Of Embers and Aura - Joecola (2024)

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

Of Embers and Aura

Prologue

A/N: I BURN! CAN'T HOOOLD ME DOWN!

Ahem… memery aside:

We're back baby! Welcome one and all, both new arrivals (though I'd highly recommend you read the prequel if that's the case), and those who've been waiting for the sequel to From Ashes to Dust.

On a side note, a 4 character tag limit is stupid, so here's the tag list I actually wanted to make: OC, Trusty Patches, Neo, Penny P, Roman T, Team RWBY, Team JNPR. But seriously, why 4 tags? Can't we have like 8? Or even 10? Four is just so limited. But I digress.

To everyone here: Welcome to Of Embers and Aura, the second installment in this series (which I will call From Ashes to Dust. So that's the name of both this AU, and the first book). So I'll try to keep this brief so you all can dive right in, but here's a quick recap (spoilers if you're still here but you haven't read the previous book, in which case, GO READ IT, you boneheaded hollow!):

Vyliria of Avalon, unkindled, awoke in the Kiln after snuffing the First Flame, just in time for the start of a new year at Beacon Academy. Remnant was an utterly alien world to her, but she adjusted quickly enough, sticking the plunge attack and taking off running. She's made friends in this age, and through trials and tribulations, team RWBY and her own team, JNAPR, have gotten their hands on the arcane arsenal the Irithyllian has doled out. In particular, the animate corpse has struck up a surprising rapport with Remnant's first synthetic being possessing an aura. Yet it's become apparent that this age isn't all rainbows and sun-praising, as the most recent Vytal Festival, celebrating the end of the most destructive war in the world's (post-First-Flame) history, was interrupted by a terrorist attack and a Grimm invasion, orchestrated by one Cinder Fall, who had usurped part of the power of the Fall Maiden, and was using the chaos to finish the job. She succeeded, but was slain by Vyliria, who had taken a fragment of the Dark Soul itself into her so that a child could paint a world back when the First Flame still burned. The Grimm attack on the campus was defeated, the massive wyvern that had been slumbering beneath the mountains outside of Vale slain by a sunlight spear by Pyrrha Nikos, though not without the aid of her close friends, her boyfriend, Jaune Arc, and over a dozen others. In the city proper, the one and only Unbreakable Patches had, for the second time in this age, gathered the criminal elements of a nation to rise to defend their homes from the Grimm, aided by the notorious thief Roman Torchwick and his surrogate daughter Neopolitain. Weiss Schnee has refused to return to Atlas with her father, and has been disinherited, but her sorceries, glyphs, and summons grow in strength by the day. Yang Xiao Long has mastered pyromancy, and her half-sister Ruby Rose can wield a phantasmal lifehunt scythe as well as her normal farming implement cum murder-tool/sniper-rifle. Blake Belladonna has an impressive control over the black flames of humanity, and has taken her team with her to answer the invitation of her father, who leads the faunus on the island of Menagerie. They've been joined by Neopolitian (who everyone calls Neo), who's roped Patches in to act as a chaperone. A cloaked figure boarded the ship they're on shortly before it left, unnoticed by all save the crow who has decided to roost on the seafaring vessel. Further north, Vyliria travels with Penny Polendina, Pyrrha, Jaune, Lie Ren, and Nora Valkyrie, to their destination in the city of Mistral, where they seek answers about Salem and the relics left behind by the Brother Gods, pursuing the single clue of Cinder having posed as a student from Haven. Roman himself has decided to set off for Atlas to make Jacques Schnee's life hell, and I'm looking forward to when I get to that. However, the forces of evil still grow and fester. Emerald Sustrai has become the next Fall Maiden, and seeks vengeance for Cinder's death against Vyliria, and Salem is more than willing to aid her in that goal. And other figures from the Age of Fire rear their heads in the modern era, as the Tyrant Sulyvahn, having somehow survived the events that transpired at the end of his age, has offered to join his own forces with the Queen of the Grimm's, and Lothric's deadliest denizens turn their gazes towards an unsuspecting Remnant. And even discounting threats of their level, Mistral lies in peril, as with huntsmen in the largest kingdom dying by the dozens, both Grimm and whole tribes of bandits reign nigh-unopposed outside of the mountain city's walls.

Right. Let's light this bonfire, and get this show on the road.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth. I only own my own OCs.

(Vyliria)

Teal metal sunk into another beowolf, the lupine Grimm twitching as it died, before the Moonlight Greatsword was ripped from its corpse. A grey, sharply angled legging of a knight of the Ringed City, forged in the Abyss and sealed with fire by gods long dead, rose and kicked the dissolving corpse out of the way. A head covered by the red, gold-embroidered, veiled hood of a desert pyromancer from Jugo turned, looking up as another of the Grimm's breed bounded towards her. She rolled out of the way of its lunge, the taloned, silver gauntlets of the Dancer of the Boreal Valley finding purchase within the cracks of the bricked road in the village center, allowing her to push off the ground and gain further distance. Embers gathered on her torso, clad in a dull armor resembling a ribcage, with faded red cloth atop it. It was part of a set that the phantom who'd traded it had called Firelink, and she privately agreed that it bore an uncanny resemblance to the attire of the Soul of Cinder. The fire raced down her arm, and upon reaching her empty left hand, leapt off, coalescing into the shape of a crossbow with a wheel atop it. The burning ash faded away, revealing the repeating crossbow wielded by Slave Knight Gael, and a mechanism within clunked, a barrage of lightning bolts spewing forth and bringing the next beowolf down. That was the fifth one dead since she'd entered the village center, nevermind the score and a half she'd slain on the way in. She dismissed her ranged weapon in another burst of burning ash as she watched another four approach from multiple angles. She rolled her neck, a small pop sounding from the cartilage in her vertebrae, shifting her stance, even as small motes of fire lazily traveled across her clothing, courtesy of the ember she'd consumed back at Beacon Academy.

Vyliria Avalon surveyed the oncoming Grimm, and snorted with disdain. The unkindled put both hands on her legendary greatsword, raising it above her head as it basked in the moonlight that was its namesake. Teal light gathered on the weapon, and she slammed it to the ground as a wave of lunar magic arced forth, cleaving the first beowolf in half. She switched to a one-handed grip, and ran towards the next, pyromancy flame crackling to life as she thrust a burning hand out, the black flames of humanity pulping whatever passed for the creature's brain. Her flame went out, both hands gripping the Moonlight Greatsword as she raised it above a shoulder, thrusting forwards and unleashing a blast of teal light as it skewered the next Grimm's chest. She whipped around as the last one in this group went to swipe at her with a paw, grabbing the parrying dagger that always rested on her hip, reversing the grip and stabbing it into the beast's palm, pushing it out of the way as she thrust her weapon forwards, the blade plunging straight into its snarling maw.

Her instincts screamed out to her, and she rolled, a brick the size of her head narrowly missing her. She followed its trajectory, noting the beowolf atop the clock tower in the village center, already priming another brick to toss at her. While the projectiles couldn't hurt her due to her aura, the shield projected by her soul that shimmered black when struck, there was a finite amount of protection it offered, and if a strike could be dodged, it should be dodged, barring an opportunity to counter presenting itself. Narrowing her eyes, she willed a burst of burning ash down her arm, a staff from the lost land of Izalith forming in her hand. She leveled the arcane wood, the catalyst glowing blue, before a shriek erupted as a crystalline lance of magic shot forth, the crystal soul spear slaying the nuisance. Five sets of bounding thuds alerted her to a quintet of beowolves coming to kill her, and she sighed as she returned her staff to the embers from whence it came, before charging to meet them head on. She met the first two running, parrying dagger digging into the ground to act as an anchor as she dropped, sweeping the Moonlight Greatsword in a horizontal arc and dispatching them, before flipping and spinning the other way, repeating the process for the next pair. The final one was treated to the spectacle of her flipping into the air, slamming her main weapon down in an overhead strike, confident that the Grimm wouldn't be parrying her any time soon.

A pair of screeches from the skies alerted her half a second before a wave of razor sharp feathers descended upon her, and she grunted as her aura took the hit from the twin assault of the pair of adolescent nevermores. She quickly holstered her parrying dagger, rolling her neck as she willed forth the gold and white chime given to her an epoch ago by her surrogate sister, Yorshka. She rang the sacred bell, rearing her arm back as she called out to the world, channeling the hate within her.

The Champion of Ash stood at the end of a world,
Around her the dark clouds roiled and swirled,
She faced down the Red Hood, to see through his last demand,
That a niece he'd left behind, could create an unburdened land,
And all throughout their battle, as the end of Flame drew near,
Crashing down all around them, were Dark Lightning Spears!

The blue bolt of lightning she formed sailed forth, tracking and striking down one of the four-eyed corvid Grimm, before she repeated the spell and felled the other. The thumps of a large beast's lumbering gait alerted her towards the next threat, and even as the chime was whisked away, she twisted, bracing a wrist further up on the flat of her blade, which barely intercepted the meaty fist that swung at her. She went skidding back from the impact with a yelp, barely staying on her feet before coming to a stop. She assessed her attacker, identifying it as a scarred, old beringel, a massive simian Grimm resembling a gorilla. Like all of the creatures of darkness that plagued this age, its flesh was as black as the Abyss, with crimson eyes that glowed with malice, and bleached white bone-plating acting as a natural armor on parts of its body. This Grimm was clearly an alpha of its breed, old, weathered, missing one eye, but with its age, its intellect and strength grew. Recognizing that she wouldn't be beating this opponent in a battle of poise, the Moonlight Greatsword was recalled in a wash of embers, replaced by the ornate glaive of a Black Knight, the additional reach of the weapon more likely to aid her here.

The beringel beat its chest, before roaring and leaping at her. She bit back a curse at its speed, backflipping out of the way of its fists, which left a crater in the ground they struck, and jabbed the glaive forward, the sharpened tip of the ancient titanite weapon sinking deep into its flesh where an ordinary blade would have only scratched its toughened hide. The next roar was one of pain, and she pulled her weapon free with a spray of black ichor, ducking the first fist thrown out but caught by the second. She winced as the wind was knocked out of her and she went flying, but where an age ago such an impact would have meant a severe injury and the need to down a dose of estus, now her aura cushioned the blow, preventing damage, but not the pain. She came to a stop after striking the ground thrice, and scrambled to her feet. She viewed pain as nature's way of telling her she f*cked up, and that if she didn't act fast that she'd be feeling a lot more very soon. This view was proven correct, as her hasty dive to her left was all that prevented the beringel from crashing down upon her. Before it could follow up the strike, she acted, both hands gripping the glaive as she spun twice, and its blade sliced into the Grimm's chest on both sweeps, then transitioning into an overhead slam, the blade plunging straight into the beast's shoulder, before she twisted and savagely yanked to the side to rip it out. Yet even so, it didn't care, and its other arm reared back to grab the Irithyllian as her eyes widened.

But it wasn't to be, as a beam of emerald green light shot forth, drilling a hole straight through its head. The beringel took a few seconds to realize it was dead, before it keeled to the side, landing with a thump as its corpse began to dissipate. Vyliria turned around to regard her comrade, raising a hand with a smile on her face, confident that the only other person in her party that had night vision could see the expression beyond her hood's veil. "Took you long enough," the Irithyllian called out in a jesting manner.

"Well, if you had stayed with the rest of us, instead of taking advantage of the fact that you could run full speed across a third of the city of Vale before tiring, coupled with you having the largest stride of the group, then we all could have gotten here at the same time," responded Penny Polendina. The gynoid, proud owner of a humanity sprite that rested in her soul, still looked much the same as when the unkindled first met her. Her face was still freckled, her hair in the same style and the same carrot-orange color, and a pink bow still sat on the back of her head. Her dozen swords, Floating Array, which could bunch together and function as a laser, hovered over her head, their forms shifting from their laser configuration back to blades. A plain black shirt was just visible at the collar of the slightly unzipped emerald green hoodie she wore, the sleeves ended at her wrists with bands of dark-grey fabric. The inside of the hoodie was a much brighter green, and two pockets sat on the outside at hip level. From the hips down to below her knees rested a skirt the same shade as her hoodie, with a black hem at the bottom striped with a lighter green that matched the interior of her hoodie. Her shoes remained black, and rising from them were a pair of opaque black leggings, with light green stripes running up the sides, before they disappeared under her skirt. It still gave Vyliria slight mirth to note that the Painting Guardian gloves she'd given Penny when the fake skin on her hands had been scrapped bare once upon a time were now a feature of her attire, covering her hands with their dull beige fabric. And though she couldn't see it, she felt pride in the knowledge that a badge of the covenant of the Warriors of Sunlight rested in one of her pockets.

"Fair point," Vyliria conceded. "Though at least I only ran ahead. Nora wanted to ride a nevermore in, for Gwyn's sake!"

Penny shrugged. "Nora will be Nora, but ever since Ruby mentioned doing it during initiation, she's been harping about trying it for herself. I feel like Ren's the only thing stopping her."

"And you'd probably be right."

A growl alerted the pair that another pack of beowolves were coming in, and they squared off to face it. "Since neither of us have to actually breathe, I'm assuming the rest of our team is still a few minutes behind us, right?"

"That would be correct," Penny said, Floating Array positioning itself as she drew an incredibly rare (and that was before the First Flame was snuffed) chime of the goddess of tears, Caitha, intoning:

With the bite of a lance yet the speed of a sparrow,
The maidens of the Lord smote them with their Lighting Arrows!

The electric projectile formed, and she took aim at a nevermore swooping in from the distance. Vyliria gave a smile to her companion, which was quickly reciprocated, before the unkindled said, "Well, I guess that's more fun for us to have, then. Though I still can't wrap my head around the fact that this is the same damn village that Nora and Ren wanted to go to before the Breach happened."

"It is a very unlikely coincidence," Penny agreed, before releasing the miracle in her hands, striking the Abyssal corvid from the skies as she joined Vyliria in a headlong charge at the Grimm.

A/N: Hey, remember when the prequel's prologue was a disjointed muddle of thoughts and memories that would make virtually no sense to someone who hasn't played Dark Souls 3? Just goes to show how constant writing can make some marked improvements. And speaking of the FAtD prologue, in case you didn't notice, I had revamped it to read better the day after I had put up the epilogue for From Ashes to Dust.

Straight into the action we go! So how about that volume 4 prologue? I'm assuming that was somewhere in Vale, and thought it would not only be cool to redo it with a FATD twist, but to also have it be the village where Ren and Nora wanted to shadow a sheriff before the Breach interrupted them.

