Chapter 7: I Have No Voice and I Must Curse
To say she was dazed was an understatement; she felt like her head had just been trampled by a stampede of rhinon. Insult to injury, there was a constant hissing noise in her ears, as if a broken radio had managed to lodge itself in her brain. All this was compounded by a pounding headache.
It made resting difficult, to say the least. She cursed with her thoughts against the pain as she lamented the inability to sleep it off, but at least her pillow was warm. It wasn't much of anything else you'd hope for a pillow to be; unfortunately, it was uncomfortably firm, and there was a strange valley going across the middle. The warmth was at least appreciated because it seemed she kicked all her blankets off again. The rest of her body was quite chilled.
Her mattress wasn't much help either; it felt hard as a rock. She rolled a little to try to find a more comfortable position and to get rid of the noise, but she couldn't find a single soft spot, and the static annoyance remained directly in her ears.
It was so distracting, she couldn't even ignore it long enough to remember how it started in the first place. Overall, this was easily the worst attempt at napping she had ever had.
"-a."
She could almost hear a dampened noise coming from above her.
"-ia…ooh…ache?"
She couldn't tell if the dampening was from the speaker's whispering or if it was just being drowned out. The noise in her ears was deafening, which was ironic since deafness would almost be preferable to having to put up with it.
"Nia, are you awake?"
Ah, she could finally make it out.
Awake was certainly a word for her current condition, as much as she'd rather be asleep.
"Five more minutes, Ma." She said as she turned to her side.
All that really accomplished was cutting off circulation to her arm, so she was quick to roll back.
She wasn't about to face the day with this kind of brain pain. Not that sleep would help any, but it helped put off getting up.
Say… hold on a moment…
Wasn't Ma dead?
Yeah, she had been for years now.
Nia hadn't slept in her own bed for most of those years.
In fact, she could swear she wasn't on a bed at all. She dug a hand into the surface she lay on and found herself grasping something coarse and damp.
She peered out with a single squinting eye, very much not adjusted to the light, and was met with a blurry sight that gradually cleared to reveal the top half of a red-headed girl.
"P…Pyra?" Nia said as she shielded her eyes against the dim-but-still-bright outdoors she suddenly found herself in.
The redhead herself breathed a sigh of relief. "I was worried for a bit there, but you seem alright."
It was Nia's best guess at what she was hearing anyway; every noise around her remained dulled by the ringing. As Nia tried to lift herself, her headache intensified, prompting her to lay back down.
"Alright isn't exactly the word I'd use."
"I'm... sorry to hear that."
As she processed a bit more about the current situation, a question appeared.
"Why am I laying on your lap?"
"Oh, you seemed like you might be cold, so I thought it could help keep you warm."
As Nia realised how cold her feet and hands were compared to her head, she concluded that it was a good thought and appreciated it. However, she also concluded that, warm as they were, Pyra's thighs didn't make good enough pillows for long-term use and attempted getting up once more.
With a lot of help from Pyra and a complete inability to find her own sense of balance, Nia managed to rise to her feet.
In all her life, Nia has had a hangover three times. All three of them were awful, and for various reasons, she hasn't had alcohol of any kind since the last one. With how pathetic those hangovers seemed in comparison to what she was currently experiencing, she wondered if she should give drinking another, if somewhat more restrained, chance.
Perhaps later. For now, she couldn't make a diagnosis to see if it would help the pain, at least until she could remember what exactly was the cause of this condition.
Pyra began leading, and Nia was in no condition to disagree.
As they began walking—or hobbling in Nia's case—she put a hand to her forehead as she tried to think, a small massage attempting to alleviate the ache.
It didn't help much, but she slowly started remembering the events that led up to her blackout, including the frightening face and the roar that probably woke the Architect.
Assuming the Architect slept.
"Hey, Pyra? Does the Architect sleep?"
The Blade slowed her walking speed as she looked at her driver, concerned. "Are... you sure you're alright enough to walk? Because if you still need rest, I think we have a while before the tide-"
"I'm-I'm fine, I just-the question popped into my head, and…you know, figured I'd ask."
There was a moment of silence as they continued. Thankfully, Nia gradually began being able to stand straighter.
"So…does he?"
Pyra considered the question for a moment. "I…don't actually know. I've never actually met Father in person. All I remember of Elysium is... well, you've seen it."
That was a little disappointing. Some reassurance that the creator of Alrest was somewhat mortal-like would have been nice.
Nia did some considering of her own. "Your father? I know you said you were born in Elysium, but the Architect is straight up your dad?"
"Yes, that's right."
"So…does that sort of make you Alrest's sister?"
