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Eren woke to the smell of dust and…potato soup?
It was a familiar, deeply ingrained scent that bypassed his conscious mind and went straight to a primal part of his brain labeled home. He blinked as his vision swarm into focus on the familiar, warped wooden ceiling of the refugee shack. A thin shaft of morning light, thick with swirling motes of dust, cut through the gloom. He was on his pallet, the rough blanket scratchy against his skin.
'A dream…' he thought, the relief a physical warmth in his chest. 'It was all a nightmare.' The memories of the last few days felt fragmented, surreal, like a bad story he'd half-heard. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The shack was quiet, but not empty. The rhythmic scrape-scrape-scrape of a knife on whetstone was absent. Instead, there was a softer sound: the gentle clink of a spoon against a clay bowl.
His mother was at the small table they used for eating, her back to him. She was in her wheelchair, her shoulders slightly hunched as she stirred something in a pot on the small, cold stove. A single, slightly bruised potato and a heel of dark bread sat on a chipped plate beside her.
"Mom?" Eren's voice came out croaky, thick with sleep.
Carla didn't turn. Her stirring didn't pause. She murmured something, her voice too low to catch.
A flicker of sheepish guilt cut through Eren's relief. He could only imagine what she was about to reprimand of…chores. He'd probably overslept, and she'd had to start breakfast. He swung his legs off the pallet; the floorboards cool under his feet.
"Sorry," The brunette said padding over. He reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. "I'll get the water after I eat. I just… I had a really weird dream."
Her stirring stopped.
She murmured again, the words a tangled, indistinct thread. This time, he caught the tail end of it.
"…monster…"
Eren's hand froze an inch from her shoulder. His heart, so warm and relieved a second ago, gave a single, hard thump against his ribs. "What?"
Slowly, Carla set the spoon down. It clattered against the pot's rim. Her voice, when she spoke, was clearer, but hollow, devoid of its usual gentle warmth. It was just…hollow. "I said, it's not surprising you'd dream of monsters."
She turned the wheelchair.
Eren's breath hitched.
It was his mother's face. The same soft lines around her mouth, the same obsidian hair tied back. But her eyes… They weren't the warm, weary amber he knew. They were pools of infinite, star-specked black, shot through with swirling currents of malevolent purple light. Zs'Skayr's eyes, staring out of Carla Yeager's face.
A soundless gasp tore from Eren's throat. He stumbled back, his heel catching on the uneven floor.
A smile stretched his mother's lips, a cruel, unnatural contortion. Zs'Skayr's voice, a layered symphony of whispers and screeches, issued from her mouth. "After all… you chose them over me. But then, why wouldn't you?" The head tilted, the purple-star eyes boring into him. "You are one of them."
"No—" Eren choked out.
Carla—Zs'Skayr—rose from the wheelchair.
It was a smooth, impossible motion. Her legs, wasted and unfeeling for months, straightened. She stood tall, looming over him, the specter of his mother inhabited by cosmic rot. "All that power," the voices sighed, a chorus of mockery. "Bound to your flesh. And you still have no idea what you're holding. You swing it like a club. A child with a god's scalpel. Truly."
The skin on her face began to bubble and peel back, not with blood, but like old parchment disintegrating to reveal the horror beneath. The ectonurite's spectral, tentacled form erupted from the collapsing shell of his mother, the wheelchair clattering away into nothingness.
"You are a failure, Eren Yeager," Zs'Skayr hissed, phasing through the table. "A vector. A leaky container for things you cannot comprehend."
Eren didn't think. He slammed his hand down on the Omnitrix.
The green flash was a scream in the quiet shack. Bones cracked and expanded, muscle surged, and where a terrified boy stood, now loomed the three-meter-tall, four-armed form of Titanfist. The sudden growth shattered the low ceiling, sending splinters and dust raining down.
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Titanfist roared, his four golden eyes wide with a child's terror given a giant's voice. He grabbed the small wooden table and hurled it at the floating ectonurite.
Zs'Skayr didn't flinch. The table passed through his insubstantial form and shattered against the far wall. He laughed, the sound like nails on a slate. "Anger. Violence. Your first and only language. Still predictable I see."
