Titans and Tribulations

Zane Joly

         “Get the bird,” I ordered. A net shot out from the cannon and grabbed the goose, dragging it in. It squawked and flapped its wings angrily, but to no avail. The net gun dragged the goose toward us. Catherine, the woman operating the gun, cut the rope and held the net and the goose inside of it at arm’s length.

“Thank you,” I said, “Please put it in one of the containment cells in my lab.” Catherine nodded and walked away, maintaining her grip on the writhing bag.

“Don’t you think you have enough test subjects?” asked Dr. Deshi.

“I do have several animals I haven’t finished dissecting or studying, yes,” I said, “But this is the largest bird we’ve seen feed from the titaness so far. This specific one has been eating berries from the titaness for about two weeks, enough time to be infected, and I am curious how the titan infection will affect a larger avian specimen.”

“Don’t lose sight of our goal,” said Dr. Deshi, “We are here to find a way to kill that thing.” He pointed over the side of the airship at the figure moving below. I looked where he pointed not because I didn’t know what I would see or that he hadn’t already made this point a hundred times, but because I liked observing it whenever I got the chance.

The titaness, the “Daughter of The Breaking”, was roughly five hundred feet tall. It was not humanoid exactly. It lacked legs, and it was more just a moving pillar of earth. Long tendrils emerged from the top of it, something between vines and tentacles that vaguely gave the appearance of hair. On the other side of its form was a collection of holes in the earth with an eerie violet light coming out of them, which could be seen as several eyes, though as far as I could tell they served no function, including sensory. The titaness’ crags naturally formed something that looked vaguely like a mouth a little below the “eyes”, which had given many people the idea of personifying it. Even the term “titaness” was gendered. The behemoth’s back was sloped, and had many relatively flat spots, allowing trees and grass to grow upon it. The soil that made up the titaness, or at least its surface, was quite fertile. Birds and small mammals moved in between the plants, living blissfully ignorant atop a thing that defied modern scientific explanation.

Trailing from the back of the titaness were several thick ropes that connected to the airship I stood upon. It was a rather remarkable contraption of wood, steel, and balloons filled with hilenium, a highly efficient form of gas that had formed a few years ago in the Breaking. It had engines, but they rarely moved and for the most part the airship just followed the titaness. The airship only had five passengers, three to man it and me and Dr. Deshi to conduct our research.

“Dr. Kahana?” I heard Dr. Deshi’s voice say.

“Yes?” I said, snapping out of my reverie.

“Did you hear what I just said?” he asked.

“Probably something about how I spend too much time collecting data and not focusing enough on our objective, or something along those lines,” I said, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a goose to study.”

I turned and headed back to my lab. Catherine had put the bird in a containment cell, next to several others. Some of the captured animals were ordinary-looking, others had eyes, fur, scales, or feathers in unnatural colors and/or were larger than they should be. The goose showed no external signs of infection, but many didn’t. On the walls were several samples of blood, soil, or plant matter.

“Let’s get to work then,” I said to my newest subject. I sedated the goose and started running tests.

“Angels have been spotted,” said Jonathan, one of the maintainers of the vessel. I stood up from my desk and was across the room in a second.

“How many?” I asked as I moved through the halls of the ship.

“Two,” said Jonathan, “The titaness is in pursuit and gaining on them.”

“Naturally,” I said. I reached the deck and went to the front railing. The titaness was moving across the ground faster than normal, and I should have recognized the ship lurching earlier as a sign it had found angels. In the sky, two figures could be seen, appearing like humans in pale gray clothes with brilliant white feathered wings. If I squinted, I could see the weapons each one held, made from a metal as bright as their wings.

