The stiff mountain wind blows fiercely as Elyas Silver continues his journey upwards, scaling the jagged, rusty, snow-capped peaks of Randall Mountain, far in the southern pole of Thera. His tattered and stained jacket flaps wildly in the wind, its former pristine white ruined by months of wear, sweat, blood, and sand. His hair, once short and brilliant silver, has grown down to the middle of his shoulders and has lost much of its former luster to the harsh desert weather. He has spent the past two months traveling the planet, wandering the desert aimlessly, simply trying to survive. After he had just barely managed to live after his humiliating defeat by Vega’s hands, he’d had to scrounge and scrape his way back to health, fighting off packs of monsters along the way.
As he continued to battle he slowly grew stronger, and when he had finally healed up enough, he decided the only thing he could do was keep fighting, keep getting stronger. He’d felt Vega’s energy leave the planet, but he knew that monster wouldn’t stay away for long. At some point, he would return, or if not him, then someone like him would appear. Elyas had thought he was strong enough to face the Harbinger, and he’d nearly died for that mistake, and Vega was infinitely more powerful than she was. He’d learned his lesson: there’s always someone stronger. He can never become complacent again. Complacency makes people weak, and the weak will always fail.
These thoughts echo through his mind as he continues his arduous climb up Randall mountain. During his travels, he’d heard stories about a massive beast that makes its home in these peaks: the Winged Titan, a monster so great it could swallow an entire caravan whole, a predator like no other. Well, he knew that the ‘no other’ part had to be an exaggeration. He’d fought a Fanged Titan when he was traveling with Peter and his gang, and he’d been just barely too weak to finish it off. He’d had to rely on Peter’s and Sullivan’s immense strength to save him, another painful reminder of his weakness. Now he has the opportunity to redeem himself, to prove how far he’s come.
He continues to climb, gritting his teeth in effort as he scrambles forward, clutching desperately onto a small outcropping just barely big enough for him to grab, then using his momentum to swing himself across a large gap in his path and edge himself closer to safety. He takes a moment to breathe, reminding himself to not look down for too long—no use thinking about the fall. The thought crosses his mind—as it has several times before—that he could just fly to the top of the mountain and be done with it, and once again he shoves the temptation away. This isn’t about getting to the top, this is about proving himself, strengthening both his body and his mind. He may be tired, his hands may be scraped down to the bone, and he may be starving, but he can keep pushing on. He has to keep pushing on.
He takes one last breath before forcing his weary body to continue forward, inching his way across a small shelf on the mountainside with small, methodical movements. He keeps climbing like this for at least another hour or so, his pace agonizingly slow, his arms screaming for a break, his knees quaking from combined fear and exhaustion, but his mind racing, feeling more alive than ever before. Already he can feel his psyche strengthening, his determination and willpower growing with each step forward, until he can practically see his energy rising, like black fire consuming the world ahead of him…
“No! No…” He says to himself, forcing his mind to settle, doing his best to focus through the haze of black in his eyes. Another close call, but he’s managed to avoid Unleashing. This problem has been plaguing him ever since he lost to Vega, his mind constantly slipping into an Unleashed state when he finds himself in a dangerous situation. While the power and ferocity of this state can’t be understated, he loses all control of himself in the process, and often winds up more hurt and exhausted afterward than he was before. He’s been developing ways to control himself, to notice the signs before he fully Unleashes, but it’s still an ongoing process. When he finds the Winged Titan, he can Unleash and let his true power shine, but until then he needs to be sharp and focused.
Another hour passes by, then another, then another, until the early morning sun becomes afternoon, beating down on his head relentlessly, boiling his already blistered and bloodied skin and blinding his already sweat-stained eyes. Through it all, he keeps on pushing, only stopping for the occasional break whenever he finds a rare outcropping or cave. Thankfully, these higher elevations are covered in thin layers of snow, meaning that he has plenty of water all around him, if he’s willing to ignore the taste of rust and dirt in his mouth. Food, on the other hand, is much more difficult to come by. He will occasionally see a small troop of nevins hiding in a cave, or a rare bird here or there on a ledge, but without any way to properly cook the meat, they don’t do him much good, and he’s long since ran out of the few small fruits and seeds he’d scavenged before he started his trek.
