Attack on Titan Fanfiction – Bladesmiths & Librarians: Chapter 1

The Last Castle Bladesmith

“How long ago did this happen?” Levi asked. 

He was at the military lab, called in by Hange. Emergency, come with someone ASAP, said their telegram. Now they stood in front of the dead body of a twelve-year-old boy. There was a knife wound to his neck, a huge gash right at the jugular. It was self-inflicted. A suicide note had been left under the door of Hange’s office.

“We found his body twelve hours ago. I was asleep when it happened. The entire staff was. I figure it happened between one to three in the morning.” There was a rueful look on Hange’s face.

Levi let out a weary sigh. The war with Marley was over only five weeks ago. Somehow, in what can only be called the miracle of the century, the outnumbered Paradian armed forces were able to beat back the invading Marleyans. Paradis forced Marley to capitulate and end the war; now Armin was in the midst of negotiating the Treaty of Stohess, the terms of surrender. But no one on the island was happy, least of all himself.

Admiral Jean Kirschtein was responsible for the extraordinary naval strategy that forced the larger, better armed Marleyan fleet to lose half of its ships and seamen. Jean learned from his early mistakes in smaller battles to the point that the war with Marley was a triumph of integrated tactics orchestrated by him. But the admiral was also counting the dead in his own fleet, having lost a third of them during the battle at sea, along with the sinking of one of their precious battleships, the HMS Dot Pixys. Jean was hailed as a hero, but the last time Levi saw him he was in such a foul mood his subordinates were quaking in their boots. 

“I am not a hero! Print that word next to my name in the papers and I swear to the gods I’ll have you swim from one end of the ocean to the other!” Levi saw Jean shouting at a journalist who came to pump out juicy information outside of the formal spiel released by the Royal Navy. The intrusive reporter, from the salacious tabloid The Moon, expected some self-congratulatory words, some chest-puffing and preening from the heroic admiral, but instead he received a scolding. 

“The moment you engage in war you are already a loser. Everyone loses. There is no winning side because while war may be a necessary evil, it is still an evil,” Jean was shouting. He was clearly pissed; he’d already released one official statement after another, including thanking the public for their support and sacrifice, praising his fallen comrades as true heroes, reassuring the nation that they will rebuild and strengthen the Royal Navy to face future conflicts, and so on. What more did this gossip columnist want from him?

Later on Levi asked the reporter, whom he was well familiar with, what kind of article he had hoped to write.

“I wanted to write something along the lines of ‘Rakish Swashbuckling Admiral Hero of Our Times’. I only wanted to extol him,” sniffled Gerhard Peckman, looking aggrieved. He whinged to the brigadier about his self-perceived maltreatment. 

It made Levi want to laugh out loud. Jean had always been tolerant of the tabloids, even when they published articles like ‘Exotic Half-Breed Beauty Heart and Soul of Royal Marines’ about his wife, Mikasa. In the name of freedom of the press he willed himself to be magnanimous. But not this time.

“We did not want this war, we were forced into it and now we have to deal with the consequences. Do you have any idea how it feels to see your comrades die right before your eyes, one after the other, hundreds upon hundreds? Men and women you raised and trained yourself, none of them wanting a war but fighting because they had no choice? Because I ordered them to? I hate war, Mr. Peckman,” the admiral had shouted at the reporter. “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can. I’ve seen its brutality, its malice, its rapacity, its futility, its stupidity. And yet you insist on calling me a hero? Tell that to our thousands of compatriots who will never again see the light of day!”

“I’ve never seen the admiral in such a huff,” Peckman groused. “I mean, we won the war! What the hell’s wrong with him?” He turned a face full of complaints to the brigadier, expecting Levi to commiserate with him.

But Levi wasn’t about to give the tabloid reporter much sympathy. The most recent, pre-war article Peckman wrote about the Special Forces was titled ‘Hot Sexy Steamy Men Protecting Us While We Sleep’. It was filled with innuendo, with barely-concealed eroticism, featuring a full-page spread of his operators during one of their training sessions, unabashedly focusing on their buff, sweaty, half-naked bodies glistening under the sun. Levi had given the press permission to photograph them for a PR campaign to make the shadowy, secretive, obscure Special Forces more palatable to the general public. The other newspapers came up with decent enough articles. Only The Moon could come up with such a cringe-worthy piece. 