The angels seemed to realize the futility of their fleeing, and swooped back around to face the titaness. Me, Dr. Deshi, and the crew watched from our ship. The titaness slowed and the long vines protruding from its “head” rose up, ready to fight. Not only that, a flock of birds rose from the trees in the titaness’ back and swarmed the angels. I hadn’t seen that behavior before. Fascinating. The angels were surprised by it too, and the birds swarmed them while they froze unsure in midair. The beaks and claws of the beasts could do little to hurt angels, but they were only there as a distraction. The vines struck. One of them impaled an angel, causing them to dissolve into white stardust, their shimmering white spear falling down to the ground below. The other angel managed to dodge, but the vine still struck them in the side, leaving a gash.

The surviving angel dove away from the swinging vines and screeching birds, before swooping up towards our airship. The angel landed heavily on the deck. “Humans you-” they began, but then seemed to notice the gash in their side for the first time. The angel stopped speaking and a look of resignation crossed their face as they closed their eyes and dissolved into stardust as the other one had. Their glowing white sword fell to the deck.

“That was interesting,” I said, kneeling and picking up the sword.

“Two angels just died,” said Dr. Deshi, as if I was a sociopath for analyzing the information we had learned instead of wailing in lament.

“Yes, they did,” I said, “Because they were attacked by birds that seemed to be protecting or aiding the titaness, something we hadn’t previously seen. I shall have to check if the avians in my laboratory were agitated by the attack as well. And one of the angels did not die immediately, and seemed to consciously choose their own end, or at least be well aware of it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Jonathan, please try to collect the angel dust with minimal contamination and bring it to my laboratory, thank you.”

As far as I could gather, the animals in my laboratory had been somewhat disturbed by the angel attack, especially those that had been recently obtained from the titaness, but that they hadn’t been as controlled or motivated as those that had attacked the angels. It probably had something to do with proximity to the titaness.

The angel dust proved utterly unresponsive and only useful for giving off a faint glow which faded within a few hours. The sword, on the other hand, was much more interesting.

The angels were curious beings. They had simply appeared one day, shortly after the Breaking. They were not religious entities, but were suspiciously similar to modern christian depictions of kind and helpful supernatural beings. I suspected it was just a form they took to try to seem non-threatening and benevolent to us. It was hard to tell for certain, as angels very rarely talked to humans. They were for the most part dedicated to their purpose of restoring the world to as it had been before the Breaking. They purified rivers that had turned poisonous, dispersed unusual weather patterns, unmade reservoirs of substances that had not existed before the Breaking, and killed any organisms that had mutated. The more of them in a place, the greater a task they could accomplish, though how they did what they did was a mystery. I sometimes wondered if the angels eventually planned to move the continents back to their former positions.

Angels, I reasoned, functioned much like an immune system response in a body, a large collection of individual agents working together to counteract the effects of an incursion that disrupted the status quo. The titaness was an agent of the infection, seeking to spread the strange transformation caused by the Breaking and killing any angels it found. 

Angels were powerful, and it was very hard to kill them. Reports showed that bullets to the head and chest did nothing to them, and they could regenerate lost limbs. Yet a mere scratch from the titaness, and they dissolved into dust. I reasoned through it. If angels were like an immune response, the same general principles might apply to their weaknesses. Some of the most successful diseases were those that used the immune system against itself. The easiest way to fight angels was to infect them. The angels were smart enough to recognize that and they had defense mechanisms, just like an immune system would. Namely, self destruction. A dead angel was better than an infected angel.

I sat in my chair and looked at the angel sword lying on my desk in front of me. The angel dust had faded, but the blade’s glow remained. The sword was long and slender and slightly curved. My knowledge of swords was rather limited, but I’d characterize it as something between a cutlass and katana. Angels’ weapons were just as supernatural as them, and in some ways seemed an extension of their being. The infected in my laboratory were agitated whenever I moved the sword near them. If the angels could not be infected, perhaps their tools could.

I was aware that this experiment was outside of my ordered priorities, but I was curious. I retrieved a few jars of soil from one of my shelves. The soil was a deep purple color, recovered from the titaness. The purple soil had been several inches deep in the ground of the titaness, and I had noticed plants with deeper roots showed higher levels of infection and were more likely to be mutated. The soil itself didn’t read as irradiated on any tests, but the power of the titaness and the Breaking wasn’t directly detectable by any technology we possessed.

