Age Four
Tyrian's memory of the first time that he molted is vague. It feels like more like a nightmare than a distant memory gained in a far off world that didn't exist anymore.
He was a boy then- following after someone who kept their tail wrapped tightly around his wrist when they'd go shopping for food or whatever else they needed so that he couldn't stray too far out of sight and into danger.
He doesn't remember much about that person- their face and their voice are lost to him, but he remembers the comforting wrap of a scaled prehensile tail around his wrist, or around his back when he was held close. He remembers the warmth and comfort that had come from such motions.
There was nothing that could quite properly emulate those feelings. That comfort, that love- as distant as those memories were.
The main thing that Tyrian remembered of that first molt was that it was a pain that seemed to swallow up his entire body as his tail outgrew its original carapace. He'd cried for days, and he hadn't been able to bring himself to the point where he was able to eat anything.
It was the first time that he could recall being poked, prodded, or observed.
He was a special case, the doctor had said. He was rare and that meant that they didn't have much of an idea as to what to do with him. It wasn't every day that someone saw an arachnid faunus, even out in the stretches of the desert in which he was raised.
Tyrian doesn't remember which desert it was, but he remembers that there were plenty of faunus there.
Even then, he'd been rare.
When his carapace had finally cracked, he'd needed help to get out of it. That loving person's tail wrapped around him to comfort him as he was helped out of the old shell to reveal the soft skin that would soon harden into yet another armored tail.
Any touch to the limb had hurt, both before and after. After the molt he'd been able to eat again, but he'd had to learn to find ways to get by without injuring his tail- he wasn't protected any longer.
His armor would regrow, with a stronger sheen and a harder exterior. He would learn to adapt.
Tyrian didn't know at the time that it was going to be part of a pattern.
Age Eight
During his second molt, comfort had been impossible to find.
There was no warm tail wrapped around his body to help him through things, there was only the pain of trying to get through it.
There was only the sound of roaring laughter, and the scent of sweets and burned popcorn was so heavy on the air that it left him feeling sick. There was music that was so repetitive that Tyrian was barely able to get it out of his mind for the next twenty years of his life. There was a bed that was little more than a pair of blankets laid out on sheet metal which left him stiff and aching.
This time when he molted his armor, it was different. His tail had been painted over for the purpose of looks, of entertaining- he was the Amazing Deathstalker Boy, that was his claim to fame. Every month he would have to sit down, and one of the women from the circus would repaint his tail.
It was always the same paint job. White and red on the topmost parts of the armor, black on the rest, and then his stinger was always painted a bright shining gold. That was the hardest part to maintain- he'd have to polish it nearly every night to make sure that it stayed up to standards. If the paint chipped, it was up to him to fix it.
That was his fate, though- he was Tyrian, the Amazing Deathstalker Boy. His gold eyes and the paintjob made for a convincing enough guise, and it brought people to come and laugh at the freak. Face paint to make him look more like the monster went a long way.
It hurt. Being laughed at constantly for something he had no control over, the sounds of horrified gasps stuck in his mind, and the popcorn that was thrown at him left him unable to deal with the scent for the rest of his life. Tyrian would hide as best as he could, and he'd cower away from anyone that got too close most of the time.
But that was his place- as long as he could do his part and make the people laugh, he was worth keeping around, and so he was kept. The circus had found him, a faunus boy wandering in a desert upset and covered in soot, tears, and blood. He should have been easy prey for the grimm, but none had come. Nobody was sure why.
That was the good thing about circuses- for all of the misery of the people on the inside, the enjoyment of their visitors and audiences was always enough to keep the beasts at bay. Safety came in the business of entertaining.
So he learned how to be good, how to please those above him. He learned to grin and bear the laughter, to talk and to act, how to juggle and how to contort his body in ways that it shouldn't have been able to, all in the name of entertainment.
