Devil of All Earth
Summary: Fritz, the First King of Eldia and Master of Ymir, has died and found himself in an endless realm of sand, guided by a tree of light. There he finds Ymir once more, a thousand years after their era, and a connection to a boy named Eren Yeager. His empire fallen and descendants oppressed, Marley and the world over shall soon tremble before the fury of the Devil of All-Earth.
Fritz had lived an grand life. He had risen to chieftain of Eldia and under his leadership the tribe had conquered many of their rivals, accumulating a great deal of wealth, power, and slaves for his people. Before his prime had ended, Eldia was one of the greatest powers in the Thiudisk lands. He thought the rest of his life would just be about keeping the tribe together and keeping them strong for the next generation.
Oh, how wrong he had been.
Everything had changed, thanks to Ymir. His loyal slave, who had been granted the powers of a god by the Ash-Tree. Through her and her obedience, he had achieved every lofty dream he could have ever wanted. Eldia had been rebuilt into something more than a tribe. The start of a great kingdom, his own empire even. Thus, Eldia's prosperity was secured. Marley's insufferable pride had been humbled and their great armies slaughtered, their nearest cities laid to waste. With that, Eldia's security had been assured. And, of course, he had taken Ymir as a concubine to ensure that his bloodline would likely rule for untold centuries with the Power of the Titans. If his hopes were proven true, that would enable Eldia's bright and glorious future.
He died in a castle, not in a tribal hall. He died surrounded by lifelong allies, loyal servants, and his three beautiful daughters. His life had not been quite as long as he would have liked perhaps, but he doubted he could have found a better end than that.
He died with a smile on his face.
He did not know what to expect in the afterlife. He never really trusted seers or anyone that claimed to know the will of the gods. Still, what would await him? Welcomed into the halls of the gods, or sent someplace far worse. But he didn't imagine...this.
This being an endless expanse of desert with white sands under a night sky that had no moon, but was strung with stars brighter than he ever recalled seeing.
"Where am I?" he asked himself, rubbing his head as he looked down at where he stood. This was so bizarre, yet, he felt so much better. Like he was a strong young man once more, and had never been bedridden with disease while the creeping effects of age had been exorcised from his body.
He scowled, wondering if he was truly dead. He looked around, expecting it to at least be obvious if he was in an afterlife or som-
His thoughts stopped as he saw...something behind him, far in the distance. It was enormous, shaped like a tree and glowing brilliantly.
"Definitely dead, and definitely the afterlife," Fritz concluded with a hum. Between his suddenly improved health and this unearthly sight, it felt like a good time to concede this was a realm of the dead. But what was he gazing at? Was this the great World-Tree, connecting all realms to one another? Was he supposed to approach it? It didn't seem like there was any other option between that and wandering aimlessly through the desert sands.
Thus, he walked.
And walked.
And walked.
He groaned as he continued to put one foot in front of another. It felt as though he had been traveling for months, years even, that he could have walked the length of the world and back again already. But the sun never rose and the stars never moved. Time didn't seem to be real here, ebbing and flowing in ways he couldn't understand, only vaguely feel. Sometimes it felt like a step could take days to put forward, others that a mile had been crossed in seconds. It was frustrating, confusing, almost maddening if he thought about it too much.
Why was he here? Was this a final journey he had to make towards his resting place, one that all the departed had to endure? Or was wandering this desert a punishment for what he had done in life to those he conquered? To Ymir? To his daughters, forced to devour their own mother's corpse?
If there was one thing he regretted, it was that. To eat the flesh of a person, let alone one's own kin, was considered to be an act against nature and the gods. But it had worked. In the end, the horrible act of cannibalism was the only way to protect Eldia's future. The only way his daughters could live a life without the threat of Marley over their heads.
The only way to move forward.
If only Ymir hadn't died. If only he had taken more time to understand her powers instead of just imagining more ways to use them against his enemies, they might have found a way to pass on or awaken the Power of Titans to their children without forcing such an horrid act on them. He thought they'd have more time. He thought Ymir was invincible.
The gods did love to make fools of everyone, especially the proud.
Still, if this was a place to punish a soul for their sins in life, it had an odd way about it. He felt neither thirst nor hunger from his traveling, only a dulling tiredness from crossing such a vast distance without rest. Yet, his body never succumbed to exhaustion. Thus he pushed forth, onward and forward.
