Wings in the Dark

Chapter 21: Fall

*Reader's POV*

The reports that were coming in were shoddy at best, dubious or hard to swallow, earth shattering at the worst. There wasn't time for full briefings or finicky details, all you had time to be told before being given an assignment to aid in the response was that a giant Titan had appeared and broken through the wall in Shiganshina, allowing Titans to flood into the pocket city, and then another Abnormal of some kind had broken through Maria itself, with Titans now flooding the third and largest wall. Warnings were being sent to cities to evacuate, trying to get to towns along the way if they could. Groups were being sent to try and stem the flow of Titans to at least give the citizens of Maria time to escape. Garrison soldiers were already being sent to reinforce the escorts for the boats coming from Shiganshina to make sure no Titans swarmed them as they moved upriver towards Wall Rose.

Levi Squad was meant to go to the front lines to try and stem the tides and give the refugees time to escape. Of course, considering the importance of both you and Levi to the Scouts, and just how vital the advantage the two of you provided was, especially now with this tragedy unfolding around you, you also had strict orders to retreat when nothing more could be done, or you risked losing one of you if you continued.

If, by the time you reached the point the Titans had managed to reach, wherever that may be, Titans had already overwhelmed the area and there was nothing you could do to hold back the tide, then you were to switch objectives and help run the warning through Wall Maria and make sure the towns were evacuating, that the messengers were actually making it to their goals and hadn't been swallowed up by Titans.

Considering it took roughly a day, in theory, to travel the entirety of Maria on horseback, and that was in a hard run without stopping which was impossible, you all knew by the time you reached the scene, it would be painfully far away from the gate city the Titans had initially broken through. At best, you would reach an area and take part in a bit of damage control for half an hour, an hour, trying to give the residents of some poor town time to flee. More likely, you all expected to be given the directive to switch tasks and start acting as messengers to make sure as much of Maria evacuated as possible before Titans swarmed the land entirely.

You, personally, expected that switch in missions to happen around the halfway point to the gate city, sooner, maybe, considering the Titans had a head start and longer gait then the horses. And it would help you be better prepared, sooner, to think that way.

Currently, you were all in the process of racing towards the center of danger, a grim silence hanging between all of you as you rode as hard and fast as you could, gas and blades still full and unused as–at the moment–you hadn't run into trouble. However, you were all on edge, because there was no telling if a Titan had slipped past the Garrison soldiers if they'd managed to keep the Titans contained, or what directions any strays might have gone in, how fast they were moving, and how far they managed to get.

"There's really no way to seal the gate?" you asked quietly, keeping your gaze fixed forward despite the abruptness of your question causing a slight stir in the group that had been utterly silent up until now.

"No. They destroyed the seal and everything, and no one was prepared for something like this. I don't know if we'll have a plan to fix it, either," Eld said grimly near the middle of the group.

"No one knows how the walls were made, so it's not like we have materials on hand to seal it back up so Titans can't get through again," Gunther added.

"And I doubt Titans are going to just sit back and give us the time we'd need to seal it, anyway," Oluo grimly chimed in.

"We'll worry about that part another time," Levi cut in sharply, bringing an abrupt end to the darker-toned discussion you'd just initiated in the group. "Right now our focus is the evacuation, so stay focused on that."