That was what kept him safe- as long as he kept the masses happy, he wouldn't face punishments. He wouldn't face the bite of a whip or someone's shouts of anger, or the sounds of someone banging against the bars he was kept behind for show to scare him.
After all,it took all of them to keep them safe. Every acrobat, every clown, every entertainer, even down to the orphaned faunus boy that they claimed was a tamed half-grimm because it was a way to scare the masses.
Just like his first molt, it had been a process. He'd started to feel sick for weeks ahead of time, and it only got heightened by the constant scent of sugar on the air. Tyrian had begun to lose his appetite, and it made performing difficult. People started to notice that he was dropping weight rapidly.
People could see his ribs- it had raised eyebrows.
Apparently a guest had brought it up to the owner of the circus- a cruel man with white hair and eyes the color of steel. Tyrian had been the one to pay for it, for something that he couldn't really control.
If he'd tried to eat, he couldn't keep it down. The pain was getting that bad.
Tyrian had been silently waiting for relief to come.
But that night, something had changed. He'd snapped. He'd been backed into a corner and he'd had no choice but to lash out to defend himself. He hadn't wanted to feel that whip on his back, and because of that Tyrian had been ready to fight.
Never in his life had he imagined that he would run his tail through someone else. He'd never thought that he would kill, but he had.
And most terrifyingly, in that moment, it had felt good.
Despite the feeling of something changing in his tail, and the way that his eyes felt like they burned the first time that they switched colors, he'd almost been ready to cry. But there was something about it- there was relief.
He'd laughed. Cried. Broken. He'd been ready to run, but once someone found out what had happened, that had been it. The circus had broken into chaos in the place where they camped, and after that the grimm had come.
They'd come in droves. Tents and vehicles were set fire to, people were killed.
For the most part, that night was a blur in his memory. He remembered finding a knife or two to protect himself with that night. Mostly, he'd used his tail, despite the pain that was overtaking his body.
Somehow, he'd been the last one standing. He was bloody, he was broken, and he couldn't stop crying.
Young Tyrian had cried, he'd prayed for someone or something to come and save him- to take him away from that horrible place and protect him.
At first, he'd thought that she'd been an angel. A celestial being sent from on high to answer his prayers- whether she was even real or not was something that Tyrian hadn't been able to even begin to identify until she reached out for him with an open hand, pearl white and covered in dark veins like lace. Her eyes had been the color of rubies, rather than the burning red of the grimm's eyes.
She was what they had wanted him to be.
A monster in human form.
When she walked, the grimm stopped. They didn't turn to attack, but rather followed after her like worshippers following a Goddess. She could offer him safety, and so when she reached out with him as a saviour from another realm, Tyrian took her help.
The woman had a name- Salem. She'd asked him his, and he'd only been able to answer with his first name. She had told him that it was a fitting name, but asked why he was painted like one of the monsters.
Tyrian hadn't been able to answer that question.
The paint on his tail had either stained red or worn and chipped from use when Tyrian had needed to defend himself against what was happening. The carapace along his stinger had finally cracked.
He'd been with his saviour for two days when that armor finally split the entire way and he was able to get out of it. The Goddess saw to it that he was fed, saw to it that his wounds were treated, and made sure that he felt safe when he was with her.
Tyrian was sure that it was a sign of love, of wanting. When his soft skin finally hardened back into armor, Salem had been proud. This was his true form after all, not a child playing at a monster because that was what made the people happy.
This time, the armor was even harder than it had been before. The split along his stinger had reformed into a duct of sorts from which his venom could flow more freely.
When she saw what he was capable of, she smiled. She reached out for him, a deity bringing comfort, and she gave him a chance at a life- one where he would serve her and her alone.
Tyrian accepted.
Once again, he learned to adapt.
He grew from his terror, and found safety in his newfound ability to defend himself.
Age Twelve
He was only twelve the third time that his tail was about to molt once more. This time, he was ready for it, the Queen had made sure of that. She'd given him a chance to figure out what was going on with the limb, and this time, she'd even gotten a friend of hers to help.