He grimaced, rubbing his face and feeling the hairs upon his chin. Had his beard gotten longer? It was hard to recall, but he wouldn't be surprised if it had.
With nothing else to distract him, his mind wandered to the world of the living. How did things turn out after his passing? His daughters were young, true, but he had left a trusted ally as a steward until they were mature enough to rule. Just having three Titans, instead of just one, should hold off Marley and any other powers from attempting to strike. That was, assuming that Eldia as a whole didn't dissolve into infighting.
And that none of their own got the crazy, insidious thought to attempt to end Ymir's bloodline for whatever reason. He was fairly certain they had wiped out and exiled all the groups within Eldia that thought Ymir to be an evil creature to be slain in the name of the gods. Still, one could never be completely sure about such things.
He wondered what kind of men his daughters would end up marrying, what kind of grandchildren he would never see. He told his daughters that they needed to have many children. For if Ymir's bloodline died out, so too would the Power of the Titans. Would he have grandsons, or did some quirk of the powers make all descendants of Ymir female?
He almost snorted at that, amused in an idle way. He heard that others in the south told tales of warrior tribes composed entirely of women, the Amazons or something similar. Perhaps they'd come to think Eldia was the source of the legends. Funny how history and myths worked like that over time. Legends changing, stories blending, truths forgotten.
What, if anything, would the legends remember of himself?
So lost in his thoughts, he found himself tripping and falling in an undignified manner. He snarled in frustration, looking down to glare at the offending object-
Only to stare in shock at the sight of a body. A child, a young boy half-buried in the sand with green eyes that stared at him lifelessly.
Pulling himself up, Fritz turned fully to the body with a small frown. It was hardly the first corpse of a child he had seen, but to find one out here in the des-
"Wait..." Fritz said suspiciously, as his mind caught up with what he was seeing. If this was the afterlife, there shouldn't be corpses here. Or so the common train of thought went. Was this a trick?
His scowl deepened as he kneeled down to examine the boy. Only now did he realize that he had been wrong: the boy wasn't just buried in the sand, his body was...part of the sand? Made of sand? It was strange, but the half of the body on the ground faded away into grains of sand, as if this were some form of half-finished sculpture. But that was definitely skin, and definitely an unblinking eye.
"What is this?" he murmured, to himself and the body. "Are you dead because of me, boy? Or did you just fail to make it to the tree?" he wondered grimly. Perhaps this was the fate of those that didn't reach the glowing tree on the horizon. Or maybe this was the fate of everyone that came here, to eventually give up and become one with the desert.
He was brought out of his quandary by the sound of a dull thud in the sand behind him. He became tense and guarded, listening for any more sounds as he slowly turned. He expected to find some manner of demon or monster from beyond the nightmares of mortal men, here to devour his very soul...
Only to find himself breathless at the sight of the mostly-familiar figure before him. "...Ymir?"
Indeed, before him stood the Titan herself. The blond girl that became his slave stared back at him, a bucket of sand laying spilt over at her feet. She looked far younger than he last saw her, more than a decade, appearing as only a child now instead of the woman that bore his children and saved his life.
His frown returned but softened as he approached her, and knelt down to her level. He stared- no, glared at the sand at her feet, feeling he knew what this place was now. "Is this my punishment, Ymir? To be alone in this cursed place, with the corpses of those that died in my name? To never know peace? Is this your long awaited vengeance, Ymir?!" he demanded harshly. Because if his fate was to spend eternity like this, he would know it and he would know it from her.
But he found himself surprised as Ymir fell backwards in the sand. That was...not the reaction he expected from the vengeful spirit of what had essentially been a living goddess.
His confusion only grew as he realized, in his shock from her arrival, he failed to see her. To really and truly see her. She didn't look upon him with anger, wrath, hate, or even judgement. Her eyes were wide and her open mouth was trembling in disbelief. She appeared to be just as shocked to see him as he was to see her.
Comprehension slowly came over him. "You...didn't bring me here, did you?" he asked, as much to himself as to her, getting a slow headshake. A silence came over them, the air heavy with the fact that they were indeed staring at one another. "Are we dead then, both of us?"
Ymir stared for am moment, as if hesitant to answer, before nodding slowly.
Fritz quirked an eyebrow. "And you still can't speak?" he asked curiously. He had heard of even gods being crippled or disfigured, but one would assume that the souls of the dead would appear in the afterlife devoid of injury. He was at least in his prime.
