Galahad yanked Nio up to their feet, no longer as concerned with the boy's mental well being. “Look at me,” he spoke quickly, eyes constantly darting to where the Titan was forming into two. “Run, run to the railroads, and don’t look back. Whatever you do make sure you get word out”

  Nio trembled, still dazed from their near death experience. It was all Galahad could do to not raise his fists in anger, “Nio!” he raised his voice, stern and commanding, shaking him for his stupor. “Do you understand?” he punctuated, pointing out further to the south, towards Velnias.

  Nio’s eyes went wide and he jerkily nodded before scrambling into a run towards the forest.

  Galahad returned to the battle, quickly finding Atlas, who seemed to have gotten the surviving Wardens organized. Five of them now it seemed with only three in fighting shape, Galahad and Atlas included. The two injured seemed to be barely holding on, body parts missing that were slowly mending themselves. One of them, Lawrence was awake, but his was a non-combatant investigation manifestation to call upon the dead. The remaining Warden was Sandra.

  Sandra had the manifestation to meld any two things together. He said things since he had once seen her meld the concept of a bridge and water together to form a pathway and another time to meld a man into a tree who pissed her off. He was pretty sure the man was still there.

  “Narrus?” he managed to ask. The man was a genius and knew how to make the most amount of Galahad’s abilities even when he didn’t. The man also held one of his anchors that had disappeared.

  Atlas shook his head sadly. “It went for you two first. Thought you were dead for a moment there”

  Galahad breathed in, his fist clenching as he pushed down cries of anguish.

  “I have a plan” Atlas continued to stare at the reforming creature, well, two creatures now as he pushed a sheathed sword towards Galahad. “And you’re the pin. Thank you for volunteering.”

  Despite himself, Galahad managed a small smile, “Just point me the way.”

  The plan was simple, cut them into parts so small that Atlas could burn them away all at once. It would take both Atlas and Galahad time to charge up their attacks, so it was Sandra’s job to distract the two Titans, and if she could. Combine them back into one.

  Sandra ran, pushing her essence forward in long towering spikes across the ground in front of her. She picked up speed, willing herself to go faster, faster and further. The healed half of the Titan reared up, moving to block her path to the still reforming half of itself. She dropped low, sliding beneath its hulking mass, sending one of her spikes of essence to the side with a kick. Essence shook, erupting from the ground with masses of molded dirt and stone, the chunks forming a massive spear which lodged into the creature's pillar-like leg. She kicked up, back into a run, placing her hand on the stone spear and activating the manifestation once more, fusing the unwieldy object to the monster.

  It barely slowed it. The beast took a moment to rear up its injured leg, high over its head. The hands on its back, like a sharp bristled brush, began tearing at the stone. Each scraped thin layers of stone with their fingernails, barely enough to make a dent on their own, but as they passed by, again and again in the span of a few seconds they were able to gain purchase. Layers became chunks, became piles until the molding crumpled to its base design. The small bit that remained changed. From stone to flesh, to a paste that seeped into the creature's gray skin.

  The distraction was no more than five seconds, but they were five seconds she’d have to take. She swore, jumping high as a hand sailed past, the wind generated fast enough to temporarily blind her.

  She dived toward the ground, arms outstretched and placed on top of one each other as a swimmer would. She coated herself with essence, and fell through earth like it was water. The pressure was immense, the creature's bulk having packed down the ground she found herself wading through. It wasn’t a long trek as he emerged, greedily consuming the air once she breached. She rotated two of her remaining, long essence spikes and shot both out from her. One to the recovering half, and one to the original. It was a target hard to miss. They passed through skin easily, connecting both parts of the being with part of the string which binded all, she said a small prayer to The Loudest Yell thanking him for his gifts, and then, with all her might, yanked.

  The collision was slow, but inevitable. Both halves tripped over the ground, and eventually each other as they were brought closer and closer. They fought, seemingly wanting to stay separate as they began buckling against one another, until both gave in simultaneously The bodies creating a fracture which rapidly consumed them both. It caused the Titan to grow, doubling its original height and mass until it towered over even the largest trees of the forest.

  Sandra wasted no time retreating, knowing its fury would soon be upon her. She merged into the ground once more, the pressure from before even greater as descending any amount felt like drowning.

  She crawled away beneath the dirt, her lungs screamed for relief, but found no purchase in panic or fear, Sandra had long since grown past both. Forward, one step at a time. Pop up, distract.