Tyrian was about the age at which other children would begin training at the various smaller combat schools around Remnant. Had he been a normal boy in MIstral, he would have been sent off to Sanctum for training. But Tyrian wasn't normal, and his Queen liked to keep him close.
He was safe there, after all, as long as he stayed by her side and under her watchful eye.
But that wasn't a comfort which would be able to last forever.
He was special, after all. He was going to be her tool, her greatest weapon out in the field once he was old enough and strong enough to hold his own. It wasn't as though he hadn't gone on missions for her before, but there was only so much that he could do without being noticed.
People tended to turn their heads when they saw a child travelling alone, as society deemed decent.
But oh, how lucky he was to have a gift for violence. How lucky he was to be built to kill, with a tail that he could so easily hide around his body. All that he had to do normally was wrap it up around him, and if he was careful enough it was going to be possible for him to just peek the sharp side of his sting out the back of his coat. All he had to go was graze someone and inject them with just a few drops of venom that he had barely learned to control.
A gift for killing like that meant that when it came time for him to adjust and prepare for his tail to change once again, it was important that he was able to rest and prepare himself for the process. Nothing could go without a hitch, for his sake and for the sake of pleasing the Goddess.
Any good weapon or tool was best kept sharp, that was what she had said when she'd talked to him about it. She was confident that she had found a metaphorical whetstone to make him stronger.
Tyrian found himself losing his appetite about a month in advance this time around. He could deal with that- it was something that he'd gone through in the past. The exhaustion was manageable, the pain was something that he was better at dealing with too.
As it turned out, once he'd been chewed on by a beowulf or two, dealing with some intense pressure in his tail was much less of a concern for him.
But this time, when Salem got wind of the fact that he was getting ready to molt, she made sure that he was looked after and cared for. She kept him feeling loved, treasured, wanted.
It would be the second time that he would end up with a doctor who would poke and prod at him. This time, the intent was a bit different than a man simply trying to offer comfort to a small child and his parents.
Salem introduced him for the first time to one of her associates, a certain Doctor Arthur Watts- he'd come all the way from Atlas, she said. Tyrian had seen him before in his Queen's castle, but it was always in passing.
He was a child- expected to stay out of sight and out of mind during the days. He'd get his training from Hazel from time to time when he needed to learn to fight, but mostly he stayed out of the way until his Goddess needed him, whether it was for entertainment, or to aid her in some task that she surely didn't truly need him for.
That was how he maintained his Goddess' favor, serving whenever she called him to aid- no matter how inconsequential the task may have seemed. .
Doctor Watts had scowled when he'd first seen Tyrian- something that Tyrian would one day learn was more Watts' resting expression than a true reflection of his moods and opinions. Arthur Watts didn't enjoy anything and he didn't approve of anything, unless it was a chance to poke at others with barbed words.
When Tyrian had sat on the man's examination table and fully uncurled his tail away from his body, it had been under the loving eye of the Goddess. Watts had said nothing- something Tyrian would later learn was only a result of the Queen's presence.
Watts had taken his time to learn about Tyrian's tail. Once again, someone called him rare when he was there for examination. The good Doctor talked about him in terms of science as he took down measurements and studied Tyrian's tail as much as he could.
It was the first time that Tyrian would learn how truly rare he was. According to Doctor Arthur Watts, there were likely only about thirty arachnid faunus in the world at any given time.
Scorpions specifically were only a subsection of that- it was entirely possible that he, Tyrian Callows, was truly one of a kind.
In some ways, Tyrian had never felt more alone than that day.
But Watts ultimately helped him.
They sat there in the office for hours upon hours as they searched for ways to make the molting go faster and ways to make it less painful to endure.
Midway through the examination, Watts had found the crack along the underside of Tyrian's tail.
Tyrian was sure that he was never going to be able to forget the way that all of the gentleness had seemed to flow out of Watts all at once as he began to probe at the crack in hopes that he would find something that would be helpful to them.