WE GOT NEW FASHION SOULS! I present to you the fashion souls of another one of my DS3 characters: Desert Pyromancer Hood, Firelink Armor, Dancer's Gauntlets (originally the Black Knight gauntlets, and those go well with the armor too), and Ringed Knight Leggings. It clocks in at 18.93 poise in-game, which lets you use a halberd (two-handed) to trade indefinitely with one-handed straight and curved swords, and anything smaller. Of course, I'm not playing by in-game rules, so that number has no bearing on the actual story, but there you go.

And so does Penny. Who I maintain is just behind Neo in rankings for Best Girl. Penny's outfit is partly my own design, slightly borrowing from Penny 2.0 in canon, and heavily inspired by the Penny in Combat Ready, a (almost certainly discontinued) RWBY story on FFN by AuthorOfTheUniverse2401. Good story, and I'm sad it cut off at what was probably 2 or 3 chapters to the end of the big throwdown at Haven. Plus, Yang pissing Mercury off with nonstop leg and foot puns (which somehow infects everyone around them, including Watts and Mercury himself) is absolutely hilarious.

And I haven't revealed what new clothes any of JNPR may be wearing. I mean, since Pyrrha dies in canon, that means I can come up with something new from scratch with her as well. And I have a different outfit in mind for Jaune, since he isn't incorporating any of Pyrrha's ensemble in this timeline. I mean, he's already going for that knight look, so why not make it official?

Lastly, since this is the prologue, the next time we get to Vyliria and co, they'll have made it to Anima. Considering that the town in question was a bullhead ride from Vale, I'm placing that first bit as less than a week since they set out. I'm just throwing a dart at the actual time frame to get from Vale to Anima, so I'm gonna say that the next time we get to that group, it will be slightly past 3 weeks into the journey to Mistral (and a good way over a month since they set off).

Also, be aware that with 3 separate journeys occurring, there will almost certainly be chapters where I focus on only 1 group, and the others either minimally feature or don't make an appearance at all.

P.S. So I know I'm like literally a year late to this, but I just had "Just as the Founding Fathers Intended" recommended to me on YouTube... I can't stop watching it. It's f*cking hilarious. Just, here's a transcript of it, and if you wanna see it in its origional, glorious form, look up the title I gave; it's by a channel named Gearhead.

"I own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended.
Four ruffians break into my house. *Glass crashes as they reverse-defenestrate themselves into the building* "What the devil?" as I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle.
Blow a- *BANG!* -golf ball sized hole through the first man; he's dead on the spot.
Draw my pistol on the second man- *CRACK* -misses him entirely because it's smoothbore, and nails the neighbor's dog. *dog dying in the background*
I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grapeshot,
"Tally-ho, lads!" *BOOM* the grapeshot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. *car alarms going off outside the house*
Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. *man screaming as he bayonet charges*
He bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up.
*Sighs in front of slightly-on-fire house with an exploded front door and police cars outside* Just as the founding fathers intended.

For real this time (I hope), I'll be seeing you all in Of Embers and Aura.

joecola00, signing off.

Chapter 2: Announcement

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Hey everyone. It’s been a while. Like, a really f*cking long time. Over a year. A decent amount of that is my own fault. This’ll get posted on FAtD on FFN and AO3, and OEaA on AO3 as well.

So, I got three things I wanna talk about:

First, Rooster Teeth f*cking imploded. Kinda expected that for a while now. As of me writing this, the fates of all of RT’s animated series are up in the air, RWBY included. It is entirely possible that we’ll never see a conclusion to the series, which is a real f*cking shame, but at least Volume 9 ended things on a high note, both in-world and in terms of quality. (If RWBY makes a comeback I really hope they bring Neo exists). That being said, RWBY was one of a small number of things in RT that was profitable, so I’m all but positive that once the rights to the show are up in the air, that someone will end up buying the rights to RWBY and will at least attempt to continue the show. Whether or not that will do well, and whether or not they’d recast characters, I can’t say, although I really hope they don’t recast the VA’s. If I was a betting man, and I’m not because my luck is sh*t, I would bet that after the Justice League Xover, that Warner Bros will end up purchasing RWBY, and I’d also bet that they’d at the very least look into acquiring Red vs Blue and/or Gen:Lock.

Second: I’ve been having a really rough time churning out the sequel. I’ve gotten to chapter 31, and I’ve almost exceeded the word count of the prequel before getting to Haven, so my stubborn ass doesn’t want to give up after all that effort. Sunken Cost Fallacy and all that. Part of its down to a lot of IRL BS, mostly problems of the 1st world variety, and part of it is down to constantly fighting my chronic plasteel shortage in Warhammer 40k: Darktide (please let me sell my thousands of diamantine in exchange for plasteel FatShark, I beg you). So this kinda brings me into my third point.

I don’t think it’s fair to you guys, gals, and whatever-the-Izalith-you-identify-as’s that it’s been this long and I haven’t given you guys anything. At the same time, I’m really loath to start publishing before I actually finish the 2nd book in its entirety. But, on the third, mutant hand with a mind of its own, I distinctly remember that the earlier chapters of the sequel were written with much more ease because I was motivated by feedback in the form of reviews and comments on From Ashes to Dust. And I am very much out of any ideas to break my creative deadlock. So after a LOT of internal deliberation, I’ve come to a decision on a compromise. I have 30 chapters dead and done, and a 31st a third complete. The next 8 chapters, including Haven and the sh*tshow at the Belladonna Manor, are outlined, with a concrete plan of what I want to happen, if very lacking on the how of it happening and details in general.

I’m gonna start uploading Of Embers and Aura. But only biweekly (on Fridays), with no bonus chapters per 100 reviews. If I did the math right, that gives me about 15 months of backlog to work with while I can push myself to keep going on the sequel. I’ll make chapter 1 an exception, publishing that the day I upload this and then I’ll wait for 2 weeks after that week to publish chapter 2 (March 29th, to be precise), and then continue on every other week (April 12th, April 26th, etc). I’m also gonna admit that I’m a very forgetful person, and will sometimes forget stuff even if I set an alarm for it. So, if I forget to upload on a Friday that I was supposed to, feel free to PM me so I get notifications in my email to tell me off for forgetting. But only do that if Saturday rolls around and I haven’t uploaded. Because depending on when/if I remember, I might upload a chapter at 3:00pm, or at 11:53pm as I go “Oh sh*t!” right before midnight. When I finish the story, I’ll go back to a weekly upload schedule

Oh yeah, I almost forgot I’m on the funny Pat website… because FFN doesn’t let you type out its actual name. I’ll be putting the next chapter up there, and will continue to have 1 chapter ahead over there, if anyone’s interested. Keep in mind that that’s not a paywall in the literal sense, because if you just wait you’ll get that same content for free, but at the same time, I’m not gonna say no if you’re so impatient you’re willing to pay me a couple dollars a month to read some text a bit sooner than the plebeians you look down upon.

So uh, that’s it, I guess. Within a half hour of this going up, I’ll have the prologue to OEaA and Ch 1 uploaded on both FFN and AO3, and will then upload every 2 weeks starting from the 29th onwards.

Wish me luck with my writing, I suppose… no seriously, while you don’t have to send me a good luck PM, my luck is crappy enough that I’d appreciate a quick mental ‘Good luck writing’ in your thoughts.

Have a great day everyone, and don’t you dare go hollow.

Chapter 3: A Stage is Set

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Ch 1 - A Stage is Set

A/N: Here’s a little fun fact: this entire chapter was originally in the prologue, before I decided that a prologue should be an introductory bit to the story and not the entire first 2 episodes worth of content. So without further adieu, let’s light this bonfire and get this show on the road.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belongs to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.

(Ruby)

The journey had been going on for a while now. In hindsight, perhaps Ruby should’ve followed Vyliria’s lead and trekked to the east coast of Sanus before grabbing a boat-ride to Menagerie, because she hadn’t realized just how much more time sailing around a continent added. The wind blew through her hair as she walked along the deck towards the front of the ship, belatedly reminding her that it had grown just a bit longer since their journey started. And that wasn’t the only thing about her appearance that had changed. Her entire outfit, and that of her friends’ had taken a major overhaul (save Patches, but the ancient undead had been wearing the same outfit for longer than Remnant’s moon had been shattered, even if the physical clothes themselves had changed every few years). To start off, she had a white, high-neck décolletage (she was still embarrassed about having to ask Weiss what that word meant) blouse with brown studded wristbands on the arms, and while the black combat skirt with a red tulle beneath had remained roughly the same as her last outfit, her waist cincher had been replaced with an overbust corset with a red strip of leather holding it in place. A black belt, bordered with red at the edges, was wrapped about her waist, the back of which held a magnetic strip for the compact form of her beloved baby, Crescent Rose, and the sides of which held ammunition for said mechashift high-impact sniper rifle/scythe. Some brown straps on her blouse allowed her to clip a small brown backpack behind her, which held some emergency supplies, even more magazines for her weapon, and the neatly folded sheepskin parchment with a crescent moon etched on it that Vyliria had given her the last time she’d seen the unkindled. Below the waist, her black stockings were no longer full, instead they merely reached to her thighs, leaving a few inches of skin visible between their tops and the hem of her skirt. They were decorated by the image of a long-stemmed rose. Her black combat boots bore red soles and each possessed a quartet of straps and buckles. Lastly, the red cloak she wore, modeled after the white one she recalled from the few memories of her mother she had, now only bore a single clip, a silver rose (with black detailing) emblem on the right shoulder, matching her eyes.

As she came up to the very front of the ship, she noted that her teammate, Blake, was already standing there, gazing out at the ocean ahead. She didn’t turn around, but judging by the way her second pair of black furred cat ears atop her head twitched, it was clear the faunus had heard her approach, even if her human ears hadn’t. Ruby idly wondered how having two pairs of ears worked, especially when one (that much like a feline, would move to match how she felt at a given moment) was superior to the other. Blake’s outfit had also undergone an overhaul. To start with, she had a long, white tailcoat, the inner lining of which was a dark purple, over which was a belt of the same color with a brass buckle and buttons, and under which was a black, sleeveless crop-top, with purple-outlined diamond and rectangular shaped cutouts above the neckline. A white belt helped hold up her form-fitting black pants. On the back of the belt on her lower torso was a white pouch, and on the back of the belt on her upper torso was a magnetic strip for Gambol Shroud, Blakes variant ballistic chain-scythe. Or as Ruby recognized it, a pistol, katana, kusarigama (with the aid of a titanium-weave ribbon), and cleaver-sheath all rolled into one (technically 2) weapon. Her thigh-high heeled boots were black, with gold-colored edging around the top, with the left bearing a belt wrapped twice around the thigh. Both pieces of the footwear proudly showed the Belladonna emblem in white on the outer side of the thigh. The part of her midriff that was exposed has a thin, horizontal scar on the left side, starting a few inches from her navel and disappearing under the tailcoat. While healing miracles had removed the most of the hideous markings left behind when Blake had used her own pyromancy flame to cauterize the wound she’d received courtesy of her ex’s semblance, Moonslice, the scar from the wound itself stubbornly refused to yield to literally divine magic, and the skin around it was still discolored when compared to the rest of her midriff. Blake didn’t particularly mind though, and as Ruby’s half-sister Yang put it, “scars added character.”

Finally walking up to her sister’s partner, Ruby kicked off a conversation. “Sooooo, Blake?”

The ravenette turned her head to her team leader, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah Ruby?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask; how does having four ears work? Do you hear differently in each pair, or can you only hear from one set of ears at a time, oooooorrr?” she trailed off.

Blake smiled and snickered, slyly asking, “Really?”

“Come on, I’m curious!”

Blake rolled her eyes, but indulged her, saying, “Well, the human ears don’t actually work. They’re vestigial. There’s no eardrums inside them, and the auditory nerves connect to the ears on top of my head instead. It was harder than you think to find a ribbon thick enough to hide them while being thin enough not to impair my hearing.”

“Huh. That’s actually really interesting,” Ruby commented. “So what’cha doing over here?”

“Thinking, for the most part. About seeing my parents again, after all this time. And about… Beacon. And I just wanna thank you again for showing up when Adam--”

“Say no more, Blake,” the red reaper interrupted. “I’m your team leader, it’s my job to watch out for you. And you saved me from his semblance too, so we’re even. Really Blake, it was no problem. I even managed to figure out that there’s more to my semblance than I originally thought!” She paused for a few seconds, internally pondering whether or not to say something that had been nagging at her subconscious, before deciding that it was time to get some good-old-fashioned sibling packback for all the times her sister had embarrassed her. “And besides, I’m pretty sure Yang has a crush on you, so even without everything else, I would've helped you for her sake. I mean, ever since Vyliria pointed it out, I have noticed her staring at you… and your butt... a bunch of times.”

Blake flushed, and Ruby internally pumped a fist at her impending victory, before listening to her friend’s response. “I… really? I’d thought that it was just Yang being flirty, because she was that way to a lot of people at Beacon. But… a lot of things make more sense now… I… oh boy.”

“Take your time if you need to sort out how you feel about it. And… if you don’t feel the same way, please let her down gently. I think this is the first time she’s actually liked someone further than a school crush.”

“I’ll take my time thinking on it. Thanks for telling me, Ruby.”

“No problem,” and Ruby dropped her voice to a whisper, “And just between you and me? If you decide to go for it, I’d totally ship you two.”

Blake’s jaw dropped, but before Ruby could take any mirth in whatever response the faunus was about to make, a series of thunks on the deck altered them that a third individual was joining them. Neopolitan was… well, Ruby still wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about the two-toned girl that was the shortest in their company. Apparently, she’d kept her mouth shut when she found out that they were warning the headmaster about Emerald (though they didn’t know it was her at the time), and she’d only been running with Cinder because she was threatening her father figure, the infamous thief Roman Torchwick, with death if he refused to do her bidding. On the other hand, she’d nearly stabbed Yang and killed her, despite having clearly won by knocking her out, and she was responsible for a lot of bad things. All the same, Vyliria had gone off with Neo to save Roman from a nutcase by the name of Tyrian Callows (who was almost certainly serving Salem), and the unkindled trusted both the other heterochromatic and Patches (albeit, she insured to not have any loose belongings when near the latter), and they at least looked like they wanted to be better people, so Ruby was willing to give them that chance.

As for the mute herself, she’d undergone a wardrobe change just before they’d left on this voyage. Her hair still went down to her hips, but the white streaks on the pink half had evidently been dyed, because they were no longer present. Black gloves that ended just before her wrists covered (most of) both hands, and from just below her knees down were clad in white, heeled shoes with black fronts, toes, and heels, and pink soles and laces running from just before the toes back to the tops of the footwear. Rising from there to her hips was a pair of form-fitting white jeans, held in place by a diagonal black belt, over which was a horizontal white belt with a silver buckle. Tucked into the pants was a red, button down shirt with the collar buttons deliberately removed, and over that was a black twin-tailed coat, with silver linings and buttons, and pink on the insides, the sleeves folded back from her wrists to just below her elbows. The collar was also folded outwards, and on the right side at hip-level was a knapsack-style pocket, mostly black, but the part that buttoned it shut on the top was pink.