"That…" Pyra slowed once again, "…I've never thought of it like that…I don't believe so, because Alrest was created by Father while I was…wait…"
As Pyra was left to wrestle with the new concept of being the sibling of geography, the pair kept wandering what Nia assumed was uphill.
She looked around the area, getting a feel for where they were. The environment felt incredibly familiar for some reason, but her headache wasn't letting her memory jog much further than a few days.
Along with that, the ringing in her ears never did die down. Fortunately, she was able to hear other things over it as time went on.
One such thing was the noise that made them stop. A very wet and very disgusting squelching noise as Pyra took a step.
She visibly recoiled from it, and with good reason.
It was green, slimy, and various other unpleasant qualities that would lead most to not enjoy stepping in it.
With a short but deep breath, Pyra was quick to calm herself.
"Nia, can you stand on your own yet?"
The Gormotti tested one leg, then the second. She could make a few steps on her own without stumbling too badly, and luckily when she fell over, it wasn't into anything else gross.
Especially luckily, she landed next to a large branch.
"I'm fine, don't worry." She said from the ground.
She pulled out Pyra's weapon and began using it to whittle down the branch into a walking stick. The blade herself found a good rock nearby to use as a stool and investigated her foot.
It seemed she had seen enough quickly, as she then proceeded to burn the residue off her shoe.
Nia flinched at the flame's sudden roar, and wasn't sure she would agree it was necessary. She could swear she felt her own foot grow warmer as she watched.
The end result was a clean shoe, which Pyra seemed satisfied with.
"Neat trick."
Pyra giggled a little at the praise. "What can I say? Fire is nature's best disinfectant."
While true, the implications weren't exactly comforting, so Nia turned her attention to the stuff on the ground.
It was far from the worst thing she'd seen in her days as a healer. She pushed down memories of the more traumatic treatments she'd done and began the tried, true, and incredibly scientific test of 'poking the weird stuff with a stick'.
It was an odd consistency, still all stuck together, sort of like a cloth, but it was heavy and off balance. The smell was certainly rank. Not in a rotten way, it just naturally smelled bad.
"This is weird, I think it's…at least, it used to be meat of some kind, but it's crushed up and slimy… it's almost like…"
"Like something took a big bite out of a brog and spat it back out?" Pyra theorised.
"…that's oddly specific, how did you-"
Nia looked up to see Pyra pointing at something.
Lo and behold, the corpse of a brog with a big bite taken out of it, which was presumably spat back out in this direction.
"…huh. Yeah, that'd do it."
With a short "eck" of disgust, she flicked the remains of the bite off her stick and pulled herself up.
Nia approached… that might be too generous.
Nia limped over to the body to investigate.
"Is something wrong?" Pyra asked, "I'd imagine brogs are hunted all the time."
"Strictly speaking, you're correct. Rare as it might be, finding a carcass in the woods is nothing special." She said as she began the scientific stick poking, "What is special is that this carcass had a single bite taken out of it, and that wasn't even eaten. I'm no zoologist, but I'd assume that predators generally don't have the energy to waste being picky."
She was basing this on her own experience with… less-than-delicious hunting results, but it probably was a safe assumption.
"Maybe… it's poisonous, and the other monster realised just in time?" Pyra suggested as she came up beside her driver.
Nia gave it a good whack with her stick, and three Bright Fliers came fluttering out of the bite cavity.
"Bugs are pretty susceptible to poison, so let's rule that under 'not likely'."
Nia poked the bite itself, finding a slimy substance, similar to what covered the pile of slop that used to fill it.
"Seems whatever did this was hungry. Lots of spit." She transformed her poking stick back into a walking stick, that is to say, pointed the now-wet end at the ground, and prepared to continue. "Watch your step going forward."
Watch their step they did, as they found more than a couple more old meals on their way up the incline.
The pulverised innards and exoskeletons of a flier, caterpile and arachno, all covered in spittle.
A second brog corpse, this time with three bites and no visible rejects.
Nia felt a slight worry grow in the bottom of her stomach, uncertainty sinking in as she began wondering what had conducted this massacre.
As they made it to an area with softer ground, a deep trail became evidently drawn in the ground. Nia hadn't noticed it at first because, well, it didn't seem worth noticing. She had just assumed it was a naturally generated rut from cloud flow. Pyra did mention the tide could reach up here, wherever they were.
Surely it was too wide for anything to have made it. There were no tracks around it, simply a line dug into the dirt.
Then they made it further up. As Nia began to not require the stick to move, the pair discovered that the rut was actually quite fresh. Upturned grass littered the side, essentially tilled soil, while the rut was packed down tight.
