Spoiler: Samuel & Melchior
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Melchior’s father looks down at him, visibly shaking and hollow-eyed, and tenderly moves to grab Melchior’s shoulders. “N-no, no, child, see? The faithful understand. We’ll be saved. We just have to be penitent! Yes, penitent! For the sins of humanity! Yell it to the sky!” His eyes betray the certainty of his voice - just looking into them, you can almost hear the desperate voice yelling back at him in his head. Still, keeping his hands on Melchior’s shoulders, he throws his head back and chants to the skies. “O blessed Maria! We are sorry! Please forgive us, we few who revel in your wisdom, for we were not strong enough to protect your pristine surface from mortal defacing! Show us the forgiveness you will not show these sinners! We are sorry! We are sorry!” The sparse dozen people around join in this chant, even as, from under his arm, you detect, rounding the corner...
wham, wham
The pounding thunder shakes from the ground through everything around you, cracking glass, scrambling your insides. A sudden chill takes you. It feels impossible to move.
“We are sorry! We are sorry!”
wham, wham
Screams erupt ever louder through a crowd that is officially leaving your small group behind, with only a few stragglers still emerging from their homes carrying stuff that you note they may literally end up dying to not lose.
“We are sorry! We are sorry!”
WHAM, WHAM
The sun, preparing to set behind the Wall, is blocked out early by a giant green-eyed face with prominent dimples and an overbite so severe you can see its front teeth failing to touch and leaving a gap as it grins down at you. The creature’s wispy, curly black hair surrounds the column of shadow enveloping your party with slithering, grabby tentacles, waiting to snare the very idea of running by the ankles, to drag it back towards those stained-red lips, the belt wrapped around one of its perfectly angular molars. It flutters its eyelashes at you and sniffs audibly with its bunched-up nose as it lurches over, its tubby belly in stark contrast with the impossibly gangly limbs and bony hands now grasping down at you.
Melchior’s father stares at the Titan with eyes wide and face pale. His voice comes out choked and dry as he struggles to summon it again. “Save us... Forgive us... We’re sorry, we’re- no, wait-“ He looks down at Melchior again, and it seems like the voice beating on the walls of his eyes is pushing through in these frozen moments, causing them to well up with tears.
Melchior feels the hands on his shoulders shove, hard. His small body goes sprawling back, just as the massive spindly fingers close around the space Melchior just occupied, and his father still does. The two of you watch as groups of two are brought up in each hand. Melchior’s father, even through the crushing pressure on his chest and stomach, squeals out, his eyes locked on his son: “I’m sorry...!”
The Titan’s delighted grin widens into an open maw, as the first group is brought up to meet its fate. Melchior’s dad screams and flails, reaching out his hands to hold a top and bottom tooth, as if hoping to wedge this deathtrap open.
“No! No! I don’t wanna die! Help me! Maria! Maria! ... Annabelle! Anyone! Please! I don’t wanna-!”
Your thoughts drift back to a time where the three of you were hanging out together. Melchior’s dad was in a particularly good mood that day - he’d brought home fresh fruit! Even for a rather well-off family like Melchior’s, fruit of such high quality was so expensive as to be a rare treat, better than even candy.
As you looked up at him, he put the top half of a lumpy, slightly overripe pear in his mouth, and bit down. Both of you heard a pop and felt a little juice spray onto your own faces as most of it streamed down his chin. His teeth found resistance in the stem of the pear, and with a grunt and heave, he pulled the whole thing out of the center of the pear with his mouth. A little chunk of pear fell down on the floor in front of you; Melchior’s dad was always a bit of a messy eater. Except... except this chunk of pear is red, and stringy, and... and...
Reality reasserts itself as the Titan sucks the spine it tugged out in between its teeth, then gleefully tosses the legs in after.
Within moments, the massive hand is reaching down towards you again...
Spoiler: Mila
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The Titan offers no showing of pain, annoyance, or any emotion at all, really, as you nearly hack its thumb off and sprint away.
Alex and Irina can maintain no such composure. Sheer panic seems to have stopped the young girl from breaking down crying, but she hardly seems aware of her surroundings. Alex, meanwhile, is barely able to run at all, hyperventilating as he is from the near-death experience.
Still, you all make your way out the front door, where, to your horror, you see this total abomination manhandling your father. It’s even a bit taller than the one that attacked Alex, but monumentally more disproportionate, with its head contributing fully half of its total height (with shorter, stubby limbs and torso to compensate) and bulbous eyes bigger than Pa’s whole head each, with a long, crooked nose. You see the heavy axe sticking out of its limp left arm, as Pa screams and aims his pistol right at the creature’s massive eyeball. You manage to avert Irina’s gaze just in time to stop her from seeing the gruesome mess that came with that loud gunshot.
But there’s no time to see what happens to him, or where Ma went. You run as fast as you can for the stables. Throwing open the doors to the horse pens, you see Greg has already started prepping a few of them to get away. He looks incredibly relieved to see Alex, but is in as much business mode as you can ever imagine him being. “Arright, let’s, uh... Irina with Mila on Bessy, since she’s calmest, arrite? And Alex on Maron, and... Think’um gonna take Aster...”
Alex shakes his head rapidly. “You can’t take Aster, he’s not broken in yet!”
“But the other two’re fer... Ma an’ Pa, right? An’ I don’t want Aster to die...”
Alex keeps shaking his head, but starts moving. “Do whatever, as long as ya help the girls on first!”