Neo gave a silent wave, and pulled out her scroll, opening the notepad app. Despite Ruby trying to learn sign-language for the mute’s sake, she still had a ways to go (though with over another week on the journey, she was confident she could learn fast, especially since she had nothing better to do), so for now this was the only method of communication they had with the heterochromatic besides playing charades. Hey. Do either of you feel like anything’s off? she typed. Because Patches swears he saw a cloaked figure stalking him earlier, but couldn’t find anything when he investigated.

Ruby and Blake looked at each other, before they both answered a negative to that question, Ruby herself further articulating her response with, “The only weird thing I’ve seen on this trip is the crow that’s decided to take up residence onboard.”

“Yeah, that is kinda weird,” Blake remarked. “Crows don’t do that.”

Neo just shrugged, before typing, So has Blake figured out that Yang wants in her pants yet?

Ruby burst out laughing even as Blake spluttered in response.

(Sun)

Being the world’s best stowaway (even when you actually paid for your trip for once) could actually be really boring, Sun concluded. Sure, some of the people he was following in his epic sneaking cloak were on to him, and he effortlessly evaded them, but when you were this good, things just lost the thrill they used to have when the possibility of being caught was a concern. He idly thumbed the medallion with his monkey emblem before readjusting his cloak to hide his unbuttoned shirt (because how else would Remnant be able to gaze upon his abs?), his jeans, and sneakers from the world. He heard the footsteps of people approaching down the hallway he was in and ducked behind some crates. Good thing this storage room belowdecks had so many crates that were person-high. Sun wasn’t really sure why there were so many crates on a ship that was only bringing like fifty people, tops, to Menagerie, but he wasn’t gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. With his excellent vantage point, he clandestinely observed the people passing through, even as their voices finally became audible.

He pegged the first voice he heard as belonging to Weiss Schnee soon enough. “I mean, I understand why we can’t practice magic on board the ship, especially pyromancy, but it’s still just frustrating,” the ex-heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, Remnant’s largest energy provider, lamented.

“Yeah, it sucks, but even I can see why casting fireballs on a ship with a lot of wood in it is a bad idea,” replied Yang Xiao Long.

They finally came around the corner, and Sun gave a quick glance to check which direction they were headed. Yang’s mane of blonde hair was as chaotic as ever, framing her lilac eyes as she spoke to her teammate. She was wearing a tan jacket with a thick collar around her neck, whose torso didn’t reach her hips, and whose dark brown sleeves were rolled up above the elbows. The jacket was gold-edged and orange-lined, and was partly unzipped, revealing the orange crop-top that covered her chest beneath. Additionally, the coat also bore two gold-trimmed rectangular tails that looked to be detachable. On her legs was a pair of ordinary black pants, over which was a brown belt, attached to which were two pieces of dark brown material trimmed in gold. The first covered all the way from her left hip to the back of the belt and was folded over the belt, whilst the second was attached from the right hip and almost around to the other piece of material. Her knee high boots had gold caps on the heels and toes, with the heel caps attaching to gold straps across the front of her ankles, and both boots had gold zippers on the upper halves of their fronts. The last elements of the footwear were a pair of small buckled straps on their upper surfaces. A purple bandanna was tied around her left knee, and finishing off her clothing was a pair of black fingerless gloves with long brown cuffs that ended at the middle of her forearms.

“You know, I’m still kind of amazed that Vyliria said you could go teach someone else pyromancy now,” Weiss continued the conversation, her gray-blue combat boots thunking on the deck. They were styled like wedge heels, though Sun knew they were still boots after the near fiasco Weiss had in the aborted (due to terrorism and Grimm-invasion) Vytal Festival Tournament, where her previous footwear had snapped and nearly threw her off-balance in the middle of her doubles round. Her dress glittered, and faded from gray-blue at the top to a pale blue at the hem, and had a sweetheart neckline along with a white, tulle petticoat. Wrapped about her waist (multiple times) was a white sash, which was tied at the front, and over everything was a slightly sheer long sleeved gray-blue bolero. It was fastened at the collar by a sapphire brooch (the rumor mill before he’d left Beacon had her elder sister Winter slip in and drain several of Weiss’ accounts to give to her before her father could freeze them) that had three pendants hanging from it, and conspicuously absent on the back of her shrug was her family’s snowflake crest… which kinda made sense, since she was no longer the heiress to the SDC, all but disowned, trying to distance herself from her father, and since it would be a really bad idea to wear something with the Schnee snowflake while visiting Menagerie. Rounding everything off was jewelry in the form of a pair of sapphire drop earrings.

Yang clasped her hands behind her head as they unwittingly passed by Sun, and boasted, “Hey, I can’t help that my blazin is amazin!”

“Was that supposed to be a pun? Because that felt like a stretch, even for you,” the blanchette shot back as they left the room on their way to their destination.

Sun slipped out of his hiding spot once he was sure they were gone, and took a quick stretch, before scratching an itch on his golden-furred monkey tail. The faunus gazed in the direction they left, and muttered, somewhat regretfully, “Man, I wish I could do magic. I mean, they’re complaining about not being allowed to break the laws of physics for a while, when the rest of Remnant can’t do it to begin with!” He blinked. “I should stop talking to myself.” A beat, then, “Starting now.”

(Qrow)

Qrow Branwen was well aware of the irony of his name, considering that Ozpin had gifted him magic that could let him turn into a crow. He was also aware of the irony of being a crow perching on the highest point of the ship. Thirdly, he was aware that he should have probably been in Mistral looking for Ozpin’s next incarnation or something like that, but he’d passed off the late (or technically not if he already had a new body) wizard’s cane to Avalon, and she could sense souls apparently, so he was sure she had it in hand. Though maybe he should have told her what she should be looking for. Meh, too late now. And who knows, Oz had just said it was likely the next person whose soul his own would merge with would be in Mistral. It wasn’t guaranteed . For all he knew, maybe one of the faunus in Menagerie now had Ozpin sharing room in his head.

But his nieces weren’t gonna protect themselves, and he was well aware that there might be White Fang members on the island of the faunus who’d want an opportunity to kill a Schnee, and anyone associated with her. Which would include his nieces. Family came before business, and he’d be damned if he was a continent away when they needed protecting, semblance or no. And speaking of Misfortune, having to be a crow for the entire voyage sucked , and so would having to be sober for that same timeframe. And it was gonna be an absolute pain in the ass to have to sneak around Menagerie for the foreseeable future once they did get there. If only there was a better way he could have--

Wait a minute, he thought. I could have avoided all of this if I had decided to chaperone their team. I even knew they were leaving before that Patches guy did! Damnit!

The crow on the ship blinked, and reflected on the terrible luck that ensured that the idea didn’t occur to him. He mentally cursed again.

Bah, I’ll just go vent by crapping on that prick who decided to throw peanuts at me earlier. I am a bird, after all…

(Emerald)

The pool of black liquid rippled, and the sound of liquid burbling echoed across the Land of Darkness as a beowolf emerged, sloughing the substance that the beast spawned from off of it as the lupine Grimm took its first steps on Remnant. It was an inhospitable environment, devoid of any life besides the microscopic and the Grimm themselves (if Grimm could even be considered as living things), with dry, red rock making up the parts of the ground that were level, even as jagged cliffs and hills dotted the landscape frequently. Menacing purple crystals jutted from the ground, ranging from the size of a hand to larger than buildings. It was here, the one continent devoid of human or faunus life that the home of Salem, Queen of the Grimm, stood; Evernight Castle rising menacingly above the surrounding hellscape.

Emerald Sustrai, despite having spent a good deal of time training both conventionally with Mercury and arcanely in mastering the powers of the Fall Maiden under Salem’s tutelage, was still unnerved as she watched the creatures claw their way into the world from the windows of the room they were in. She was vaguely aware of the mercury-haired son of an assassin standing next to her, a scowl on his own face as he watched the spectacle as well. Neither of them had sought a wardrobe change since their time in Vale, and even if they wanted one, Evernight didn’t exactly have a department store selling new outfits. She and Mercury both were shocked from their observation as someone hummed next to them. Emerald’s head twisted to the right, as she met the abdomen of the figure responsible for the vocalization. She looked further up, eventually meeting the eyes of their newest “ally.”

Sulyvahn stood serenely in his robes that bore a religious connotation Emerald couldn’t identify. Yet, he still managed to give off a presence that induced a primal terror in the recesses of her mind, having silently walked up to the window and not drawing notice until he had hummed. When he gazed down at Emerald, he merely raised an eyebrow, before speaking in that melodic voice that the Fall Maiden almost felt compelled to trust. “Indeed girl, watching these Grimm spawn is mildly interesting to bear witness to. Though, decidedly… different to how I bring forth pawns and allies.” He resumed staring at the pools below. At least until a clearing throat drew his attention.

Mercury grunted, and Sulyvahn glanced over to him next. “Yes?” he asked, in a bored voice.

“I don’t like being ignored,” he stated.

“Well, if you were worth my attention, then maybe I would bother acknowledging you, boy ,” the man responded in an apathetic manner.

Mercury’s annoyance descended to an outright glare. “More often than not the person you don’t look at is the one who puts a knife in your throat. And the last person to call me boy is dead.” Emerald’s eyes widened, and she took a few steps back as the room seemed to get colder.

“Was that a threat?” Sulyvahn asked, the first hints of annoyance creeping into his tone.

Mercury narrowed his eyes, and despite the terrifying presence the enigmatic man exuded, maintained eye-contact. “No, just a statement of a fact.”

Sulyvhan narrowed his gaze, and the room was as silent as a grave for a few agonizing seconds. Mercury refused to back down. The taller man finally hummed once more. “I can respect a person with a spine, however foolish they may be. When the council Salem has called has ended, seek the part of Evernight that I and my followers have taken residence in. If any challenge your entry or presence, tell them I have sent you. There is a man there, called Dunnell. You will tell him I have instructed him to impart his knowledge of pyromancy unto you. I do not tolerate allies without utility, and without arcane abilities of your own you are outclassed by the greatest of our foes.”

Mercury still maintained eye contact for a few more moments, before giving a single nod, and turned, moving to the spot at the table next to Emerald’s chair. Though before he got there, Sulyvahn spoke once again. “Mercury.” It wasn’t a request for attention; it was a demand. Mercury turned back to him. “ Do not draw my ire again,” he stated evenly. “I do not abide insubordination.” With that, he turned his gaze back out the window, and Emerald quietly walked to her seat at the table.

The chair next to hers was reserved for Sulyvhan (Mercury still had to stand, despite the fact that Emerald roughly considered him her equal, if very annoying at times), though the one past that was currently occupied, as well as two of the three chairs on the opposing side of the furniture piece. Tyrian Callows was dressed as he had been the last time Emerald had seen him in Vale, although his biological scorpion stinger, the end of which had been severed in an altercation involving Avalon , had been replaced with a mechanical prosthetic designed (and fitted with poison created by) Doctor Arthur Watts, who sat opposite of Emerald herself. The deranged serial killer was bouncing in his seat like a child, gleefully awaiting the arrival of his “goddess,” Salem.

Speaking of the disgraced Atlesian scientist, Watts was currently pouring over some coding details on a scroll, his face backlit by the screen of the device. His gray-streaked hair was black, as were his eyebrows and mustache, and his eyes were a dull green. His skin was slightly tanned, and he was tall and thin, clothed in gray pants, with an overcoat of the same color, albeit with yellow lining, and a yellow dress shirt with a black necktie beneath. His fingerless gloves, shoes, and yellow-buttoned undercoat were all cordovan, and one could see yellow socks beneath the shoes.

Next to him sat Hazel Rainart, who (when standing) towered over all beside him (save their newest ally) at a staggering eight feet. His massive, muscular, broad figure only further bolstered his large stature, and his complexion was dark, similar to, but not the same as, that of Watts. His arms had hair and scars along them in equal measure, though the latter were confined to the skin above his elbows, his eyes were the same color as his first name, and his beard and short hair were brown. A large brown belt was wrapped around his waist, holding the lower half of a two-toned olive/green coat, which in turn sat over a 3/4 shirt that was a uniform black. His legs were clothed by a pair of black pants, with a pouch strapped to both legs, and his boots were brown, with a splash of white on their fronts.

“You will do no such thing,” he said, having returned to his normal tone of voice. “The only thing you will do to Avalon is bring me her head on a platter... Though I may feel more rewarding were you to bring her to me alive,” he finished, the briefest of terrifying smirks gracing his face. Watts leaned back from the ancient being, and kept his mouth shut, which placated Emerald enough to keep her peace.

“You, know, if I were you, I’d hunt her down,” Tyrian suddenly cut in. “Find her,” he gave a pair of laughs, “and… well,” another snort of amusem*nt, “she burnt Cinder from the inside-out, didn’t she? Can’t you cast fire as well?” The psychopathic scorpion faunus began laughing to himself so hard he was shaking, and Emerald looked down at one of her hands, briefly flaring the fires the Maiden powers had given her, before narrowing her gaze.

“Cease your squabbles,” Sulyvahn suddenly spoke, walking as silent as a grave to his seat, reaching it not half a second before the wooden doors to the room creaked open and Salem, still clad as the first time Emerald had seen the Queen of the Grimm, silently swept into the room, the only sound interrupting the silence being the slight tingling of the ornaments on her hair. She strolled past the table as they all stood at attention, though Sulyvhan still maintained his air of indifference. She reached the windows past her own seat at the head of the furniture centerpiece, gazing out for a few seconds before turning around. “Watts,” she began, her voice as dry as her terrifying male counterpart, “do you find such malignance necessary?” She paused for a trio of seconds, before waving a hand, and all gathered (save Mercury) were seated.

“My apologies ma'am. I am not particularly fond of failure,” the Atlesian replied.

Salem sat herself before responding with, “Then I see no reason for your cruelty towards young Emerald. It is true that the loss of Cinder harms our goals, but she passed onto Emerald the powers of the Fall Maiden, grievously damaged Beacon Tower, and most importantly, killed dear Ozpin .” She leaned forwards slightly, “So I’m curious: to what failures are you referring?”

Watts took a moment to form an answer, half raising a hand to gesture as he spoke. “Well, the unkindled.” Emerald grit her teeth, both at Watts, and the reminder of Avalon. She noted the scowl that graced Sulyvahn’s features for a scant second.