Titanfist didn't wait for another taunt. He turned and bolted for the shack's door, his massive shoulders tearing the frame apart as he burst through into the… outside.
It was day, but the light was wrong. A sickly, bruise-purple twilight hung over the refugee camp. The sky was starless, a solid dome of gloom. And it was silent. Eerily, utterly silent. No murmured conversations, no crying babies, no clatter of pots nor wood. The winding paths between shacks and tents were deserted.
"Hello?" Titanfist called out, his voice echoing unnaturally in the stillness. He took a wary step forward, his four eyes scanning the shadows. "Mikasa?...Armin?...Anyone?"
SQUELCH.
A cold, vice-like grip closed around his left ankle.
Titanfist yelped, looking down. A hand, pale and caked in grave-dirt, had erupted from the hard-packed earth. It held him with impossible strength.
"Let GO!" he snarled, yanking his leg. The hand held fast. He pulled harder, putting his massive strength into it.
With a wet, tearing sound, the earth gave up its prize. The hand was attached to an arm, and the arm to a body that was dragged from the ground like a rotten root. It was a man, or had been. His clothes were rags, his skin was a sickly grey, and his eyes glowed with the same familiar, hateful purple light.
A thrall. One of Zs'Skayr's puppets.
It snarled, a sound devoid of anything human, and lunged for his leg with broken teeth.
"Yah!" Titanfist kicked out in a panic, his foot connecting with the thrall's chest. It flew back with a crunch of bone, but it didn't cry out. It just scrambled back to its feet, its head lolling at a wrong angle.
A low moan echoed through the camp. Then another. And another.
From the shadows of doorways, from under carts, from the very earth itself, more thralls began to emerge. Dozens of them. Men, women, even children, all with that same grey pallor and pulsing purple eyes. They moved with a jerky, marionette-like gait, their heads turning in unison to fix on the giant four-armed alien in their midst.
Titanfist's large heart hammered a frantic rhythm. He backed up, his shoulders hitting the wall of a nearby storage shed. "Stay back!"
They didn't. They surged forward as one, a silent, shambling tide of possessed flesh.
Instinct took over. Eren's fear was a fire, and Titanfist's body was the furnace. He swung a fist the size of a ham, catching two thralls and sending them spinning into a cluster of tents, which collapsed. A third leaped onto his back, clawing at his neck. He reached back with two hands, plucked it off, and slammed it into the ground so hard the earth cratered.
But for every one he smashed, two more took its place. They clambered over the fallen, mindless and relentless, swarming up his legs, his arms. He felt cold, pinprick fingers grabbing, scratching. He roared, shaking his massive body like a dog shaking off water, sending thralls flying.
"ENOUGH!" he bellowed, clenching all four of his massive fists. He drew them back and then slammed them down onto the ground with all his might.
BOOOOOM.
The earth didn't just shake; it rippled. A visible shockwave of force exploded outwards from the point of impact. The ground heaved, tents were flattened, and the swarm of thralls was lifted and tossed like leaves in a hurricane, crashing into shacks and each other in a tangle of limbs.
Panting, Titanfist stood in the epicenter of his self-made earthquake, surrounded by temporary silence and wreckage.
A rustle from above.
He looked up. A thrall had been thrown into the skeletal branches of a dead tree. It hung there for a second, then detached itself and dropped, not with a feral snarl, but with a silent, deadly grace, aiming right for his head.
Titanfist reacted, his upper-left hand shooting up and catching the thrall square in the face, stopping its descent cold. He drove it downwards, slamming it into the dirt with a brutal thud, his hand pinning it by the head.
The thrall stopped struggling. Its purple glow dimmed slightly. It looked up at him, and its features… shifted. The grey pallor bled away into pale skin. The matted hair lightened to blonde. The glowing eyes faded into wide, terrified, and very familiar blue ones.
"E-Eren?" the thrall that was now Armin whispered, his voice small and broken. "Why… why are you doing this?"
Eren's breath caught. All four of his golden eyes widened. For a heartbeat, the fire of battle guttered out, replaced by a cold, sickening dread. "Armin…?"
