Harvey and Grant kept watch as the figures drew closer.[1]
Teri stopped walking.
The others didn't notice at first. They moved two steps before the quality of her stillness pulled at them.
Her head had dropped. Her breathing had changed. Something was pressing on her heavily.
"It..." Her voice came out too thin. "It's here."
She turned.
They all turned.
The ground behind them rose.
They had slid down the Gravebound Titan.
Its body assembled from the ravine itself. Lichen and mineral crust aged its shoulders. Torn remnants of weapons were embedded into its frame like old wounds that never needed healing.
It rose to its full height and looked at the seven figures in its clearing with the mild, unhurried attention of something that had done this many times before.
Nobody moved. They had all frozen in panic.
Harvey stepped out from behind the bone.
He looked at the Titan once. Then looked at Grant.
"This should be our cue to head the other direction" he said.
Grant nodded in agreement and they ran back the way they came.
The little commotion and people running behind them brought Tony back into reality.
"Run!!!" Tony shouted.
They all broke into a run at different speed. Following the two people ahead of them.
The Titan's first step forward sent a tremor through the floor.
The fog churned around the Titan's legs as it walked.
It exhaled through its mouth to clear the fog to reveal its target. The bones carpeting the ground scattered outward like loose gravel.
Harvey ran with his eyes behind him. Reading how much ground the Titan covered per step, how long before it closes the distance.
Grant was reading something different.
His reflexes were already pulling the movement apart. The weight shift before each arm came. The tilt in the frame. The half-second delay between intent and swing.
"Sweeps left," he said between breaths. "Watch the weight. When it goes right go left."
Tony looked at him sharply. Confusion written all over his face.
The Titan's weight rolled right.
"LEFT!" Grant called.
They scattered. The arm came in low and flat, sweeping through the space. It struck the ground and sent bone shards and stone fragments exploding outward in a wave that managed to knock Cecilia off her feet.
She hit the ground hard. Theo pulled her upright without stopping.
Zach looked at the devastation behind them, and ran faster.
Grant grabbed Olivia by her arm and pulled her without explaining. She moved before she understood why. A falling ribcage formation crashed on the space she had been running.
He grabbed Theo and halted to a stop for a brief second. A bone shard the size of a spear passed through the air and landed in front of them. They went around and continued running.
The Titan stepped again. Tremor rolled through the clearing floor. A crack split open ahead, not deep nor wide. Teri's foot caught the edge.
She went down hard.
Her ankle felt twisted. She pushed herself up and her weight went through it and the leg buckled. She dropped to one knee, face tight.
"Get up," she said to herself.
She tried again. Getting her footing right to pick up pace.
The Titan had already lunged its arm towards her. She wasn't going to make it out of harm's way in time.
Aveline blinked.
She appeared beside Teri, grabbed her arm, and blinked.
They came out ten meters to the right, clear of the Titan's arm.
They both stumbled on landing, and pushed themselves up immediately and stepped back into the run.
The Titan's weight rolled left.
"RIGHT!" Grant called.
Everyone went right. The sweep came in low. It caught the ground just behind Theo and sent him tumbling. He rolled and came up moving.
The edge of the sweep had caught Zach as well. He hit the ground shoulder first and skidded across the floor, came up with one knee bleeding. The blood lifted slightly in the air around the wound, responding to something the rest of him was too focused to control. He shut it down and kept moving.
The Titan's weight rolled right.
"LEFT!!" Grant shouted.
Most of the went left.
Tony was half a step slow. The sweep caught him fully.
He was launched sideways, slamming into the floor. He skidded and stopped hard against a collapsed bone. The force of the impact buried itself inside his chest, pulsing beneath the bone.
He didn't move right away. His body was trying to process it.
The Titan turned toward him.
Aveline blinked.
She appeared beside him, grabbed him, and blinked them both forward. They came out near the others.
She landed on both hands and knees. Stayed there for a moment. The world doubled. The dizziness and the blurred vision hit her hard this time.
Tony crouched beside her. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." She responded.
They got back on their feet and moved.
The Titan stopped sweeping.
Harvey saw it the same time Grant did. The shift in weight. Both feet planting. Both arms drawing back.