He decides to ignore his growling stomach, knowing that he can and has survived hunger far worse than this. He keeps pressing on, ignoring the constantly rising pain in his body, the hunger in his stomach, the boiling heat of the desert, the aching pressure of his psyche—ignoring all of it. He knows it can’t be much further until he finds the Winged Titan’s nest; it simply has to be around here somewhere. So he keeps on searching and climbing for what feels like an eternity until suddenly, mercifully, he comes to a large, flat precipice close to the top of Randall Mountain. He eagerly climbs up onto the precipice and takes a second to breathe, relishing in his accomplishments, savoring the dull, throbbing ache of his arms and legs as his muscles burn and beg for rest.
As he rests, he can see his target dead ahead: a frighteningly large nest of bones containing a single, torso-height chick at its center, its mouth gaping open, letting out desperate cries for food. He’s done it! He’s found the Titan’s nest, and even better, it’s unguarded. He can take a moment to regain his strength, allowing his exhausted body time to recover a little before he challenges this mighty beast. He sits back and watches the chick call for its next meal, debating with himself the possibility of killing and eating the baby while its mother is away. He plans to slay the Winged Titan anyway, so it would honestly be more merciful on his end to just put the chick out of its misery now, rather than let it starve later. However, he runs into the same problem as before: he has no way to cook the creature. Besides that, killing the chick would likely make the Titan more furious than it would be anyway, making it that much harder for him to fight back, and while he wants to test his limits and prove his growing power, he’s no idiot. A mother protecting its child is dangerous enough. A mother avenging its fallen child would be infinitely more deadly.
That thought brings a strange, sadly comedic smile to Elyas’ face. He’d thought the same thing about himself before. When the Harbinger massacred his town and slaughtered his family right in front of him, he thought that his rage and desire for revenge would make him strong enough to fight back. He’d been wrong, and nearly paid for it with his life, both times he challenged her, in fact. Maybe revenge isn’t much of a power-booster after all. Maybe old Jack had been right, maybe Elyas should have waited before he went back out to fight. It certainly would’ve saved him all of this pain and hardship now. But at the same time, if Elyas had never left when he did, he never would’ve learned just how much farther he still had to grow. He would’ve been stuck in his own head, believing himself to be at his strongest, all the while oblivious to the true heights he could achieve if he put his mind to it.
“What am I doing…?” Elyas asks himself quietly, realizing the insanity of this train of thought. Does he really believe that? Does he really believe that it was for the best that he nearly died, cut to ribbons, and tossed aside like a dirty rag? He looks down at his once beautiful white jacket and smirks. “Dirty rags is right,” he mumbles, fully recognizing now just how delirious he is. Maybe he’s pushed himself too hard this time. He’s in no condition to fight. What was he thinking, coming all this way up here without any food, water, or backup to speak of?
Right. He needed to prove himself…but to who? Who would even know he was here? Certainly not the people he’d gotten the rumor of the Winged Titan from. They were just traveling merchants on their way back home. There’s no town nearby that he knows of, no villagers to brag to, no one who would care if he took down what amounted to just a local legend. What about his friends? “Yeah… What friends?” He murmurs, thinking angrily back to the last time he’d spoken to Peter and the others. After everything he’d done for them, all of the help he’d given them, all of the techniques he’d shown them, they just kicked him out like he was some kind of useless animal. He’d only seen them after that when he was already on death’s door, far too gone for any of them to save. He’d had to save himself. He’d had to crawl his way back to life, fighting every monster, every bandit, everything that dared challenge him along the way.
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That’s why he needs to do this. Not just to grow stronger, not just to prove to himself how far he’s come, but also to prove them wrong, to prove that he didn’t need them to begin with, to prove that they’d made a horrible mistake crossing him. He needs to know that he’s become stronger because he needs to know that he can put them in their place if and when he ever runs into them again. And if Vega or any other monster like him dares show their face again, Elyas needs to know he will be powerful enough to destroy them.