In theory they would have been able to do just about anything in an attempt to heal the injury if they tried hard enough, but Watts was careful. There would be no experimentation on that day.
The decision was made that it was for the best that they didn't go ahead and force the rest of Tyrian's molting. Forcing it could run the risk of injuring him further. When Tyrian had explained that he would end up in pain for a few days until the new cuticle hardened, that had given Watts a better reason to pull back on things.
But they'd come up with a small solution. When the molting was well underway, then he was to report directly to Arthur, and their Queen would be sure to be there for the actual process. She would offer some sort of gentle comfort in her presence alone, and Tyrian was thankful for it.
Only a kind Queen would accompany one of her loyal subjects in hopes that it would be enough to make him feel safe. For his suffering to be overseen by the woman who years before had taken him in and seen to it that he was comfortable and mostly safe the last time that he had molted as an honor of sorts.
If it wasn't for the fact that he was going through a painful process that left him feeling like he wanted to do nothing more than sleep, that comfort would have been even more powerful. He didn't know whether he'd be able to feel like he could sleep, but at least he would be able to just rest and bask in her warmth.
As the days wore on, Tyrian's exhaustion grew, until finally he heard the sound of his carapace continuing to crack further. That was when he'd gone to Watts, woken the man from his sleep, and the two of them were off to the lab where their Queen would later meet them.
The process wore on, and Watts was careful with him. First the man tested the crack with a nail file to see whether or not it would be a way to further the split and make it easier for Tyrian to finally worm his way out of the old armor in favor of a new skin.
That hadn't worked easily, though it had been enough to weaken parts of the armor so that it split more easily later on when Tyrian was finally able to bend his tail and force it free from the dead part of him.
The solution came in the form of a scalpel while Tyrian laid on his stomach and was left to stare at a spot on the wall to distract himself away from everything that was going on. For just a second, Watts had accidentally nicked the oversensitive skin underneath, and Tyrian hadn't been able to keep back the sob and yelp that escaped him.
But their Goddess was kind- she reached out and took him in her arms as Watts cut along the tail to help him free himself. She'd whispered words to comfort Tyrian through the process, and while he'd been shaking in pain, she hadn't said anything.
Her hand had stroked his hair so that he could find his comfort, even if it was just for a short while. Tyrian would never stop feeling grateful for that. She never commented on the way that his tears wet her gown, or the way that he clung to her like she was the only link he had left to the world.
The process had taken close to two hours, but soon enough they'd been able to end it all. Tyrian had been able to tear free from the tail, and he'd been careful to remove the rest of the old carapace by hand, prying it away from his until he was finally able to relax.
For several days, Tyrian would remain under Watts' careful observation as they waited for his tail to heal and for the fresh skin that covered it to harden into the armored shell that it should have been.
Watts took careful records throughout the entire process, and Tyrian had been okay with that. He felt mostly safe, and once the injury healed the rest of the way, Tyrian felt stronger than he had before.
Once he was ready, he was sent to return to his combat training. Once again, his armor was stronger than it had been before. It shined under the light and it was darker in color than it had ever been before.
Tyrian didn't mind that so much- at least he could take comfort in the fact that he knew that he was stronger. With his tail stronger and healed, he was able to be an even better tool for the Goddess.
When he returned back to combat for the first time, he had laughed in glee.
Oh, the great potential that he had.
He wasn't even a teenager, and once again, he was reminded that he was custom built to kill, all because of some lucky genetics.
The only question was what would happen the next time that he molted, years down the line.
If he was to believe his Goddess' words, next time he wasn't likely to be at the castle. Next time, he would be off being the tool that she wanted him to be.
Tyrian accepted that with glee.
His armor was strong. He could adapt to whatever came next for him to deal with.
He was built for adaptability, it seemed. He wasn't done growing.
When it was time to continue growing, then Tyrian would do so.