I carefully poured the purple soil over the angel blade, covering all of its exposed surface. I poured some more soil along the table and then laid the sword on top of it and adjusted the soil so it covered the entirety of the weapon. Now it was just an irregular lump of purple dirt that a soft glow could be seen through. Yet at the same time, it was the tool of supernatural entities being subtly infected with a great unknown and unpredictable power that suffused much of our world. I smiled. Oh, we lived in such remarkable times.

I had left my laboratory to get lunch. I needed to eat, and a little socializing was good for the brain, though I refused to talk to Dr. Deshi any more than was strictly necessary. The food we had was designed to last us for the two year maximum our research trip could last. The required need for caloric efficiency, nutrition, non-perishability, and availability meant that flavor came as a last concern. Still, I had become accustomed to it since we had started following the titaness four months ago. I had proposed we try to harvest food from the plants and animals on the titaness itself, and pointed out that with proper cleaning and cooking any risk of infection would be minimal, but the others hadn’t wanted to risk it.

I found Alexi in the galley, eating a bowl of oatmeal. I had respect for all three of the mechanics on the ship, but I liked Alexi the best. She was an engineer and had drawn most of the blueprints for the airship.

“Hello, Alexi,” I said.

“Dr. Kahana,” she responded in greeting, “How goes the studying of bird shit and angel corpses?”

“The avian fecal samples have yielded useful data,” I replied, starting to make a bowl of the awful tasting oatmeal for myself, “The angel dust has been of less use, but I’m running tests on the sword. I’ve yet to see their results.”

“Some would call experimenting on an angel’s sword sacrilegious,” said Alexi, “Or at the very least, unethical. We are on their side.”

“Is that what you believe?” I asked, carefully keeping my tone free of disrespect.

“Well, no,” said Alexi, “Not really. I saw an angel up close once. It was fixing a fissure in the ground. Coming out of that fissure was hilenium, the stuff used to lift this airship. The gas is light, easy to capture, non-poisonous, and isn’t flammable. It’s green too, which makes it easier to see when it’s leaking. And the angel just sealed up our largest source of the stuff then moved on. Angels seem nice until you see one up close and personal. They… well it’s hard to explain, but something about them isn’t human. And I’ve known plenty of people on the spectrum who couldn’t make eye contact or who didn’t show emotions on their faces easily, and they aren’t like angels. Angels are something else. I think angels do what angels do, whether that helps or hurts us. I think the titaness is like that too.”

“You’re a smart woman, Alexi,” I said. I had finished making my oatmeal and was taking my first few bites.

“I damn well know it,” the engineer said, “I designed an airship, didn’t I? And you’re pretty smart too, for knowing to complement the people running the ship you’re on.”

“Well, that and for my PhD and long list of studies in biochemistry,” I said.

“Like I said, you’re smart,” said Alexi, setting down the finished bowl. There was a meaningful pause before she continued, “So I’ll trust any conclusions you draw.” Then she left the room. Interesting.

Every two hours, I would move a small amount of the soil on the sword aside to see if there were any visible changes to it, then cover it back up. After a couple days, I noticed that the tint of the sword’s light had changed, becoming pinkish. In three more days it was a light purple. After another two, the blade glowed a deep violet.

I carefully removed the soil and picked up the sword. Physically, it seemed much the same as before, except for the difference in its glow. I showed the sword to the infected animals I had in captivity. Unlike before, none of them showed the slightest reaction to it. It was a reasonable inference that I had successfully managed to infect an angel’s weapon with the power of the titaness. 

I gave the sword an idle twirl. I thought the color purple suited it much better.

“Dr. Deshi wants to talk to you about something,” said Catherine.

“About what specifically?” I asked, not looking up from my notes.

“He wouldn’t say,” said Catherine, “Just that it was important.”

