In the heart of Velnias, Fern slouched at her desk. Shock etched into every fold of her face. Clutching the report, the young Verdan's trembling hands betrayed her as she struggled to make sense of incomprehensible news. She combed through the text sentence by sentence, word by word, hoping to unearth an overlooked comma, word, or phrase that might alter the meaning of the telegram. She found none as she mouthed the words:

  URGENT TELEGRAM

  FROM: GALAHAD

  TO: WARDENS HQ: FERN

  SPEAR HEAD ERADICATED

  NEW TITAN STILL AT LARGE

  ONE SURVIVOR GALAHAD

  TITAN COLOSSAL WITH MANY HANDS

  APPEARS TO NULLIFY LIFE CONTRACTS

  ALL OTHER SOULS LOST

  GALAHAD

  The report's brevity, no more than half a sheet of paper, left Fern yearning for more details, for some shred of certainty. For greater confirmation or news.

  No one would take the news of Spearhead's death well.

  Unfortunately for the entire Peninsula, it played out exactly how she imagined it.

  Day’s later, Fern found herself walking along Velnias' Mainstreet, the bustling thoroughfare now tingled with an air of palpable tension as people made their way through the snow.

  The streets remained congested with traffic and vibrant lights, but a cautious hush had fallen upon them as if the city held its breath, waiting for the next disaster. No one dared honk as paper boys peddled various printings of grim headlines with a subdued sense of urgency. Variations of 'The Peninsula of Knowledge in Fear: A New Titan Wipes Spearhead,' '1921 marks the end. The Strongest Not Enough!' and 'Essence-Linked Crimes Surge After Spearhead Tragedy' littered the hands of the paper boys as they exchanged fear-mongering for coins and cash. It made her sick. Her attempts at a more diplomatic spin couldn't quell the public's perception of the event. She couldn't even blame them. The whole Peninsula was feeling the effects of Spearhead's destruction.

  While Velnias struggled under the weight of uncertainty, reports painted a grim portrait of other major cities. Fear and unrest festered, threatening to plunge the entire Peninsula into chaos. Both fervent and desperate protests erupted like wildfires, casting a long shadow over the precarious calm people clung to. Dej Khov had worse food shortages, and the Inquisition there worried about an influx of undead due to starvation. Cholt was no better as the city's tinkers were getting antsy, and many started using their technology to turn to thievery. She had been working overtime routing Wardens teams to and fro, matching skill sets with the supernatural problems reported.

  The other branches of The Wardens hadn't had to work this hard in years. Before, there was a pervasive mentality of "if it was important send Spearhead." and "Spearhead is the strongest. Might as well leave everything up to them."

  'Yeah. This is what you get when you put all your eggs in one basket.' She chided the Warden's past over-reliance as she thought about its result: teams running around like headless chickens, at least one contract used per mission, civilian casualties up 235%, with a 46% decrease in resolved cases. It didn't help that there were also just more essence-related events.

  There were the normal Essence events that happened naturally, like a random beam of Essence from the cosmos – reducing a village to a bunch of aberrations or the presence of elementals due to the improper disposal of the dead. If it was just those, everything would've been fine. The issue was that three cults – bone, flesh, and voice – were also becoming more active and daring. It all culminated in a chaotic maelstrom.

  Warden's command could no longer just route resources and hope for the best. With things spiraling beyond what any single branch could handle, The Executive Council had been forced to act. It resulted in an evening meeting with her and Wardens Branch Captains and a newly input request from Galahad which she had already denied.

  That evening, Fern found herself in a small, well-lit, yet windowless meeting room, so plain and devoid of life it made her skin crawl. She was joined by five others, all Warden captains from major cities, each sitting silently, dispersed around the table with seemingly no rhyme or reason. She felt out of place as a support staff, but she chalked up her presence to being the senior most dispatcher, and having received the telegram from Galahad directly.

  The air was thick with unspoken dread. At the far end of the table, one of the captains fidgeted with their watch, another flipping through a pocketbook, but no one spoke. She had almost excused herself to get some fresh air when the doors finally opened with two individuals wheeled in a film reel projector, followed by a man in a long trench coat and hat that covered most of his face.

  Fern tried to peer closer, to make out any details of the individual, but found herself entirely unable to do so. She frowned, every time she looked away his height and posture slipping from her memory.