“Yes,” Hazel finally spoke, “but she was a relic of the past at best, and a mere nuisance of needing more than one death forced upon her at worst. How was she able to best one of us?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Watts echoed. “Even without her full power, it should have been effortless.”

“It is because of what she is,” Sulyvahn interjected, surprising the room when Salem didn’t react to him speaking out of turn. “The powers of my age that she can draw from, her unwavering resolve that let her push past thousands of deaths in the past, and even now could let her endure thousands more.”

“Yes,” Salem returned to heading the conversation, “even the best-laid plans can be undone by a single unanticipated variable. But make no mistake, Emerald. You hold the key to our victory, which is why you will remain by my side as we continue your training.” Emerald wanted so desperately to argue, but held her tongue. “Watts, you are to take her place, and meet our informant in Mistral.”

“Very good,” he replied with a solitary nod.

“Tyrian,” the deranged man turned his head to his goddess, “I want you to continue your hunt for the Spring Maiden.”

Tyrian chuckled darkly. “Gladly.”

“And Hazel? I would have sent you to meet Sienna Khan, but Adam Taurus’ death has eliminated the White Fang as a tool for our use for the time being. Instead, you will look into the potential use of Mistral’s criminal underground to further our goals.”

“As you wish,” he rumbled out.

Emerald steeled herself, shoved a lid on her emotions, and sucked in a breath. “Your Grace?” Salem raised an eyebrow, but still motioned with one hand that she could speak. “What about Avalon? She’s clearly opposed to us, and now that she’s had contact with Pacthes, ” another man she dearly wanted to murder for good, “she knows about us as well.”

Salem hummed, genuinely appearing to consider Emerald’s argument. “Tyrian?”

Callows grinned, twisting his head to the side. “Yes, my Lady?”

“Spring can wait. Find the girl who killed Cinder, and kill her however many times it takes for her to stay that way.” Tyrian rubbed his hands together, giggling madly.

“If I may?” Sulyvahn actually asked for permission to speak this time, and Salem gave it with a nod. He procured two ornate rings crafted from an unidentifiable metal, with onyx gems set in them such that they resembled eyes. “Take these,” he said, “The rings will increase your strength and durability, and I have taken the liberty of removing the curses I normally place upon such trinkets, as your loyalty is without question.” Tyrian was literally bouncing in his seat, before Sulyvahn added, “All I ask, is that you acquire someone else. Alive .” Tyrian deflated, mulling things over in his head, before adopting a less enthusiastic, but still clearly insane, grin. “It has come to my attention that Avalon is traveling with a synthetic construct that bears a soul of equal potency to normal humans… and faunus,” he added as an afterthought. “I would be quite interested in learning what I could of her. And I’m sure the good Doctor Watts would also enjoy the opportunity when his own business concludes.” The man in question gave a silent nod with a predatory grin at the statement. “Though while I would much prefer that you do so, if it interferes with your primary task, you need not complete this… additional goal.”

“Because of your efforts,” Salem addressed the room, “Beacon has all but fallen, and Haven will be next.”

Those gathered rose from their seats, but before Emerald could do the same, Tyrian addressed her. Even as Sulyvahn strode from the room, Mercury first to follow to the destination the man had given him, Callows spoke. “Remember, burn her right back.” He started madly cackling to himself, throwing himself back against his chair as his manic mirth only grew deeper, the sound still following her as Emerald sharply rose from her seat and made a swift exit from the room.

(A Like-Minded Soul)

Oscar Pine jolted up in his bed with a scream, frantically drawing breaths in. The details of the nightmare that had been repeating the past few days were fading yet again, and once more, all he could recall were an underground vault, a good deal of green light, and a ridiculous amount of fire. Something felt… different, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. With a sigh, he pushed the nightmare to the back of his mind, quickly getting dressed, before heading to the sink in the barn he slept in and taking a look at himself in the mirror. Still the same short farmboy with tanned skin, still the same freckles, and still the same annoying, faint, perpetual blush on his cheeks. Same messy short black hair, and just like the last time he checked, his eyes were still hazel, and the irises were still forest green with accents of burnt orange and yellow around his pupils. His dirty, scuffed white shirt had a pocket on the left side of the chest and the left tricep, laces across the middle, and sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Orange suspenders held up his old pair of olive pants, patched with darker cloth over both knees, that tucked into his worn brown boots. A quilted cloth hung from his left pocket, and his hands were covered by orange gloves, with green straps crossing in an X-shape on the backs of his hands, and around his wrists. And still the same bandage wrapped about his neck, not to mask a wound, but merely to protect from sunburn during long days in the fields.

He blinked a few times at his reflection, but nothing had changed, he shrugged the strange feeling off, and moved to get on with his day. After all, the farm chores ain’t gonna do themselves, he thought. Though at least he could deal with the drudgery by daydreaming about going on some fantastical adventure.

(?)

The majority of the island of Menagerie was an inhospitable wasteland, either because it was a thick jungle full of dangerous animals of the ordinary variety, a thick jungle filled with Grimm, or an empty, inhospitable desert… which was also filled with Grimm. However, the immediate environs of Kuo Kuanna, the city the faunus of Remnant had built on the landmass, was relatively free of Grimm thanks to natural barriers, and action on the part of faunus huntsmen and huntresses living there. The jungles were also notably less choked with vegetation, and had very few venomous animals of a nature dangerous to the island's inhabitants, who were still reeling from the news of the attack on Vale, and the role the White Fang had played in it.

It was in this jungle roughly a dozen miles from the city, in which sat a clearing. The land of the clearing itself was perfectly capable of housing more vegetation, but none larger than grass grew in a radius around the center of it. The object preventing larger forms of vegetation in question was a strange one, that didn’t belong in the current era, yet much like other entities and objects from the past, had the curious trait of a tenacious stubbornness that allowed so many artifacts of that time to endure to the present in the forgotten corners of the world. Even now, a gentle flame burned at the base of a coiled sword, thrust into a pile of ash, with a few human bones sticking out. Whatever structure that may have housed the bonfire had long since lost the battle against time, yet despite the Flame it was connected to going out an epoch ago, it still burned.

And then those flames suddenly grew, burning brighter, and exponentially increasing in size. A hand clawed its way out of the fire, and a body was ejected, clutching a katana that it had dropped when it had first been severed from the mortal coil. A male voice, dry and rasping, cried out in agony, as the figure convulsed for a few moments, before lying on the ground as he gathered his bearings, and reconciled his continued existence with the memory of electricity and a sharp pain in his heart, before a loss of consciousness. The man put his arms underneath himself, pushing up and bringing his knees under him, before staggering to his feet. When he felt the wind on a part of his face that shouldn’t be feeling it, he removed the crimson katana from its sheath, and gazed at his reflection in the blade. What he saw was enough to completely overshadow the fact that he could once again see out of his scarred eye.

Adam Taurus stared at his desiccated, blackened flesh, and the two red dots inside empty eye sockets that were barely visible in the reflection on the blade, and he screamed. And because he took the time to scream, to attempt to realize what had befell him, it would be a few minutes before he would notice the black sprite with two white eyes serenely floating above a small slip of paper near the coiled sword a few steps away. Though if one looked at the note, one could see the cursive writing that had a distinct feel of aristocracy to it, that simply read:

Crush the humanity in your hands. Kneel before the coiled sword, and offer the Dark to the Fire.

~ L

()

So Ruby’s carrying around the Way of the Blue parchment. Can’t forget that Vyliria passed that off to her.

I’m totally making up the ribbon on Gambol Shroud having a titanium weave, but it does make sense for the durability that fabric has no right having. I also am absolutely sure the explanation I came up with for how Blake having 4 ears works in terms of hearing isn’t canon, but in the grand scheme of things, it changes nothing. Not sure how well I hinted at it being a thing in FATD (I mean, I did confirm it in review responses, but I’m not counting those as part of the actual story), but I am aiming for Bumblebee to sail, and I’m trying to actually have it make sense rather than appear as fan-pandering (I still ship it regardless). Keep in mind that there’s a lot that happens off screen in-universe. I mean, a whole school-year went by at Beacon. There were a lot of little moments that happened that just didn’t actually get shown because I didn’t want to burn myself out with 50 slice-of-life chapters (and I’m assuming that this is also the case in canon, except they didn’t have the budget for the same). I’m still gonna take my time with it, but I figured that the ball needed a bit of a push to actually get rolling. And there’s nothing like siblings to muck up romantic pursuits!

Neo was not gonna be redesigned originally, but several months after starting OEAA, I saw an absolutely amazing V4/5 redesign idea on reddit done by ModdedJoker, so I decided to use it and give him credit. And again, for legal reasons so that there’s not even a shadow of a doubt, all credit for this Neo redesign goes to ModdedJoker… except I omitted the black tie they had Neo wear. IDK why, but I just feel that even if it goes great with the outfit, Neo just wouldn’t be the kind of girl to wear a tie unless she literally had no other choice.

Sun is still in this party. Even if the rest of the members don’t know about the additional adventurer. And yes, Weiss isn’t picking up the heels again. It’s a small detail, but after going out of my way to swap her to more mundane footwear in the prequel (and it feels strange and cool to type prequel and know that this is the second part of a series), but not a detail I’m going to regress on. Pragmatism beats Fashion Souls in this case. Also, she doesn’t have her family crest on her outfit, as a form of protest against her father. Again, another small touch, but one that’s worth mentioning as a change caused by the altered timeline. And yeah Sun, I’m sure you would love to learn magic… (types words with arcane intent)

Yeah, Sun isn't’ really doing much besides hanging about for the moment, but he will have a part to play. A regret with the last book was not including my brother’s 2nd favorite character (at the time of typing this part of the A/N in March 2021, my brother has yet to witness his favorite, Roman Torchwick, being swallowed by a gryphon) more often, and I also regret not being confident enough to write his final versus Penny. I fully intend to give him more spotlight moving forwards.

So Qrow’s tailing Ruby and co. His semblance certainly isn’t letting him have a comfortable journey, but since no one knows that he’s a bird, he can crap on people who annoy him with minimal repercussions.

Can’t forget about the bad guys and Pontiff Sulyvahn. Nefarious plans aren’t gonna concoct themselves. How else will they destroy the heroes in time for Nondescript Winter Holiday? Also, Sulyvahn may be evil, but he isn’t racist. Even Evil has Standards. He includes the faunus equally in everything he does. Including genocide.

Things have changed. Not everything, but a good deal of stuff has been altered by the prequel, and the butterfly effect is just getting started.

Yeah, I wasn’t forgetting about Oscar. Honestly, I’m kinda looking forward to getting to write him more. He strikes me as a bit of an underexplored character in RWBY fanfics that don’t specifically focus on him.

Oh yeah. In the words of Nora, “This. Is. Happening!” Adam’s back. With a darksign. I’m not anywhere near done with him . This is step two of my plan on how to shuffle up the antagonists after murdering him and Cinder. And in case anyone was confused, chronologically speaking, Adam’s section took place before the sequel, but after chapter 50 of the last book. I’m not too sure on how long I want the time-skip from my volume 3 to volume 4 to be, so in the true Dark Souls fashion, I’ll leave when exactly he comes back, along with the length of the time-skip, to be up to the reader to decide. But hey, at least he can see out both eyes again, so he’s got that going for him. Yeah, Adam was dangerous before, but now he has depth-perception!

Also, did NO ONE pick up when I mentioned that they never retrieved his body in Ch 48.5 of FATD? Come on, “they aren’t dead unless we see a body” is like the number one anime logic rule! And this is DARK SOULS to boot, so that should have been an even more glaring hint!

And geez, I wonder what person who would know about humanity and have some kind of cause that even remotely aligns to Adam’s own goals (which as of that exact moment are currently somewhere along the lines of “Kill all of Blake’s friends, and once I remember that Vyliria murdered me, make sure to kill her first, and then make Blake suffer,” or something like that) has a name that starts with an L. And I’m sure that he’s no longer in the general area, either, and even if he was, I’m sure that he’d be alone. In case you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic. sh*t is going down in Kuo Kuanna. A lot of sh*t is going down there. The Fennec brothers and Ilia are the least of the problems that will be cropping up for Ruby and friends.

Chapter 4: A Walk in the Woods

Chapter Text

Ch 2 - A Walk in the Woods

A/N: Feels a bit weird, because I haven’t actually typed anything in 2 months because college. Might take me a bit to get back into the swing of things. I apologize if this is visible in my writing. Also, it’s weird to be following the Volumes as I write, but basically disregarding the actual dialogue of the scenes because of the divergence from canon. And with the way I’ve planned things, I’m pretty sure half of Volume 8 won’t happen to begin with. It also feels strange to be watching Volume 4 again to begin with. I’m still heartbroken by Volume 8 (I’m typing this in early April 2021). Neo might be Best Girl, but Penny was my favorite character and OH GYWN, MY FEELS!!! IT HURTS!!! IT STILL HURTS!!!

Ahem… anyways, let’s get back into the swing of things. And I’m gonna try to do more from Nora and Ren’s perspectives this time around.

Edit 3/11/2024: In the spirit of current memes, “WE MAKING IT TO MISTRAL WITH THIS ONE, BOYS!” (but not actually, that's like 20 chapters from now, lol)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belongs to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.

(Nora)

“I’m just saying,” the ginger bomber spoke up as the group continued their conversation as they trekked through a forest on Anima, “was VAAPPR (AN: Vapor) really the best we could come up with as a new team name?” Nora Valkyrie brushed a strand of orange hair that had gone in front of an eye behind her ear. One of the downsides of letting it grow to reach her shoulders, she supposed. And that wasn’t the only part of her appearance she’d changed. Her eyes had shifted color from a more turquoise tone to something approaching aqua, which she personally thought was cool, and she’d framed them with a touch of pink eyeshadow at their far upper corners. Ren didn’t notice that yet, but she masked being upset about that really well. Her fingerless gloves were still pink, as was the pleated skirt (albeit with a white layered tulle) with two wide belt loops (which were also pink) that reached halfway down her thighs, and her knee-high socks that poked up from under her white calf-high boots, which also had pink laces, though the low heels, soles, and toes were black. Her white, sleeveless turtleneck was basically the same as the one she wore at Beacon, though the heart cutout on the chest had a diagonal slash through it. Nora personally thought it made her look more rugged, and no one said anything negative about it, and Vyliria even seemed to vaguely approve, so it couldn’t be a bad thing, at least. On her left arm was a short, detached white sleeve, and over her shirt was a short sleeved, open, cropped navy blue bomber jacket - Heh, navy blue bomber jacket. Try saying that five times fast, she thought to herself - with a damaged print of her hammer-with-a-lightning-bolt emblem on the back, pink stripes along the sleeves, pink buckled cuffs, and red lining on the collar and inside of the jacket. Her canvas talisman rested on her hip, and under her shirt, held around her neck by a thin chain was a badge of the Warriors of Sunlight. After they’d started their journey, Nora had decided that jolly cooperation was something right up her alley, and the second day out of Vale, she’d asked Vyliria if she could join as well. A bemused unkindled found herself inducting her, Ren, and Penny on the same day, and couldn't quite keep the smirk out of her tone as she did so.

