The woman with raven hair and ember eyes drew back her drawstring. So this is how it ends. Pyrrha tried to believe, that like she'd heard in so many tales, she had no regrets; that she was unafraid as she stared into the face of her executioner. But searching through herself she found no such thing. She regretted not kissing Jaune sooner, but she also regretted kissing him at all. Would he be able to move on now? Just how much would he blame himself? She pulls him close to her and pours all her feelings for him into that one kiss, and then goes and gets herself killed.
The thought brought her more pain than the arrow in her heel did.
She hoped he wouldn't blame himself, though she knew he would, and that only made the pain, the guilt, worse. She regretted not being able to tell Nora and Ren goodbye; the pain was less for that though, they had each other, they were partners, they would move forward together as they always had. She wished she could've seen her home once more, the gentle townhome of white brick in Mistral with an equal parts intimidating and welcoming bronze trimmed door. She wished for so much, she didn't want to die, hell, she was terrified of the end that creeped ever closer to her. She could feel it almost breathing down her neck, whispering in her ear, as the woman with the raven hair seemed to pull back the bowstring in almost slow motion.
She was scared, so very scared. She wanted to grow old beside her lover, preferably Jaune, and die peacefully surrounded by family, but that was not to be, and she had made it so. She was scared for all the people she held dear. She had failed to stop the raven haired woman, just as Professor Ozpin had moments before, and now her friends would die because of her failure, them and all of Vale.
The bowstring was taut now, at full draw. The shattered moon above shone down brightly on the chaos below; fitting that such a broken thing would be shining over the remnants of Vale so brightly tonight. From far below she could hear the sounds of battle, swords clashing, Grimm bellowing in agony, fury, and just sanguinary bloodlust. But up here, atop Beacon's once glimmering tower, it all seemed so distant. It was silent here, save for her own labored breathing and the quick, excited breaths of the woman with raven hair.
With a start Pyrrha realized these were her last moments. Shouldn't she be thinking of something nice? Something happy to stave off the horror of the now? She should, shouldn't she? She desperately poured over her memories searching for one to give her peace, to give her strength. The ones from before this year were sparse and scattered: a motherly smile here, the simple nod of her father there, but nothing remarkable. The ones from this year though...there were so many: the shocking white of Jaune's dress as it fluttered and shook as she watched him dance, the smile on Ren and Nora's faces as they joined in, her own inability to look away from this silly, lovely, incredible man, and his rather exposed, and very toned shoulders and collarbone. The warmth and steadiness she felt only a few days ago as she leaned her head on his shoulder; the steady support he provided, and the overwhelming joy and shock she felt when she realized his hand was on hers, before it faded away to contentment as the warm orange sun shone down on them. The manic laugh of Nora a mountain of tables above her as they utterly destroyed the cafeteria in the ultimate food fight, the enchanting smell of Ren's pancakes matched with the first rays of light on the weekends.
She remembered the warmth, the heat, she had felt as she pressed her lips against Jaune's, the joy, and the sadness. She wished they had shared more kisses over their time here, she wished the one memory she had of such a thing wasn't tinted with the inescapable sadness of destiny. But that was not to be.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the twang-thwap of a bowstring as it released, the taut cord smacking against the forearm of the raven haired woman as it launched her end. There was an overwhelming, all consuming, pain in her chest, and she instinctively gasped, winded by the fire that tore through her breast, but pain replaced the air as she struggled to breath. She couldn't cry out, the arrowhead inside her sternum prevented her from doing so. All she could do was whimper over and over again, each one growing ever softer.
The world before her began to darken, the colors fading away to muted grays save for the gleaming white of the woman's smile and the burning yellow of her eyes. She could feel her head lolling softly forwards as everything began to darken, but she didn't have the strength to do anything about it. In a world away Pyrrha registered that the woman had caught her head, preventing her from collapsing, and that she was doing...something to her body; it might have been painful, but she was beyond that, consumed by the ever fading light of death as the darkness enveloped her. She thought she heard something soft thud to her left, but it was too late. Everything went black.