Empty, broken krabble shells started littering the path. It seemed their mystery predator had finally found something it could stomach.
"So, it prefers seafood. I don't blame it, krabble can be pretty good." Nia joked in a bid to keep her nerves calm. She was not excited to learn that this whosiwhatsit was nearby. Perhaps the driver of the Aegis shouldn't be so scared of a regular animal, but Pyra had yet to elaborate on what the Aegis was or why being their driver was so special.
In more positive news, after being out of sorts for so long, Nia had finally restocked her sorts. Mostly at least, her headache had only dulled and her ears still rang, but she was otherwise coherent.
She began truly taking in her surroundings, tallying all the wildlife they'd seen so far and comparing it with the trees around them. It was a fairly lush forest for an area susceptible to cloud tides, as well as how dark it was despite Nia being able to tell it was day from what little sky she could see past the overgrowth.
The area was relatively lit up thanks to some…glowing…plants…in the ceiling…
The reason the surroundings had been so strangely familiar immediately became plainly obvious.
She had been here before.
Startlingly recently, in fact.
Concerningly recently, in fact.
The memory of a loud, wet snap surfaced in her memory as those events played back in her head. It was slightly relieving to remember that nothing that was hers made that noise, but she wouldn't deny that the event still frightened her a little.
The chill of fear shook her, as she could still clearly picture those fangs diving for her neck.
"What was that?" Pyra asked suddenly.
"Huh…? Oh, sorry, I just realised where we were, and-"
"No, that noise." Pyra explained in a hush, "Like a big stick just snapped."
"Wait, that wasn't just in my head?"
Sure enough, another snap was heard soon, along with a very anguished cry accompanied by what sounded like the crackle of electricity.
Light shone not far from them, just past some puzzlewood trees that seemed to have been gnawed on.
"That sounded like a garaffa." said Pyra.
Almost immediately after, there were sounds of a struggle alongside a strange chirping noise followed by a low, rumbling growl.
Nia didn't need to say what that sounded like, because she already knew what it was.
One final wet snap, the lights went out, and new noises of crunching and ripping replaced the sounds of fighting.
Pyra barely had time to voice an objection after Nia started running towards the noise.
Of all the places they could have ended up, she wasn't sure what she should be feeling about the fact that it ended up being here.
On the one hand, if everything she was assuming about this thing was correct, it was quite the humorous twist that she's met him twice here now.
The other, there was the incredibly scary thought that the other people she met here were still here.
Thinking more about that would have to wait.
She came out into a clearing, and witnessed a sight she would have to remember.
There certainly was a garaffa. Emphasis on 'was'.
It was now reduced to breakfast, and the client did not seem impressed.
A small Titan lay flat on its stomach, its rear facing Nia. The same Titan that had suddenly appeared on that old boat.
It groaned in distaste, yet continued chewing, likely having come to the conclusion that it couldn't keep throwing away meals.
She didn't blame it for complaining. Garaffa meat turns rancid if killed while its electric hide is active. That's what her da-er, what the library books said anyway.
She swallowed some mouth water as she wondered how long it had been since her last garaffa tenderloin. Nicely pan-seared to medium rare, basted in garlic butter, with a side of mushroom gromrice…
Remembering that this was not a time she could reminisce safely, she shook herself out of her hunger-fueled fantasies.
She began circling around it, taking care to avoid stepping on or getting hit by its tail of ludicrous length. It almost had a mind of its own, and the Titan itself was doing little to keep it in line as it would randomly decide to stretch, coil, or sweep across the ground.
She focused all she could to ensure she was being quiet in her approach. She took care to avoid stepping on sticks, making sure that she didn't rustle any bush or branch.
It was unfortunate that what gave her away wasn't any fault of hers.
She made it maybe halfway when the Titan suddenly froze completely. She stopped with it, fear starting to pump adrenaline through her. It sniffed the air, catching the scent of something.
A chewed-up Garaffa leg roast was dropped from its jaws, and its head rose as its nose kept searching.
Without warning, its head flicked around, now staring directly at Nia.
The gormotti girl flinched in surprise at the sudden movement, and fell smack on her rear.
Fight or flight instincts tried kicking in, but she was nowhere near lucid enough for either.
As she watched crimson drip from the creature's teeth, she regretted running so far ahead of Pyra.
It watched her, she watched it.
She stared, it stared back.
Her fright slowly began to subside, and it looked... confused?
It tried turning around, and Nia winced in sympathy as it accidentally put weight on a forelimb. The resulting chirp was strangely cute, especially strange considering what made it.