The thing beneath his hand stared up with perfect, wounded confusion. A single tear traced a clean path through the dirt on its—his—cheek.
Then Titanfist's jaw set. The golden eyes hardened. "No," he growled, his voice trembling not with fear, but with fury. "You're not him. I'm not falling for that again!"
As if on cue, the "Armin" thrall's face twisted back into a snarl of pure hatred, its eyes re-igniting with purple fire. It thrashed, trying to bite the massive fingers holding it down.
A blur of motion from the side came to view. Titanfist swung a backhand, but the new attacker was faster; a grey blur that ducked under the swing, planted its hands on the ground, and executed a perfect, fluid backflip. Its foot connected with a devastating crack under Titanfist's chin.
The force of the kick snapped his head back. Pain, bright and startling, lanced through his jaw. His grip on the "Armin" thrall involuntarily loosened, and it scrambled away.
Clutching his chin, Titanfist's eyes focused on his agile attacker as it landed in a crouch.
It wore the remnants of a dress, now torn and grey. Its black hair was messy just like the rest of its body. But the face, currently contorted in a feral snarl, was unmistakable.
"M… Mikasa?"
The thrall didn't speak at first. It just stared at him with those empty purple eyes, chest heaving. Then, its head tilted in a horribly familiar, assessing way. When it spoke, the voice was a distorted rasp, but the cadence, the bluntness, was hers. "You did this. Your fault. We're like this because of you."
"NO!" Titanfist roared, the denial ripping from him. "You're not her! You're NOT MIKASA!"
He took a step towards it, a third fist drawing back to strike the abomination wearing Mikasa's face.
A cold, frail hand closed around his right wrist.
He froze. Slowly, he turned his head.
Another thrall had crawled from the wreckage. This one moved slowly, painfully. Its dress was torn, its hair a tangled mess. It looked up at him, and Carla Yeager's face, now grey and lit with that awful purple glow, stared back with an expression of profound, alien disappointment.
All the fight left him. The towering Tetramand deflated, his shoulders slumping. He took a stumbling step back, then another, away from the thrall wearing his mother's skin. "No… no, no, no…"
"The connection to flesh is always a weakness," Zs'Skayr's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. The ectonurite lord materialized above the chaos, his tentacles writhing with amused contempt. "You cling to these shells. It makes you so very easy to break."
One of his larger tentacles glowed with concentrated violet energy. "Allow me to demonstrate."
A beam of pure, ghostly plasma screamed down from the tentacle.
Titanfist crossed all four arms in front of him in a desperate block. The impact was monumental. He skidded back, his 2 toed feet carving trenches in the earth, but he held.
"Hardly impressive." Zs'Skayr intoned. The beam intensified, doubling, tripling in power. The violet light washed over Eren, searing, pressing. With a final, deafening CRACK, he was launched off his feet, soaring through the air like a discarded toy. He hit the ground fifty feet away, tumbling end over end in a cloud of dust and pain.
Before he could even sit up, Zs'Skayr fired again. Eren rolled, the blast cratering the space where he'd just lain. Another telekinetic gesture from the ectonurite, and a boulder the size of a cart tore itself from the ground and hurtled towards him.
Titanfist grunted, all four arms shooting out to catch the massive rock. The impact drove him back another few feet, but he held it. It left him wide open.
Zs'Skayr didn't miss the chance. Another plasma blast, point-blank, square in the chest.
WHUMP.
The air left Eren's lungs in a whoosh. He was airborne again, the world a spinning blur of purple twilight and pain. He crashed through the skeletal remains of a fence and into the treeline at the camp's edge, finally sliding to a stop in a heap of shattered wood and his own groaning mass.
Dazed, he pushed himself up on three arms, clutching his head with the fourth. A shrill, urgent beeping cut through the ringing in his ears.
Beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.
NO.
He looked at the Omnitrix symbol on his chest. It was flashing red. The familiar green light was draining away like blood from a wound.
"Not now… not yet…" he pleaded, his voice ragged.
The transformation seized. A violent, sickening reversal of matter. His body shrank, his arms merged, his mass evaporated in a reverse gred flash. In an instant, the mighty Titanfist was gone. On his hands and knees in the dirt, gasping, was ten-year-old Eren Yeager, clad in torn, dirty clothes.
