Gus didn’t care for most things, but she did care about keeping her word.
The possibility that someone had gone after Anandra was unacceptable.Not just because she’d told him she’d keep him safe.She’d been careful to cover her tracks.If someone had taken him, it meant she had problems that she had avoided considering until now.
Unease slid through her before she stifled it.
First things first—she needed to figure out where in the spine she was.
The hammock swayed as Gus shifted to eye the drop below her feet.It was a long way down if she slipped.
Gus didn’t let that stop her as she reached for one of the smaller trunks, getting a firm handhold on it before sliding off the hammock.Clinging to the side of the tree, she took a good look around.Spotting a gap about ten feet below that might be just big enough for someone her size to crawl through, Gus headed towards it.
To her relief, it was exactly what she’d thought.Gus squirmed through the narrow opening, her cloak adding a few more pieces of bark to its collections.Then she was finally out.
Perching on one of the intertwined trunks, Gus took stock of the situation.
The walls of the spine were covered in a dense canopy of vegetation that partially obscured what was written below.Gus could just make out the large block number for eighteen several feet up the shaft.
That meant she’d come to a stop somewhere between decks eighteen and seventeen.
Not bad.She didn’t have far to go then.
Gus started her descent.The climb wasn’t difficult, the width of the tree’s trunks making it easy to find purchases for her feet and hands.
All she had to do was try not to fall.Something she managed quite adeptly.
It wasn’t long before she spotted the faded sixteen denoting her destination.
Before parting with Titan’s Lord, Gus patted its side and pressed her forehead against the warm wood of its trunk.“Thank you.”
She thought she might have imagined the faint pulse from within the tree and the way a twig seemed to brush her cheek before she pushed away, darting across one of the rickety bridges the inhabitants had built to reach the tree’s trunk.
Once across, Gus paused to take in the overgrown garden that served as this level’s green space.
It wasn’t as well maintained as those on other decks, overgrown in places and withering in others.She looked up, finding dead branches hanging off one of the ornamental trees.The nearby shrubs were also in need of a good pruning.
Gus fought a growing sense of frustration as she took in what looked to be a powdery mildew on several species of flowers.
Shetskedunder her breath.Such an easy thing to fix.
Whoever was responsible for the garden’s upkeep wasn’t doing their job.An oversight Gus would have to remedy later.For now, she sent a smattering of her energy into the plants around her to tide them over and correct some of the imbalances before leaving the garden behind and heading into the slums.
Stepping onto the main concourse, she found the surrounding area quiet.An all too familiar hush blanketing the shops.Those who’d visited a war zone or stepped foot into a place after a major disaster knew this feeling.This sense of strained anticipation and fear.
The locals were waiting to see how much of the fallout would land on them.
“When Titans war, it’s always the small and weak who reap the consequences,” Gus observed softly.
For most of her life, Gus had counted herself among their numbers.Smaller.Weaker than everyone around her.
But not today.
Today, she was the Titan.It was uncomfortable to realize that she’d be the one raining down death and destruction on the surrounding populace if she found what she suspected she would at Natalie’s.
And yet, Gus didn’t deviate.
She kept going, heading inexorably toward her destination with a grim resignation and a faint hope that she was wrong.That in a few minutes she wouldn’t have to show these humans what it meant to break a vow to the forty-three’s weakest member.
Fourteen