She pulled herself up, and the titan looked at her as she walked properly in front of it, curious yet somewhat cautious.
It resigned itself to the fact that it couldn't move, so it simply continued lying where it was.
With some caution of her own, Nia slowly approached the titan's head.
This beast had saved her life. If she was right, that would be the second time within a month.
On the off chance she was wrong... well, she didn't fancy learning what chewed up garaffa felt like.
The titan watched her, further confusion filling its expression as it kept sniffing the air. It stared at Nia intensely, as if it were unsure what to make of the gormotti girl. This was the first proper look Nia had gotten at its face. While it was just as intimidating in the light as it was in the dark, the colours were certainly more vibrant.
Four horns adorned its head, one short and grey rose out of its snout, another with a split end from the top of its head. The last two were black and shiny, tipped with a surprisingly deep green, and went backwards. It was an odd collection, as the two that pointed in a useful direction were not very large.
The underside of its neck was deep green, and the scales were so uniform they almost looked smooth. This greatly contrasted the top, which for some reason had moss growing out of it. Meanwhile, the sides had large interlocking segments.
Those rust-orange eyes stared deeply at her, the nose between them ever sniffing.
She couldn't help but wonder why he looked so confused to see her again.
She made it to arm's reach with the very tip of his nose, part of her still hoping she wasn't within bite's reach of the teeth.
Nia squinted as she noticed something about the nose.
"Do... do you have four nostrils?" She asked in slight disbelief, "Why...how-what purpose does that even serve? They're so close together, you wouldn't even gain any-"
Her biological ramblings were interrupted by the subject of the analysis suddenly blowing out a large cloud of…well, Nia didn't really want to know what it was.
Out of the very sniffer she was questioning came something that could be mistaken for a puff of white smoke. Unfortunately, it was nothing so innocuous.
She was lucky her stomach was already empty, otherwise she would have vomited in moments. The white mist was absolutely revolting. The putrid remnants of the titan's buffet were all present, along with something far, far worse. All thoughts of garaffa steak were purged from her mind as she collapsed in a dry-heaving fit.
Though her eyes watered still, she thanked the Architect that the cloud of burning garbage quickly dissipated.
"TITAN'S ARSE!" she shouted once she could talk through her own coughing, "The bloody hell was that for?!"
Upon noticing that he seemed quite pleased with himself, Nia began smacking the titan's snout with her stick.
"Never" smack "Do that" smack "Again!" smack.
And a few more for good measure.
For his part, the titan was completely unphased by any of the impacts. The stick was the one being punished, if anything, but she managed to find some catharsis in it.
When the stick finally broke, Nia was still left a little agitated and very revolted.
Just around the titan's rear, she could hear Pyra's footsteps approaching.
Now that she had stopped yelling and hitting, she could hear a lot of things.
The small tic-tac footsteps of a small arachno crawling up a tree nearby.
The mournful, retreating "shree" sound from what she assumed were the family of the titan's meal.
At that moment, she realised something about the things she was hearing.
The slight rustle of leaves in the wind.
The whisper of the wind itself.
Her headache persisted, but completely gone was the hiss of eardrum damage.
The squeak in the dirt as the Titan adjusted his position
A soft, apologetic noise. A noise she really didn't expect a dragon-looking thing with shoulders broader than a garden shed to be capable of making.
"Did you just…" she placed a hand to her ear.
She winced at the clicking his hands made as he moved and the groan he made after.
She wasn't even looking at them, to be honest, preferring not to recognise how bad their shape was.
She focused on his face. His eyes were soft and sorry.
Nia reached out and put a hand on the beast's snout. "…you could have given me a warning or something."
Another apologetic noise.
"I guess that means you can't talk, huh?"
A short chuff.
"That mean no?"
A small chirp.
That avoids needing to play charades, at least.
Pyra's tentative approach came into view.
"You don't need to worry, he probably already knows you're there."
The Titan attempted turning around, but the motion ended up putting weight on a hand again, which itself led to another pained trill.
Nia placed her hand back on its snout, the best thing she could think of to comfort the creature. She felt a bit weird petting something that was presumably fully intelligent, but Dromarch always seemed to like it.
She quickly shifted her thoughts to avoid that memory. The strange cloud he made, there was something to focus on. It was strange how he could fix her ears but hasn't done anything about his own injuries. Strange that he could fix her ears at all, but Nia learned from a young age to never look a gift armu in the mouth.
That just led to questions, which led to questions she couldn't answer, which led to questions about why she couldn't answer them, and eventually the authorities would get involved, and it all just turned into a big kerfuffle.
"Are…are you sure it's safe?" The red-haired blade asked hesitantly.
"If I wasn't, I wouldn't be inviting you."
"But we've seen how dangerous it can be, and you were just screaming and-" she recoiled for the second time today, "-what on Alrest is that smell?"
The Titan became a little sheepish as Nia side-eyed him.
Pyra coughed a little, clearing her throat and her nose.
"W-well, scent aside... um, thank you for your help." She said with a quick bow to the Titan.
With her hand still on the snout, Nia could feel the vibrations of the acknowledgement shake her whole body. She could also notice the scepticism in the Titan's eyes as he could fully see Pyra.
"Well, then, I suppose that introductions are in order." Nia began to metaphorically clear the air, as much as she wished she could also literally clear it.
"You…already knew this Titan, Nia?" Pyra became slightly less reserved at the suggestion.
"Well, you could say that." Nia stepped away, faced him, and made a gesture of presentation. "This lovely lass is Pyra. She says she's the 'Aegis', but I'm not sure what that means. Oh, and she's also my new blade."
Pyra herself still looked a little concerned, but she managed to find the courtesy to make a small wave, along with a slightly worried smile.
Nia spun around and made the same gesture to present the Titan.
"Pyra, this is a friend of mine. His name's Rex."
Pyra's uneasy smile began fading as pure bafflement creeped up her expression. She blinked a few times, stepping back as she struggled to understand what she had just heard.
She came to the first natural conclusion one would think of when hearing something like that.
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"Oh sure." She gestured at the Titan once more, "This is Rex."
"Rex? As in…the Rex that came with you to help Jin and Malos free me? That Rex?" The poor girl was taking this surprisingly well.
"Yes. At least… well, I never did actually-" she faced the Titan once more, "You are Rex, right?"
One chirp for yes.
"Okay, good," Happy to have actually confirmed that, she turned back to Pyra. "Yeah, that Rex. Though, I was the one tagging along with him."
Pyra's eyes narrowed as she processed all of that.
"Uh…huh. Okay…" Pyra began, "I mean… Well, it isn't okay at all... but I'll assume you don't have any more answers."
"That would be correct." Nia confirmed, "Honestly, I think it's 'cause I'm still a little dizzy, but I'm trying my best to ignore the insinuation of it."
The gormotti turned once more to… she had to admit, it did feel incredibly strange calling him by his name… she turned to the large Rex. "I mean, I seriously doubt you have any idea what happened either, right?"
One chuff for... wait, that's not right, he's supposed to chirp for yes…
Wait…
"Hold on, what?"
The Titan named Rex looked at her confused, unsure of what he said wrong.
"You do know what happened?"
He was halfway into a chirp before he paused, thought a moment, and made the "kind of, sort of" head tilt motion.
"You have a general idea of how you turned from a kid into a feckin' Titan!?"
One chirp for yes, one aggravated sputter from Nia as she realised he couldn't share said general idea.
"Please try to stay calm." Pyra commented, "Although, I do agree it's strange."
"Strange she calls it, like that's not understatement of the year." Nia still struggled to process this.
A general idea of how someone just turns into a titan. That's like saying you have a general idea of how to make bread, it should be such an involved process that you either completely understand it or just let it be done for you. Though, maybe not the best comparison considering how rare it would be to find someone who doesn't know how to make bread.
All the same…
"Well, I suppose I should just be glad you're alright."
The Titan Rex responded by glancing at his shoulder.
"…mostly alright, then." She corrected, "How long you figure that'll take to heal?"
The Titan Rex responded by groaning a little as he plopped his head on the ground.
"You don't know. Got it."
She thought for a moment.
"…wait a moment, I'm a medic." She looked back at Rex, "Let me see them."
With a few wiggles and a lot of whinging, the Titan Rex managed to prop himself on his elbows to present his hands.
Hands that were…not the same shape they were when Nia first saw them. It wasn't the worst she'd ever seen by a mile, but they were still a long way from 'does it hurt when I do this?' territory.
Pyra tried her best to look away, but Nia knew how hard it was to look away from accidents.
"That does look pretty bad, but it's nothing we can't handle, right Dromarch-"
She looked over her shoulder and found nobody else besides Pyra, and was reminded of the situation she found herself in.
"…oh. Shit." She cursed under her breath.
She had tried to ignore it, and in the process, she forgot she was currently missing the most important thing for being a driver medic.
Which, among other things she was also trying to ignore, meant that she actually had no immediate means of helping Rex.
"No ether healing then... I guess I'm popping these back into place manually." Assuming she was actually strong enough for that, "One sec, I'll get you something for the pain-"
She opened her bag and was met with more awful news: the bag contained a singular item.
"-shit." She said, louder than the last one, "…Um, alright, I can still work with this; there ought to be plenty of herbs around here that I can process-"
Herbs that she would not be able to recognise, because the one person she always trusted with the botanical knowledge was who she was currently missing.
"-Shit!" She exclaimed, making no effort to hide her growing worry.
It never before occurred to her just how much she relied on Dromarch. He was the one with all the herbal and medicinal knowledge, and while Nia was the one who knew more biology, he was the one who could actually do the healing.
She did have one last option, though she wasn't sure she trusted anyone present enough, herself included. No, it was much better if nobody knew. That's how it always was.
All the same, that still left her without any kind of solution to Rex's hands.
To do anything, she'd need another Blade, but there was no way of knowing what kind was inside of them unless you had seen the blade first. Besides, it wasn't as if she had any way to…get one…
She looked back inside her bag.
As stated, its contents were but a single item.
It was the first thing she had picked up since she returned to the land of the living.
Half of a core crystal, now glowing, if flickering slightly.
A motley mix of red, purple, and blue.
She looked back at the Titan. His own core shone bright in the centre of his chest. Completely blue and shaped like a sideways check mark, yet it did not quite fill the hole it sat in. Almost a perfect semi circle was left from a perfectly flat plane on the core's corner. The only visible purple and red were on that very flat.
"Uh…Rex? Is, um…Is this yours?"
She pulled out the core half, Rex sniffing it a few times and seemed just as confused as she was.
It was his. There was no mistaking it.
She was currently holding half of his core.
Therefore, his core was broken.
Therefore, he should not still be alive.
Yet he was.
Which would mean he survived getting stabbed.
He survived getting stabbed through the core.
He survived the event that killed her.
In that moment, Nia felt cracks forming in all the theories she had struck up about exactly who or what Rex was.
Hold on, did that mean she came back to life for nothing?
Well, no, she did save that boat full of people.
Back to the matter at hand, or rather, the matter of what was in her hand…
She was holding half of a core crystal, which had lit itself back up while the other half was currently in resonance.
Neither situation should be possible, but it seems this has just been an impossible kind of week.
With no real better ideas, she walked up to Rex and slotted the half core into the place where it presumably belonged.
It fit perfectly. Small indents in the surrounding skin were exactly shaped for the limbs of the missing piece. Though its sibling half stuck out much further, it was clear this was where it belonged. The hole was made for it. The core as a whole began shining, and soon many other parts of the Titan followed the example. A line that ran down the middle of the torso, all the spots on the forearms, the green tips of the horns, and the entirety of the tail all began working together to blind any onlookers that lived in these dark woods.
The Titan's digits popped and cracked as they returned to the much more usable hand shape they were meant to be.
He reared up a little, shortly bellowing with something like victory, and once again was met with the fact that his legs were not made to support him.
Nia was nearly smushed between Rex and the dirt. If she hadn't dropped to her back and he hadn't caught himself, things could have been much worse.
Instead, all she had was a pain in her forehead from the core crystal half falling back out.
As she rubbed the spot that was probably going to bruise later, she picked up and inspected what hit her.
It was in the same state she had found it in.
Black, lifeless, empty.
Like Rex had just taken all the power from it for himself.
The power from his own missing core half, essentially meaning he had just stolen something he already owned.
She stared up at his face, part fascinated, part in shock. He stared back, mostly out of concern for the girl he had nearly squashed.
"…I…do not have the energy to properly articulate my feelings right now."
"Are you alright, Nia?" Pyra asked, barely hiding her panic.
"Yea, 'm fine" Nia was more than happy to accept her new Blade's help getting up.
"That's good, but…what was that?" The aegis asked as she looked the Titan over, "What…is he?"
"Honestly, if I had to take a guess…" Nia looked Rex in the eyes, and for now asked one final question, "You don't either, do you, big guy?"
Rex appeared mournful for a moment, before turning away from the girls and plopping back down on the dirt. After a few seconds, there was one chuff for no.
The mystery of Rex deepened further, so much so that Nia began to wonder if she had ever actually begun solving it. All the same, it had been a long couple of hours since she woke up, and her head still throbbed, so she was very much not in the right headspace to begin picking the facts apart again.
"Well, I suppose there's a silver lining." Nia said as she dusted herself off.
As Blade and Titan looked at her confused, she continued with a smile:
"Whenever you can talk again, you get to name the condition."
She's always wanted to use that joke, but she had yet to be in such a situation. It probably wouldn't be very reassuring in a real medical emergency, either.
"In the meantime, I doubt the tide's gonna be kind enough to wait for us to leave before it comes back in, so what say we get to higher ground before we nearly drown again?"
Almost every child fantasises about their growth spurt.
Waiting for the day their shirts no longer fit, meaning they're that much closer to being as big and strong as their parents told them they would be.
They persevered, eating their vegetables and drinking their armu milk, until one day they stood as tall as or even taller than the adults around them.
Sure, some were sad to no longer be able to wear their favourite clothes, or being too heavy to be carried, but kids generally liked getting bigger.
This was not one of those cases.
Getting bigger was one thing, suddenly being big was something entirely different.
It was a curious thing; for one moment, he was just average height for his age. Two-ish days later, he could probably fit his entire old body in one of his footprints.
One day, he had to apologise for the sounds of his steel-booted footsteps.
The next, those might as well have been silence compared to how little stealth he now possessed.
Before, he struggled to reach things on the top shelf of his own home, questioning how or why he put them up there in the first place.
He probably has several bruises on most of his extremities by now, solely because he kept underestimating his own reach.
He was most certainly not meant to be wandering around a forest.
Much less while carrying passengers.
It was the weirdest piggyback ride he'd ever given, without doubt.
He used to be the oldest kid in an orphanage, so he had given a good few of them in his time.
He would never expect any of the kids to just find something to cling to on his back and not let go. That probably would have hurt them both, for starters.
Now, that's exactly what both his riders were doing. It wasn't like he came with a saddle, but he felt bad that there wasn't much he could do to help them stay on.
He was a bit irritated at first when he realized he had been demoted to pack animal, but as he proved to be the best vehicle available for the dark and uneven landscape, he decided to keep his small frustrations to himself.
Not that he could actually voice them.
Plenty of Titans were capable of speech. He was aware of several, and was very close to one in particular.
He wasn't one of the plenty, it seemed.
His hind legs were useless, his tail was unwieldy and cumbersome, and if it weren't for his inconveniently large arms he would barely be capable of movement. His shoulders kept ramming into trees that he definitely gave a wide enough berth to, and the sassier of his riders kept kicking his neck and complaining because it was clearly his fault that he was such a bumpy ride.
While he could barely feel that last one, and he did actually feel bad about it, there were many things he wished he could open the big salvagers' book of colourful words on.
And one of them was that he couldn't speak in the first place.
If it was not clear by now, he was sure the architect hated him.
Not to blame the guy, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be either.
What kind of creature can spontaneously fix its own broken bones?
What kind of Titan can pretend to be a human?
What kind of living being could shake off literal death twice in a month?
Perhaps it would be too generous to claim he had shaken it off, but the point stood that he was further from knowing what he was than he had ever been. Not to mention Nia's sudden resurrection and this strange Pyra girl.
All he was sure about right now was that somehow, after a whole Garaffa, two Krabbles, three disgusting bites of Brog, and some rather splintery experiences with some trees, he was still hungry.
More than that, he was starving.
He had been hungry since he first opened these new eyes, and he had only gotten hungrier as time went on. He had done some hunting, sure, but that was made difficult due to the lack of hands. Before Nia showed up, the only things he managed to take down had attacked him first.
There was painful irony in the fact that he regained his hands after he had already staked his claim in the ecosystem. Nothing else wanted to try their luck against the big, scary new monster that just showed up.
Either that, or Nia's attitude was scaring everything off.
He had heard that some animals' defence mechanism was to be so unbelievably aggressive that nothing thought you were worth the trouble of hunting.
In either case, he was hungry and irritable.
A bad combination when you've suddenly gained what was probably a few thousand pounds of muscle and a concerning lack of aversion to killing things.
Sure, he was…rather, Rex was no stranger to fishing and had fought plenty of sea monsters for a meal, but this was the first time either of them had broken a neck with their teeth.
He didn't know where the instinct came from, and he didn't know why he did it, but he frightened himself with it.
Luckily, it was just a garaffa.
This place had plenty of those.
Probably.
Of course, he knew he could hold it back.
He would never even think about eating a person.
…Okay, so the thought may have crossed his mind when he first saw Nia again, but that was just because he didn't recognise her at first and he was hungry.
Really hungry.
Incredibly hungry.
He didn't know how he could be this hungry, he knew his stomach was nowhere near empty, he had just eaten a whole monster not thirty minutes ago, and yet…
Every step he took, every wall he climbed, and every chasm he threw himself across reminded him.
He could barely process the terrain he was looking at, it was so distracting. One might think the nose upgrade he apparently had would make him even better at tracking down food than when he was small. One would be wrong, he could barely smell better than he could when he was a real human, much less when he was…whatever he was when he stopped being a human. Not that he was ever actually a human.