The Omnitrix on his wrist was a dull, inert red. It had timed out. Too soon. Far too soon.
Before the horror of his vulnerability could fully sink in, a low moan sounded from the bushes. Then another. Grey, shuffling forms detached themselves from the shadows of the trees. The thralls. They'd followed him. And now he was small. And powerless.
The first one, a man with a twisted back, lunged with a guttural snarl.
Eren scrambled back, but tripped on himself. He was going to die here. He was—
FWUMP-SHZZT!
A blast of brilliant, actinic white energy, hotter and purer than sunlight, tore through the twilight. It struck the leading thrall square in the face. There was no explosion, just a horrific sizzle and a flash of light so intense it bleached the color from the world for a second. The thrall reeled back, clawing at its face where the flesh was now blackened and steaming, a large chunk simply gone.
Eren blinked, shielding his eyes. Standing between him and the thralls, holding the sungun that glowed with a soft, warm light, was Grandpa Arlet.
Relief, so profound it was a physical pain, flooded Eren. He stumbled to his feet. "Thank the Walls! Something's wrong, Zs'Skayr, he's back, he's messing with my head, the thralls, Mom, Armin, Mikasa, they're all—"
Grandpa Arlet turned. His face, usually a mask of weary kindness, was calm. Too calm. His eyes met Eren's.
They were glowing with a soft, familiar purple light.
"Indeed," Grandpa Arlet said, his voice perfectly measured, utterly sane, and utterly wrong. "Something is very wrong."
He raised the Sun Gun again, its warm light now looking mocking. "With you."
He fired.
Eren threw himself sideways. The white beam seared past his shoulder, close enough for him to feel its blistering heat. He hit the ground, rolled, and came up running, pure adrenaline overriding exhaustion.
BANG!
The sound of a standard-issue Garrison rifle echoed through the woods. Dirt kicked up at Eren's feet. He skidded to a halt, looking up.
Perched on a mossy boulder overlooking the path was Hannes. He held a smoking rifle with casual expertise. But his face… it was slack, his eyes staring with a vacant, peaceful expression that was more terrifying than any snarl. He took a long, slow drag from a flask that wasn't there.
"The old man's right, kid," Hannes said, his voice a lazy, drunken drawl that didn't match the deadly aim. "You're the problem. A walking, talking problem." He shouldered the rifle again, the barrel seeking Eren's center mass. "Best to put a problem down 'fore it causes more mess."
Eren didn't wait. He dove into the undergrowth as another shot rang out, the bullet snapping a branch over his head. He ran. He ran blindly, branches whipping his face, thorns tearing his clothes, the sounds of pursuit; the silent shambling of thralls, the occasional crack of the Sun Gun or bang of the rifle; fading behind him. He ran until his lungs were fire and his legs were lead, until he burst into a small, sun-dappled clearing, collapsing against a large, gnarled tree trunk, sobbing for breath.
Safe. He had to be safe here. It was quiet. Just the sound of his own ragged gasps and the gentle rustle of…
He went very still.
The rustling wasn't the wind. It was the sound of something large moving with predatory silence through the brush behind him.
Slowly, every muscle screaming in protest, Eren turned his head.
In the deep shadows of the trees, two meters away, a pair of eyes burned. Not purple. A deep, furious, terrified blue. Then another pair opened. And another. Five burning blue orbs, arranged in a crown, and a sixth, milky-white, pulsating one, all fixed on him.
The Vulpimancer. Six meters of bruised purple muscle, fur matted with ash, the V-shaped patterns along its spine strobing erratically with unstable energy. The parasitic centipede of light glowed fiercely within its translucent chest. Heat radiated from it in visible waves, making the air above its back shimmer.
It was crouched, its powerful haunches coiled. It wasn't snarling. It was perfectly, utterly silent. And it was looking directly at him.
Eren's breath froze in his throat. His heart didn't beat; it vibrated against his ribs like a trapped bird. This was it. After everything, it would end here, in a quiet forest, eaten by the very monster he'd…
The Vulpimancer's muscles tensed. It pounced.
