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And I was still asking the same question as I vomited into the toilet on my ship. As the days leeched into weeks, the sickness only grew worse.
I was a Titan. A warrior species on the brink of extinction. We were strong, hardy people. This virus, this sickness, could not last forever. Eventually, I would pull out of it.
But my body sure was taking its time.
I had no choice but to shake the sickness. If I didn’t, my crew would remove me as their captain.
And I knew without a shadow of a doubt the moment I was at my weakest, that was when one of the crew would Challenge me to a leadership duel. A smuggler worked for money, not duty. They would turn on me the moment they knew I couldn’t defend myself.
With the way I was feeling, I had little chance of coming out ahead. I was as weak as a newborn babe, just as I was all those years ago when my mother clutched me to her dying breast…
My eyes rolled back into my head as my chin struck the floor. Out for the count.
My mother was strong, powerful… and I’d never seen so much fear in her eyes before.
I’m a child again, clutched tightly in her arms. Outside, the battle has been raging for hours. Fire erupted some time ago, shortly followed by horrified screams. Not Titan screams. We didn’t scream like that, not when death came to claim us. We welcomed him like an old friend.
My mother pulled the blanket off our bed and moved to the corner. She sat down and hurled it over us. To someone passing by, it might look like a pile of laundry like the others on the floor.
Fire blossomed and bled yellow puddles across the sheet. I pointed at the shadows that danced across the blanket’s surface. My mother held my finger and lowered it, shaking her head gently.
She froze when a large shadow paused in the rectangle of the entrance to our hut. My mother kept her eyes on it and placed her thick hand over my mouth. I watched, transfixed, as the shadow swelled across the sheet’s surface, growing larger.
Closer.
The shadow’s head turned one way and then the other. He lurched forward and slammed his blade into a pile of laundry. It rasped against the hard stone floor as his blade tore into it. He pulled it free and began that slow head movement once again.
My mother pressed a finger to her lips, signaling for me to keep quiet. I copied the movement. She raised the blade she kept at her waist to chop vegetables.
That shadow growled low and grunted as he edged closer still.
Mom coiled her legs under herself to spring up and attack the shadow at a moment’s notice.
And that’s when the other shadow turned up.
Bigger, more powerful. I recognized him through the blanket even without seeing his features.
My father roared as he broke into the tiny space of our hut. The creature, taken by surprise, screeched like rusty iron across an anvil before turning silent and still. He crumpled to the floor as my mother dropped the blanket and embraced my father.
He raised me to his face, already cut and bleeding. He cupped my mother’s face in his hand and kissed her. Normally, I would have groaned and turned away in disgust but this time I sensed something was different.
He led us out the door and into the darkness of the jungle. Perched on my mother’s shoulder, I saw the village I’d once called my home burned like the deepest fires of the forge, and the people I loved screamed and cried among them in blood-tinted soil.
We hustled through the village, shrill screams, and pained cries chasing us into the night. A large shadow burst from behind a hut and swung his huge sword at me and my mother.
It was a Titan.
My father was there, blocked his attack with his sword, and cut the figure down. The Titan clutched his chest, his eyes flashed yellow. His body morphed into my father before shifting again to a creature with a long face and a dozen black eyes.
I stared in wonder. I wished I could change shape like that. It must be a lot of fun.
Father grabbed my mother and led us out of the village and down a slight incline. I didn’t recognize where we were. Everything looked so different in the dark.
“Get in!” my father said.
My mother climbed into a canoe as my father shoved it forward.
Arrows thudded into the side of the boat, but my father took no notice. Shadows high up on an embankment backlit by a bonfire rained arrows down on us.