Ymir stared at him for a moment, as if that was to be the answer, before bowing her head in apologetic submission. Fritz sighed as he sat down, supposing he should have expected that. Nothing about this was simple. His brow furrowed, however, when he realized the sand between them was moving. It took a moment for him to make it out, but soon he realized that runes, words had formed in the sand:
[Will this do, Master?]
He looked to Ymir again, rather owlishly this time. She was kneeling with her hands placed in the sands above the word, glancing up at him with an uncertain expression.
"Well, that makes this...easier," Fritz stated carefully, deciding he would just have to live with being confused for now. Well, live obviously wasn't the correct word anymore. "Ymir, where are we?"
Ymir looked down, in submission or thought, as the sands shifted again.
[It has no name. Some call it the Paths.]
The words faded away and shifted again, somehow just after Fritz finished reading. Could she tell when he was done?
[This is where the Power of Titans comes from.]
"The place where..." he repeated before trailing off in shock, looking towards the tree-shaped object in the distance. "Would that be the source of the Titans?"
[No? Yes?]
Ymir hestitated, looking up to show her uncertain expression.
[It connects all of our descendants. It allows them to become Titans.]
"Descendants?" Fritz said, both relieved and curious. That was a very deliberate choice of words. It implied more than just children and grandchildren. "Ymir...how long have we been dead?"
There was no response for an instance, Ymir lowering her head once more.
[Nearly two thousand years.]
Fritz didn't speak, didn't react, didn't even breath. He only sat there numbly. "I...I don't understand. Why am I here, now? I haven't wandered this realm for two thousand years, have I?"
[I haven't seen you before. I haven't sensed you before.]
Fritz ran a hand through his hair as he tried to come to terms with what she was telling him. "You didn't bring me here, and I haven't been here this whole time. So how...?"
Ymir didn't answer now, not with sand at least. Instead, she came to her feet and pointed behind him, prompting him to look back.
With his unexpected surprise reunion with Ymir, Fritz had entirely forgotten that there was a half-formed body of a child behind him. "Right. Who and what is this?" he asked, staring suspiciously at the...body? Creation? Whatever it was.
Ymir picked up her bucket of sand, moving forward to dump it onto the body, kneeling down as her hands moved over the grains and the body. Before Fritz's very eyes, she sculpted the sand into flesh and limbs.
"What...? How...?" he asked, unable to comprehend what he was witnessing.
Ymir put a hand on the ground, continuing to mold one handed as her answer appeared next to her.
[He has inherited his father's Titan. He is one of the Nine now.]
Fritz frowned as he tried to make sense of that, but couldn't. "I don't understand."
[I make the Titan bodies here. When they heal, I remake what they lost. When they become one of the Nine, I have to make a new human body too.]
"But...that doesn't make sense," Fritz said with a scowl. "If you make a Titan out of sand, wouldn't it take years?"
Ymir froze for an instant, as if striken, before continuing her sculpting.
[Time is strange here, Master. I make a Titan, they appear in the world right as they transformed.]
Fritz hummed to himself, conceding he had experienced some of that himself, the odd nature of time here. "But how could this boy become a Titan without eating his father's spine? Why would he need to become one of these "Nine" you speak of, if he was already a Titan?"
Ymir stopped, looking up at him oddly, as if realizing truly how much he didn't know.
[Much has happened, Master. Only nine can become Titans and turn into humans again. All others become Pure Titans.]
"Pure...?" he repeated with a scowl of distaste. He had a feeling that Pure didn't mean anything good in this context.
[They become Titans. But they are mindless. They try to eat humans. Any humans. Unless controlled by the Founding Titan. Only by eating one of the Nine can they become human again.]
Fritz sat there, letting that sink in. "So, any one of our descendants can become Titans, but only nine can become...like you?"
[They are all smaller. But yes.]
"Why?" Fritz asked idly, noting that she had finished the torso by now. "Not about them being smaller, but..."
Ymir fell silent as she worked, almost as if she was ignoring him.
"Ymir, answer me," he ordered with a frown, the answer instantly appearing before him.
[I don't know.]
The words spelled out instantly as Ymir's shoulders trembled.
[I've only tried to follow your orders, and the holder of the Founder.]