I sighed and got up. “Alright then,” I said, “Let’s go see what he wants to waste my time with now.” Catherine turned and led the way through the airship. We had been provided with several weapons in case we were ever attacked by infected animals. Catherine always had a knife in her boot, but today she also had a tranquilizer gun tucked into the hem of her pants, under her shirt where she was hoping I wouldn’t notice it. I made a mental note of it, but said nothing.

Catherine led me to a medium sized meeting room. Alexi, Jonathan, and Dr. Deshi were all standing there. “I figured there was about a half chance that I was being led here under false pretenses,” I said casually, “Alright, what is it?”

Dr. Deshi cleared his throat. “Last night, while you were sleeping, I investigated your lab,” he said, “I looked at your notes.”

“That hardly seems necessary,” I said, “We discuss our findings with each other every week.”

“Yes,” said the other scientist, “and for some time I have suspected you were lying, and it turns out I was correct. You’re not just distracted, you’ve completely ignored our objective. None of your investigations have anything to do with killing the titaness.”

“To destroy such a thing, we would first need to understand it,” I responded. 

“Oh?” asked Dr. Deshi, “And is that also why you corrupted an angel’s sword?”

“‘Corrupt’ is such a subjective word,” I said, “I subjected it to the deep soil of the titaness in the hopes of causing transformation, yes. And yes, I hid the sword from you and lied in my reports, but I did so because I knew that you would react this way.”

“You’ve gone mad, Kahana,” said Dr. Deshi.

“Please,” I said, waving a hand in dismissal, “I’m hardly stitching together the dead like Frankenstein or testing on myself like Jekyll. I’m simply seeking knowledge, like great scientists throughout history. Besides, sanity is even more subjective than corruption. We are in an airship, tethered to a moving column of earth that mutates life around it and kills angels. Such an idea would have seemed mad two decades ago, no?”

“Like I said, I read your notes,” said Dr. Deshi, “I know your plans for that sword. You were going to kill angels with it.”

“I hypothesized that it would be highly dangerous to them,” I said, “I didn’t make any plans of action about what to do with it exactly.”

“We were supposed to find a way to kill the enemy,” the man retorted, “and instead you found a way to kill our allies.”

“Allies?” I asked, “They’re inhuman beings that go around terraforming things to go back to the way they like it. They’re no more friends of humanity than the titaness.”

“They are trying to fix the world, while she is continuing to destroy it,” said Deshi, becoming increasingly incensed. 

My irritation was also growing. “A child’s perspective,” I responded, “The angels aren’t trying to help us. This isn’t a battle of good versus evil, civilization versus nature, or any other high ideals. All the titaness and the angels are is change as opposed to stagnation. The Breaking happened, and we need to accept that. The angels won’t bring back our civilizations, they won’t bring my husband or my children back to life. My family died in the Breaking, like so many others, but it is foolish to blame the titaness for that. Let’s assume for a moment the angels did win. The titaness was destroyed, the angels restored the world, then they left. Humanity would lose every valuable resource the Breaking granted us, like the hilenium that lifts this airship, and instead we’d be trying to bring back the technology and infrastructure we lost. That would take humanity, by my estimation, somewhere around three centuries, obviously varying significantly based on wars and the like. So three hundred years in the future, we’ll just continue on like we were before. And if we ever get too ambitious, ever try to change the world… Who’s to say the angels won’t come back down and decide we’re the infection that needs to be cleaned? The titaness is after all just as natural as us, just as natural as anything that rose from this planet. The angels are the enemies of change, and therefore the enemies of progress, and therefore the enemies of science.”

“So your argument is that as scientists we have a duty to help a giant destructive monster that poisons the local wildlife?” asked Dr. Deshi. He was being a stubborn idiot, but that didn’t surprise me. I wasn’t talking to him, I was talking to the three other people in the room he had seemingly forgotten. I was talking to the people who ran the ship we were on, including Catherine, who quite relevantly had a tranquilizer gun on her person. Dr. Deshi had never had much practical perspective.