“Well, this isn’t a good time, Gerhard. War is but a chronicle of grief, and the admiral knows it better than anyone. No chest-thumping for your entertainment. Sucks to be you,” Levi replies, clapping him at the back, sending him on his way.

Jean’s foul mood reflected the mood of the Paradian military. The general public was celebrating because the civilian casualties have been kept to a minimum. Technically, Paradis won the war. As a bone fide nation-state it was their first war and they survived it. It was part of the war propaganda machine to laud the accomplishments of the armed forces. But few in the military felt like celebrating. 

Lt Colonel Mikasa Ackermann-Kirschtein of the Royal Marines, General Connie Springer of the Royal Army, Marshall Hange Zoe of the Royal Air Force, and himself and Jean, all of them fought valiantly. But right now they were too busy burying the dead and counting the heavy cost of the bloodshed. The long road to rebuilding what was taken away from them was bleak and dispiriting. 

Victory tasted hollow when you didn’t want to play the game in the first place. It tasted even more hollow when you knew there would be more of the same to come, more countries wanting to invade them, lusting after their precious natural gas. Levi knew how schools of war taught that soldiers always need to be prepare themselves to fight the next conflict. Wars of attrition were a fact of life on their cursed planet. There would be no respite.

Today Levi was faced with another undesirable fact: it wasn’t just the natural gas that outsiders were after. Somebody out there was after the ancient secrets of Paradis’ master craftsmen. Somebody out there wanted to steal the secret behind their labour-intensive, precision bladesmithing process that produced the finest, most perfect blades in the world. 

At the lab, Levi stared at the dead body of the boy. He knew who he was. The last time he saw him was a year or so ago when he was still alive and full of hopes and dreams. His name was Alec Schmitz, and he was the last of the castle bladesmiths of the ancient Eldian empire. 

And this is why war sucks, Levi thought. It’s not just those on combat duty that die, the fallout of war extended to children like Alec. He remembered the boy always being by his father Jakob’s side, the two of them looking as a parent and child would, with their very pale skin, auburn hair and steel-grey eyes. Alec was a quiet, thoughtful boy who, like his father the master bladesmith, kept to himself. He would only speak when spoken to, his words always pared down to a minimum. By the time Alec was twelve he had the focused concentration of a swordsmith, adept in the extremely rigid process of continuously folding and forge-welding the steel to create a laminated blade.

“They came at night, burning down the entire village,” Hange continued. “They surrounded Jakob’s house. There was no escape for him and his workshop staff, except for the children…”

“Children? Jakob had only one child, Alec, on this very gurney,” Levi corrected, staring at the body that was now blue and cold. A pain was growing in his chest.

Hange shook their head. “Alec has a younger brother named Jürgen.”

“But that cannot be. You know I’ve been meeting with Jakob once or twice a year. He’s only ever introduced me to Alec.”

“I was surprised myself when the two of them appeared on my doorstep after the war ended. But I did blood testing. They’re brothers alright. For some reason Jakob hid Jürgen from us, from everyone.”

“What happened to Jakob?” Levi asked. He already figured out the answer and steeled himself for the gruesome details.

“He reacted very quickly. He burned all the materials, melting the in-progress blades along with the ores so that the secret composition cannot be found out. Just in time he makes his sons hide behind a false wall. And then the assassins came and tortured him, cutting off his arm, the one carrying the mark of the Castle Bladesmith. He gave nothing away, according to the children. He withstood the torture for the entire hour it took his sons to inch their way behind the false wall and into the underground passage connected to the river,” Hange said.

“And they didn’t force him out of the workshop, taking him alive with them to wherever they come from?”

“You know the machine Jakob built as a last resort? He used it.”

Levi closed his eyes, felt pain in his chest. Jakob had built an elaborate contraption in the forge where he could wedge the lower half of his body, the only way of extracting him being to split his body in half, killing him instantly. He could imagine what happened next. Jakob kept on talking, enduring the torture, making up bogus information, distracting the enemy until his sons were able to escape.

“Once he knew his sons were in the clear, he detonated the machine with his foot. The children saw the entire workshop and house burst into flames,” Hange said. “But two of the assassins were outside the smithy, keeping watch. The children believe they might have survived the blast.”

“So they’re probably still undercover here on the island, looking for Alec,” surmised Levi.

