Suddenly, the pressure ceased on Eve and she could breathe again. She rolled over, hacking, coughing for air, grasping at her throat. Saliva made her mouth and throat slick as she gasped for air.
Beside her, Elisa was also heaving for air on the grassy ground. As her breathing steadied, Eve wondered why the fog had withdrawn and looked up. The twisted red mask of the cloud shepherd stared right back at her, only a few feet away. The titan was squatting, extending its head forwards, observing her. Eve was proud that she didn't jump out of her skin.
Then, Eve realized that it wasn't looking at her… it was looking at Elisa.
Elisa's reaction to the Shepherd was the same as Eve's. Elisa's hand instinctively skirted forwards to her plate carrier where her knife had previously been, but then realized that her combat knife had been shattered by the scream.
For now, though, the Shepherd didn't seem to have any hostile intentions—at least towards Elisa.
Elisa stood, placing herself in between Eve and the Cloud Shepherd. She regarded the titan coldly. "What do you want?" Her voice was quite even for someone who was facing down an impossible being.
The Shepherd switched masks to one that was ornately carved out of a strange cyan wood. The expression seemed to be of a thoughtful countenance with raised eyebrows.
Who are you? Why do you have our eldest?
The Shepherd intently stared at Elisa, its eyes unblinking and impossibly vast behind the mask.
"Your eldest—" Elisa froze mid sentence. The silence seemed to speak for itself.
"Elisa?" Eve winced as she rose to her feet, stepping cautiously toward the woman. Her breath caught in her throat.
Elisa's eyes had rolled back, but this time they weren't amethyst or lavender—they gleamed with an unnatural brilliance, her irises prismatic, stained-glass mosaics. Petal-like patterns unfurled outwards, printing themselves across the surface of her eyes like fractal flowers blooming beneath glass.
Elisa lowered her head briefly, then straightened with eerie composure. Those crystalline eyes swept across Eve before settling on the Shepherd.
When she spoke, her voice had changed completely. It carried more weight than Eve had ever heard—drenched with authority, echoing with regality and pressure so immense it felt like the sky itself would be pressed to the ground. Space and time twisted around Elisa, rifts warping into tendrils that curled inward like limbs drawn to their master.
The serpentine spirals wrapped around Elisa as she lifted a single hand and pointed at the ground.
"Kneel."
The word echoed in a chorus, the same haunting voices that Eve remembered from the Bloom back during their raid at the arctic Laboratories of Cold Weather Outpost Four. A glass flower bloomed behind Elisa's ear, winding itself into place like a hair ornament sculpted from living crystals.
With a thunderous thud the Cloud Shepherd dropped to one knee, bowing its antlered head. Despite its vast size, it obeyed without resistance, the creature brought to heel.
Eve froze. Is the Bloom manifesting again? What happened to Elisa and Isa? Did they lose control? Eve's thoughts scattered. What the hell is happening? A grim realization shook Eve. If the Bloom turned hostile again, she had vowed to stop it. She would be taking responsibility for her emotions clouding her judgement by allowing Elise to continue living while doctrine usually called for erasing everything that they couldn't comprehend with bullets.
Elisa—no, the Bloom—spoke again, voice carrying that same ancient, layered resonance. "What were you hoping to accomplish, Shepherd? Explain yourself."
The Shepherd lowered its head further, voice diminished to a murmur.
I meant to warn the younglings, O elder.
The vast titan sounded small. Chastised, even.
"Really."
The Bloom didn't wait for clarification. Its choir erupted at full force—a harmonic detonation of voices that shattered the air. The Shepherd buckled, driven further into the earth as space around it fractured into rifts. Reality rippled outward as slashes in the air bled undulating beams of multicolored light, dancing like flares. One hovered directly above the Shepherd's head, spinning and dropping slowly.
"Tell the truth, or your arrogant head will be gone." Elisa roared over the choir, her voice jagged and cold.
Shit.Did the Bloom always have this much power? Eve's heart hammered, struggling to keep blood moving through her body. Her lungs fought for air and her muscles locked down, refusing to move. She wasn't being pushed into the ground like the Shepherd, but even so she could barely move. Eve didn't know what the Bloom had done, or how it had reclaimed control of Elisa. However, she knew that the moment it showed signs of hostility towards anything, she'd need to act. But could she? Eve couldn't even lift her arms. Every step felt as if she were dragging iron weights. Then—just as suddenly as it had begun—the sound vanished.
The choir dropped into strangereal silence. Space stitched itself back together. The cracks in the sky sealed. The flowers and tendrils evaporated like breath on glass. All that remained was the glass bloom curled around Elisa's ear. She delicately tucked a strand of obsidian-black hair behind it.
The Bloom stared down at the Shepherd with an expression that could only be described as disappointed and detached. Almost like a parent watching a wayward child commit a sin they should've known was wrong by their heart. "Can you bring back the ones you killed or not?" The way Elisa phrased it made it clear: this wasn't a question—this was a threat.
Of course, my elder.
The Shepherd silently changed masks. A new mask slid into place—white, carved from a mysterious wood-like material. It had no expression— it was neutral. Hollow. Then, the Cloud Shepherd raised a single claw. The bodies it had slaughtered moments ago twitched, then moved. Severed limbs clawed toward torsos, finding their halves like magnets. Strands of flesh wound and rewove itself as the dead soldiers breathed again.
"I would have expected someone of your age to be less… petty," Elisa chided, voice regal but cold. "Why are you so quick to rage? Could you not sense the humans in your mountain range until after you drowned them in your clouds? Could you not see that those you aimed to kill did not mean to harm you?"
...I sincerely apologize.
The Shepherd raised a second claw, and the forest around them parted like curtains. There, on the knotted, moss-choked ground, lay the bodies of several Asphodelian BAR squads—limp, broken, lifeless. Unlike the soft rise and fall of the TRACE and BHISL operators around her who were unconscious, Eve couldn't see any breath coming out of the Asphodelians at all. They were dead.
"I'm disappointed in you," the Bloom sighed.
Eve had been approaching quietly, trying to process everything when Elisa turned around to face her. Her gaze locked on Eve, and though her voice was still the Bloom's chorus, it now carried a strange softness—a drifting melancholia that seemed to transcend time itself.
"You are… my host's lover, yes?"
The words caught Eve off guard like a punch to the gut. "What—I—we're not—" She flushed hot red, stumbling over herself in the situation. "I mean—" Flustered, Eve decided that it would be better if she shut her mouth. Immediately.
The Bloom raised a single hand and gently placed it over her chest and traced her porcelainlike cheek with the other. It curiously regarded Eve as if it had a new aberrant interest in her—one that was perhaps a bit more… engaged than a simple interest.
"You should… what is the expression? Go out with my host?" The Bloom, controlling Elisa, tilted its head to the side. "On a date," It clarified. "And for real, not just to discuss what happened to me." The Bloom smiled, the ancient being residing inside Elisa's body gauging Eve's reaction.
Eve stared, her chest pounding with a mixture of emotions as she covered her face with her hands. Her cheeks burned. What the fuck is even going on?