Age Sixteen
The next time that Tyrian began to molt, he was stuck off in another part of the world, off on a mission that had been very plainly presented to him as a test, passed down by the Goddess herself so that he could prove his loyalty and usefulness.
There were a lot of places that he would have expected to end up in, but he'd never expected to end up so far away from home when the time came to molt. It was the first time that he was truly left to molt alone, out in the stretches of Vacuo as he searched for the Shallow Sea amongst the sands.
It wasn't the best work that he could have imagined having to do, but Tyrian was glad to have been given the privilege to take it. This was the key to his purpose, his guarantee that he could stay at the Queen's side should he succeed.
When he found the crack, he had been installed in a small village overnight, getting ready to move on to whatever came next when the sun barely began to peek over the dunes in the morning.
If he did well, then he was going to be able to return to the Queen with a small trophy in hand, and he would be received with love and kindness as reward for his victory. All that he had to do was find the Shallow Sea, and return to his Goddess with a shell that seemed to hold whirlpools within it, despite being dry.
But molting was a setback- one that would surely end with Tyrian being later to return than he would have preferred. The Queen didn't take well to tardiness, that was a lesson that Tyrian had learned the hard way many years before. Considering that Tyrian's task was to bring her something great, he couldn't afford to be late.
One did not upset the Queen.
So when he first found himself lacking that desire to hunt and eat, Tyrian had known that he would have to deal with this the hard way. He couldn't afford to be pulled back or to waste time all because he was in a bit of pain. He was almost a proper adult, sent off on his first important solo assignment for the Goddess.
If he screwed this up, then he was going to have hell to pay for it- Tyrian was sure of it.
He had no intention of upsetting the Queen. He would grin and bear the pain the same way that he had before, back when he'd been a boy left to mostly deal with everything on his own. If that didn't work, then he would find ways through this.
When he laid awake at night, stomach-down and with a book in his hand, he had found himself thinking back to that night in the desert amongst the burnt out remains of the circus. He'd molted then, and he'd been able to drag that process forward through nothing more than sheer combat.
Of course, there were some problems with that. It wouldn't work as a strategy anymore, especially when his Goddess' blessing meant that he was able to move outside of the attention of the creatures of grimm when he was away on assignment. She'd kissed him and for just a moment, he'd felt like his skin had burned as the protection that she granted sank in.
If he closed his eyes, he could still vaguely feel her lips on his forehead, warm and comforting. She'd smiled.
But that wasn't the matter- he needed to focus on healing fast enough that he wasn't going to end up being late to return. Tyrian had work to do, and he had to think back to words that he'd heard nearly a hundred times before to be able to find the strength to keep going.
It was Hazel's mantra, of course. Let no obstacle block his path, no matter how small. They'd been given to him as parting words back when he'd made his departure.
He spent that first night thinking hard on how to speed things along.
In the end, he came to a conclusion. Combat with grimm wasn't likely to be an option, though they would have been the easiest way to encourage the cracking of his carapace so that Tyrian could break free from it. The healing process was going to be hard, especially since it would take a few days for his tail to harden back to armor as it needed to.
But alas, he'd been sent in search of the Shallow Sea and a counterfeit hunting license said that he was a skilled enough fighter that people were willing to tell him things that would help any hunter. People were willing to ignore the most obvious issue- the fact that he was a teenager all because a little slip of paper said that he was capable.
Truly, it was the best gift that Watts ever could have given him. Of course, it had come with the caveat that in some number of years he was going to need to find some sort of licensing of his own, though it was likely to have to come from one of the kingdom's frontier programs rather than the academies.
According to Watts, there would be fewer questions asked that way. They tended to be loose when it came to the regulation of hunters outside of the four kingdoms. Hazel had said that the easiest way for Tyrian to get what he needed would to be to go to Menagerie when the time came.
Well, Tyrian supposed that he wasn't wrong.