“Yes. The children were able to take the river route to the underground city, and the Military Police brought them to me last month.”

“They’re safe in the lab,” Levi remarked. The military lab was the most fortified stronghold on the island, next to the royal palace. “Why would Alec kill himself?” 

Wordlessly Hange took a note out of their pocket and handed it to him. 

Levi read it and winced. Again, that pain in his chest. 

He carefully handed the note back to Hange. The pain in his chest was searing. Poor kid. Levi felt he had failed Jakob Schmitz. He should have been there for Alec. Clan Schmitz was bound to Clan Ackermann, had been since the beginning of Eldian civilization. They were tasked to look after each other. 

During the end phase of the war they’d been so focused on protecting the natural gas mines up north that they failed to provide more security to their traditional craftsmen on the west coast. Connie had deployed an army battalion on the western side, protecting the river and the villages alongside it during the war. But after Marley surrendered and Connie asked Levi if he could now redeploy his troops to the north and south where more hands were needed, Levi agreed. How naïve of them! How could I have been so unforgivably fucking naïve, Levi thought. I should have…

As if reading his mind, Hange says, “Levi, don’t. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. You had too many things to take care of after the post-war chaos, and so did I. But I should have noticed Alec’s condition because he was under my care. My staff and I did what we could, but it just wasn’t enough.” Their face crumples in grief. “Alec was suffering from extreme trauma but I was too wrapped up in my affairs to notice. I’m sorry.”

“You gonna shoulder the blame again, Hange, like you usually do?” Levi asked quietly. He knew the Royal Air Force fleet was nearly annihilated in the war, their handful of biplanes going on suicide missions against Marleyan airships. Marshall Zöe had been occupied. All of them were, and yet, here was good ole Hange, taking the blame so he won’t have to.

Hange shook their head, saying in a subdued tone, “We could blame ourselves, but it won’t bring Jakob or Alec back. We must focus now on taking care of Jürgen.”

“This kid, Jürgen, where is he?”

“I hid him in the national library when I learned that you were coming over. I think no one will look for him there. I had to put him elsewhere because if the assassins know what they’re doing, they’d have trailed after you, bringing them right here.”

“So he’s safe with Gustaf?”

“Yes, he’s hunkered down in the basement archives. Gustaf showed him where to run and hide during an emergency.”

They were walking down the corridor but Hange made a left turn to one of the lab rooms. “There’s something else I wanted to show you,” they tell him, putting the note under a lamp powered by iceburst stone. 

Beneath the ink handwriting was another note written between the lines, only visible when seen over the light of the lamp.

“It appears to be in the bladesmith cipher, the one we’ve recorded from your memories. I didn’t have time to decrypt it. Can you tell me what it says?”

Staring at the mystifying symbols, Levi knitted his brows in concentration, trying to make out the faint markings. He was familiar with the cipher, one of the memories he’d inherited from his ancestors. It was a secret language that only the elite warrior clan and the castle bladesmith clan shared between them. He used the cipher to send orders to the master bladesmith, as his ancestors had done for two thousand years.

With a heavy heart Levi read the note out loud:

Dear Master Ackermann,
My father said my little brother Jürgen is the key to saving the island in the future. He told me if I had to choose between saving his life and my brother’s, I should always choose my brother without hesitation. He said Dr Hange will recognize when the time comes for Jürgen to know what to do. He said to ask you to please watch over him. I am sorry for no longer being of service. I am sorry to disappoint my clan and Clan Ackermann. Please forgive me.
yours truly,
Alec Schmitz

The two ponder over the note as moments pass in mournful silence. 

“Save the island? Whatever could that mean?” Hange finally asked out loud.

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” answered Levi. “I’m as puzzled as you are. And long before we even get to that question, I need to ask: how in damnation did the assassins find out about the bladesmith village? How could an outsider know of their exact location? It wasn’t on any map. The only map of it is in our heads. You, me and Historia are the only people on this island that know the truth behind its existence.”

Hange scratched their head. “I thought the Fritz royal family took all the information about the Ackermanns and the Schmitz and the rest of the ancient clans with them when they fled to Paradis. I thought the ancient clan legends were forgotten in the continent after King Fritz left. But I was wrong. Someone, somewhere, still has the knowledge, still wants to steal the ancient blade formula.” They sigh despondently. “We should have forced Jakob and his children out of the village, dragged them kicking and screaming to the palace grounds when we had the chance.”

