I shrugged. “Almost. Trig? How you feeling?”
“I’m up for anything,” he said. “I mean, maybe I can’t take a Titan down by myself, but I’m still useful in other ways.”
“The Shadow Titan was like a newborn in that form,” I said. “Hardly able to control itself, had difficulties in precise actions. It didn’t have a lot of time to adapt to its new body.”
“You’ve killed 3 Titans now, two of them by yourself,” Trig said. “I don’t think modesty is the way to go. So what do you have in mind?”
“The Nursery,” I replied, pointing to the woods. “We need to verify that it’s been destroyed for good. Elsewise, this forest will just end up full of monsters again.”
Trig nodded. “And we better check underground too. I’d wager that whatever we saw on the surface was probably extending below the earth too. Let’s go.” He made a motion to me ever so slightly, indicating that now would be better than later. Why the urgency, I wonder?
We departed from the Vessel, leaving it alone to tend to the ‘unpodded’ Masara. Apparently, there was some kind of binding process that allowed the Vessel to take control of these mindless husks, putting them to work. A sort of takeover that would eliminate all previous impulses in these workers and replace them only with the Vessel’s orders. We would have a full retinue of warriors to escort us back home, the Overseer had assured me.
Once we were a mile away or so, searching through the extremely unfamiliar forest for the nest, Trig brought up a surprising question. “I think we should hold onto the memory shard for a little bit,” he said. “Are you with me on this?”
I frowned. “What are you talking about? The Overseer needs it. There’s some kind of rebinding process that needs to be done, but once it’s complete, it’ll have all of its memories back. Who knows what it learned while in this forest?”
“Yeah, but…well…” Trig sighed and stopped walking, turning to look at me. “We can’t assume that these things are our friends.”
“What do you mean? They seem friendly enough.”
“Because they wanted something. Notice how they have all the cards, so to speak? They have the knowledge of what’s going on, understanding of these Titans far more than we do, and instead of freely sharing, they want to ‘evaluate’ us. To make sure we’re up to their standards or whatever. You don’t find that weird?”
“It is weird,” I agreed. “But they have their reasons.”
“Yeah, and what if when we hand over the memory core and the Overseer, they say ‘seeya later’? What are we gonna do then?” he pressed. “Look, I’m not trying to start trouble here, goodness knows we have more trouble than we could ever want. But we just went through hell and we’re guaranteed what out of the deal? A good faith exchange of ideas?”
“You don’t trust them?”
“It’s not about trust. It’s about getting what we want out of the deal. We have a bargaining chip. That memory core is important, right? Important enough for them to give us something, anything, as a sign of cooperation.”
“You want to extort them?”
Trig laughed. “I just want a fair trade. That’s all. They give us some of their secrets, bona fide stuff that will help Hunter’s Hope and the rest of humanity, and they get their Overseer’s memory back. They wouldn’t dare balk at the offer. Unless…they were planning to pull one over on us.”
It was my turn to laugh now. “Trig, you can’t be serious? You want to take the only potential allies we have here, the only creatures we have ever met that seem to know what’s going on, and insult them by holding their leader’s memories hostage?”
“I want to show them that we’re not chumps. Charity gets you nowhere with thieves, Avery. Trust me, I’ve cheated enough people in life to know that the honest folks understand give and take. It’s the dishonest ones who get offended at deal making.”
What was I to say here? Trig had some points to consider. The Masara were certainly not in a hurry to help us out. And they had no trouble asking for favors with the promise of future goods. But at the same time, what if their secrets were too big to just hand over to total strangers? What if we needed to earn their trust before we could get the vital information? Waving the memory core in front of them and demanding payment would annihilate any goodwill we had with them. Not to mention, they might try and take it back by force.
“Your concerns are understandable—” I started to say, only for Trig to scoff and shake his head.
“Really? You’re not going to trust me on this? After all we’ve done together?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Trig…it’s just…we have two different outlooks. You seem to assume the worst in folks and I…well, I don’t,” I replied, putting my hands up to protest his frustration. “In the battlefield, I trust you with my life.”
“But when it comes to making decisions about the future of our people, you’d rather not listen,” Trig said. He was irritated, but to his credit, he tried to suck it up. “Look, you’re the boss. I trust you. But…I reserve the full rights to say I told you so here. And hey, I hope I’m wrong, okay? I’d rather assume the world is made of rainbows and sunshine. But before a year ago, I had never even seen sunshine. So…you can’t get mad at me for assuming the worst.”
“I’ll think about what you said,” I replied, knowing full well that I wasn’t going to consider extorting the Masara. Damn, that was how my mother talked to me, wasn’t it? Always saying that she’ll consider my words, only to flat out ignore them.
We travelled the rest of the way in silence. We saw no monsters,