“Now,” I continued, “Let us examine what happens if the titaness wins. The angels are finite, no new ones have emerged since their initial appearance. If the titaness eliminates all the angels it is free to mutate this planet. There will be new animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms, and quite likely new medicines and technologies made from these new beings. Humanity will adapt to our changed planet, possessing the knowledge of the old world and pairing it with all the remarkable creations of the new one. Earth will once again be filled with untamed wonders. If the titaness can exist, then anything is possible. It’s a world of opportunity, of knowledge brought by the constant metamorphosis the titaness brings.”

“The titaness threatens any settlements she passes by with her mutated animals and reshaping of the earth” said Dr. Deshi, “At least the angels ignore us.”

“For now,” I pointed out, “And we can adapt to the titaness. In the last fifteen years, most of humanity has died. That sort of thing forces someone to look at the big picture. And in the big picture, the angels are not on our side. So if I have any ability to tip the balance one way or the other between them and the titaness, I’m going with the titaness.”

“I don’t need to hear any more of your insanity,” said Dr. Deshi, hand clenched into fists at his sides. I only watched him impassively. It was important that I seemed the calm one between the two of us, the one who knew who knew what they were doing. 

“And I, thank goodness, don’t need to hear your stupidity,” I said, “One way or another, I think we’re done with each other.”

“What do you mean, ‘one way or another’?” asked Dr. Deshi, looking confused. Then a tranquilizer dart hit him in the arm and he collapsed to the floor.

Catherine lowered her gun, expression unreadable. Alexi was watching me with curiosity, and Jonathan was staring down at Dr. Deshi. Jonathan gave a half-hearted nervous little chuckle. He seemed a little uncomfortable, but not like he was surprised. 

“I talked to the others,” said Alexi, “We weren’t decided and wanted to hear the both of you out. I trust you more than Deshi the same way I trust the titaness more than the angels. Better than the alternative. So keep that in mind, Kahana.”

“I will,” I said, “Now, what are we doing with my colleague here? I propose we dump him overboard.”

“With a parachute?” asked Jonathan.

“Sure,” I said.

A few minutes later the four of us were standing by the rail of the airship. Dr. Deshi was screaming obscenities at us as he drifted down to the ground. It was a memory that I would always cherish.

“What do we do now?” asked Catherine.

“Now,” I said, “We get ready to kill some angels.”

To get down to the titaness from the airship, one had to zipline down on one of the several ropes tethering the two together. It was not a comfortable process, and I had to do it several times. I would go down to the titaness, collect some of its purple soil, have the others pull me back up using a separate rope attached to my harness, deposit the soil in my laboratory, and repeat.

When we had enough of the soil, I would stir it together with water and some of the oatmeal mix we had. The stuff was nearly impossible to scrub off of anything once it dried. The resulting titaness-soil glue was put onto harpoons, knives, and bullets. It was a much cruder method than the infection of the angel’s sword, but so far we only had one angel weapon.

Opportunity came a couple weeks later. The titaness had started heading with purpose in a different direction, presumably because it sensed a gathering of angels. A landmark came into view before long. It was a mountain range, probably a section of the Rocky Mountains, shattered and changed by the Breaking. The mountains were now just a wall of countless large rocks floating in the air, suspended by unknown forces. The higher rocks were covered in snow and some of the lower ones had visible spots of vegetation on them.

As the titaness pulled the airship closer to the shattered mountains, flying figures came into view. Angels moved around the suspended boulders. Occasionally, a small group of them would touch one of the rocks and it would start drifting through the air before hitting and melding with another rock. They were putting the mountains back together, piece by piece. Angels would also sometimes land on rocks with vegetation. A few seconds after they did so, the plants would all wither and die and they would leave. The plants and animals around many sites of Breaking anomalies carried mutation in them, and the angels had no tolerance for such infection.