First, though, he’ll need to survive today. He takes a deep breath and settles his mind as best he can. All of that anger and determination will help him in the battle to come, but for now, it’s just wasting energy he doesn’t have. His stomach growls once again, crying out for nourishment like the Titan chick in the nest waiting for its mother. The chick keeps calling and calling, its starved cry piercing through Elyas’ ears and grating on his last nerve, taunting his own starved body. He hasn’t climbed all this way just to be stuck here, starving next to this ungodly creature as its horrendous call scrapes on his mind like shards of glass.
Elyas slowly lifts a finger and aims it at the chick, summoning a shard of ebony black energy before flicking it forward with contempt, cutting through the chick’s head like a knife through paper, instantly silencing it, bringing a soothing quiet to the mountain once again. Satisfied with himself, Elyas leans back against the rocky wall and closes his eyes, waiting for his real target to show itself. The wilderness remains silent for all of a minute before a horrifyingly shrill call rips through the air, a sound somewhere between a scream of anguish and a roar of rage.
Elyas’ eyes snap open in fear, finding himself face to beak with the legendary Winged Titan. The beast definitely lives up to its name. Its beak alone is at least ten feet tall, and easily twice as long, with serrated edges perfect for tearing through its victims. It stands at an intimidating eighty feet tall, its massive, hundred-foot-long wings flapping furiously as it hovers just beyond the stone platform where its nest lies, staring forlornly down at its decapitated young. Two small—or at least relatively small—clawed appendages reach out to gently caress the body of the dead chick before they suddenly and violently lash out, grasping for Elyas with ferocious strength, leaving a massive gash in the stone just behind him as he barely dodges out of the way.
“Nothing personal, big girl,” Elyas says, summoning a black blade of fire in his hand, its ebony shimmer glinting hatefully against the Titan’s glistening red feathers. “But your kid was pissing me off.” He lunges forward to attack, stabbing the Titan through one of its small arms, leaving a singed hole behind as he rips the blade out and goes for another strike.
The Titan howls in fury and in pain and thrashes its opened maw to the side, hoping to simply devour its chick’s murderer, but Elyas leaps out of the way of the attack, taking to the sky so that he’s above the Titan’s head. He raises his arms up and claws his fingers before slashing them downward, firing off ten jagged blades of black fury down at the beast. The Titan flaps its monstrously massive wings, propelling itself backward out of the way of Elyas’ attack before it turns and climbs higher into the air, kicking itself off of the mountain with a second set of enormous, talonned feet, instantly catching up to ELyas, much to his shock.
Elyas barely manages to avoid being swallowed by the Titan but gets nicked by its clawed hands, sending him spiraling back with surprising force. He takes a brief second to right himself midair, only to feel himself forced back down into the mountain by a massive gust of wind as the Titan flaps its wings once again, creating a thunderous clap of air that shoves Elyas back into the mountain. He manages to struggle against the wind long enough to not be completely forced back, but the Titan uses this moment of distraction to gain more height, its beautiful red feathers gleaming against the blue sun as it unfurls its immense wings and puffs up its chest, forcing every feather possible into the harsh sunlight.
Elyas looks up to try and find his prey, but the Titan had been anticipating that. With a shrill cry and a twist of its torso, it spins itself around rapidly, creating a blinding strobe effect with its feathers as well as deafening Elyas with its horrendous call. Elyas shouts in surprise and pain, using one arm to cover his scorched eyes while keeping the other one free to launch wild, reckless attacks to keep the overgrown bird at bay. His ears ring non stop, his eyes feel like they are melting in his skull as flashes of the Titan’s form still burn their way through his mind, and through it all his stomach growls ever louder, desperately calling for him to stop fighting, to save what precious energy he has.