“Well, it might not be a color, but honestly, with our initials, it's a miracle we could come up with a team name for the six of us to begin with,” her partner Lie Ren responded calmly. Renny himself (the nickname was interchangeable for her) had a new outfit that bore some similarities to the one he had at Beacon, but it was still decidedly different. His eyes were still magenta, as was the steak on the left side of his hair, but the hair itself had been let down, and allowed to grow to a few inches above his butt. Her pancake-making husbando - not that I’d ever utter that aloud - had a longer, sleeveless tailcoat with black and silver trimming, the main color of which was a slightly darker shade of green than his last outfit. Beneath that was a black, sleeveless turtleneck with red, tasseled ropes over the hips, and his legs bore a pair of white pants that were tighter below the knees, and on his feet were black, calf-high open-toed sandals. Going from his middle fingers to his biceps were gradient pink-to-black detached sleeves that ended in metal armbands. His sorcery staff was tucked into a cloth loop on his back, and his covenant badge also rested under his shirt.

“Are we really bringing this up again, guys?” Jaune asked. “Like, seriously, why not talk about that gigantic geist we just wasted instead?” Nora’s fearless team leader had undergone a drastic change of outfit, and the story behind it was somewhat amusing. Originally, most of the group was going to keep the same outfits for the trip to Mistral. But then Vyliria had swapped her attire out for something more red and rustic themed, claiming, “Sometimes you just need a complete outfit change,” and Penny decided to follow her example, swapping her outfit to something better suited to long-term travel. After that, Pyrrha decided that getting actual armor so she wouldn’t take another arrow to the heel was probably a good idea. They’d had a good laugh when Vyliria had said that at least she didn’t take an arrow to the knee, which sobered quickly when they realized she wasn’t referencing an Olden Scrolls game, but speaking from the actual experience of taking a greatarrow to the knee. Ouch. At that point, Nora had hopped onto the bandwagon, and Ren had joined her before she could start pestering him to do so as well. Finding himself the odd one out, Jaune jokingly remarked that he may as well go for a full knight getup, only for Vyliria to say that she could actually make that happen.

Case in point, according to the Irithyllian, Jaune was now clad in the titanite-reinforced armor of an elite knight of the long-dead kingdom of Astora, which was apparently famous for its knights and some super-dude in the Warriors of Sunlight named Solaire. Instead of the brown scarf that came with the set (Pyrrha chose to take that for herself), the hood of his black hoodie poked out from beneath his chestplate. His hair had grown a bit messier, but was kept roughly the same length, and the helmet for the set currently rested on the hip opposite of where Crocea Mors rested, his chime of Filianore just behind his shield-sheathe. The right arm was more heavily armored than the left, with a full steel pauldron, steel on the upper arm and the back of the elbow, and a steel gauntlet that went nearly to the elbow, chainmail covering what the metal didn’t. The upper half of the left arm, and its elbow, were also protected by steel, but lacked a pauldron, and the lower half was covered by chainmail, the glove and was leather, as was the wrist guard, more chainmail visible on that limb than the other. When Jaune had questioned the difference between them, Vyliria had remarked that the armor was originally meant for humans who didn’t have aura-enhanced (or undead-enhanced) strength, so weight and the balance thereof were factors to take into account when making armor. The less armored arm would have a shield to protect it, so the armorers could both afford less protection on the left limb, and needed to lighten it to account for the weight of the shield. The boots and knee-guards were also steel, though the leggings and boots themselves were a thick tan leather, apparently basilisk hide, and therefore far more durable than what would come from a cow. Nora wasn’t ashamed to admit she had nightmares the first time she slept when Vyliria had described just what a basilisk was. Petrifying curse-fog spraying giant googly-eyed frog things with fanged mouths and beaks that liked to lurk deep underground, in poisonous areas, swamps, and poisonous swamps were something she could do without, thank you very much. Over his chainmail coat was a basilisk-leather one, dyed a deep blue with gold embroidered edges, Vyliria having used some sorcery to alter the gold-stitched crest of Astora on the chest to the Arc crest at Jaune’s request. Around the waist and across his chest were ordinary leather straps.

“I mean, it wasn’t anything special,” Pyrrha Nikos responded. “Vyliria just blasted its body with soulstream and then I hit the actual geist with a sunlight spear.” The redheaded tournament champion from Mistral, who’s life had been saved at the last possible second by a half-hollowed Vyliria who couldn’t even remember her own name at the time, had also undergone a heavy outfit overhaul. She still had her bronze circlet with emerald earrings, a red sash about her waist, pinned in place by a bronze plate with her emblem, her eyes were still green, her eye-shadow being a lighter shade of the same color, and her dark red hair still sat in a waist-length ponytail, but those were the only things about her getup that hadn’t changed. Now, she was clad neck-to-toe in form-fitting steel armor, painted a dark bronze with lighter bronze highlights, styled like what ancient Mistralians used to wear. The armor didn’t cover her completely, of course, as some needed to be removed from the joints to allow maneuverability, but thick black leather covered whatever the metal didn’t. An armored skirt went from her hips down to just above her knees, her armored boots were no longer heels, and, as mentioned earlier, the brown scarf that was originally part of Jaune’s armor was wrapped about his girlfriend’s neck. Her shield, Akoúo̱, rested on her back, as did her soul-transposed spear she’d obtained from the Grimm wyvern that had attacked Beacon and Vale, which she had dubbed Phalanx. Her xiphos (which was now only thus) Miló rested on her left hip, and her sunlight talisman, wielded by Solaire himself, was upon her right hip.

“It was an incredibly efficient dispatch of a very dangerous Grimm,” Penny Polendina chimed in. Nora personally liked the gynoid, who had a very compatible personality with her own.

“Overpowered spells do tend to make the average encounter trivial,” the last member of their group, embers lazily burning across her form in a manner Nora frankly found awesome, Vyliria Avalon, finally joined the conversation. “And before you try asking again, Nora, we’re not naming the team AVALPN (A/N: Avalon). I refuse to name us after myself… But enough of that, Look at the bright side: with how much we’ve been breezing through our encounters with Grimm during the trip, we’re a week ahead of schedule.”

“Yeah,” Nora responded, “but you ‘celebrate’ our progress with relentless sparring at every available opportunity. Just because you and Penny can’t get tired like the rest of us mortals doesn’t mean that we can as well.”

Vyliria’s hooded head tilted downwards for a few seconds, and Penny glanced over to her when she didn’t immediately respond. The rest of the group came to a stop as well when they saw the Irithyllian’s mood dip. “I… I have the dubious benefit of being able to learn from literally fatal mistakes. But just because I can doesn’t mean I should welcome death with open arms, content in the knowledge that I’ll get another attempt. Especially since the nearest bonfire is all the way back in Vale. I… I still can’t figure out how to call upon my fragment of the Dark Soul at will. I can’t just snap my fingers and use it like I did against Cinder. And my fight with Tyrian proved I’ve gotten rusty. I need to improve my skills, with all of my weapons. That’s why I’ve been so adamant on sparring with you all as we’ve progressed on this journey. Why any day we don’t encounter Grimm, I ask to clash blades to hone my skills. Because I need to improve, so I can keep my promise.”

Nora looked to the unkindled, and decided to offer her own two lien. “Vyliria, I appreciate it. We all do. But you don’t have to run yourself ragged every day for our sakes. I know you’re… well, dead and all that, but you deserve to live a little, just like the rest of us.”

Penny stood on her tip-toes and put a hand on Vyliria’s shoulder, and she looked over to the gynoid. “I know you don’t mind getting hurt, Vyliria. I know you’ll come back if you die. But it still hurts to think back to when you did. It hurts us all to see you push yourself so hard. You care about us, but we care about you as well. I care about my best friend.”

“I… I…” Jaune cut in before she could finish.

“Come on Vyl, you said it yourself. We’re kicking butt, and we’re ahead on our trip. Just take a break, and enjoy the journey with the rest of us.”

The unkindled co*cked her head. “Vyl?”

Pyrrha was the one who replied, managing to look abashed as she did so. “I came up with the nickname just the other day.”

Vyliria was pensive for a few moments. “I’m honestly not sure how to feel about it. I’ve… well, I’ve never had a nickname before. The few I could call friends in my days in the Age of Fire were far too formal for something like that. I suppose I’ll give it the opportunity to see if it grows on me.”

“Knowing you, that’s likely the best concession we’ll get,” Ren chimed in.

Vyliria took a breath. If Nora squinted, she could see a smile underneath the veil of her hood. “I’ll take a break. At least until we’re through the next village.”

Nora’s stomach growled loudly enough to scare several nearby birds. “Great!” she said before segueing into the most important thing in the universe at the moment: “So that means we can have lunch now, right?”

Vyliria joined her friends in a round of laughter, before using her pyromancy to light a fire so they could get to heating some pancake mix… being cooked by Renny. Vyliria might have forced them all to carry their survival gear on them, but she did store away a year’s supply of maple syrup at Nora’s (extreme) insistence.

With Ren busy flipping the batter, the group found themselves in a lull in the conversation. One Nora decided to fill. “Hey, Vyliria?” When the unkindled gave an inquisitorial hum in acknowledgement, the ginger bomber continued with, “So you keep mentioning crazy stuff you did in Lothric, but you’ve never really gone into the specifics. Since we got time to kill, why don’t you tell us a story?”

“What about that time you made us drink Siegbrau, Vyl?” Jaune asked. “You mentioned that you’d got the stuff as a gift for helping someone fight a guy named Yhorm. There’s gotta be a story behind that!”

“There certainly is,” Vyliria remarked. “Yhorm was a giant so massive, that geist we killed earlier would have only come up to his knee. The last Greatwood Giant, and a Lord of Cinder to boot, which meant not only was he even more powerful, but he was on fire as well.”

“You fought a flaming giant?” Pyrrha asked.

“In his throne room, full of corpses and gold, both the results of his failed efforts to save his subjects that hated him,” the Irithyllian replied.

“That sounds like quite the story,” Penny remarked.

“Even I have to admit my curiosity has been piqued,” Ren added as he passed the first finished stack of pancakes to Nora.

“Come on, tell us the story!” Nora said. Or well, that’s what she would have said had the pancakes in her mouth not made her speech unintelligible.

Vyliria sat down in the shade cast by a tree trunk, and pulled her hood off. She had a wry smile on her face. “Fine, just give me a second to figure out where to begin…”

(Vyliria)

“Irithyll dungeon and the Profaned Capital were not pleasant places to go to. Full of psychotic jailers who could drain your vitality with their mere gaze, giant undead rats, even larger giant undead rats, basilisks,” she didn’t miss Nora’s shudder at the word, “and mimics all over the place.”

“Mimics?” Penny asked.

“Right,” Vyliria said, raising a hand to signal an apology. “I forgot that none of you are familiar with the nightmares that plagued Lothric. A mimic is… well, picture a treasure chest. Just, a stereotypical wooden chest with a metal chain on the side. Except, when you open it, inside is a giant maw with a massive tongue and razor sharp teeth, and hands spring out from the side, grabbing you and yanking you in so it can eat you. And if you manage to puzzle out that it’s a mimic and go to attack it instead of opening it, it sprouts legs, and alternates between trying to grab and eat you, or kicking you harder than a horse. And not just normal kicks, because then they wouldn’t be enough of an absolute bitch to kill. No, they’re also stupidly acrobatic, capable of leaping like a professional dancer, and able to roundhouse-kick so well it still makes me uneasy to recall. Oh, and did I mention that the whole time they’re trying to kill you, they’re constantly uttering a demented, haunting giggle?”

There were a few seconds of shocked silence. Penny had her hands over her mouth, and Ren had stopped flipping pancakes. Nora had even managed to forget to continue chewing, staring slack-jawed with her favorite meal stuck in her mouth.

“What the f*ck?” Jaune finally asked, horror written across his face.

“How can that exist?” Pyrrha asked.

“Honestly?” the Irithyllian replied, “Beats the sh*t out of me,” she finished with a shrug. “Even the gods had problems with them, and if they knew how mimics came about, they never bothered to tell humanity. Legend states that they were born from the souls of beings with great avarice, forever doomed to punish that of others in order to slake their own greed. Right, so where was I? Ah! I was standing before Yhorm’s fogwall-”

“Fogwall?” Penny asked.

“Beings with sufficiently powerful souls could make a fog wall around the area they chose to hole themselves up in. It drew power from some remnant of the Age of Ancients, when the world was shrouded in gray fog. You could pass through the fog to enter, but couldn’t leave. So once you entered, you either left as a corpse on the way back to the bonfire, or with your foe’s corpse at your feet. Anyways...” She lost herself in her memories as she spoke, idly casting mirage to show what she was describing to those gathered. After all, why just tell when you can show and tell?

She gazed at the fogwall ahead, triple checking that her court sorcerer's staff was strapped to her hip. She wasn’t exactly sure how useful mundane weapons would be against a giant of Yhorm’s caliber, so she held off on willing her sellswords to hand for the moment. If anything, this first crack at her second Lord of Cinder would be the equivalent of testing the waters. She absolutely expected to die, and as much as she didn’t like it, she intended to just spend this attempt on getting a feel for how her adversary fought.

At least, that was the plan until she heard armored footsteps coming up behind her. The gargoyles in the Profaned Capital had stone for feet, and the things that looked similar to the jailers had ordinary footwear. She whipped around, terrified that she’d missed the droning chime that signified the entrance of an invader, only for her fears to be allayed by the least expected source.

“Siegward?” she said incredulously. The jovial knight of Catarina had forgone his usual zweihander, and in its place was a seemingly broken (on the blade) stone greatsword of strange make, the blade going for a couple feet before it ended in a jagged shear. His bulbous gray-white armor, resembling an onion in structure (thus earning the kingdom’s best warriors the nickname “onion knights”) covered the man as always, yet something seemed… different. As she kept bumping into the man during her journey to this fogwall, his normally boisterous (and very scatterbrained) demeanor had become much more subdued, and if she didn’t know he was the same man, his posture now may have caused her to assume he was someone else entirely.

“Ah! Vyliria… I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought I was going to have to do this alone…” the onion knight said, even his tone betraying his somber mood.