The titaness advanced towards its prey, and I noticed birds starting to rise up from its trees. These angels did not attempt to flee as the others had. They broke off from their work on the mountain range and flew towards the titaness as one. There were dozens of angels, more than I had ever before seen.

Alexi, Jonathan, and Catherine were standing next to me on the deck. “I think it would be a good idea to get the sword,” I said to Alexi, and she nodded and ran to do so.

The birds rose up and attacked the angels. But the swarm of angels simply waited for the avians to come to them, instead of moving forward to engage. They started killing the birds, eliminating the distraction while still remaining out of reach of the titaness’ writhing tendrils. I realized that this was planned, strategized. The angels intended to destroy the titaness, and had prepared.

Alexi came back with the glowing violet sword, and I took it and hid it behind my back as we watched the fight. Most of the birds had been killed, and now the angels were diving down to attack the titaness. Each time they struck the colossus with their weapons, a significant portion of its surface earth crumbled and fell off, as if the touch of the angels’ blades dissolved some bond holding it together. The titaness’ tendrils were fast and did manage to strike some of the flying attackers, but the angels were fast too and often managed to dodge out of the way.

The earth that made up the titaness rumbled and three appendages of soil reached out from her to smack at angels like swinging arms. The titaness turned so that the several glowing “eyes” were facing a cluster of angels. Rays of bright violet light shot out of the holes, and disintegrated any angels that touched them. It would seem the titaness had more defenses than I had expected. Still, the angels had the upper hand. There were too many of them, and they continued to ruthlessly strike. A group of them managed to cut off one of the titaness’ earthy limbs.

“We need to get involved,” Alexi said, a second before I was going to say the same thing, “Catherine, Jonathan, man the weapons. Net and harpoon any angels you think you can hit, and pull them to us.”

The weapons of the airship began to fire. Angels hit with the modified harpoons seemed actually hurt, but they didn’t dissolve like they did when struck by the titaness’ tendrils. Usually, the angels could cut themselves free of the nets or pull out the harpoons, but they were distracted and stuck in place for a moment, giving the titaness time to kill them itself.

One of the angels flew towards us. When a harpoon was launched at them, they dodged with ease. The being landed on our deck, shining white halberd in hand. “What are you-” they began before I slashed at them with the infected angel sword. The angel stared in shock for a moment at the blade before falling away into dust, their halberd clattering onto the deck.

More angels started to head towards us. Alexi picked up the angel halberd and tried to stab one as it landed on the deck. Unlike with the infected sword, the pure angel weapon just passed through the angel’s body like it was made of mist. While the angel was distracted, I stabbed them with the sword and they fell apart. Another angel landed behind me, and I knew I didn’t have time to turn around and strike them. Luckily, I didn’t have to, as Alexi drew a pistol and shot the angel squarely in the chest with a bullet covered in the titaness-soil poison. They didn’t dissolve, but they seemed disoriented and hurt for the moment it took me to wheel around and stab them.

We continued like that, Jonathan and Catherine occupying angels fighting the titaness, Alexi holding off ones that landed on the ship with her pistol and poisoned knife, and me executing them with the infected angel sword. I have no doubt that had the titaness not been there, the angels could have killed us all with ease. We merely helped turn the tide.

When there were only a few angels left, they tried to flee, but they didn’t get far before the titaness stabbed them with its tendrils or crushed them with its arms. When the last one was dead, the titaness remained stationary. The glow from its “eyes” dimmed slightly and I spotted the earth around it starting to crawl up to fill the wounds left by the angels’ attacks. I’d never seen the titaness stop to rest and heal before.

“Is everyone alright?” Alexi asked, panting heavily.

“I’m fine,” said Catherine, stepping back from the harpoon gun. Jonathan nodded a little unsteadily.

“The angels nearly got me a few times, but I’m somehow alive and unharmed,” I said. I looked down at the pile of angel weapons that lay on the deck. The next time angels came, they’d be in for a much nastier fight. Oh, what remarkable times we lived in.