“You know that would’ve been impossible, Hange,” Levi pointed out. “The master bladesmith was a very stubborn man.” 

Hange knew Levi spoke the truth. Jakob Schmitz refused to leave the village deep in the forest because it had the charcoal and clay he needed for the forge, had the metals and water from the western river that he needed for the blades. Leaving that hamlet would have meant losing his identity and his home. A century ago the castle bladesmiths used to live within the palace grounds, but after the Ackermanns were banished by the king, Clan Schmitz left the capital and built a hidden village on the western side of the island, staying there for the last hundred years. All of them thought the clan was safe in their forest hideaway. But now, this unexpected tragedy. 

“Jakob Schmitz was indeed stubborn,” Hange countered, “but I should have strong-armed him to relocate if only for the duration of the war.”

“Sure, relocate him during the war then return him after the war, right into the waiting arms of the assassins. There was no way you could’ve anticipated it, Hange.”

“What have we done, Levi? We’ve lost a living national treasure…”

“We should’ve given the clan proper security even after the war. That’s where my mistake lies,” Levi readily admitted. “Them fucking bastard assassins, taking advantage of Marley’s timing of surrender to try to steal the formula.”

“Just when we let our guard down, they come swooping in.”

Levi folds his arms across his chest. “Something just doesn’t add up. Someone stole our state secrets. Someone betrayed us.” 

“Blacksmith villages populate the length of the western river. But they didn’t burn the other villages. They only burned Jakob’s. Somehow they found out his true identity,” says Hange.

“Clan Schmitz has been hiding in plain sight for generations,” Levi says, “and no one had any idea except us in the inner circle. This has to involve someone from the inside. But who the fucking hell?”

“We’ll have to find out. But first, the child.”

“The labyrinth?” Levi asks, already knowing the answer.

“Yes, please take the labyrinth. The assassins might be on your tail,” Hange replies. 

The labyrinth was a complex system of underground tunnels that connected the lab and military headquarters to the royal palace, the Parliament, the City Hall, the national library and other facilities, all of which lead to the underground city. To prepare for the war they emptied the underground city and turned it into a massive bomb shelter. In post-war, the military planned to use the labyrinth to conduct covert messaging and traversing underneath the capital.

“Levi,” they called out to the retreating back, “please don’t scowl too much. Try not to be so frightening. Jürgen is a seven-year-old child, just a little boy, really.”

The man with the clear grey eyes simply shrugged his shoulders, then gave a thumbs up and bid his leave. 

Levi’s mind was racing. There were two foreign assassins on the island. Heaven knows where they were and what they were doing. There was the betrayal of the bladesmith village location and its true identity. They had been state secrets. Who else could have possibly known? There was the little boy, the mysterious, hidden-all-these-years child that Jakob Schmitz said would save the island. From what? Levi wanted to know. From war? How then? With a blade? And how could Jakob have foreknowledge? 

He needed to get to the national library, take the mystery child and bring him to the palace. It was the safest place on the island. He’ll have to talk to Queen Historia and tell her everything about the dead boy, get her help in figuring out who betrayed them. He needed to warn her of the assassins wandering freely on the island, hunting down the last of the castle bladesmiths. He’ll have to see the queen’s children, Princess Ymir and Prince Eren. He hadn’t laid eyes on the twins for nearly a year. Will they remember him? Did they still look perfectly identical, carrying on as spitting images of their father, Eren Jaeger? 

And the mystery child, Jürgen Schmitz, will his memories come back in time? 

“The shock and trauma was such that both boys suffered from short-term amnesia. They couldn’t remember anything about the assassins, except that they were men,” Hange had revealed to him earlier. 

But Levi and the police needed to find the butchers, hopefully alive so that he can extract information from them. Who was after the ancient Eldian clans? He wanted to know, especially since the Ackermanns were foremost among them. To protect the last remaining survivor of Clan Schmitz he will have to find out exactly what he was dealing with. Will Jürgen be able to help?

I’ll find out soon enough, he thought ominously.

Next – Chapter 2: Jürgen Schmitz

Back – Introduction & Chapter List

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References

The line about war being a necessary evil was adapted from a Jimmy Carter quote: “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

The line about hating war was adapted from a Dwight D. Eisenhower quote: “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen it’s brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”