Greg beams excitedly, running over and practically carrying you and Irina up to Bessy before gently placing you together on her bare back, you at the reins and Irina clinging to your waist. You usually ride with a saddle; you find the bare-backed experience painful before you’ve even started moving. Still, there’s obviously no time to object to it. Greg pushes the struggling Alex the rest of the way up onto Maron as well, then turns to go grab Aster... before all the horses spook at once and a shadow looms in the doorway.
It seems the Titan’s hand has already healed up most of the way since you cut it - all that’s left is a rapidly-closing incision you can see steam rising out of.
Greg freezes, then reaches for the ax he brought with him as the Titan walks into the doorway, blocking your escape. Bessy, to her credit, lives up to her reputation as your calmest horse; though she’s getting old, she maintains a steely demeanor in the face of this threat. Every other horse in the stable, the one Alex is riding included, begin to whinny and buck with fright.
Surveying the situation, Greg nods determinedly and charges at the Titan, roaring as he brings down the axe and splits open the monster’s face and skull right down the middle. As the Titan stumbles back, Greg employs the same oxen strength you knew (and had to patch stuff up behind on account of) him for, wrestling this three meter monstrosity to ground aside from the doorway, so there’s room for the horses to run through.
“Go! Git! Jus’... Move! Graaaargh!” Greg roars animalistically, struggling to pin down the spasming Titan.
Maron - and consequently, Alex on her back - hardly waits for the invitation, and bolts out the door, galloping at a full-tilt sprint as Alex clings desperately and gives up completely on taking control just to hang on. You follow him out with a much greater handle on your beast, taking one last moment to see what’s become of your family - Pa, screaming in the midst of having his arm gnawed off by the one-eyed freak-head, and Greg, much more successfully handling his bisected-head prey, even as it seems like the bones and flesh of its skull are trying to heal around the lodged axe in a gout of steam and pulsating muscle.
What’s your plan?
Spoiler: Marie
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You stay on that refugee boat for many days. They barely had time to pack food for anyone; while you got some precedent on what little there was by virtue of your age, you’re still left with a nauseating tightness and pain in your empty stomach.
Thankfully, at last, you arrive in Trost District and are unloaded from the ship. You immediately notice that the military has already set up tents for a refugee camp, surrounding which are a mass of people all as wealthy as your mom back when she was able to work, looking at your ship - and the opening in the Wall that let you all in - with a small batch of disdain, a substantial minority of genuine empathetic concern, and a majority of paranoid terror at the possibility of ending up like you.
As you’re all unloaded and more refugees stream in, they put a priority on reuniting families and providing everyone with soup and bread. In the coming months and years, this show of sensitivity on the part of the military and Trost residents would sour into apathy and disgust towards the smelly refugees responsible for their actual workload and increased taxes, respectively. But for now, none of that has set in, and you’re all treated as kindly as can be afforded.
Adding to life’s efforts to make up for the horrible events you just witnessed, a couple of days later you’re surprised to find your father among the last wave of refugees. He holds you tight and takes care of you along with your grandparents, but when you ask about your mom, he has no answer. You hear him cry himself to sleep that night. Perhaps you do the same.
Spoiler: Amelie
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Your conversation partner seems annoyed as she takes to the same multitasking of talking as collecting herbs, but as you finish, she relaxes, even chuckling a little bit. “I was right, you really are clueless. You notice something fun about our history textbooks? You know what none of them ever mention? Progress. We don’t celebrate people who invent stuff. Hell, remember when the guy who made that weird fireless light burned his own lab and killed himself ‘cause of how little everyone gave a crap? And sure, locally, we’ll be real happy about a doctor curing a disease, ‘cause it means we didn’t die. But there’s no big renown in that, either. You know who we do celebrate, and write articles about the ‘historic importance’ of?” She looks up at the sky, pausing from her task for just a moment. “Military dogs and rich nobles. On and on about how great they are and how it’s thanks to them life in the Walls is so awesome. People who think they’re making real differences don’t matter that much. The people who do matter are the ones who look out for number one and the number twos that’ll come after ‘em. Social mobility, my growth-stunted friend. Where I am now, I sure as hell won’t do anything to affect this world we live in. But if I climb the social ladder? Raise my kids somewhere warmer, with better schools, richer clients, so they can keep climbing after me? Then who knows, right? Maybe my great-grandkids could actually do something worthwhile enough to get my last name in the books, at least. And I’ll be comfier doing it than wasting away in the constant blizzards pretending anything I do is important.”
Spoiler: Crescentia
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After waiting a while for a response and not getting one, the scarlet-haired woman shakes her head. “I suppose that’s too much to put upon a child. Alright, let’s simplify.” She kneels down and puts a hand on the young princess’ shoulder. “You have two choices, kid. You can try to get back to your palace, and assuming everybody believes you are who you say you are - doubtful - you can go back and work on trying to capture me so you can be enslaved like your mom was and drink fancy wine while being responsible for everyone dying outside. Or...” She stands up and gestures to the world around. “You can take control of your life and do something to make thinga within the Walls a little better. It’s your call, and your life. Do what you think is right.” She points out towards the horizon. “That way, you’ll find other people heading into Trost District. You’ll be one of the first refugees to show up, along with the ones on horseback, fleeing from the destruction of Wall Maria and the Titans that are overtaking it. Think about it, and then go get help, whatever path you choose. I wish I could offer more, little one, but I’m...” She glances aside and shakes her head, changing her mind. “I’ve got to keep moving, so this horrible future can be averted.”
And with that, she gets up and staggers off into the early morning. It’s up to you alone to decide what to do now.