Chapter 34

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Part Three: Lost Girls

"Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only one second without hope."

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There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are the moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not.

Eren Jaeger's horse galloped toward death as certainly as if the path was marked with signs. If he did nothing, his crazed and panicked horse would crash into the sea of zombies, and Eren could die. If he tried to slow Apache down, the zoms would surround him and drag him out of the saddle. If he dismounted and ran, they would close around him and he would be lost. There was only one possible choice left, and it was as improbable as it was insane. The Eren Jaeger who had gone reluctantly out with his brother ten days ago could not have made that choice. The Eren Jaeger who had faced the reanimated corpse of the artist Pixis but had not yet faced the other horrors that last night had forced upon him would not have made that choice.

As Apache bore him toward the hungry mouths, Eren's lips spoke a single word. It was not a cry for help. It was not his brother's name. It was not a prayer. In his mind there was only one thing larger than his own death, only one thing more powerful than his fear of the living dead.

He screamed, "Nix!"

And he drew his wooden sword, kicked Apache's flanks as hard as he could, and charged into the monsters.



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