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The ravine narrowed around Grandpa Arlet whilst his horse picked its way along the uneven floor, its hooves clicking against loose rock as the animal's breath misted in the cooling air. Above, the sky was a strip of orange, sunset now at its peak. Soon, full dark would fall.
Soon, but not yet.
Grandpa Arlet pulled the tracker from his pocket. The device's green dot still pulsed steadily, thank God.
Still alive, he thought. Still moving. Still... somewhere.
He urged the horse forward, his eyes scanning the ravine's walls, its floor, its shadows. The Forest of Giant Trees loomed ahead, its outer fringes visible now from his viewpoint. Between him and that distance lay open ground; dangerous ground, Titan ground.
He'd been here before. Decades ago, back when he'd first arrived on this world, when he'd still been learning its rhythms, its dangers, its secrets. Who would have thought that a known tourist attraction would become titan hotspot center?
The Titans were not like the other horrors he'd faced across the galaxy. They were not cunning like the Incurseans, not malicious like the Ectonurites, and definitely not calculating like the Cerebrocrustaceans. They were something else entirely; a plague given flesh, a natural disaster that walked and fed and regenerated, driven by hungers so primal, so basic, that they barely qualified as consciousness at all.
And yet, they were connected. He knew that now, had known it for years. The Xerxathi graft that had inhabited this planet for eons, the same parasite that had turned a set of humans to sub-species of base humans here into the monsters that now roamed these lands, had a common origin. The Titans were a result of innate desire derived from the primary host…who from history was long since dead. The sub species humans; Eldians; had the Xerxathi parasite's primary host fractured into compartments of 9 Xerxathi grafts; the power of the 9 titan shifters. Though connected; these particular titans compared to the 9…were manufactured weapons, or a mistake, or both. Once again tweaking the desire of said primary host and its other 8 grafts to attain these abominations.
And now Eren; Grisha and Carla's child, the boy he'd sworn to protect; was out there, somewhere in that nightmare, marked by a powerful device that made him a target for every force that moved in the shadows.
The horse whinnied softly, ears flattening. Grandpa Arlet felt it too; a change in the air, a shift in the ground's vibration. Something was coming.
He reined in, slowing to a walk, then to a stop. His hand moved to the laser gun at his belt, the weapon warm from its recent use. The tracker went back into his pocket to keep its green pulse hidden.
The ground trembled. A rhythmic THOOM... THOOM... THOOM... growing louder, closer, shaking loose pebbles from the ravine walls.
Grandpa Arlet sat perfectly still on his horse. His heart rate, trained by decades of survival, remained steady. His breathing slowed as he looked at the source of the trembling.
The Titan emerged from around a bend in the ravine.
It was a twelve-meter class, its body a grotesque parody of human proportions. Thin limbs, distended belly, a face frozen in an expression of idiotic surprise. Its eyes; those empty, pupilless eyes; swept the ravine without understanding, without anything resembling thought. Then its gaze set on the small senile human below it…
…and it walked past Grandpa Arlet at a distance of twenty meters.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The ground shook with each step. Loose stones danced. The horse beneath him trembled but held, trained by its strange rider to trust the calm in his hands, the steadiness of his presence.
The Titan's head turned. Its gaze passed over him, over the horse, over the space they occupied.
And then it looked away.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
It continued down the ravine, disappearing around another bend, its footfalls gradually fading into the distance.
Grandpa Arlet exhaled slowly. He patted the horse's neck, feeling the animal's tension, murmuring soft reassurances.
"Perks of not being from around here," he muttered to himself, a wry smile tugging at his lips. "They can't smell you if you don't smell human to begin with."
It was true, in a way. The Titans were drawn to humans, to their scent, their heat, their very existence. But Grandpa Arlet, for all his years on this world, was not quite human. The Titans didn't register him as food. They didn't register him at all. It had saved his life more times than he could count.
He urged the horse forward again, picking up speed now that the immediate danger had passed. The ravine was opening up, its walls lowering, the ground leveling into the scrubland that bordered the forest. He could see the trees now, truly see them; colossal beyond belief, their trunks wider than houses, their branches spreading like the arms of ancient gods. The Forest of Giant Trees. The realm of monsters.
Eren was in there.
Grandpa Arlet pushed harder.
The scrubland gave way to scattered undergrowth, then to the first of the giant trees. Their roots were like walls, their shadows reaching meters away. The tracker pulsed faster now, closer; Eren was near, somewhere in this labyrinth of wood and shadow.
He rode through the outskirts, his eyes scanning, his heart pounding with a mixture of hope and dread. The forest was quieter than he'd expected. The Titans that roamed its depths were visible only as distant shapes, moving with that slow, shambling gait that spoke of endless patience and endless hunger.