  She’d repeat the pattern however long Atlas and Galahad needed.

  The weight of an ocean crushed down on her, compressing the dirt she had melded into. Her ribs strained against the force as air clawed itself out of her throat. She was pinned with nowhere to move and rapidly running out of oxygen. Then something broke the soil. It wormed its way across her wrist, wrapping it with far too many fingers scraping against her skin – digging in, tugging and pulling at her flesh.

  It yanked, once, twice, each time it pulled she could feel her legs stuck beneath the dirt as her torso stretched, and twisted. Thrice. The dirt gave before her body and she found herself dangling in the air. She released the meld between her and the dirt, layers of soil falling from her skin. She took shallow breaths as her mind caught up to her body. The titan looked at her, the hundreds of hands that had buried themselves in the ground looking for her slowly unearthed themselves, turning as if they had eyes to see her.

  No plan. No time. No way out. The grip on her wrist tightened and twisted, fingernails gouging her arm. If the titan wanted the fucking thing so badly it could have it.

  She formed a ring of sharp, thin essence around her shoulder and pulled the energy inward. The formed blade bit into her shoulder in a messy cleave, snagging and tearing unevenly as long strands of sinew resisted the force. Her vision blurred in sync with white hot pain, sound falling away as she yanked the blade down again. She cried out, tears falling unbidden from her eyes as it wasn’t enough and she was forced to slam the blade down a third time.

  She was falling, her own blood dripping in the air beside her. She looked up. Her arm twitched in the Titan’s grasp as the last vestiges of essence caused the arm to spasm.

  The Titan’s hand gripping onto the severed limb rotated her arm up and a tension rippled through the creature's entire body as muscles spasmed. It swung rapidly– grip shattering what was now regular bone and flesh as it began slamming itself and its passenger into the ground in a frenzy. On the third impact it lifted itself back up – caked in red. Her own fingers waved at her from the hand.

  Sarah melded into the air as she fell, her form becoming less corporal and far lighter. Not the best plan in her opinion, but limited options were called that for a reason. She floated up, sticking close to the underbelly of the beast, hoping that she could stay out of its attention long enough to recover.

  The plan fell apart as the creature decided to let gravity do its work as it jumped four feet into the air, and let itself crumple to the ground.

  She refused to be crushed, or perhaps even dispersed into the wind. So she melded into the Titan skin. Mentally she focused, ensuring the distinction between Melding into the Titan’s skin, Melding into the Titan, and Melding with the Titan.

  It was light. Too light. She thought her body would be heavy, but her surroundings felt more like air. Felt porous. Wrong. She instinctively back peddled, closer to the Titan’s skin.

  A reverberation rang through her back, and as she turned she saw the many hands of the titan slamming themselves against where she had melded herself. They gripped chunks of gray flesh and ripped and with every tear Sarah felt the air of the outside rush closer and closer to her.

  She scrambled, manipulating her manifestation to move closure to the neck. Then, her foot snagged. Caught and held. The substance beneath her heel twisted and changed, soft and porous into a dense and hard material. She jerked forward, forming another blade of essence as she had before, but something lopped inside of her rib, pushing against her lung, winding between her bones. Then her sight fractured. First in lines, then in pieces and then nothing. Just the sensation of more and more stone pouring through her.

  She flared her manifestation attempting to escape through merging with the Titan’s stone skin further still, and in the brief moment her essence flared, the stone solidified almost her entire body.

  There was no escape. No tricks left.

  She was going to be eaten by this thing.

  She wanted to writhe, to twist and push, and although her muscles tensed and strained there was no movement. There was no air to breathe, but her lungs tried anyways, each breath out more stone grew, constricting her more and more. The one rib that was locked in place fractured as her lungs continued to collapse.

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  The world blurred. Then shattered.

  Sandra’s stomach flipped as her body collapsed inward into a single massless point, then – Air. Light. Voices.

  She was whole, the arm she had cut off earlier clasping onto Galahad’s hand in a shake.

  “Good shit,” Galahad spoke, grinning, having activated and used his own ability to effectively teleport her.

  “I’ve always thought,” Atlas cut in with a sad smile. He looked from Sandra to the massive Titan, his dark skin glowing with orange light from a lattice of glowing Essence floating all around him, “That the unknown is a lot less scary with others around.”

  Sandra’s eyes widened as she looked up to see what could only be described as a madman's delirium filled masterpiece.