But that wasn't what Tyrian's focus should have been right then- he needed to be thinking about just about anything else at the moment. He needed to have a way to get this job done, and have it done correctly so that he could return home to good things- warmth and praise rather than the mocking bites of Watts' insults or his Goddess' cold shoulder.
Somehow, he managed to force a small amount of food down before getting a bit of rest. In the morning, he was sure to have plenty to see to.
He was right- the first thing that Tyrian did that morning was check over the length of his tail, using a mirror in the small inn that he was staying the night in to make sure that he didn't miss anything. As expected, there was a crack, though this time it was small and started at the base of his tail where it met with his spine.
Tyrian couldn't think of any worse place for it to show up, since that was where his tail tended to see the most movement. Oh, that was going to be hard.
But he forced his nerves down as he dressed himself and found the best way to wrap his tail up around his waist without causing the most pain. As it turned out, there wasn't really a position that he could hold his tail in without feeling the way that his tail continued to crack, further and further with every step.
But he had been through worth than this, Tyrian reminded himself as he dragged himself out of the inn for the day ahead. It was going to be mostly travelling by foot until he reached a certain village out in the sands- assuming that he could even make it as far as Mirage.
But when it came to work like this, Tyrian knew that he didn't matter. A little discomfort wasn't going to be the end of the world, and Tyrian was ready to deal with whatever needed to be done.
So he forced himself to walk out of the inn and began the trek out to a little village named Mirage that some rumors had directed him to. All because that was needed to be able to succeed in his task, as his Queen wanted.
The walk was perhaps the most grueling thing that he'd ever gone through. He'd been through a lot of things in the past, but there was no way that Tyrian was going to be able to just ignore everything that was going on.
He wasn't even halfway there when he practically collapsed along the flag-marked road as the pain split further and further up his tail. Exhaustion was one obstacle, but compared to the pain that he was bearing, he needed to be able to just rest for a bit.
Tyrian took a seat along the side of the road, closed his eyes, and just listened to the world around him. Somewhere far off, he could hear gunshots- grimm being taken on by a hunter, no doubt.
His Queen wouldn't approve if he went out to help a hunter from one of the four academies to kill grimm. Normally that wasn't something that he was supposed to be doing- normally, it was best for him to make sure that any hunter that he came into contact with fell.
But perhaps for this, he could make an exception. Tyrian knew for a fact that the Goddess' blessing could be ignored if he just went ahead and provoked some grimm towards him. All that he had to do was fire a shot or two, and then he could deal with this and make it easier for him to escape the dead armor that was trapping him.
It was a true fight to make a decision on what he was going to do, and when Tyrian finally came to a conclusion, he pushed himself to his feet, and followed the gunshots. He knew that unless the grimm being fought was particularly big, he wasn't going to be able to see it until he was right on top of it.
The glare of the sun against the sand was always particularly harsh, and it turned the landscape into an oven of sorts. Tyrian was fine with that, he was built for the ability to deal with the heat, after all.
Most hunters though- they didn't bear that ability. They didn't carry the blessing of faunus blood in their veins, and even if they did, it was rare that they carried the right type of blood.
Tyrian climbed a dune, and when he was at the top he finally saw what he needed peeking into view. A lone huntsman, in combat with a large wormlike grimm that burrowed beneath the sands.
He knew plenty about the beasts, enough that he was going to be able to go ahead and kill it in one or two strikes if he needed to, not that he would. It wasn't going to look good if he jumped in and took out a monster as efficiently as he knew he could.
After all, the world thought that he was just a simple sixteen year old boy- and he was, Tyrian supposed.
Just not like most, that was the best gift that his Goddess had ever given him.
So Tyrian swallowed back all of his pain and then he leapt to action- first with the spray of bullets at the grimm until he was close enough that he was able to strike the grimm himself.
The huntsman noticed him and just nodded when he saw him. Tyrian nodded back and paid the hunter no mind, just fought.