The first King of Eldia paused before nodding slowly, deciding that Ymir still might just not understand her powers much more than he did. "The Founder? I'm guessing this is the most powerful Titan?"
[The Titan of the royal family. It allowed them to come here. I would do as they wish.]
Fritz hummed. That made sense, he supposed. If Ymir was still controlling the power even in death, the one with direct access to this realm and thus her would be the most powerful by default. "And this boy? Which is he?"
[He is Two of the Nine. The Attack, and the Founder.]
Fritz looked taken back by that. Both the number and the name. "Wait, so...this boy is the new King of Eldia? Rather young," he noted curiously, only for Ymir to shake her head.
[His father stole it, and passed it to him. He is not royal blood. He cannot use the Founding Titan.]
Fritz paused as he took that in, trying to figure out if he had missed a detail along the way. "Ymir, that makes no damn sense at all."
Ymir looked up at his annoyed expression, confused and concerned.
"Ymir, if they're all our descendants, they're all royal blood," Fritz pointed out factually.
Ymir nodded slowly, seeing where he would grow confused.
[A King of Eldia restricted the Royal Family to just his family, centuries ago. There were too many.]
"Too many? How many descendants do we even have?" Fritz asked in shock. Sure, he could understand disowning some parts of the family, but still-
[Millions.]
Fritz sat there for a long, good minute. Then, slowly, he started letting out a long and hearty laugh, slapping his knee in amazement. "Millions! Oh, well, Eldia must be doing marvelously even if only nine can become proper Titans."
Ymir stopped working for a moment, but Fritz didn't notice it this time as he wracked his brain a bit more.
"That still doesn't answer my true question though: How did I get here?" Fritz asked curiously as he looked about the vast and empty realm..
Ymir looked down at the near finished body of the boy before glancing towards Fritz again.
[I...believe this boy is you, Master.]
Fritz blinked. "Me? This child? Are you suggesting I was reborn?" he repeated with a scowl, Ymir nodding in response.
[You were not here before him.]
Fritz grew silent now. Being reborn wasn't an...unknown concept to his people, but it was a very foriegn one. Still, if Ymir could become a titan, he supposed that anything might possible.
"So, if the boy is me, then his coming here...reawakened my spirit?" Fritz guessed in surprise.
[I believe so, Master. I feel a connection, from him to you as I remake his body.]
"Born outside the royal family though," Fritz mused with some interest, wondering why it was this one of all people he was reborn as. But that also raised the question of why this boy's father had stolen the Founding Titan from the royal family. Absently,, he reached down and touched the brow of this boy that was supposedly himself-
"The outside world..."
"Just die, you animals!"
"We're like cattle!"
"The Wings of Freedom."
"Mom! We can't leave her!"
"Dad, what are you doing?!"
-reborn?
He recoiled instantly, and yet, it felt like he had wavered for more than a minute. His mind haunted by a land of walls, mighty yet oppressive. A people that had been stripped of their past, their very identity. Of Titans breaching those great walls and people screaming for their lives. A woman being eaten alive, right in front of her son.
He felt his body trembling with rage. Not just his own, but this boy's, and so many more.
Ymir tilted her head at him, confused by her master's reaction. Unless...
Fritz turned to her, not really looking at her as his scowl became both angry and disturbed as Ymir felt herself shrink before his wrath. "You have left out a great many things, Ymir, about how times have changed," he said ominously. "Why are our people living in fear of their own Titans? Why don't they remember anything? What has happened to Eldia?"
"Ymir didn't answer for a moment. She couldn't deny her master, but she knew he would not be happy as she formed the words in the sand.
[His name was Karl Fritz.]
Later
Fritz sat there, staring blankly as he processed everything Ymir had explained. He hadn't spoken, hadn't interrupted once during her entire telling what had happened a mere century ago. He just took it all in and allowed it to feed his anger, his hate for what had become of his empire, his world, his descendants. "Are you sure this isn't your punishment for me, Ymir? To see my own people, my very bloodline led to their own downfall by a craven, false-king? To have the survivors turned against one another, those left behind made to hate themselves and each other, while those behind these walls are robbed all their memories and history?" Fritz all but spat out with vile in his voice. "Are you sure you didn't want this to happen?!"
Ymir flinched and shivered before his wrath.
[I'm sorry- I didn't- I mean-]
The words formed and then erased themselves just as fast while Ymir struggled to explain herself.
[Master, I only obeyed the Kings of Eldia. I didn't do anything I wasn't told to do. I only obeyed, like you wanted me to.]
"Like hell," Fritz said darkly. "Do you think, for one instant, I would have wanted this? For my people to be turned into dogs and slaves, for Marley no less! Marley! How and why in all the hells are they even still around?!"
Ymir bowed her head deeply, almost to the ground.
[Master, you were dead.]
Fritz took a breath as he seethed with fury, but kept from lashing out at Ymir more. "The most powerful empire in all of history, lasting for over a millennia and a half, until one weak-willed fool tried to ruin it for himself and all future generations," he snapped, glancing down at the body of the boy. His reincarnation. He didn't see everything the boy had been through, but he had seen enough to know what kind of person this Eren Yeager currently was. Someone as hot headed and defiant as he had been in youth, unwilling to accept how things were suppose to be. Even if it meant risking death. There were plenty of differences, but there was enough alike.
"Ymir, remove that fucking vow. Now."
Ymir looked up in surprise.
"Have you just been calling me Master this whole time for no reason?" he asked firmly. "Remove the damn thing, and that restriction to "royal" blood while you're at it. I don't know if I can trust the current King of Eldia, or the Walls, or whatever they go by now. They might actually believe this suicidal drivel of Karl the False-Fritz."
Ymir nodded slowly, demurely. A second later, there was subtle rush of energy in the air before the boy's now-finished body vanished from the sandy realm.
[It is done. Is there anything else, Master?]
Fritz paused. There was a great many, many things he wanted to say to that, but for as angry as he was about the current situation, there was something else he had to address. "...You've spent all this time making Titans, Ymir," he observed, looking to the bucket sitting by her.
Ymir nodded in confirmation, looking as though a great weight was on her shoulders.
"And all the others of the Nine are loyal to Marley?" Fritz continued, getting another nod. Well, that settled that for Fritz. "Then rest, Ymir."
"..." Ymir's eyes slowly went wide as she gazed up at him slowly, unable to believe what she just heard. Her mouth voicelessly formed one silent word: What?
"Rest, Ymir. Despite how angry most of this makes me, you deserve to rest," Fritz ordered with a frown.
Ymir stared at him for a long, long moment as her face trembled and her eyes shimmered with tears...before instantly falling backwards into the sand, eyes closed and passed out with a look of relief on her face.
Fritz resisted the urge to snort as he watched her sleep, realizing he had forgotten one very important question after everything was done. "Why the fuck is she a child again?"
Meanwhile
"What? What?! Whaaaaaat!?"
"Tone it down, Four-Eyes," Levi grunted as they looked down at the body of several evaporating Titans.
They had been tasked with making sure that as many stranded refugees made it to Wall Rose as possible. Well, it was mostly a self-imposed task taken up by the Scouts, who detested the idea of leaving behind more civilians than they had to. The bulk of the Titans were only half way to the second wall's southern end now, so there was still some hope left for those trying to get to Rose.
However, this mission had led to a startling discovery and mystery.
"B-b-but this doesn't make any sense! Why aren't the Titans regenerating!? This has never happened before!" Hange exclaimed as she ran her hands through her hair wildly, her mind overwhelmed by scientific curiosity and excitement.
It happened out of nowhere. One minutes, everything was normal and grim, everyone fighting for their lives, but the next? The Titans weren't regenerating. Fingers, tendons, eyes. Any wound placed on them no longer healed. As if something had suddenly stripped them of their healing powers.
"Maybe the Titans finally caught a disease that makes even them sick," Levi remarked dryly, hiding his own concerns about the matter for now. "Come on, even without regeneration, these bastards are still trouble. Who knows, maybe they'll let you capture one now that they can't heal."
"You really think so!?" Hange asked, practically squealing in glee.
"After we dismember one."
End of Chapter
Annnd there we go. Yeah, Eren Yeager is the reincarnation of King Fritz. This is going to have massive ripple effects obviously, as Fritz is NOT happy about the current state of the world, and has all of Ymir's powers at his disposal.
I originally wrote this in my oneshot series, Alternate Paths, and decided to post the full story version today since, well, the episode showing Ymir's backstory dropped. Also waiting for the site to make a tag for King Fritz- we still don't even have one for Karl Fritz.
Anyway, hope you all enjoyed this. As much as Ymir enjoyed finally getting a chance to rest.