And then it clicked in her head. “Your… promise. Your duty. Thoust were a comrade to Yhorm before he became a Lord, I’d assume?”

Siegward gave a sad nod, before replying, “You can go ahead. I’d like just a moment to… collect myself before I see him again.”

Nora raised a hand. “They knew each other?”

“Can I finish the story, and then answer questions?”

“Sorry…”

Vyliria sighed, but continued.

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she merely gave a nod of her own, and took a breath, walking to the fogwall. The unkindled gazed into the swirling eddies for a few seconds, before pressing a hand to the arcane barrier. Her hand sunk through, and the fog audibly rippled as her body followed. She stepped forth into a massive throne room, pillars rising over a hundred feet to support the stone ceiling overhead. A dirtied rectangular pool sat in the center of the room, stretching into the distance, and choked with rusted golden trinkets and piles of charred corpses. Many more burnt bodies were piled on the sides and corners of the room. And on the far side, sat a massive throne, atop which was Yhorm. She swallowed at the sheer size of the giant, one hand clutching the handle of a machete with a stone blade that was several dozen times her size, but was slightly longer than a longsword in the Lord’s hands. His charred armor covered his form, a crown resembling tongues of flame rested atop his hooded head, and what skin was visible was hideously cracked and burnt, Linking the First Flame having taken its toll, and even now fire coursed along his limbs in a macabre parody of veins (and for all she knew, it was entirely possible that fire was what coursed through the Lord's veins). A bowed head slowly tilted up, and from within the hood two baleful red eyes, each the size of her head, gazed upon her, even as she took increasingly reluctant steps further into the room, her feet splashing in the ankle deep pool.

“This is not going to be a pleasant affair,” she said aloud to herself.

More footsteps splashed into the water, and she stopped, turning her head to the left to see Siegward walking beside her, coming to a standstill next to her, his pierce shield in his left hand, and that strange sword in the right, resting on his shoulder. He removed the weapon from said shoulder, raising it and leveling its point towards the Lord in a salute.

“Yhorm, old friend.” The world seemed to pause for the span of a terrifying pair of heartbeats. “I, Siegward, of the knights of Catarina, have come to uphold my promise.” Yhorm let the machete’s end fall to the floor with a thunderous boom, using it as an anchor as he rose to his feet. Vyliria cursed in her head as she watched him casually reverse his grip back to normal on the massive weapon, holding a small house’s weight in stone like it was nothing. “Let the Sun shine upon this Lord of Cinder!” the onion knight cried out in response.

With a series of booming footsteps, Yhorm began to merely walk across the room, each step covering dozens of feet. Siegward raised his blade, charging to meet him, uttering a warcry at the top of his lungs.

“HIIIIYAAAAAAA!!!”

“Really?”

Vyliria shrugged at Jaune’s question. “To this day, I still don’t really know why he thought it was a good idea to begin with.”

Yhorm met him halfway across the room, backhanding Vyliria’s fellow warrior and sending him flying like an onion-shaped brick, though he maintained his grip on his weapon. A particularly dense mass of the dead at least cushioned the impact. And then the Lord was upon her. The massive machete raised above and behind Yhorm as he crouched, swinging down towards her from her left. She barely had the time to scream a startled “Oh, f*ck!” before she bodily threw herself out of the way as it crashed against the ground, sending a spray of rusted precious metals, water, and stone everywhere. Vyliria scarcely came out of her roll before the machete was coming back around from the other direction, and she threw herself into avoiding the massive strike yet again. Having managed to avoid two killing blows, Yhorm raised his weapon overhead and brought it directly down on her. She hastily called forth her black knight shield, panickedly raising it overhead with her right arm, just in time for the stone blade to impact. With a thunderous clang, the shield held, but the raw kinetic energy of the impact bled through, and combined with the momentum, Vyliria was crushed under her own protection, her arm mangled into so much meat, only held together by her cracked armor, most of her internal organs pulped, and her ribcage reduced to so much skeletal shrapnel. Yet even so, she--

“Penny? Are you okay?” The gynoid appeared horrified, looking down, her arms wrapped about her knees, which were pulled to her chest, and Vyliria paused out of concern.

Penny shivered, refusing to look at the pyromancy paused on Vyliria gazing at her own mangled body. “I just… I don’t like thinking of you being hurt like that.” A round of agreeing nods from her companions were made.

“Most of my tales involve being hurt like that, and usually worse, especially dying rather painfully. I can stop if you don’t want me to contin--”

“No,” Penny said, raising her head and meeting her gaze, green eyes meeting a green and silver pair. “I just… I want to hear it, but I don’t like hearing about you being hurt and dying.”

“Right. I apologize in advance then.” The small wave of guilt as she continued stubbornly refused to die down.

Her left arm still functioned, and she fought through her crushed body and the pain, grasping onto her staff and firing a soul spear directly into the giant’s face. Yhorm stumbled back a few steps as the sorcery struck an eye, and Vyliria used the opportunity to drop her catalyst and take a deep draught of estus. Her body reknit from its broken state, and she dismissed her shield, frantically scooping up her staff as she scrambled away as her foe recovered and went to bear down on her again.

Yet her ears suddenly picked up the sound of howling wind, which reached a crescendo as what she could only describe as a vertical slice of compressed wind raced across the room, slamming into Yhorm’s back at full force, the giant bellowing in pain as he fell to a knee, bracing himself from completely falling with his machete. She gazed in the direction of the attack, to see Siegward holding that strange sword in both hands over one shoulder, winds already gathering to the broken blade once more.

“Only a Storm can fell a Greatwood!” Siegward shouted, as much to her as to their foe. Yhorm rose to his feet again, disregarding the Irithyllian as he charged the Catarinian down. Yet Seigward finished charging the strange magics of his weapon before the giant reached him, raising it high overhead and bringing it down once more, a massive slice of condensed gale-force winds billowing forth and striking the giant face-first. Yhorm fell to his knees again, but this time, when he slammed his blade upon the ground, it was set alight, the flames on his skin suddenly burning with renewed ferocity. He rose much faster than either she or Siegward anticipated, closing the final steps to the onion knight and giving a mighty stomp, flames splashing out from the impact, and knocking her ally from his feet. He recovered quick enough, dodging the follow up strike from Yhorm’s machete, but the pillar next to him wasn’t as fortunate. Several dozen tons of crumbling masonry rained down, Seigward hastily running out of the impact zone while Yhorm literally shrugged off blocks of stone larger than his head striking him. Seigward seemed to lack the time it took to charge the blade’s magic while Yhorm was attacking him, so Vyliria hastily devised a plan to refocus the giant’s attention on her. In a wash of embers, the onislayer greatbow she’d looted from the capital a scant hour earlier was in hand, and she grunted with the effort it took to pull back the string and nock a matching onislayer greatarrow. She grimmly took aim for the back of Yhorm’s knee, but she forgot to check her footing, because just as she went to fire, she slipped on a gold goblet she’d been standing on the handle of, her aim thrown off target but still releasing at full force. Even as she sent the bow back to her storage mid-fall, she watched it sail towards her target, striking his rear, and going far further than it should have if it merely hit skin.

“No!” Pyrrha exclaimed, and besides that utterance, they all stared at Vyliria, mortified and in shock.

“Yeah…” the unkindled looked at the grass at her feet. “I’ll admit, even at the time I felt extremely bad about that one, and I still do, but yes, I accidentally shot him up the arse with a greatarrow. It certainly got his attention though.”

Yhorm stumbled forwards, bellowing in pain, and he whipped around, burning gaze locked to the Irithyllian. He ran at her, horror running through her veins as he closed the distance across the throne room in three steps, fist flying, and an explosion erupting from the impact. The only thing Vylira had to be thankful for was the fact that the fist impacted directly in front of her, because if she was actually struck, she had no doubt she’d be back on the way to the bonfire. As it was, she ragdolled towards the fog wall, tumbling to a stop just in time for the giant to reach her again, scooping her up in one massive hand, before turning and throwing her like a stone towards his throne. She scarcely managed to put her arms in front of her face before she crashed into a pile of rusted gold, sure that the impact had broken her everything. She lied still for a moment, hearing Seigward’s weapon going off in the background once more, and Yhorm’s pain as he was forced to a knee a third time. She managed to get her estus flask to her lips, and after healing the damage by almost draining the thing, she crawled out of the crater she’d made. Even as she looked across the room, Siegward frantically threw himself out of the way of Yhorm’s blade, but the blast of flames from the impact sent him sprawling. A burning kick punted him away, causing him to lose his grip upon his weapon, Yhorm striding to the wounded knight as he desperately dodged attack after attack. Vyliria wrenched her gaze from the two combatants, frantically wracking her mind for anything she could do to actually contribute to the fight at hand. Then her gaze fell upon a familiar stone hilt in a pile of old gold at the foot of the throne.

“There’s no way,” she muttered aloud as she scrambled towards it, grabbing the hilt and pulling. It came out of the pile, and she blinked a few times as she stared at the near-identical blade to the one Siegward held, though this one may have had a few more inches on it before the point where the blade was broken. “Sweet Gwyn, it actually is.”

She shifted her stance to match what the onion knight had been doing, and heard winds whistling as they gathered to and built upon her acquired weapon. I really hope this works, she thought. A few more seconds passed, Siegwards seeing what she held and nearly taking a hit as he froze in surprise, but he still dodged, bolting towards her, Yhorm in hot pursuit, evidently developing tunnel vision for his current target. The wind burst on her blade, multiplying several factors in strength and volume, and she took a breath as she raised it overhead and slammed down. She watched the slice of compressed storms billow forth, striking the giant down to his knees yet again. Vyliria felt drained from using the weapon, yet she powered through, beginning to charge it again, even as she saw her comrade running for his discarded blade in her peripheral vision. She felt it burst to life a few seconds later, yet held, even as Yhorm closed with her. The unkindled was making a gamble, and each thundering step as Yhorm crossed the room made her question her decision that much more. But it turned out to pay off, as a step away from swinging at her, another lance of wind came from Siegward, the howling gale striking the giant once more. Vyliria immediately followed up, aiming for the machete that Yhorm kept catching himself with. It was blasted from his hands, and he fell fully to the floor from the impact. Vyliria walked backwards as she began charging the magic in the sword for a third time, as Yhorm slowly moved his hands to push himself up with a groan. But it wasn’t to be, as with a final shout from her comrade, his own attack cleaved straight into the Lord’s neck, and his massive head tumbled from his body, Vyliria having to hastily reposition to avoid getting squashed by it. The wind gathering to her own blade dissipated, and seconds later, Yhorm’s corpse followed suit, leaving behind a soul and some Cinders, which would need to be returned to the empty throne in Firelink. She began to gather them in an urn, even as Siegward exhaustedly walked over to her.

“Holy sh*t, we actually pulled that off on the first attempt,” she muttered to herself. She noted a bonfire bursting into being at the foot of the now-vacant throne, and the fog wall dissipating at the entrance to the room, but stayed devoted to her current task until it was complete. Upon doing so, she noticed Siegward finally reaching her, panting from the exertion.

“Ha… ha… It seems… I’m in your debt… once again…” he got out between pants. “My thanks… I could not have kept… my promise without you.” Yet even so, much like herself, their undead resilience meant they were already regaining their stamina at an absurd rate. Both of their heaves of exhaustion were already fading.

“Twas no problem, Siegward.” She motioned to the brilliant yellow flame floating nearby. “If thou desires his soul, you can have it. I don’t imagine I’ll get too much use from a man-sized version of his weapon.”

Siegward actually paused, before removing his bulbous hamlet, revealing the older face beneath, and the short black hair atop his head, already starting to bald away. The thick black mustache covering his upper lip bent as he spoke. “I… thank you.” He moved to Yhorm’s soul, reverently taking it, before squirreling it away in the same manner all unkindled did with whatever they got their hands on. “You really are a true friend.”

“I… might not be the most perceptive of people, but I could tell he was important to thee. Twas the least I could do.”

Siegward gave a sad grin in response, before calling forth two brown wooden kegs. Vyliria perked up, taking off her own helmet as the scent of the siegbrau reached her nose. “Now, for a final toast!” the onion knight declared with a shout. “To your valor, and my old friend Yhorm!” He passed one keg to the Irithyllian, and they tapped their beverages together. “Long may the sun shine!” He gave a boisterous laugh, and they both tilted their kegs back and drank deeply.

In the present, Vyliria focused on the world around her once more, dismissing her pyromancy. “We spoke for hours, got completely drunk, he told me stories about Yhorm-- before you ask, they aren’t mine to tell-- and during that time, he gave me not only the recipe to brew more of the stuff if I so wished, but also these.” She called forth two kegs of siegbrau, both marked with a blue streak of dye. “This is an especially potent brew of siegbrau. I didn't learn how to make this one, so I’ve been saving these two for a special occasion. This stuff is potent enough to make me drunk before I’m done with the keg, so it’d probably kill you, so I apologize for not sharing it.” She sent them back to her storage. “Right, now if you have questions, feel free to ask.”

Ren raised the most pertinent question. “There just happened to be another magic giant-slaying sword at the foot of the throne of said giant?”

“As I said earlier, Yhorm ruled the Profaned Capital before it fell. He was a kind hearted ruler, and a one man army at the same time. He single handedly protected and governed his people, yet the racist pricks still hated him all the same. His only friend for many years was a knight of Catarina who wandered into his domain on a quest. Far before I was born, those swords, called Storm Rulers, were forged specifically to be able to slay Greatwood giants like Yhorm. But the knowledge to craft them was lost, and the last two known Storm Rulers in existence fell into Yhorm’s possession, both already broken before he could obtain them; their reduced potency only able to drive giants to their knees. Quite ironic, really. He gave the first to Siegward when he set off to Link the First Flame, making the onion knight promise to use it to slay him should he shirk from his duty, and the second always sat at the foot of his throne, as proof to his subjects that he left them the means to kill him should they so wish.”

“That... actually answered all of my questions too,” Jaune said. Pyrrha silently nodded, but before she could look to Nora, Penny spoke.

“Do you still have that second Storm Ruler?”

“I was gonna ask that!” Nora whined.

Vyliria rolled her eyes, calling it forth. “You can all have it for a bit if you’re interested, just don’t hold it over your shoulder. I’d rather not have gale force winds being frivolously flung about.” Nora deflated further. “Okay, fine, Nora can do it once, but only after we’re done eating, and you need to be facing away from the rest of us when you use it.”

“YES!!!” the ginger bomber cried joyously. “I can’t wait!”

“But that means you’d have to eat Ren’s pancakes faster,” Vyliria commented with a wicked grin.

Nora looked horror-struck. “But… if I eat them faster, I can’t enjoy them. And if I take my time, then I have to wait to use the magic wind-sword! Nooooooo!” she raised her hands, shouting dramatically to the sky. “Ren,” she said through tear stained eyes, “comfort meeeeeeee!”

The other four in the group began to silently laugh as Ren awkwardly walked up to Nora, bending down and putting a hand on her shoulder, suddenly stiffening as Nora sprung up and wrapped him in a hug, pancakes temporarily forgotten in her sorrow. Except, since Ren had bent down, and Nora had sprung up, Ren suddenly found his face in Nora’s feminine assets. The laughter paused as Ren’s face went red, before resuming explosively, Vyliria going as far as to fall over on her side, actual tears leaking from her eyes.

Dear Gwyn, she thought, I guess I did need a break.

()

A/N: Nora thinking of Ren as her pancake-making husbando popped into my mind completely randomly, and I laughed so much at the thought that I instantly knew I had to work it in somewhere. Also, eye color can shift. This happens IRL. My eyes started out blue when I was born, were green by the time I was 14, and shifted to gray (which occurs in less than 1% of humanity) when I was 20. On a side note, I’m now only one step in iris-tone from being able to stare Grimm to death… this is also another reason as to why Vyliria’s eyes are the colors they are. Not only do I think heterochromia looks cool AF, but it’s also a reference to my eyes changing color IRL, with one of her eyes being green, and the other silver (the Dark Souls character designer is very detailed… but very unintuitive, and after 20 minutes, I decided silver was close enough to gray that I could move on with my life).

Well, here’s the new fashion souls for Jaune and Pyrrha. For Jaune, I’m completely bullsh*ting on the basilisk-hide and titanite reinforced armor. I just thought that it would be appropriate to the whole “elite knight” thing. As for Pyrrha’s armor, picture ancient Greek hoplite armor in terms of style, but more like clothing in armor form in terms of appearance. I know Phalanx wasn’t that original for the Grimm spear, especially because I’m sure one of the 1st 2 souls games had a boss called Phalanx, but I’d spent twenty minutes trying to come up with a name and was still drawing a blank, so I went with that and moved on.

Vyliria’s (figuratively) busting her balls to try and get better, shaking off the rust from her other weapons. Her friends are concerned.

And then we get the story of this universe’s bossfight with Yhorm. So, Ultimate Kuuga, if you’re still reading this series, here’s that bossfight you asked for. Nice and Dark Souls with a twist of messed up comedy, kinda like how I write this story in general. As for that greatarrow... Well, in the first plan, she shot Yhorm in the knee, but then I made the Skyrim reference earlier in the chapter. I then realized that if he’s focusing on Siegward, there’s a good chance he’s not facing Vyliria. Then rectal-probing-via-greatarrow popped into my head, and I decided to run with it.

Also, because they’re ahead of schedule, they killed the geist before bumping into the village that was threatened by it. Considering that the only upgrade that would happen there in this timeline is Jaune getting the greatsword mechashift on Crocea Mors, I may just skip it entirely… and possibly skip the greatsword as well, because I think that the only reason he could upgrade it was because he had metal from Pyrrha’s gear. That’s what happens when you derail canon.

Anaywas, I decided that I want to get Renora going before Atlas, so I’m abusing the fact that everyone’s in a much better mood since Penny and Pyrrha aren’t dead in order to make things happen faster. That’s all for now. See you all next update!

Chapter 5: Under the City in the Sky

Chapter Text

Ch 3 - Under the City in the Sky

A/N: Oh, I’m sure you guys and gals (or whatever-the-Izalith-you-identify-as, I don’t discriminate) aren’t expecting this little entry. But since we don’t have a Weiss in Atlas in this timeline...

You wouldn’t know this if I didn’t say anything, but I made several edits to this and other Roman-centric chapters between here and chapter 14. These edits were made to line up this story more with the canon established by Roman Holiday, and if you haven’t read the book for whatever reason, there will be spoilers for it from this point forward. I’m not bending over backwards to fit the book, but the timeline wasn’t different enough at that point for things to go majorly different compared to canon. Of course, Patches does come into play, but again, my timeline only has him step into Roman and Neo’s lives after the Vanille mansion explodes.

Edit in March 2024: I’m not marking that with spoilers because the book has been out for several years by this point. Additionally, Delta404 left a very good guest review. I love it when people start speculating on what’s going on in both lore and in the world in general. You people SHOULD be wondering what else from the Age of Fire might be lurking about, either buried beneath the earth, or hidden in the forgotten corners of Remnant. Even in book one, I gave a few hints as to some of the things that are waiting in the wings for one or more of the cast to stumble upon. To continue with that analogy, there are quite a few actors who have yet to step onto the stage. As for Adam… maybe bringing him back and him making the decision to get revenge on the main cast is the plan. As for what caused Vyliria to finally wake up after all that time… I don’t think I’ll ever say it outright, but if you pay attention to her personality, her motivations, and how she thinks, it’s possible to figure it out. I’ll admit that since I’m the guy writing her, I’m definitely biased since I KNOW the answer to that question, but while it’s very, very, VERY difficult, it’s still possible.

Edit 4/19/2024: It’s my Birthday, so have a chapter!

Disclaimer: I don’t own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belongs to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.

(Roman)

Atlas. Remnant’s northernmost kingdom, nestled in the frozen tundra of the frigid continent of Solitas. A shining city in the clouds (literally, it was floating in the damn sky), a technological marvel, boasting the most cutting edge technology available, home to Remnant’s only professional military, and the beating heart of the world’s industrial complex. And for all of the corporation’s faults, it was still the headquarters of the SDC, who provided dust, and ultimately energy, to all of civilization.

Mantle was not Atlas. Though technically, one could argue that it was, as the kingdom was renamed from Mantle to Atlas after the nation’s defeat in the Great War some eighty years prior. However, the city of Mantle had been left behind when Atlas ascended to the heavens, literally placed in the newer city’s shadow. Its buildings were older, its technology lagged behind its sister city, and its residents, a disproportionately large number of which were faunus, many forced to work in SDC mines, had a noticeably poorer quality of life when compared to the city above.

Though one benefit of Mantle being left behind when the kingdom was renamed was that it was much easier to go unnoticed within its walls. And that included getting into it, even as General Ironwood worked to tighten the borders, and ruthlessly vet any incoming foreign nationals in the wake of the attack on Beacon Academy in Vale. So while stepping foot on Atlas unnoticed was out of the question, when one had the right criminal contacts and a good stack of lien, getting into Mantle proved to be no hassle.

The apartment Roman Torchwick had acquired was more than adequate for the needs of a single person, with two bedrooms each bearing two beds. Which was damn convenient, if you asked Roman, because if that wasn’t the case, his unexpected tagalongs would have forced him to sleep on the couch. As it had turned out, using Junior to set up his transport to the kingdom of Atlas was a mixed blessing. His aid had made the trip leagues easier than it would have otherwise been, but it had come with a caveat. Two younger caveats, to be more exact. Taking Melanie and Miltia Malachite with him had been the condition by which Junior’s expertise in clandestine transport was secured. When Roman had asked why he was being forced to take the brats to Atlas, especially considering his track record with the twins (read, the half-dozen times they tried to render extreme violence upon each other, and the fact that their mother still wanted him dead, which in turn meant he couldn’t set foot back in Mistral without Lil’ Miss Malachite’s Spiders looking for his head), his response was, “After all the sh*t that’s just gone down, I don’t have the confidence that I can keep them safe in Vale anymore. And Avalon’s going to Mistral, so I can’t send them home to their mother because wherever that walking corpse goes the apocalypse seems to follow. Patches kept my dad’s criminal network from imploding when you got him blown up, and somehow, you’re on a very small list of people that Patches trusts, so if you want my help, you’re gonna keep them safe.”

And so it was that the hatted hoodlum found himself in this situation, with an unexpected pair of wrenches tossed into his master plan. Though he was confident he could turn this to his favor… though he missed it when the only kid in his life didn’t talk. Case in point, he could hear Melaine whining about the fact that the mattresses were hard as she walked into the room that Torchwick had converted into an impromptu scheming room, which gave him half a mind to steal some softer mattresses just to shut her up. The pale green-eyed twin with the longer hair still had it at the same length, with the bangs just about reaching said eyes (which continued to bear cyan highlights), but her outfit had undergone an overhaul for the colder kingdom. A long sleeved shirt that matched her eyes was for the most part hidden by an off white coat with cyan fur along the edge of the hood, the sleeves, and the bottom of the coat itself. The coat went slightly below her hips, but not enough to impede the movement of her legs, and split into two separate tails at the back. Boots of an identical color scheme, also adorned by fur at the top, went to just below her knees, her blades now sitting on the back of this pair of footwear in the place of her heels, though the boots were large enough that a function was added to retract them to a point where they appeared to merely be sharpened heels. While Melanie had complained, Junior had insisted that walking around in Atlas with obviously weaponized footwear was a terrible idea. A pair of thick cyan pants kept her legs from the polar air, and her gloves, while the same design as the ones she wore in Vale, were now far more insulated. The white, flower-shaped hairpin on the left side of her head had been replaced with a much smaller rectangular (in a horizontal manner) one.

Her (thankfully) quieter twin Miltiatades (literally everyone except her own mother called her Miltia), younger by a pair of minutes, with identical hair, eyes and eye-shadow (though the first was a shorter bob-cut, albeit it still obscured her eyebrows, and the last was a heavy red), wasn’t joining in the complaining, but she’d also changed her attire for the colder climate. A crimson shirt sat beneath her buttoned coat, which was red patterned with black streaks, resembling her old dress, but without actual literature stamped on it. The coat went past her waist, transitioning into a half-skirt with black fur lining the bottom edge, hood (which was down), and the sleeves. Her heels were replaced with knee-high red boots with black lining, and thick, black leggings were visible in the space between the boots and the skirt. Her claws (attached to her red gloves) had undergone a much more extensive mechashift upgrade than her sister’s heels, able to fully retract and be hidden, with lower caliber pistols added in to boot. Not something that would even bother a bulkier or more heavily armored Grimm, but the addition of a ranged option would certainly shake things up for anyone that fought the Malachites. It seemed that the more mellow twin had taken a page from Blondie-- Yang’s, Roman begrudgingly corrected himself, book after the beating she’d given them scant days before the start of Beacon’s least fortunate school year.

Kids… Roman grumbled in his head, already mentally adding an exception for his precious ice-cream cone, however far away Neo was at the moment. Roman took a deep breath, calming himself down. “Look, Mel, we got here two days ago, I wasn’t expecting I’d have to chaperone you two brats for this escapade, and I’m still getting settled in and haven’t even gotten past brainstorming a plan right now. Can you just wait a couple more days until you whine to me about some dust-damned mattresses!”

“But, like, they suck!” Melanie responded.

Roman forced himself to calm down, and then gave his reply. “Look, if I agree to make sure that the first thing we steal here are some better mattresses, will you shut up?”

The older twin scoffed, but still replied with a “Yeah, whatever,” before she strutted back out of the room. Roman put his head in his hands and sighed. He took out a small pocket mirror and checked his reflection. He muttered a curse under his breath when he saw bags under his eyes, realizing that he’d need to call it a day early to make sure he got enough sleep. While he’d added some thermals as an underlayer for the colder climate, a demand to keep his image meant that he’d done minimal changes to his outfit. Granted, it had undergone a minor overhaul, though. The shoes and the pants were the same as before, though with the added theremals and the fact that the whole of Mantle was heated with dust meant that he could get away with unbuttoning his white overcoat. Or well, his new overcoat. Nice and white, with red on the inside, looking just like the old one, save that it split into two tails at the back, which both went down to his knees, and a more flared collar, almost looking like a Mistralian hand fan framing his neck, with the tips just shy of either shoulder. Just beneath the collar the coat flared open on both sides again, and small pins with his jack-o-lantern emblem rested on each corner. Visible beneath the open overcoat was a brown vest, buttoned diagonally from roughly halfway down its height on the right side to the bottom middle, the last three brown (of a slightly lighter shade) buttons visible. Beneath that, one could see the top of the black turtleneck shirt he wore, and over it, but under the coat, was his gray scarf, now tied at the back instead of the front. His beloved bowler hat (the seventh one since his arrival in Vale all those years back) and his facial appearance were kept the same, though the feather in its red band had been dyed, pink on the bottom, brown at the tip, with a small streak of white in between, in order to remind himself of Neo. Damn, he missed her already. Lastly, the black gloves that now almost reached his elbows were held in place at the wrists and forearms by some red straps. Said gloves also had some lightning dust (for now) hidden away, so he had a nasty surprise waiting for anyone who thought they could get into a melee with him and only have to worry about his cane, which on the surface, had only undergone a single change: the bit of previously red plastic between the curved head and the shaft had now had a few more colors to its name.

He was brought out of his self-assessment by his scroll chiming, and he looked over it to see an official broadcast was being sent to every scroll in range by the Atlesian council. Deciding to sate his curiosity, and hearing the twins doing similar in their own room, he opened the broadcast, and listened as the voice of General (and two council seat holder) James Ironwood began to issue from the scroll’s speaker.

“People of the kingdom of Atlas. I’m sure many of you are concerned about recent events in Vale, and how disastrous they nearly were. Therefore, I will be the bearer of good news. We have, earlier today, received word via courier that Vale expects its tower, and therefore global communications, to be repaired within a year. Rest assured, Atlas is doing its best to send experts and materials to expedite those repairs, so that timeframe will likely be even shorter in reality. In more local news, much like the media, I’m sure many of you have also been speculating on the alleged news that the Maidens of the Seasons from folklore are actually real, and that the attack on Vale was carried out to attempt to steal the powers of one.” There was a pause that lasted a pair of seconds, almost as if Ironwood was building up the dramatic effect of his next sentence. “We have confirmed the validity of those claims.” Huh, Roman thought, thought they were gonna deny that for sure. “A contact in Vale who was involved with the events around the Fall Maiden there--” You mean yourself, Roman corrected in his head “--has informed us that throughout their time keeping the Maidens hidden from the world, that one Maiden of each season typically resided in one kingdom, and that the powers would typically return to that kingdom if the Maiden in question left before their passing. The Maiden on Solitas is the Winter Maiden. And… unfortunately, the Kingdom of Atlas does not have the whereabouts of the current Winter Maiden. The council has come to the unanimous decision that we desire to put this woman in our custody for her protection, and to this end ask that if she hears this broadcast, to come to us, so we can offer our best and brightest to ensure her safety. In addition, the council is offering a hundred thousand lien reward for any information that directly leads to finding the Winter Maiden, and a ten thousand lien reward for any indirect information that leads to that same goal. We ask that no one confronts the Winter Maiden, as her powers means she has the potential to do great harm to even the best specialists we can offer, but to instead report what they know as soon as possible. The Atlesian military will do its utmost to ensure this goal ourselves, but when it concerns the safety of the entire kingdom, we humbly ask all of our people to do their part in ensuring the safety of the whole. Thank you for your time, and if you see something, say something.”

Roman took in a breath as the broadcast finished. Well, that’s interesting. First and foremost was that Atlas was out looking for the Winter Maiden, which meant they didn’t already have her. But more importantly was what he read between the lines. Atlas was stepping its game up in looking for her. Which meant that there would be an increased presence of military units and law enforcement in Mantle, which in turn meant his job just got harder. Then again, the challenge is half the fun. He grinned, before a yawn forced its way to his lips. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll move stealing those mattresses up the time table. Or just buy them outright. I mean, what use is all my stolen lien if I ain’t gonna spend it?

(Whitley)

The Schnee manor was quiet. It was a bit ironic, considering that the head of the family was using it as his headquarters to plan his (disastrous) campaign for a council seat, but all things considered, it was also quite fitting considering the state the Schnee family was in. His mother Willow, forced into a marriage she didn’t care for with a man she didn’t love, forced to have three kids with him and watch as he subverted the company her father had founded. More often than not, she was found with alcohol in hand, her coping mechanism turned into an addiction as she became a shell of the woman she was. His eldest sister, Winter, in an act of revolt against Father, had renounced her inheritance of the SDC and joined the Atlesian Military. His father, Jaques, who saw even his own children as tools to further his own goals in the amassing of wealth and power. And Weiss, who’d left them alone, left their mother behind, left him behind, to galvanize with some foreigners in Vale, one of which was a Belladonna, just to spite her Father, who retaliated by disinheriting her and appointing him to take on leadership in the SDC when he passed. She’d certainly accomplished that last goal, as the knowledge of the now-deceased Adam Taurus having the company initials branded to his face meant Father now had the record of worst electoral polling in Atlesian history, and it was all he could do to throw money at his lawyers to stop anyone trying to further investigate the company.

Whitley Schnee, youngest sibling and only son in his dysfunctional family, sighed as he stalked the halls of the manor, on his way to Father’s study, since he’d requested a meeting with him. He walked alone down an immaculate halfway with crystal clear windows letting the pale sun shine in. Out of force of habit, he glanced at his reflection in the glass, to ensure nothing was amiss for Father to critique. Not a single snow white hair was out of place, the length kept short, and mostly pushed to the left, save for an intentionally undisturbed cowlick. The light blue eyes he had flicked over his fair complexion, verifying a lack of blemishes. He drew his gaze back ahead, the only sound in the hallway being the taps of his black dress shoes on the floor. His right hand moved from its position behind his navy blue trousers-- perhaps I should look into breaking my habit of having one or more hands behind my back, he thought --drawing upwards to adjust his light blue vest, which had two lower pockets, a right breast pocket (in which sat a black handkerchief), and buttons that were colored an off white that had a hint of a faint, paler blue. That same color graced his short sleeved untucked dress shirt, said sleeves fastened just above his elbows by navy blue cuffs, each bearing twin gold buttons.

At least Klein made crepes this morning, Whitley mused, trying to find some kind of silver lining to his situation. He was brought back to the present when he arrived at the door to Father’s office, hearing voices inside.

“I’m not talking about the good of my company, I’m talking about the good of Atlas! Our entire kingdom!” Father shouted.

“That is a load of garbage, and you know it,” the voice of General James Ironwood replied evenly, and in a significantly more calm manner, as Whitley gently put an ear to the door without moving to open it.

“I beg your pardon?” Father barked back.

“Jacques, will you please just hear me out?”

A glass slammed onto the chess table in his office, and the sound of a chair creaking issued as Father shifted in his seat. “You are a trusted friend and ally to this family, James, but what you’re suggesting is absurd!” Father continued at a softer volume, a fist slamming into an armrest giving emphasis to the statement.

“You are blowing it out of proportion,” Ironwood calmly replied.

“The council will never agree to this.”

“You forget,” the general said, his tone picking up an undercurrent of hostility, “that I hold two seats on that council, and that your own prospects of election to that body grow more unlikely by the day.”

“Your dust embargo has already cost me millions, I can promise you I have not forgotten!”

“So this is about you!”

Deciding that enough was enough, and that it would be better to get this over with before Ironwood put Father in an even worse mood, Whitley knocked on the door, and when the conversation on the other side halted, he hesitantly said, “Father? You wanted to see me?”

Footsteps issued from inside, the door opening as Whitley took a look at the general on the other side. He’d grown stubble since his return from Vale, and his hair was more unkempt as well. Above the waist was a white, double-breasted tailcoat, belted at the waist, with dark blue and black accents, most prominently at the cuffs and shoulder pieces. Beneath that was a black collared shirt and a red tie. Both hands bore white gloves, and his white pants hung over his black boots. “Mister Schnee,” he began evenly, “my apologies. I should have been gone by now.”

The apology seemed genuine enough, so Whitley quietly murmured, “It wasn’t an issue sir. I’m sure whatever you and Father had to speak about is important.”

Ironwood’s eyes showed pity for a split second, and Whitley felt a spike of anger at that, but he pushed it down even as the general’s gaze hardened once more and he turned back to Father. “We’ll continue this at another time.”

“Indeed,” Father spoke tersely. His cold blue eyes showed that the argument was far from over. “Klein can show you out.”

The general scoffed. “Don’t worry, I know the way out. Until next time, Jacques.” He looked to Whitley once more. “We would be willing to go over an application to Atlas Academy, Mister Schnee. We’ll be back in session before you know it.” His gaze softened as he looked at Whitely for a few more seconds, before he strolled out of the room, the door gently clicking shut behind him. Leaving him all alone, with Father.

He looked up at the man who didn’t raise him. Jacques Schnee was fair-skinned with white, slicked-back hair. He had a large, thick white mustache on his upper lip. He was dressed in a pure white double-breasted blazer with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket, below which was a light-blue dress shirt, vest and a white clip-on tie, printed with the Schnee emblem. His silver-colored wedding ring was on his right hand.

“Can you believe that despite what we did to save Vale, that people still blame Atlas for what happened to Beacon?” Father complained, as he walked over to his desk and sat down in his chair, spinning it to gaze at a portrait of his younger self on the wall. “Ironwood can’t even save a kingdom right!” he was now back to shouting. “It’s a wonder he wasn’t stripped of his rank!” He resumed grumbling. “I suppose the council trusts him, for better or worse.”

“I would trust him,” Whitley hesitantly responded. “Regardless of what others think, he did save Vale. Though… it would be better if he hadn’t banned us from exporting dust to other kingdoms.” There, he thought, support a man doing his best in terrible circ*mstances, but then immediately and preemptively agree with Father to placate him. That should keep his mood even.

“Yes, ‘a precautionary measure,’ at least until we’re sure no one will declare war on us,” Father mocked, “How anyone would see that as sound logic is beyond me.” He took a breath. “Which is why the Schnee Dust Company will be holding a charity event in the coming days.” Father adopted his best “business pitch” voice, “We need to show the people of Remnant that we are on their side. That we are all victims of the attack on Beacon.”

“That’s wonderful news, Father,” and Whitley could be completely honest with that sentiment, “and it will also help the company’s image, along with your own prospects at the election.”

“Indeed,” Father agreed, “And it would make the both of those look even better if the family were to present a united front for the event. Unfortunately, with Willow indisposed, and your sisters off in the world and in the military, that means in order to project an image of our family’s philanthropy and strength, that you will need to attend this event.”

“Of course Father,” he immediately agreed, whatever opinions he had pushed aside in order to appease the man, “I’ll start preparing immediately.”

“Good, that’s my boy. You’re free to get on with your day.” Father opened a terminal, already getting back to work, so Whitley egressed from the office as fast as he politely could. When the door clicked shut behind him, he took a few steps to the side, before leaning against the wall and slouching back as he let out an explosive sigh. He slid further down to the floor, wrapping his arms about his knees. He felt anger suddenly surge through him, and he clenched his fists and grit his teeth. You left us, Weiss. Did you even think about us when you told Father you wouldn’t return home? Did you even think about your mother, and what it would do to her? What it did to Father? The anger started draining. What you did to me…

“Hot coffee, Mister Schnee?” came the sophisticated voice of the butler that had done more to raise them than their parents, Klein Sieben. Whitley jerked his head up, looking alarmed that he hadn’t heard the man’s approach, before rationalizing that a butler learned to move quietly to avoid notice as he did his duties. At least it was Klein, so he didn’t have to worry about the effect on the family image of someone seeing him in that state. Nonetheless, he stood up, hands reaching for the proffered tray as he retrieved a steaming cup of the stimulant, grabbing the mug and taking a grateful sip.

“Thank you, Klein,” Whitley responded.

“I always find that he keeps his study dreadfully cold,” Klein offered as a way of response, light brown (at least at the moment) eyes twinkling in mirth. He was a man that was roughly Whitley’s own height, slightly heavyset and with balding brown hair and a large mustache. His butler’s uniform consisted of a white collared long sleeved shirt, a black vest with a cyan tie, black trousers, and black shoes, to which he personalized with the addition of a silver pocket watch kept in his right vest pocket, and clipped to one of the two rows of silver colored buttons on the vest.

“But do you know what I think?” Klein asked, moving the tray that had borne the coffee Whitley was currently enjoying to block the view of his face, before lowering it to show that his semblance had changed his eye color to red, and with it, his personality. Now in a much more grumpy tone, yet still with a smile, he continued. “I think it’s to balance out all his hot air.” He chuckled.

Whitley turned around, gazing at the door behind him, terrified that Father had heard, but when nothing happened for a few tense seconds, he turned back, whispering, “Klein! Father’s right there!”

Klein blinked as he sneezed, and when his eyes opened they were now light blue. In a much higher pitched voice, he said, “Oh, sir, my apologies for making you tense, I… ah… ah…” He sneezed yet again, and then a third time, and Whitley found a smile starting to break across his face despite his best efforts. Klein brushed a finger against his lower nose, looking down at it as he wiggled his mustache, and said, “Ahhhhh,” blinking, his eyes now yellow, he continued, his voice more reasonably pitched and much more jovial, “there’s my happy little snowball.” His grin was wide, infectious and spreading to the youngest Schnee near-instantly.

Whitley sighed, feeling slightly better once more. “Thank you again, Klein.”

()

A/N: Bear with me here, this is an entirely original plot thread I’m coming up with (besides like 3 canon scenes where Whitely is taking Weiss’ place), and I have no idea of the specifics I want to take it to. Honestly, as of late April 2021, my plan for this consists of: Roman and the Malachite twins make merry mayhem for the SDC in Mantle, run into Robyn Hill and her Happy Huntresses, shenanigans ensue, Whitley gets (unwillingly) involved at some point, [REDACTED] shows up and causes problems of the violent variety, [ALSO REDACTED] shows up and caused even WORSE problems of the mass murder variety, and eventually the fustercluck down there gets so bad that Ironwood and the Ace-Ops get involved, and at some point Roman rolls the dice and embarks on a dangerous gambit directly against Jacques Schnee himself. The latter stages of the plan (everything past [REDACTED] showing up) are also entirely up in the air, and I may scrap them and go for something else entirely. I kinda have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m excited to try.

Now, Roman’s got an image to upkeep, though he’s got layers of clothing underneath. So while the design is new, it's also similar to the old. I drew heavy inspiration (read, basically copied) from an idea of a timeskip Roman that was drawn by fudgemintguardian on tumblr. And also electric gloves, because those are cool, and I wanted to give Roman something to up his game with. Not enough to shoot electricity, but enough to shock people, block weapons and the occasional bullet safely, and augment punches. Maybe even short out an electronic lock or two, and definitely the odd droid. The Malachite twins are more free to change their fashion statements up, however, so I went with a more heavily winterized version of their previous outfits.

You may be wondering why Atlas just publicly put a bounty out for a Maiden that we (the readers) know they currently have. No, I’m not changing canon and making up a different Winter Maiden. There’s a reason Ironwood lied (beyond the fact that Robyn isn’t currently holding his hand). That reason, of course, is misdirection. The world now knows about the Maidens, because of Patches and Roman, and then the news traveling by word of mouth and by letters after the CCT went down. Since the people know about this, they want to know who the woman with insanely powerful magic in the kingdom is. If Ironwood says he has the Winter Maiden, that tells Salem she merely has to attack Atlas Academy to get to her. If he convinces his fellow councilors to lie (if he even tells them to begin with, I haven’t actually decided if he’s shared anything yet), however, Salem will be forced to conclude Atlas has no idea where the Winter Maiden is. Now she has to clandestinely search the entirety of Mantle and Atlas, and there’s also a chance the Maiden is living as a hermit somewhere else on Solitas, if she’s even on that continent in the first place. Basically, by lying, and offering some cash he will never have to actually pay, Ironwood forces anyone after the power to run on a wild goose chase, at minimal cost to himself beyond making it look like his military is searching for someone who’s already secretly in his custody. And since Roman only knows that the Maidens are real, and not who any (besides Emerald) are, he falls perfectly for the ruse.

Also, hey, Whitley is relevant since Weiss is doing Epic Team Boat Trip things with her team on the other side of Remnant. I’m gonna admit, I wanna do something with him, (because Volume 8 made me like him, which is probably the only good thing to come from the emotional trainwreck that volume enacted upon my soul-- I MISS YOU PENNY!!! WHY, RT?!? WHY BRING HER BACK JUST TO KILL HER AGAIN?!?!? WHY PLAY WITH MY HEART LIKE THIS?!?), even if as of writing this A/N I’m not really sure what that something is. I think I’m gonna enjoy playing around with him. Maybe not as much as I’m looking forwards to more Oscar, but I am looking forwards to Whitley as well.

Whitley not entering his father’s study during the argument between Jackass and Ironwood is a small change, but one that's important to point out the distinction between him and Wiess. As are other things that are slightly different from canon. I also moved up the timetable for the charity event from weeks to days because it won’t really fit for the vague plans I got for Atlas at the moment. I don’t really know why I added that last sentence, as this is all still subject to some pretty heavy change, but whatever.

As a quick addition several months after I first wrote this, it turns out that I’d been spelling Whitley as Whitely. Going back and correcting every single instance of that was the opposite of fun. I swear to Gwyn, this is like me thinking vermillion was a shade of teal/green all over again…

I’m also aiming to move back to more standard chapter lengths going forwards. Anyways, see you all next time!