Not using his gauntlets was an ordeal, especially when he was trying to get himself to the point where he cracked his tail badly enough that he could just escape the carapace all at once. Together, he and the hunter felled the grimm, and by the time it was over he was sure that he had cracked the tail along its entire length.
The hunter gave him a look up and down, and Tyrian had to fight with himself when he realized that it probably wouldn't do for him to just let the huntsman live. His Goddess liked to know that hunters were killed, regardless of how important they were. Any hunter was a detriment to her cause, that was what she had said.
Tyrian made a decision and attacked the man, because that was what his goddess would want. Killing him wasn't a difficult task, and once the job was done, Tyrian just stood there amongst the sand, feeling a little empty and unsure of how to proceed.
He had to keep moving, he reminded himself as he began to wash any blood away from his skin using the loose sand. It didn't do much, but it worked.
With his travels resumed, Tyrian was able to begin tugging to get the remnants of his tail off of his body. The process took too long- he camped overnight a mile or so away from Mirage and just got the tail off before he travelled the rest of the way.
He buried the remains of his dead carapace in hopes that he wasn't going to be figured out. The knowledge that he'd killed an innocent man back in the dunes nagged at the back of his mind, but Tyrian just reminded himself that he had done what his goddess would have wanted.
Killing was part of his job, it was a necessity of his work. Tyrian knew that perfectly well, but usually he wasn't left to deal with this sort of thing on his own. He'd killed before, but he'd never been alone for it like he was now.
Somehow, that changed things.
Tyrian could adapt. He could deal with it.
The hot desert air helped speed up the healing process of the new cuticle, and it meant that Tyrian was able to continue his search for the Shallow Sea in the stretches of desert sooner than later.
The new armor made him feel like he was a new man. It made him feel stronger and it almost felt like he had been able to shed some of his sins along with the old part of him that didn't belong there anymore.
For the first time, Tyrian thought of his molt in terms of something other than pain. It was a rebirth.
He grew stronger. The sands of the desert that got blown against his tail polished it into a brighter shine than it had ever had before.
Tyrian smiled when he first got a glance at himself in the waters of the Shallow Sea.
Another molt, and he was stronger.
Another molt, and he carried no shame for the events of the last few days.
His Goddess would surely be proud and receive him with open arms, all because he hadn't let himself get stopped by the need to molt.
It drove him home even faster, a shell swirling with waters that didn't exist in hand.
Age Twenty
He was only twenty years old, and he had a significant kill count under his belt.
It was more than most would ever have, even in his line of work.
All because that was what his Goddess wanted. All because it was a way to sow the seeds of chaos. That was what she wanted from him- if she wanted someone killed, and she wanted it done efficiently or secretly, she would summon him.
Usually his work was solitary, but sometimes he was given a chance to do something else.
This time, he had been sent in search of something for his Goddess again. That seemed to be all that he was doing these days. Ever since he'd located the Shallow Sea for his Queen, she had been proud of him. She'd found other work for him, and now he was out in search of the greatest trophy yet.
Many times over, he had heard the Story of the Seasons. He'd heard about how the wizard had stolen great magic from a god, and how that wizard had gone ahead and passed it out to a set of sisters in an act of ultimate hubris. A thief giving to thieves, truly something that should have stopped before it could even happen.
His Goddess wanted him to find one of the maidens for her. It was a chance to help return that magic to her, and she said that if he was able to do this job right for her, he would bring their cause closer to victory.
Tyrian had been out for months in search of one of the maidens. His Queen had requested that he find her the Fall Maiden, though she hadn't said why.
He knew much better than to ask questions about such things after so many years with her.
One did not upset the Queen, and a fast way to upset her was to fail her. To ask too many questions or leave her annoyed.
But Tyrian was fairly certain that he was her favorite, and so he did his best to be there for her. No, he would not upset the Goddess. He valued his place by her too dearly.
That didn't mean that he wasn't getting tired with his travels.
Somehow, his path had brought him all the way to the bottom of the world.