Eren screamed.
"AAAAAAAAA-
-AAAAAAAAAHH!!!"
He woke up screaming.
The sound was a raw, ragged thing that tore from his throat and echoed strangely in the enclosed space he was in. He jackknifed into a sitting position. Cold sweat plastered his shirt to his back. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, painful drum solo.
"Mom!" he gasped, the name instinctive, a plea for the world to make sense.
Silence answered him. Not the oppressive, purple silence of the dream, but a deep, natural quiet, broken only by the distant drip of water and the soft sigh of wind through… leaves?
He wasn't in the shack. He wasn't outside.
He was in a…cave.
The reality of it seeped in slowly, pushing back the nightmare's lingering terror. The air was cool and damp, smelling of wet stone, rich earth, and… something else. Something musky, wild. The light was faint, a soft, predawn grey filtering through a thick curtain of vines and ferns that hung over the entrance a few feet away.
'Dream. It was all a dream. The camp, Mom, Zs'Skayr, his monsters, Grandpa, Hannes… all a nightmare.'
Relief, sweet and dizzying, washed over him. He slumped back against the cool cave wall, letting out a shuddering breath. He was safe. He was…
Wait.
Fragments of other memories, harder, sharper, less dreamlike, stabbed through the relief.
Fire. So much fire. Screams. Green crystal. A purple monster phasing. The feeling of wings. A supersonic dive. A glowing net. Pain. Green light pouring from his chest… into the monster. Then… falling. Orange fur. A grip on his jacket…
His eyes snapped open wide. He looked down at his wrist.
The Omnitrix was there. But it wasn't its usual soft, glowing green. The face was a dull, dead...grey. Not red, grey. The dial felt cold and inert under his fingertips. He pressed the symbol. Nothing. He tried to twist the dial. It was locked solid, unresponsive.
A cold that had nothing to do with the cave seeped into his bones. 'It's drained.'
Panic, a new, clean panic, began to rise. Where was he? How did he get here? The last clear memory… the market square. The Vulpimancer, healed, turning orange… then grabbing him…
Oh.
A soft, deep, rumbling breath sounded from the other side of the small cave.
Eren froze. Very, very slowly, he turned his head.
In the deepest recess of the cave, where the shadows were thickest, a massive shape was curled. It was a mound of dense, healthy orange fur, the color of autumn leaves at dusk. Darker orange, almost brown, V-shaped patterns traced along its spine and haunches, now dormant and natural-looking, not glowing. It was breathing slowly, steadily. As Eren watched, one of its hearing gills twitched open.
It was the Vulpimancer. But not the nightmare version. Not the purple engine of destruction. This was… the after version. The one he'd… fixed.
And it was right there.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, to hide, to fight. But his body was weak, aching in places he didn't know he had, and the Omnitrix was a dead weight on his wrist. He had no powers. He was a ten-year-old boy in a cave with a giant alien predator.
The creature's head lifted. It didn't snap up; it rose slowly, with a languid, powerful grace. The smooth, eyeless dome of its face turned toward him. It was blind as it naturally should be. It had to use its sonic sense.
It chuffed. A low, vibrating exhalation that filled the small space. Not a growl. A question.
It uncurled itself and stood up. Even on all fours, its head nearly brushed the cave's low ceiling. It was still enormous, easily the size of a small horse, but its movements were fluid, controlled, lacking the frantic, pained energy of before.
It took a step towards him.
Eren scrambled back, his back hitting the cave wall with a thud, the breath hitching in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the impact, the teeth, the end.
A soft clunk sounded on the stone in front of him.
He opened one eye.
The Vulpimancer had nudged something forward with its muzzle. It was a rough, bowl-like depression in a piece of old, water-smoothed wood. It was filled to the brim with clear, cool water.
The creature then took two precise steps back and sat down on its haunches, its smooth face tilted in what Eren could only interpret as a questioning, wary… expectation.
Eren stared from the water to the creature and back again. His throat was parched, aching. Cautiously, never taking his eyes off the Vulpimancer, he reached out and picked up the wooden bowl. It was heavy, solid. The water was cool and clean, with a faint, mineral taste.