  The lattice was spherical in shape, its radius no less than fifteen feet in any given direction. Each of the weavings took up no more than six cubic inches with some sigils from one cube overlapping with another, each drawing from and using parts from one another. There had to be hundreds of these. How did they do it so fast?

  She looked towards Lawrence, who looked away in shame, “I asked Narrus”

  Ah. So he really was dead. Their contracts weren’t going to save them.

  She pushed the thoughts from her mind, seeing the last part of their madness.

  Anchors. At seemingly random points Galahad had placed no less than ten anchors. Four were clustered together. Another cluster contained three, and the last few were scattered.

  “What is this?” She breathed equal parts awe and horror.

  “Cheating.” Atlas said plainly, pointing to the cluster of 4 Anchors, “A relay for infinite essence for Galahad”, he continued to the cluster of 3, “Galahad’s essence blades”, and he shrugged at the last ones “and essence siphoning, so I’ll get a little kick back”

  Galahad stepped forward, raising his blade, as he looked back. “Ready?”

  “Fire at will.”

  The man brought down his sword, with a distinct lack of ceremony.

  The lattice flared, the anchors pulsed feeding into the weaving. The entire construct trembled, vibrating so harshly Sandra feared it would shatter, and at last their work activated.

  Three long blades of essence formed in the air, each rotated at a different angle. They shot forward through the air. The lattice bloomed, the anchors moved and rotated. Three more blades formed, each aimed and rotated distinctly once again. They chased after the first wave, followed by another, and another and countless more. A gatling gun of essence blades that sang as they traveled and cleaved through large portions of the titans flesh with each impact.

  The barrage never stopped. Long after anyone in the history of the Peninsula would have ran out of essence – the shots continued. The lattice was working, each time Galahad came close to running out an anchor would activate, and he’d resume the state of a perfectly healthy, fully topped off on essence Warden.

  The essence poured from him in a continual stream, each time he reset a portion of the substance would be siphoned off, flowing through the labyrinth of sigils as they began to glowing a deep red-orange. It intensified, growing brighter and brighter until it was preferable to stare directly at the sun.

  The sky burned. Flames circled the sky in a halo above the Titan, wreathing their opponent in a holy dowry before execution.

  By the time Sarah looked back to the Titan the majority of its mass were already discrete chunks, and much to her horror they were growing, turning into smaller writhing hands as they transmuted dirt into usable mass.

  Then Atlas called down fire. It did not rain. It did not slam. It fell like judgment. As fire touched the ground it melted into slag. The air itself was swallowed in a roar of combustion, drawing in the surrounding oxygen to fuel its creation. Long after all the air was gone, it continued to sustain itself, pulling more and more on the constructed lattice.

  For two minutes, fire took the world.

  Judgment only stopped when the lattice finally broke, falling away like dust.

  Neither man panted or gasped for air. Why would they after all, Galahad’s manifestation ensured that it felt like they hadn't even done anything.

  The trio stood in place for a moment. The relief of a victory rushing through them, the cost thought about in some abstract far off place. They looked over the destruction. Sandra sending a wave of essence over the ruins, trying to catch any sight of the Titan still being alive, and signature of essence that could alert her. But she found nothing. She found nothing. Where was its core? Harbingers, had pseudo-cores. Intangible things that held their power, Titans had actual, physical cores.

  “It’s core isn’t here”

  The tape flickered. Fern frowned. Everyone’s jaws hung as they watched the casual display of power from Atlas and Galahad – those who hadn’t before finally understanding why they were considered the strongest. For a moment. For a brief moment Fern had almost cheered, hadn’t believed that the pair wouldn’t make it out of this alive. She had read the message from Galahad, that all but him had been killed, but seeing the memories in front of her. She had still believed.

  Then Galahad saw it. Felt it before he saw it, but saw it still. It was something that grabbed at his feet. Stealing skin from his ankles and clawing against the vein on his thigh.

  He turned to the south, where he had sent Nio, and standing, head peaking barely above the trees was the Titan.

  The film reel stopped. Fern blinked in confusion, glancing at Wave as the lights in the meeting room flicked on.

  "Where’s the rest?" she ventured. She was shaken by what she saw but couldn't look away. What happened next?

  Wave shrugged, "Like I said before, trauma messes with people's memories. After this point, everything gets real scrambly. Uninterpretable. As Galahad recovers, we'll be able to extract more and more, but for now, this is all we have, and frankly from Galahad’s report we know what happens next. It’s not pretty." He motioned for one of the workers to rewind the film. It took a second for the man to spool it and move to the correct frame.