  Essence, it had to be.

  The man began speaking, "Thank you all for joining me here today, my name is Wave. I'm here at the behest of The Executive Council to share highly confidential information with all of you. I don't know what you did to be part of this in group, and frankly it doesn't matter. All that matters is you've been cleared to view the following footage which we've extracted from Galahad's memories."

  The room held a collective breath as everyone leaned closer, hanging on to Wave's words. Waiting for clarification or a continuation.

  "You're about to see part of the fight that wiped out Spearhead. What you are about to see will no doubt spread in the coming days, but how that spreads is up to us. Make sure you pay attention and ask any questions you have before you leave this room today. In approximately twelve hours, or once the last of you leaves, the footage will be burned."

  Dead silence. No one dared speak, barely even breathing as the footage started. They fast-forwarded through most of the day's memories up until the group of twelve sat around the campfire, drinking and laughing with one another.

  Everyone in the room heard everything, each chuckle, clink of the glass and friendly barb thrown. Saw the dulled colors of frosted winter towards the north.

  Something caught Fern's throat as she laid eyes on Atlas. She would never see him again, would she.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The leader of Spearhead, Atlas, raised a dark obsidian hand with a can of ale in toast, and suddenly a flicker and static filled the screen, temporarily obscuring everything.

  "What was that?" Fern ventured, the first words anyone had spoken with the exception of Wave.

  The film paused, a few of the captains shooting disgruntled glances her way, "That," Wave pointed at the static, "is just an artifact from the memory extraction. When people go through traumatic events, the memories can get a bit blurry and are harder to sift through. Let's save questions for the end though." he tacked on at the end before starting the film up again.

  They all watched the events of the past play out on the screen. As the footage resumed, the room seemed to shrink, the present dissolving as the past came into undeniable focus.

  Galahad clapped Narrus on the back with his left arm, raising the canteen to his lips for a deep swig. Then – falling.

  The drop stretched on.

  Half his body was gone. No pain. Not yet. His head lolled to the side, and he strained his eyes to open. Bisected from shoulder to hip, his right lung bare to the wind, his heart missing. He couldn't think. He couldn't recognize the significance of what he saw or felt as he drifted.

  Then, his anchor activated – he felt his entire body, his consciousness, everything that defined him pulled into place.

  Empty space found flesh again as he snapped back to life and consciousness. The force of reality slammed into him, making him wave his arms wildly as he continued to fall through the air.

  He had been launched high up into the sky. His eyes darted around, trying to gauge what in the hell had just happened, and was only met with chaos and a monster.

  The thing was a colossus of flesh and grasping hands, too many to count, as they grew and fell all across the creature in a tide. Some rose as lighthouses – tall and wide. Others were swallowed by the writhing of their elders, forced beneath the water of its stone-tinged skin.

  It stood on eight appendages, the first two – more pillar than leg – which seemed cut off into stumps. The remaining six were thinner, lither, yet still far wider than the length of a car, each ending in gnarled, elongated fingertips stretching and flexing unnaturally to support its weight. It didn't so much walk as glide. Each forward digit pressed into the ground, curling inward, shifting the Colossus with the fluidity of a roach. They didn't move in tandem; rather, they each had a mind of their own, only generally understanding or knowing where they should be moving, resulting in what looked to be an ice skater – changing directions constantly while constantly facing a different location than the one previously.

  One of the younger wardens, Nio, dodged – too slow. A massive hand swung down like a wrecking ball, each finger spearing deep into the dirt to cage the boy. It lifted, leaning back to gather more force as it uprooted the earth and its prisoner, who was already freezing and hacking an escape. But it was not to be. The cage got closer to the back of the creature, and the remaining hands reached, replacing the hastily cut exit with a slaughterhouse. The hands scrambled and fought for dominance, disregarding the boys' struggles. His thrashing barely registered as they finally brokered an agreement, yanking him free and hurling him onto the colossus' back.

  The smaller hands scrambled and tore to get at the fresh morsel. He thrashed and cried out. Waves of essence crashed forward, and ice erupted around him, but he could no more resist the tide of hands than a natural disaster as he was dragged under.

  And Galahad was falling still as his mind righted itself. It wasn't too late. He had to act. Galahad re-set one of his anchors to his current state as the existing anchors burned his thoughts. He flipped through them, finding the correct one as his essence surged. It yanked, pulled, and strained against reality. Suddenly, a weight slammed into his chest. A body, still screaming and writhing.

  The boy fought his surroundings like a drowning man, causing Galahd to nearly lose his grip before yanking Nio closer for the landing. This time, he didn't use an anchor at all, but his Essence Manifestation directly as he coated the surroundings in his essence as they tumbled on the ground. No impact or explosion of dirt from their fall, everything held perfectly in the state it had been previously.

  Galahad finally let go to let the boy gather himself. Nio had been their newest addition, a young one to train up. He wanted to make sure Nio would be fine but now wasn't the time. He flicked through his anchors again, but his stomach dropped as he recounted. Some were gone. Not used up. Just … gone.

  That shouldn't even be possible. Even if someone had died, if Galahad used his manifestation, a body should have remained to be recalled. A soulless husk, at the very least. Something was wrong here.

  Atlas. He needed to find his commander. Atlas could organize them … but only if he had the time and space to do so.

  But the creature was rampaging. Whipping to and fro with graceful flailing, which kept the survivors on guard. It lunged at one foe, reaching out to another midleap with three arms as it overwhelmed the scattered Wardens with unpredictability.

  Atlas had his job, but he needed the opportunity to be able to do it. Galahad had his job, making sure that Atlas could do his. If the commander needed space, Galahad would make space.

  He didn't know where his sword was. Spearhead hadn't expected a fight; it was meant to be a team-building weekend. With a scowl, he faced the creature and ran forward.

  Galahad manipulated the essence around his fist as he ran, constructing three distinct chambers.

  The first chamber was the intake, pulling in a large volume of air. The second chamber he created from the space his essence took up and then opened into a perfect vacuum to help the first chamber gather more air. The last was the compression chamber, where all the air was shoved into a space far smaller than it was ever meant to fit. He cycled the process –intake, compression –revving up the system over and over to stack more and more pressure.

  He reached the Colossus, set an anchor on the creature and a condition, copied the same anchor onto the edge of his knuckles, and punched.

  His essence bubble released all of the gathered pressure at once. Ten feet of compressed air into a space no larger than five inches in diameter. Almost 94 tons began its explosive march forward. Then it looped.

  Activation condition: activate on impact

  Copy the activating anchor.

  Galahad wasn't sure how small the universal time constant was. As far as he cared to learn, a nanosecond was the smallest unit of time that mattered –and even that was too small to matter to him. So it still galled him when such a loop – which didn't even use 1/1000th of his essence combined to initially create – drained his essence instantaneously by all practical and scientific measurements.

  Several things happened simultaneously as the difference between "explosive chain reaction" and "one seismic impact" began to blur.

  The explosions rippled one after another, the energy traveling with such speed that the atmosphere couldn't recover from their previous dissipation, combining into a directional superdense continuous shockwave.

  The result was an instantaneous rail cannon. The heat grew unbearable as the air pressure tore and crushed apart the creature's tissues and cells, vaporizing one of its forward legs and large swaths of the creature's chest.

  The ground directly around the impact pulverized and compacted into a deep crater that superheated, leaving the dirt steaming and loose stone molten. Further from the direct ground zero of the attack the ground spiderwebbed and cracked, sending a shockwave miles through the area.

  Galahad didn't bother protecting his arm, simply allowing it to combust. The action activated his anchor, recovering the arm as soon as it was gone as he was sent rag-dolling rapidly across the ground back towards the still recovering Nio.

  Galahad grinned. Space made.

  He shuffled to his feet, gritting his teeth in pain as he looked towards the Colossus.

  He had sheared enough off of the creature that it had been bisected in turn. He had expected a shower of blood and viscera any moment now, but as he peered closer, it looked as if the attack had cauterized the wound as it deleted flesh.

  Galahd looked closer still and saw the flesh growing and growing rapidly. The stone flesh repaired and moved across space as the portion that didn't have a head began to grow one. The ground beneath it disappeared as it converted its surroundings into tissue it could use to regenerate itself.

  This wasn't just some strong essence beast or one of the new stable ones they had seen in Velnias. This was something new or something much, much older. The word fell from his lips, tinged with fear and disgust. Titan.

  The objective was no longer elimination or preventing losses; now escape was the only thing that mattered.