Time seemed to pass, but Pyrrha had no way of knowing that for certain. She thought there was supposed to be something kind waiting for those who died, if they deserved it, but all she found was blackness. A dark so dark, a black so black, that it may have well as been a mountain: impassable and implacable.
With a start she realized that she was drifting towards the dark, and as she inched closer to it she could feel the negativity it radiated: hatred, loneliness, jealousy, bitterness, anger, betrayal, every negative emotion known to humanity seemed to emanate from the mountain, as it were, rocking her body as she floated through the void towards it. The negativity was so intense, so solid that it left her feeling hollow; if this was the fate that awaited her after death then she must've done something truly terrible in her life, must've hurt someone more than they could've ever deserved.
Fear gripped her heart, her mind, her whole form as she drifted ever closer to the dark. She prepared herself for immense pain, but to her surprise felt nothing as she passed into it. Surely something so malicious would instantly cause her every fiber to become alight with suffering, right?
Despite herself, and the massive evil around her, a tiny flicker of hope began to burn in her mind: maybe this was only temporary? Maybe it was a mistake? A test? Maybe she would be greeted with peace after she passed through? As if on cue a laugh echoed through the dark, like it could feel the spark of hope intruding in its territory, and suddenly every malicious feeling about it seemed to grow tenfold, the darkness itself becoming more solid until it encased her, like being buried alive.
A woman's voice reverberated through her new reality; that was unexpected. Instead of a deep, booming, and hellish voice, the voice that spoke was higher in pitch and softer-spoken, yet somehow deeper in hate, in distaste for her. She couldn't make out what she said, the voice seemed to emanate from the point where she could hear, but not understand. It began to creep closer, growing in intensity, but shrinking in volume as it did, and yet still, she couldn't make out any words. But the tone, the hate, the jealousy, and sheer negativity that the voice emanated chilled her to her very core. Another cold, derisive laugh, so close that it seemed to be coming from scant millimeters away from her ear. And then a sharp and burning pain erupted in her sternum, she tried to scream, but when she opened her mouth the darkness entered, like she was drowning. But this… this was not water, that much was obvious. It moved slowly and deliberately through her, scorching every part of her insides and outsides that it touched, it was a pain so deep and intense that she could feel it in her very soul. Everything burned. It would've been terrible if it happened for only a brief period of time, but the torture seemed to stretch on for an eternity, the blackness taking it's time transforming her, enveloping her as she begged for the peace of nothingness.
She wasn't sure how long it went on, she only knew that it seemed interminable; the voice had come and gone through it all, returning to briefly intensify the pain and laugh. She could tell from the tone that it was mocking her, but she still could not understand. She didn't care, she just wanted it to stop. She could feel the darkness as it transformed her, she wasn't sure how, but she could tell that she was changing. That was good, that meant this torture had a goal, that maybe it wouldn't continue indefinitely; she didn't care what it changed about her, so long as it stopped.
More time, more agony, more laughs, more mockery. How long had it been? Did it matter? She could feel that the darkness was almost done, that she was almost completely transformed, that she was nearing the end of her suffering. But, against all logic, a light appeared in the distant darkness. A soft light through the blackness, a tiny little orb floating through the Dark as if it was searching for something. The darkness around her seemed to ignore it, either that or it was unaware of the light's presence.
It moved ever closer to her on an erratic, zig-zagging path, but then the orb stopped. Scant feet before her it ceased its movement and just hovered, staring at her. As bizarre as it seemed, it had noticed her. The tiny thing began circling her form, scanning her up and down before coming to a rest in front of her face. She stared at it, and it stared at her, a funny thing to have a staring contest with an orb of light.