  Wave pointed to the Titan, watching from over the tree line, "I believe I do not need to explain to everyone why this is bad. If it can make more of itself, then unless we trap this creature or somehow get it under control we risk the entire Peninsula."

  "They had life contracts." One of the captains in the back spoke up, a more prominent man with a scarred face and sparse yellow hair. "How are they dead. Captured I could understand. Turned into an essence beast or had their flesh mixed in stone I can wrap my head around. But dead. They should've reformed right in Wardens HQ. Why did the contracts fail?"

  Wave shook his head, frustration evident, "throughout the footage we see, there is no clear use of a manifestation being used, the creation of another one of itself may be it, but we have reason to suspect that the Titans ability itself may be to nullify contracts."

  Another oppressive beat of silence.

  The meeting dragged on – plans, next steps, requirements for the captains. During the proceedings someone even suggested releasing an edited version of the footage to the public. Fern barely registered it. Her heart wasn’t in it.

  She left.

  The thought of returning home filled her with dread – returning to an empty bed where Atlas should have been with framed pictures, and a shattered shared life.

  She turned to her desk, and it filled her with anger – sorting through half sheets of paper, deciding lives with a single stamp

  Instead, she walked. The air bit at her, but she welcomed any reprieve from the numbness. She let it push her forward to the husk of Spearhead’s former office.

  The inside of the building was a wreck. The entirety of the support staff ahd quit the moment the news broke. Papers lay scattered, some half signed, some abandoned mid sentence. Only one light shone, far in the back.

  She opened the door without knocking.

  Galahad sat on the wrong side of the desk, a flask intertwined with his fingers. He needed a shave. His hair was unkempt, his eyes half-lidded with exhaustion and drink. The moment he saw her, he looked away.

  She opened the door, not bothering to knock and came face to face with Galahad. He needed to shave. His hair was scraggly and unkempt, and he held an opened flask in one hand as he sat on the wrong side of the desk.

  “Please,” it came out as a breath, “let's only have this conversation once.”

  Fern pulled a chair next to him, and grabbed the flask, pulling deeply from it before shoving it back in Galahad’s lap, “I don’t think I have that in me.”

  “Could you do it?” Galahad pushed out in a hoarse whisper, “If I were to give you infinite essence, could you turn back the clock that much? To before we left”

  “I wish I could.” she didn’t elaborate.

  “Did you see my request?” Galahd continued, still not looking at Fern.

  She took the flask again, continuing to pull and not giving it back, “No.”

  Silence.

  “I’m reforming Spearhead-”

  “No” she practically spat the word, a hiss of frustration, anger, grief that caused Galahad to flench. “I meant no to your request Galahad. We’re not pumping some poor fools with essence”

  Another beat of nothingness.

  “Why are you here?” Galahd scowled, as he grew the courage to look at the furious Fern.

  “I don’t know”

  She turned the flask in her hands, rolling it between her fingers like a child with a puzzle they couldn’t solve. Then another swig. This time, she held it out for Galahad. He took it and drank.

  Neither of them knew how to speak to the other. The silence stretched, suffocating.

  “They’ll push my request through anyways. The Executive Council wants a new Spearhead”

  “I know”

  “Four times the usual amount of essence. They’ll survive long enough for The Peninsula to stabilize.

  “I know”

  More silence.

  Fern swallowed, hesitating as she rolled the words in her mouth. Then soft as wind she started, “Thank you. For being his friend.”

  Galahad turned away, not daring to look at anything but the floor.

  “Atlas always felt alone,” she pressed on. The words wouldn’t stop now. “Before you came, he never smiled. Never laughed. Like he was carrying the weight of the entire Peninsula on his back.”

  Galahad’s breath hitched, “He was the most charismatic man I knew.”

  “We knew two very different men.”

  Galahad nodded, a small sob escaping his lips.

  She could feel the tears burning, but she forced them down. Forced herself to stand and leave without another word.

  8 Hours later

  URGENT TELEGRAM

  FROM: UNANIMOUSLY, THE EXECUTVIE COUNCIL

  TO: CAPTAIN GALAHAD

  REQUEST APPROVED

  IMMEDIATE AUTHORIZATION GRANTED FOR SPEARHEAD REFORMATION

  FOURFOLD ESSENCE COMMUNION SANCTIONED

  SELECTION AND AUGMENTATION TO PROCEED WITHOUT DELAY

  FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION