Creation began on 05-26-22
Creation ended on 06-20-22
Attack on Titan
The Pale One: The Blood of Winter
A/N: Snow is beautiful when it falls from the sky from the sky and covers everything, but when blood is thrown into the mix, it makes it an unearthly sight to behold. At night, when the sky turns red because of fire, you wish for a sky that dispels the fear.
Liberio, probably the main location of Marley due to its population and propaganda, but what really made it a terrible eyesore was the way its people behaved towards other people from other parts of the world due to its prejudice against what he understood as Eldian sympathizers. As he saw a Marleyan man lift a young boy's right arm up to cut it off, Pēruwan acted and grabbed the knife from the man, letting himself be seen in broad daylight.
"Hey!" The man gasped, looking at him. "What the Hell is your problem?!"
"What…did he do to wrong you?" Pēruwan asked him.
"He got dirt on my shoes."
Looking down at the man's shoes, Pēruwan saw very little dirt on them, and then he looked at the boy, barely seven years old from the looks of it, but deeply afraid of the two of them.
"A little dirt of some shoes never hurt anyone," he told the man. "There's no need for such extreme measures. He probably didn't mean it."
"He could very well be an Eldian from some other country and doesn't know how things work here!" The man grunted, and reached for the knife. "He doesn't need both his hands to do things! Hand it over!"
Grip! Pēruwan grabbed his left hand and pulled it down, forcing the man to meet his gaze.
"There's no need for harming a child, sir," he told him.
"Unless you're an Eldian, too!"
"I'm not an Eldian. I just don't like unnecessary violence being committed to people when talk is simpler and more than sufficient."
"This is Liberio! Here, anyone that is Eldian has to learn their place, even if it means through violence! They're the Devil's brood!"
Then…Pēruwan pulled his head back and slammed it against the man's, breaking his nose and sending specks of blood across the air and ground. This caused people around him to react in panic over what he did.
"What the Hell is wrong with you?!" The man demanded to know from.
"You wanted to cut a little boy's arm off simply because he got dirt on your shoes, but I just broke your nose," he told him. "Which offense seems less than now?
Grip. He felt a hand on his left shoulder and he looked to see another Marleyan in a uniform.
"You had best come with me, sir," he instructed Pēruwan.
"And if I were to decline?" He asked him.
"I'm afraid that deadly force will be implemented."
Unfortunately, Pēruwan had become so versed in what he was trained and educated to do in the years he lived with Gaia and her Restorative that deadly force was simply part of the common currency he used to get around.
"You mean, you'll have me dealt with if I refuse you?" He asked, just to make sure he understood the man.
"That's right," he responded.
Squelch! The Marleyan man felt something sharp penetrate him in the abdomen as he fell to his knees in front of the pale-skinned man.
"I will pray that you find peace on the other side," he heard him tell him as he walked away, and he collapsed onto the ground, his waist bloody.
"Oh, my…" The other man gasped; he didn't see anything to indicate that this guy did anything to the security officer.
Slice! Something like air went across his neck…and he fell to the ground seconds after, choking as he saw the pale man carry the boy away.
-x-
Language was the diversity of the world's people, and just as there was a grand division between land, waters, and culture, so, too, was there division between the words spoken and the words understood. But Pēruwan, taking the time to understand people from other parts of the world, understood a foreign language when it was spoken to him by one that learned to speak it everyday of their life.
"(I thank you for saving my son's life,)" a man in a foreign hat and attire praised him after the boy led him to his people's camp.
"(Your gratitude, while appreciated, is unnecessary,)" he responded. "(I am trying to find something that can be used to resolve the discrimination and restore harmonious coexistence between all the people of the world. My sources confirmed that it can only be in one of two places: Marley or Paradis. Perhaps you have seen something like it once before. It can't be too hard to take notice of; it sticks out to the believers.)"
Pēruwan showed him a sketch of the coveted object of his pursuit and the pursuits of those like himself from long ago.
"(I've seen this once in a dream,)" the man's wife expressed to Pēruwan. "(It was said to give dreams that were meant to be pieces of information to serve those chosen to find it. Are you one of the four chosen to find it?)"
"(I am. I am The Pale One.)"
"(I am sorry. I fear you will not live a long life if you continue on this path you're on.)"
"(I have lost my past because of Marley, leaving only this path for me. My memories lost to me from before I met my savior. Winter is upon us. It will be too cold to go anywhere for most.)"
"(When I saw it in my dream, it was behind a wall with a woman's head engraved upon a gate. There was a name written on it, as well. Sina.)"
"(Wall Sina. It's not in Marley. It's on Paradis Island…behind Wall Sina. I must get to Paradis Island and past Walls Maria and Rose.)"
"(But to get there, you will need the presence of…the corrupted fragments of Eldia's living history. One of the Titans.)"
"(Marley only has seven under their control following the aftermath of the Great Titan War…and has only ever since exploited the use of six of them. If anything, I can think of at least seven reasons…why they don't deserve to possess them, anymore.)"
The foreign couple looked at him as his face seemed to grow paler with the words he chose to utter. They had heard stories about him…and those that came before him…and both feared and respected what he did for the Restorative and the world. He was a being beyond them due to the path he walked; divided between light and darkness, between this land of the living…and the dominions of the departed, he was the only one of every generation that could walk in both realms, forever blessed and condemned. It was hoped that he would one day be freed from such a life and move on.
-x-
Nobody ever saw it coming. Not that any Marleyan cared enough to suspect that it would ever happen. Because of the snowstorm from last night, nobody bothered to look outside and see a body hanging from a streetlight, relieved of its head and spinal column.
"Who was it?" A man from the military questioned.
"Ralph Grant, sir," a soldier informed.
"How do you know?"
"He was the Armored Titan."
"Has his family been notified?"
"He didn't have any family, sir."
"Who would do something like this?"
"Someone that hates Eldians?"
Another soldier came by after examining the remains of the murdered Eldian and gave him an envelope found in the pants of the body.
"What is this gibberish?" The man demanded to know from the soldier.
"All I can understand is that whoever wrote it is directly responsible for murdering Grant; some of the words are hard to make out, but there are at least five words that are easy enough to make out: 'Vengeance', 'Titan' and 'Unity'. And at the bottom is what I can assume to be the killer's name; there's a translation under it."
"Who goes by the name 'Periwane'?"
"It's pronounced 'Pēruwan', sir. It's some sort of foreigner name."
"Pēruwan? That's not Eldian."
Unbeknownst to the Marleyans, Pēruwan laid atop a roof, looking down at their efforts to try and understand what he had done and why he did it. Because the Marleyans continued to segregate Eldians for alleged crimes committed before any of their grandparents were even around, this enabled him to gather information on specific individuals within this internment zone and he began his search for the six Titans being exploited by Marley, starting with the Armored Titan, or, as he was taught by Gaia, a Titan that had once been revered as Eldia's honorable shield. Next on his list was the Female Titan, or, as he had learned of it, Eldia's sacred maiden, second only to the mother of all Eldians.
The shield, the maiden, the puller, the savage, the mouth and the skinless nightmare, he thought as he turned away and looked up at the white sky. Should any holder die before their time, the Titan they carry is transferred across time and space to a member of the Eldian race yet to draw the first breath. But the Titan slumbers until the child turns thirteen, after which they only live for thirteen more years. By killing these members subservient to Marley, I limit their range of cruelty…and gain more time to reclaim the Unity and free the world from the hatred it's slowly being poisoned by. They may not have long to live right now, but by removing them, I will save others from sharing in their fate. Take out the few for the many, and there is hope for a better tomorrow for those that survive.
A snowflake fell from the sky and touched him on his nose. But he couldn't feel the coldness from it; as alive as he was, he had forgotten how the snow felt to his sense of touch.
"You won't always be able to feel the change of the seasons, but when you don't feel the seasons upon yourself, just know that you're still among the living," Gaia informed him of his limitations as one of the Restorative's four special emissaries. "When you serve something greater than yourself, you tap into a source of energy that is as old as civilization itself. There are four aspects to the world that most have forgotten over the ages, but because there are those that haven't forgotten, those that are chosen represent the Restorative's interests become the living history of the world. And you, Pēruwan, represent the fourth and final aspect of the world that everyone must face in the end of the path they take throughout life."
"And what is that?" He uttered in the present; he sometimes did this, speaking the same questions he had already spoken as he recalled his memories from his interactions with Gaia.
"At the end of the path that represents life, there is the final step to be taken. The path to the next life. Because after life, there is death. Those that fear death fail to understand that death is simply the next step in their existence. It is a stepping point, a crossing from the world you once knew and entering the world you next to nothing about." Gaia had taught him.
"And what if those that don't accept that their time must come to an end are unable or unwilling to go down that path?"
"Then, as the one assigned to such a duty, it is your task to make sure they go down that path. To the saddened ones, remind them that it is not a bad thing to cross over into the next life. Let them know that when their pain ends, they will return to life with a clean slate. To the cruel ones, let them know, either through words or through actions, that for every wrong they ever committed to those around them, they will receive many times worse than they can imagine."
I am…the one that walks both sides of the line, he thought as he got up and ran across the roofs. I am the dread of blood in the darkness. The living ghost that walks among the people. They can say I was shedding innocent blood, but those I go after…are far from innocent. But they'll say that they were. May the shield be passed down to a new holder until the Unity is found and used to release the world from its hatred. Now is the maiden's turn to be released from the cruel manipulations. Marley…Paradis…the people need to realize that the hate they place upon others because of something that happened before their time has consequences beyond comprehension. And the monsters that represent the hatred aren't the Titans. The Titans are just a representation of how power corrupts those that seek it at all costs. The monsters…are the ones that choose to embrace the hatred and become warped by it. In the end, we make, we create, our own monsters.
-x-
Gasp! A young boy awoke in the dead of the night from a nightmare he couldn't fathom.
Within it, he saw a legion of monsters walking across the land, setting it ablaze, and leading them was a monster as large as a mountain, made of bones and a head with hair. It was terrifying. No other words could describe what he saw in his nightmare.
What…was that? He wondered as he looked out his bedroom window and at the falling snow.
To be continued…
A/N: So, yeah, the story's deviating, but that's the whole point of its plot. Soon, we'll be heading towards Paradis, but first Pēruwan has to clean up Marley's house and cripple their hold on the world. Happy days ahead to those that desire them.