They stared and stared before it shuddered, before gingerly floating downward to her chest. There, it examined the hole in her sternum, where the darkness had begun her torture, and its form pulsed ever quicker as it did so. It seemed to hesitate there for a long while, the light within the orb shifting and swirling hypnotically. Maybe she was crazy to associate humanity with this light, but after an eternity of endless torture she realized it would be surprising if she wasn't crazy. It shuddered slightly, as if making up it's mind, before floating back in front of her face, so close this time that it was touching her nose. A feeling of peaceful warmth spread through her body at the touch of the light, like sitting by a campfire and laughing while surrounded by loved ones. And then, it began to brighten. Like a hive waking, the darkness began to swarm towards the intruding light, but it was too late. In a flash of white it enveloped her, the suffering stopped and she could see nothing but white.
Her body told her she was falling, but all her eyes could verify was the whiteness. The sudden, aching thud of her body colliding with a hard tiled surface verified what her eyes could not. The most immediate thing she realized was that, save for the dull throbbing of her chest from the impact, the pain had stopped. It was gone. She couldn't help herself, she sobbed. She trembled and shook and sobbed, wailing in relief. After so long it was over.
She wasn't sure how long she stayed like that, her body and mind registering nothing but the lack of the ever present agony that she had been made to endure for so long. At some point her vision came back, only to be blurred by tears of relief as she cried. Slowly, her breathing began to steady and her eyes hazily focused on the only thing she could see: the ground. It was a worn gray tile, the cracks between filled with moss and lichen. It was cold to the touch, as if it hadn't felt the need to be warm in many years. She thought she should get up, but her body argued against it: for the first time in who knows how long she wasn't in agony, she should enjoy it, and the uncomfortable chill of the tile beneath her could wait.
More laying there, more examining the scuffs and grooves of the tile, and eventually her body resigned to her mind's insistence that she should rise. She pushed herself shakily out of the prone position she had been lying in, and the first thing she realized was that the room she was in had no roof. Huh. That's unusual. Her eyes gradually moved downwards from the dark sky where there should've been a roof, and towards the floor. Cogs of all shapes and sizes lay scattered around it, forming mountains of rusted steel that glittered weakly in the starlight. Remnants of what must've once been a majestic wall encircling the round room surrounded her, with high, arching windows, intricately carved and evenly spaced columns, and-oh no.
The majestic abandonment of the room was ruined by the massive black...thing perched on the entire right side of the tower. Its wings were spread to their full extent, easily half a hundred meters from wingtip to wingtip. It's body was adorned with the scars of a hundred-thousand battles, bony, ivory-colored plates with red trim adorned key parts of its form, even stretching across its abdomen like twisted ribs. The same colored spikes rose from its back in two rows, one on the left and the other on the right, its face was entirely covered in a magnificent white mask that its top teeth seemed to erupt straight out of. Its mouth didn't end at the jaw like every other ordinary creature, but instead stretched down it's neck in a twisted and unnatural fashion, as if a child had forgotten where mouths should end, and still absentmindedly drew the line of its mouth down the neck far past its natural boundaries. It's monstrous mouth oozed frozen blackness, and was punctuated by deformed fangs that reached out as if to spear the very air. And like two glowing rubies, its eyes stared back at her with malevolence only surpassed by the darkness which she had resided in for so long. Her mouth moved without any conscious input.
"Oh."
A/N:
Bum Bum. Still not entirely satisfied with this chapter to be honest, but it's been sitting on my Google Docs for two or three months now and I just want to get it out so I can publish the more interesting chapters for this story that I've written so far. I welcome any and all feedback you may have; never want to stop improving after all.
Also, as a side note, don't expect cover art for the story until, at the very least, the release of Chapter Five as I don't want to spoil anything beforehand.
This fic will be updated weekly for the first 9-10 weeks, and ideally through its whole life, however I only have ten chapters written at the moment so I can only guarantee the first 9-10 weeks as weekly updates.
9/9/2016, 10:52am: Updated chapter format so that the whole thing isn't a freaking wall of text, Chapter 2 format update coming later today.