And then he found the clearing.
He reined in so sharply that the horse reared, nearly throwing him. For a long, frozen moment, he simply stared, his mind refusing to process what his eyes were seeing.
There, on the scorched earth, illuminated by the rays of setting sun, lay two small objects.
Two legs.
Child's legs, severed cleanly below the knee, still clad in the tattered remains of trousers. They lay separate from each other, yards apart, as if thrown by some tremendous force. The ground around them was blackened, scorched as if by fire so intense it had fused the very soil.
Grandpa Arlet dismounted. His legs felt like water, his hands like ice. He walked forward, each step an effort of will, until he stood over the remains.
The trousers. He recognized the fabric, the patched knee, the uneven hem that Carla had sewn just last month. The shoes; one still on, one lying nearby; were the same worn boots that Eren had refused to replace, claiming they were "lucky."
His breath caught in his throat. His vision blurred.
No.
The word was a denial.
No. No. No.
He fell to his knees beside the remains, his hands hovering over them, afraid to touch, afraid to confirm what he already knew. The scorched earth. The severed limbs. The absence of anything else; no body, no blood trail, no sign of struggle beyond this single, terrible spot.
Something had happened here. Something that had taken Eren's legs. Something that had burned the ground. Something that had...
"It can't be…"
His realization came, not as a thought, but as a memory.
A figure stood before him in the darkness. Hooded, cloaked in black so deep it seemed to drink the light. The clothes were wrong; too sleek, too seamless, fabric that moved like liquid shadow. Futuristic and near Alien. Not of this world, not unlike him. But yet it bared the fading symbol of the wings of freedom.
Grandpa Arlet's hand went to his weapon, but the figure made no move to attack. It simply stood there, waiting, watching.
In their arms, wrapped in pristine white bandages from head to toe, a small form lay sleeping. A child. The bandages covered everything; face, body, limbs; leaving only the faint rise and fall of breathing to prove that life still lingered.
The hooded figure's eyes glowed green. A soft, steady viridian light, like stars reflected in still water.
"I mean no harm Mr Arlet. Eren will live…" the figure said. "…But he will not be the same."
Grandpa Arlet's mouth opened, closed, opened again. "I know that but—"
"The boy carries a weight he does not understand. A power that will shape worlds or end them." The figure's glowing eyes seemed to bore into him, through him. "You know this just as much, don't you?"
"Give the boy back." The words snarled out of Grandpa Arlet. "You don't get to decide his fate. Especially not the future."
The figure was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, he shook his head.
"Not yet. Not when there is a lot at stake here."
With that the old wrecker fired his weapon at the time traveler.
Grandpa Arlet's eyes snapped open.
He was still on his knees in the scorched clearing and the severed legs before him. But the despair that had gripped him was gone, replaced by something else. Something cold, sharp and focused.
He will live.
Those words echoed in his mind. A warning. A promise. A riddle.
He will not be the same.
Grandpa Arlet looked at the legs again. They were real. They were Eren's. And the scorched earth; it wasn't burn marks from fire. It was something else. Something that had left the soil fused, glassy, transformed.
He'd seen marks like this before. On battlefields across the galaxy. After plasma strikes. After energy weapons. Or after...
Titan transformations.
Grandpa Arlet rose to his feet. The bastard really did it didn't he.
He looked toward the depths of the forest. The Titans were moving there, shadows among shadows. It was madness to enter. It was suicide. That is to anyone else.
He mounted his horse.
"Go," he commanded, and the animal; faithful, terrified and yet still trusting; surged forward.
They rode straight into the Forest of Giant Trees.
The Titans turned as they passed. Heads swiveled and huge eyes tracked. But none moved to intercept or gave chase. The strange man on the strange horse did not smell like prey, did not register as food, did not trigger the primal urge to consume.
They passed a ten-meter class standing in a clearing, its face frozen in a rictus of idiot glee. It watched them go, uncomprehending, then returned to its eternal patrol.
They passed a cluster of smaller Titans, four and five meters, huddled around the base of a giant tree like children around a storyteller. They didn't even look up.
They passed a fourteen-meter brute, its body looking somewhat scarred and extra distorted as the eyes gleamed with something that might have been... curiosity? It took a step toward them, then stopped and tilted its head. Grandpa Arlet met its gaze for a long, frozen moment. Then it turned away, losing interest, the spark of something almost intelligent fading back into mindless void.
The forest closed around them, vast and ancient and filled with horrors. And through it all, Grandpa Arlet rode, his eyes fixed forward and hands now back on tracker.
The green dot pulsed. Closer now. Much closer.
Chapter 31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.