out. “Who is this… partner who will be accompanying me? One of your personal guard?”
“Not one of my guard, no,” he said. “She is not even Tenakth, in fact.”
Kotallo frowned. “Not Tenakth?”
Hekarro shook his head. “Do you recall the blood-haired outlander from the Embassy? The one by the name of Aloy?”
“I do,” Kotallo said cautiously. Ever since his return to the Grove, he had been hearing talk among the Tenakth about the feats of the Nora warrior from the east, to whom Fashav had given rite of passage. It had been said that she was helping the Utaru to heal the machines that planted their fields, that she snuck into Regalla’s outposts and eliminated their fighters with the stealth of a Stalker, and one hunter had told him that there were rumours she could take down a Thunderjaw single-handedly.
From the sounds of things, the woman was a formidable warrior. But none of that was relevant, not if she was not Tenakth.
Kotallo narrowed his eyes. “You mean to send her? But she — you said it yourself, she is not one of us. What makes you believe she will agree to help?”
“Everything that Dekka and I have heard about her makes me believe it,” the Chief said. “She will not refuse.”
“How do you mean to convince her?” Kotallo said. “Will you challenge her to a duel?”
Hekarro smiled. “Your injury has made your tongue as sharp as your blade.”
Kotallo clenched his jaw. Hekarro was right; he was being unforgivably sharp, in ways that he would never have been before he’d lost his arm. But the injury was just so distracting: the shooting pains, the uncomfortable feeling at night like there were ants creeping beneath the skin…
Cease your complaining, he scolded himself, and he straightened his posture. “Forgive me, Chief,” he said gravely. “It’s not my intention to question your methods. But what makes you believe she will even come here to the Grove, so you can petition her assistance?”
“Dekka believes it so,” Hekarro said, “and I believe it, too. It is only a matter of time.”
Kotallo grunted. A moment later, Dekka appeared at the door with a smile on her face. “Chief, the outlander is here.”
“What?” Kotallo blurted.
Dekka’s smile widened, and Hekarro squeezed his shoulder. “The time has come for your duty,” he said. “Go to Stone Crest. I will have the outlander meet you there.”
Kotallo wanted to protest. He wanted to reject this duty, and he wanted to reject the company of this unknown woman who would undoubtedly disdain him as much as the rest of the tribe, and with good reason. But he was a soldier, a Marshal, and he had no choice but to do as Hekarro had bade him.
He saluted Hekarro, then strode out of the strategy room. And so it begins, he thought grimly. So began his first task after his injury, the first duty Hekarro had conferred upon him: a completely futile duty that he was sure to fail, in the company of an outlander whose motives were entirely unknown.
And so it begins, he thought: the rest of my ruined life. Perhaps he ought to grow accustomed to failure, because things would not get better from here.
His life would never get better. His arm was gone, and his warrior’s pride with it. No matter what Hekarro said, Kotallo knew the truth: he was nothing but a cautionary tale now, and once Hekarro had a new set of Marshals to carry out his word, he would have no value anymore.
No matter the result of his trial-by-combat, no matter what the Chief tried to say, Kotallo knew the truth: his life was a ruin now, and he would never be whole again.
The body hair???? That perfect, delectable patch of hair??? It begs for fingers trailed through it, lying in bed late at night. Idle touches from a lover’s hand while their head rests on his shoulder.
It just, lives in my head rent free right now. And not nearly enough people on this hellsite are talking about it.
Thanks to @crackinglamb for the tag! Once again, I haven’t done this in ages, but I finished Horizon Forbidden West recently and my head is exploding in WIPs so everyone can get a taste of the chaos of videogame boyfriends that are taking up my brain right now.
First off, some Aloy x Drakka (i.e. the cheeky shithead boyfriend):
Drakka grinned. “Hey, are you shy or something? Never seen a naked guy before?” he teased.
She shot him a sharp look, and with a jolt of surprise, he realized that it must be true. “Wait, really? You’ve never seen a man naked before?” he said. If that was true, then did that mean…?
Another feeling poked at his gut — a warmer, more restless feeling this time. He peered carefully at her. “Have you never been blooded before?” he asked.
“What does that mean?” she said stiffly.
“Have you never had sex?”
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Next up, some Aloy x Nil (i.e. the murder hobo boyfriend):
She moans, clenches her nails on his naked chest, revels in the blissful thrum of heat racing through her body. Beneath her, distantly, she hears his deep and musical voice. “You really do ride with abandon, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” she pants. “Only way to get ahead.”
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Finally, some Aloy x Kotallo (i.e. the stern boyfriend with the sof insides and the sense of humour that only his loved ones get to see):
He woke to the sound of howling.
All around him, from every quarter, he heard a mad howling cacophony of noise. Machine screeches, the battle cries of his people, the agonized screams of the wounded, the desperate commands of the fleeing Carja.
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KOTALLO WILL GET THE SEXY TIME TOO, PROMISE. He just has to go through the slowburn first. Everyone pray to your gods and spirits for me for having this many fucking WIPs at once IN ADDITION TO GERALT/READER WHICH IS ALSO MOVING ALONG AT FULL SPEED.
“And now?” Kotallo whispers, nuzzling his nose into the angle of her jaw.
“Wherever we like,” Aloy murmurs, and yelps as Kotallo leans more of his weight into her.
Her feet slide in the foaming surf. “I’m going to fall,” she warns breathlessly.
Kotallo’s only response is to lean into her further, his face buried in her jaw as his laugh rumbles through her, and Aloy shouts as they overbalance together into the salty waves.
