Flapping Of Wings
Summary: Random bonus scenes from It Takes Two Wings To Fly, mostly from the moment Eren and Levi reunited onward. Fluff, fun, slight non graphic smut, occasional angst, short. Not in chronological order.
5. Eldian Things
"We really did a number on the Glass Tower, huh?" Eren commented in the wake of the battle against the gigantic wolves and monkey as the town started cleaning up the wreckage the fighting had caused. Thankfully, only a small part of the northern edges of town were damaged and there were no casualties, by some miracle, but the cleanup was going to take a while. Especially the remains of the Glass Tower. The thing was in shambles. Barely any floors were left and some of them will have to be knocked down, too, since the glass was cracked and they were made unstable. "Shame. It looked pretty."
Levi nodded absently as they made their way inside the no longer guarded tower. People had better things to do than guard the Glass Tower now, like fixing the homes of their neighbors. Or their own.
The inside of the tower, the so-called tomb of Ymir Fritz, was covered in glass. It was everywhere, but the integrity of the structure had remained. Levi wondered if they would take the whole thing down, anyways. People tended to not like things similar to those trying to kill them ... Then again, they liked Eren well enough. The two made their way over to the altar on which Ymir was supposedly laid to rest while her daughters were forced to eat her flesh. Levi can't help but wonder if this place was authentic.
"Is this really Ymir's tomb?" He asked Eren, the only one who would have the real answer.
The brunet studied the altar before shaking his head in a negative. "No. I don't think this was where the original capital of the Eldian Empire even was. This was probably only for the last couple of Kings before Karl Fritz."
"The idiot that sentenced all the Eldians on Paradis to death?"
"Yup."
"Yeah, well, fuck him." Eren snorted but also nodded in agreement. "Still, it's clear these woods are full of those shining centipedes, so we can't be too far from where Ymir originally got her powers, right?"
"Yeah, I think they moved or expanded the capital by a few miles only. These woods were familiar enough to me since I got here, so this has to be the area Ymir had lived in."
Levi nodded as the two of them walked back outside. He may be a clean freak but there's no way he's cleaning all that glass with only Eren to assist. They'd be at it for days and the two of them actually have other things to attend to. Like all the other shining centipedes in the forest surrounding this tourist town. "Can you actually sense the other glowing creepy crawlies?" He asked, because that was the one thing they hadn't discussed at all since Eren had casually dropped that bombshell in their conversation with the mayor.
"If they're awake, very easily," replied the Titan Shifter, holding the door open for Levi to go out first before following. "It's actually quite similar to how I was able to sense every Eldian as the Founding Titan once Ymir lent me her power. But it's also very different, because these beings are so ancient, their consciousness is nothing like a human's. And if they're not active, I have to be practically on top of them in order to sense them. It's why I've been hunting them for so long yet there are still so many of them left. They're easy enough to fight once they're found, but it's the search that's difficult."
"They don't seem as powerful as the one that began this whole Titan business," Levi observed, remembering how relatively easily the wolves and gorilla could be taken down. "They don't regenerate and they can be killed any which way that's usually fatal for their host's species. Compared to Titans, despite their size, they're kind of a letdown."
"I think that the one that made the Titans was one of the oldest ones still alive, thus it was so powerful," Eren replied as they made their way to help clear up the streets. They were planning on setting off into the forest in a few days and Levi's animals needed a clear path to run on. "We'll probably run into more troublesome ones once we find others as ancient as that one."
The former Captain nodded and they set off to work.
A couple of days later, they were deep in the forest, Eren focusing on a faint trail his senses were picking up while Levi sharpened his own instincts to detect danger better. He'd actually left his canines and eagle in Luka's care, not wanting to risk one of them getting used as a host by an awake shining centipede. He's come to love all of his animal companions dearly over the past two years.
This part of the forest was undisturbed, not by humans and apparently not by beings as big as Titans or other hosts for the ancient species they were looking to exterminate. Which actually had Levi starting another conversation that was long overdue that had been bugging him since he'd started his travels.
"You know, I always wondered how, if 80% of the population of the world was eradicated, I ran into so many untouched communities and landscapes. I mean, the Colossal Titans supposedly Rumbled the world, right? Then how come this place is intact, untouched? Even if it's been twelve years since then, surely there would be traces of the Rumbling even here?"
Yeager - or Jaeger, as he was going with these days, since it meant hunter in the local dialect - actually shrugged, looking as confused as Levi felt. "I think it was Ymir's doing? Since this is Edlia's ancestral home? Or it could be the shining centipede not wanting to destroy its own kind. I don't know. I didn't exactly direct where the Titans were going. They just marched onward in all directions that the Walls faced."
"That's ... perhaps even more disturbing than you controlling their path," Levi admitted and Eren nodded in agreement.
Well then ...
That's a conversation neither of them were willing to touch with a Colossal Titan sized pole ever again.