To stop the guilt from sticking, he decided he should be thankful he was alive at all.
Whether this qualified as 'still alive' or 'alive again' was a question far above his grasp on philosophy, but as far as he cared, he was alive enough. Even in spite of his hunger.
Admittedly, this wasn't exactly what Rex had in mind when that weird voice said he could be resurrected again, but the fact that he could even say that it went smoother last time is a feat in itself. He should probably try to stop dying so much, this third chance probably cost him whatever remaining luck his life had. Looking back on it, he didn't think he had much left the first time, considering the events that followed. He shuddered to imagine what the future may hold for him.
Hopefully, it was food.
There he went again. Hungry this, food that.
His mind was fixating too hard on the wrong thing.
He had to focus. Just thinking about it and sulking over it wasn't going to help. He needed something to take his mind off it.
He tried to focus solely on what he was doing.
He was walking-er, crawling through a forest.
Where was this forest anyway? It certainly felt familiar, but how did he get here?
He remembered falling into the cloud sea along with Nia and the redhead, whose name he now knows is Pyra. He caught up to them and managed to wrap around them, and tried to make a small air pocket. It wasn't airtight, but it seems it did the job.
He got tired, shut his eyes for a moment, and the next thing he knew, he was beached in a forest.
So, where was he?
Think, the mission was in salisbury sea and they went steak- damn it, focus!
The mission was in Cyclus sea and they went south.
Where would the currents take them from there? It was Amathatober, the month when all the big harvests were done and veggies actually tasted good- no, stay on topic- so then the currents of the season would be…
He struggled to keep a steady image of his sea chart in his head. It shouldn't have been this hard, the thing was his tablecloth whenever he didn't feel like wiping down the counters. This led to the picture of Mor Ardain having an unfortunate ketchup stain across its chest, but it was six years old, so some wear and tear should be expected. He never regretted it, though. He could distinctly remember the meal that made the stain, it was a rare treat to fish up a-
Gah, he was doing it again! Why was it so hard to keep his thoughts on a single task?
Come on… the information is all right there, think this through, where was he?
Think…think…sink…doing the washing up…meals…
He sighed in defeat.
This was hopeless. He hadn't the slightest clue where they were, was too hungry to think about it for more than ten seconds, and as if to rub citrus in the wound, he still couldn't ask.
He and his stomach grumbled in harmony as he finished scaling a particular curly tree. Not sure where he was, and not paying much attention to where he was going either. Nia seemed to have a good idea of where to go, so he just absentmindedly followed her directions.
That Pyra girl hadn't spoken much since introducing herself. Not that Rex could have a conversation at the moment, even if he could speak. All the same, he recognised her, as scrambled as his thoughts were. The Blade from the secret room on the old ship. The Blade someone clearly went to a lot of trouble to hide.
The Blade he tried using to fight off Malos.
The Blade that killed him.
His lungs grew dry just remembering it.
She seemed to remember him as well, considering she knew his name. She seemed nice, at least. Perhaps Nia told her the story. Either way, he wasn't going to waste his time failing to think about it.
His riders dismounted as they came to a cave. After having carried them for about an hour, he was surprised at how much lighter he felt with them off.
Nia continued saying things as they went through the narrow path. What those things were, Rex still couldn't pay enough attention to remember.
He couldn't stop himself from squinting as they made a corner and finally entered some sunlight.
They emerged onto a cliff face, the sun must have been just past noon, and the expanse of the land was a lush, verdant green. Anything else about it, Rex couldn't tell. Details blurred and warped as his stomach kept growling.
Nia began speaking, clearly meant to be saying something important. Unfortunately, the only word Rex retained was "welcome" before something far more important took his attention.
Nia hadn't even finished speaking when Rex caught a scent in the air.
Within seconds, his bleary vision turned scalpel-sharp, and below the cliff he found the source.
Fresh blood.
An armu being enjoyed by a pack of volfs.
Fine meat, wasted on wild vermin.
His stomach screamed in rage at such audacity.
Not a single comprehensible thought was had as he leaped off the edge.
By the time he realised what he was doing, he had already eaten half the corpse and made about five more.
He was also staring down a particularly perturbed pack patriarch.
With some palatable food finally in his stomach, his hunger at long last seemed to die. His focus returned, and with it, the ability to recognise some scars on the giant volf that was growling at him.
They perfectly matched a recent addition to the unique monster wanted board.
A notorious cattle thief by the name of Sad Bernard.
Two things went through his mind at that moment.
The word "Oh", and the word "Shit".