Elyas doesn’t have much time to think before he feels himself being ripped away from the mountain, crushed against thick, scaly hands as the Winged Titan grabs him and crushes him with all of its enormous might. Elyas screams as he feels his body breaking against the Titan’s might, his arms cracking with each press, his ribs crying in protest as they slowly start to collapse in. He slowly opens his singed eyes, squinting against the immensely bright sunlight to look up at the Titan as it slowly draws him towards its beak, ready to devour him head-first.
He struggles and strains against the beast’s strength, using his telekinesis to try and pry a finger loose, but his mind and body are simply too weak to do much. All he manages to do is slip a hand through one of the Titan’s claws, but that’s all he needs. He summons a sharp edge of power and flicks it forward, piercing through the Titan’s side and leaving a small but noticeable black gash in its wake. The Titan calls out in distress, leaving it just distracted enough for Elyas to finally break its grasp, blasting its hand open with a jagged burst of power, cutting the clawed appendage to shreds. Before the Titan can properly react, Elyas slips down below it, sending a couple claw slashes upward as he flies away from the massive creature, trying to regain some distance.
The Titan manages to block the weakened attacks with its enormous wings as it spins around, righting itself to Elyas’ angle before rocketing forward at speeds no creature its size should be capable of, furiously trying to kill the man responsible for its child’s death. It cries out, trying to deafen its target again, but Elyas is too far for the screeching call to do much damage. Elyas smirks despite the agonizing pain in his body and the sickeningly weak feeling in his gut. This is it, one last shot to take down this beast. He has it exactly where he wants it, at the perfect range, mouth wide open to devour.
He spreads his arms out wide at slight angles, clawing his fingers and summoning thick, black shards of energy to them. He then starts spinning around and around, creating a jagged halo of ebony blades, all of them spinning at immense speeds, ready and eager to tear their victim in half. The constant spinning makes the already queasy feeling in his stomach explode into genuine sickness, but with nothing in his stomach to expel, he simply heaves slightly before gaining the will to clamp down on his gut. Once this attack is complete, he will have a feast on his hands.
“Don’t worry, big girl. You’ll see your kid soon enough,” he growls, stopping his spinning and allowing the smoking halo of death around him to rise slightly so that it orbits his hand. He leans back, preparing his arms to launch the deadly disc of power, but his body starts to wobble. He has expended too much energy to make this attack, pushed his body way too far, but still his mind remains focused and strong. He suppresses the pain, ignores the sickness, and aims his attack.
“Cyclone Cutter!” He shouts, thrusting his arms forward and launching the whirling disc of shattered energy forward, straight for the Titan. He grins exhaustedly as he sees the Cyclone Cutter nearing his prey, eager to rend it apart, only for the massive beast to simply dive under the disc, avoiding it entirely and closing the gap between itself and Elyas. Elyas doesn’t have enough time to react before the Titan swoops up from under him, clipping him with one of its massive talons, completely shattering his balance before turning around and dive-bombing him from above, sending him crashing halfway down the length of the mountain behind him.
As he plummets, he looks over to see his Cyclone Cutter still soaring through the air, crashing into Randall Mountain and easily cleaving the entire peak off of it, sending it crashing down to the savannahs below. In a brief moment of deleterious glee, Elyas laughs. His technique worked. If it had managed to hit the Titan, it would have died, sliced cleanly in half like the mountain ahead of him. He allows himself to revel in this thought for a brief second before the Titan catches up to him, using its remaining arm to deliver a devastating slash to his torso, tearing through his chest and leaving thick red gashes behind and sending him hurtling all the way back down to the dirt.
Elyas hits the ground hard, barely able to put up so much as a weak telekinetic Void Field, cushioning his fall just enough so that he can live, but only just. Sprawled out on the ground, broken and weakened and dying, he looks up to the sky, seeing the bloody red silhouette of the Winged Titan soar back into the air, letting out a victorious cry. As the world begins to fade around him, all he can think of is the red wings of the Harbinger, her sickeningly sweet face glaring down at him, eager to drag him down into death, back into his family’s arms. His eyes shut and his breathing slows. He falls unconscious, completely oblivious to the shaded figure approaching his dying body.