Both.
That was different.
Both arms came forward together. A vast, flat, slamming force that rolled outward across the entire clearing in every direction at once. Not aimed. Not precise. Just clearing everything.
The shockwave hit them all.
Bone and stones and compacted dust blew outward in a wave. Every person in the clearing was knocked off their feet.
Sound came back in pieces. Breathing. Coughing. The low creak of the ravine around them.
Tony pushed himself up first. He scanned the shapes in the dust. People moving. Getting up. Stunned but moving. He counted.
Eight.
"We can't keep running forever." He said.
"Do you have a death wish?" Harvey responded picking up pace again. "Look at the size of that thing."
"Cecilia, build up that blast." Tony calls out.
"Olivia, hold it down."
"Theo, help me set that rib bone up."
"I'll aim for the heart," then he turns to Cecilia. "You aim to rip off the head."
She nodded.
Tony surged the energy that was building up in him into his fist.
Theo held the bone, aiming it at the Titan's chest.
He hit it with full force, sending the bone flying.
The bone pierced the Titan's chest but seemed to do little or no damage.
It was like piercing a needle into the skin.
"Clear!" Cecilia shouted.
She blasted the pulse but missed her target.
She miscalculated and the pulse hits the Titan on the right shoulder.
The Titan staggered two steps back and then balanced itself.
Particles of lichen and minerals fell off its shoulder. Stone dust and mineral grits shifted slowly inward. Sealing the opening on the shoulder to return to what it was.
It turned its gaze to its shoulder. Where the blast had landed. Smooth pale stone underneath.
It showed no pain. No anger. Just a quiet, brief acknowledgment that something had occurred.
Then it looked at them.
Olivia could feel it pulling away from her.
The Titan moved. Slowly. One deliberate shift of weight.
The shadow anchor began to tear.
" The plan didn't work." Olivia voiced out.
The Titan's weight shifted right, breaking through Olivia's anchoring.
" Run!" Tony screamed.
Zach, Teri, Grant and Harvey where already miles away from them. They didn't stop running.
Aveline had slowed her pace to be on standby in case they would need her help.
The Titan's hand came in for sweep as they scrambled.
"They won't all make it in time." Aveline murmured to herself as she blinked.
She appeared beside Cecilia.
Grabbed her. Olivia was only a few strides ahead. She stretched out her hands to grab Olivia too.
She blinked. They came out of the sweep path.
Aveline stumbled but manages to get back her footing. Her vision blurred. She blinked her eyes hard to clear her vision then she blinked again.
Tony had make it few meters pass the sweeping path but Theo was still in the path of danger.
She blinked again.
She appeared beside Theo.
She grabbed him.
The sweep hits but she manages to blink him out to avoid the full impact.
They crashed few meters in front. Rolling few meters then came to a halt.
She felt like the world split sideways. Two versions of everything. The dizziness was worse than before. Her body and the world around her stopped agreeing with each other.
"Are you okay?" Theo asked.
"Go, go, go." she responded. "I'll be right behind you."
She pushed herself upright. Swayed. Steadied.
Everyone was moving. Everyone was clear.
Well, everyone except her.
Tony turned back to see the Titan's hand descending towards her.
"AVELINE!" He screamed.
Her vision wasn't still clear. But she decided to blink toward the sound of the voice that called.
She blinked. She appeared crashing into a bone.
She didn't make it clear of the descending hand.
The impact was immediate.
Tony stopped for a brief moment.
Please...
Let her have made it.
The dust began to clear.
For one impossible heartbeat, he searched for a figure running. Looking for any movement.
There was none.
His heart shattered.
"Aveline..."
She lay motionless in the crater the Titan had left behind.
Half of her body was buried beneath shattered stone, her chest crushed into the ground beneath her. One arm reached outward, fingers frozen as though she'd been an instant away from another blink.
She was perfectly still.
No blink.
No miracle.
"TONY!"
Theo's voice tore through the clearing.
Tony didn't move.
The Titan had focused its gaze towards them and took another step.
[1] In case you missed the previous note, the story has been renamed to Beyond the Anomaly: The Eighteen.