He drank. He couldn't help it. He drank greedily, water sloshing down his chin, until the bowl was empty. The relief was immediate and profound. He set the bowl down with a shaky hand, while he wiped his mouth.
"Th…thanks," he muttered, the word feeling absurd.
The Vulpimancer rumbled again, a soft, almost approving sound that vibrated in Eren's chest.
Eren's eyes adjusted fully. The cave was small, the entrance partially covered by vines and leaves. He wobbly got to his feet, his legs protesting. He needed to see where he was. He shuffled to the cave entrance, pushing aside the thick curtain of hanging vines.
The view that greeted him made his blood run cold again, for entirely different reasons.
They were high up. The cave mouth opened onto a sheer rock face, part of a towering cliff that overlooked a vast, mist-shrouded basin. Far below, a dense, impossibly vast forest stretched to the horizon, its canopy a rolling sea of green so dark it was almost black. The trees were… tall; to say the least; they were colossal, their trunks wider than houses, their highest branches piercing the low clouds. The first rays of the rising sun painted the mist in gold and pink, glinting off something massive and motionless nestled among the roots of the nearest mega-tree. It was somewhat beautiful. And familiar.
"The Forest of Giant Trees…" Eren whispered, recognition hitting him like a punch. His father had brought him here once, during a rare open tour day that was an interception between wall Rose and wall Maria before.
Then his gaze shifted. A few meters away, partially hidden by a tree…was a Titan. Motionless. Ten meters tall, its naked form slumped against the trunk, eyes closed as if sleeping.
"A titan." he whispered, horror dawning. "Thi-This is-" Eren's heart leaped into his throat. He scrambled to his feet, legs wobbly, and stumbled toward the entrance, pushing aside the vines.
He spun back to face the Vulpimancer, who had followed him to the entrance and was now sitting calmly, its head tilted as if listening to his panic.
"Why… why did you bring me here?!" Eren demanded. The creature just tilted its head again, rumbling softly.
"Are you insane?! Why here?! This is Titan territory! We're in the middle of—" His rant died as he saw the Titan shift slightly, one massive hand twitching. His panic switched tracks. He needed to get out. Now. He needed to find Mikasa, Armin, Hannes. They'd be worried sick.
"Okay, okay," he muttered to himself, turning back to the Omnitrix. "New plan. Blitz. In and out. Find them, explain… somehow." He focused, slamming his hand on the dial. "Come on, come on, work! Just a little charge! Just enough for Blitz!"
He slammed the dial.
…Nothing.
The device remained dark, unresponsive. Eren's eyes widened in horror. "No… no, not now! Come on, you piece of—!"
He slammed it again. Still nothing. He pressed. He twisted. He smacked it. He pleaded.
Nothing. The device was a tomb. Grey. Lifeless.
"FUCK!" The curse erupted from him, loud and desperate, echoing briefly in the cliffside silence.
The Vulpimancer flinched at the sudden noise, its head pulling back slightly. It let out a low, warning chuff, this one edged with clear agitation. It didn't like the shouting.
Eren stared at the dead watch, then at the Titan-infested forest below, then at the giant, alien, blind creature he'd somehow befriended-enraged-saved, who was now his only companion in the most dangerous place inside the Walls.
He was ten years old. He was powerless. He was lost.
And the sun was rising on a forest full of monsters.
Eren's knees buckled. He slid down the cave wall, he slid down the cave wall until he was sitting on the floor, pulling his knees to his chest. The Vulpimancer, after a moment of tense observation, slowly settled back onto its belly a few feet away, its smooth face still pointed in his direction, listening.
He buried his face in his hands, the cave suddenly feeling very, very small.
Outside, the forest stirred. A distant roar echoed; a Titan awakening. The Vulpimancer's nose twitched, its body tensing.
Eren looked up, dread coiling in his gut. "We're not safe here… are we?"
The creature rumbled, low and steady. Almost like an answer.
And in the distance, the first rays of sunlight caught the silhouette of the slumped Titan, its beady dead eyes awoke…then it slowly turned its head toward the cave.
Chapter 29-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.