Menagerie was a new experience- different, but ultimately pleasant and almost liberating, in a way. It was rare that he was able to walk down the street without wrapping his tail up around him. He wasn't used to tight crowds, or close-knit communities. He wasn't used to seeing so many other faunus in one place- normally they weren't so common, or they hid as best as they could manage, like him.
Tyrian wouldn't delude himself into thinking that he would find much on the continent of Menagerie. He was following rumors about strange weather patterns because that seemed like it might be the most useful information to follow. It wasn't that useful to him, since he was learning that Menagerie had strange weather to begin with.
Finding a maiden was next to impossible, it turned out. There were too many young women out in the world, and the weather could only give so much to follow.
But there were some things that made it easier. He was only twenty, which meant that he was able to fall in with other people in his age group easily enough. Contact with young women meant that he was able to observe.
That acting experience that he'd gotten when he was a boy turned out to be much more useful than he would have ever imagined. It meant that Tyrian was able to play at normal, or like he was from one of the kingdoms.
People didn't question too much as long as he kept an act up. He could pass as a normal person, so long as he was careful not to let anything about him or his work slip.
In Menagerie he was able to learn things though, about himself especially. There was no chance that he was going to be able to find any sign of family- that part of his life was so far back in his memory that he couldn't recall enough to put the pieces together.
No, his only purpose in Menagerie was to seek out a maiden. Everything else was a distraction.
Even though he was fairly certain that the task would ultimately prove futile, he had to try.
When the hunger pangs first appeared, Tyrian had been ready for them though. He had been ready for the very real possibility that he was going to be molting on a mission. At least this time he could be prepared for it, and he could be around his own kind when it happened.
It had been sixteen years since that had last been true, and even then, it had been hard. A distant memory brought on by pain and an early childhood that he couldn't quite remember, no matter how hard he tried. All that he could remember was that warm tail, wrapped up around him like a security blanket.
He got himself a room at a small inn in Kuo Kuana, and made it his base of operations for the rest of his time there in the city. Since he was mostly tracing rumors and the population of Menagerie was mostly centralized to the capital, it meant that he didn't have to head out into the desert.
Not that the desert really bothered him that much. Of the few things he was sure of about his childhood, he was sure that he was from a desert.
The continent was hot though, and that was a blessing in itself. It meant that if this molt was going to be anything like his molt in Vacuo, he was going to be able to rest easy. All that he had to do was get the exoskeleton detached, and then the heat would be able to dry the callow skin until it hardened.
The difference between this hunt and his search for the Shallow Sea was that they had different meanings. His Goddess had sent him out to find the Shallow Sea on a test of sorts- a chance to see whether or not he could hold out on his own, and to see whether or not his abilities to gather information were going to make him of any use beyond assassinations.
This time, it was the real thing.
But his Goddess had sent him out with the promise that this wasn't going to be a short trip. Tyrian was expected to check in at the Fortress once or twice every couple of months, but beyond that, he was on his own.
What that meant was that he was able to take his time while he was in Menagerie, and he could take the downtime that he was afforded out in the city to go ahead and just rest while he molted. There was going to be no medical examinations, there wasn't going to be any need for him to rush out into danger for the sake of damaging his tail.
For once he could actually do what his body most wanted for him to do and just sleep through the process in a safe place until he was healed and truly ready to go back out into the wilderness to continue his work.
It was nice being able to take the process at his own pace.
When the crack formed along the central line of his stinger, Tyrian had just paid attention to it and did his best to keep the appendage close to him as he took the time to figure out everything that he needed to figure out. For the first time, he only kept it close for the sake of protecting it, rather than hiding it.
He'd never thought that he would find any sort of saving grace out in the wild when he wasn't looking for it, but he had found something.
It had come in the form of an old woman with more eyes than she should have had, selling small jars of various ointments to whoever was willing to buy them from her. She'd noticed him walking through the booths.
She'd noticed him before, apparently. She'd noticed his tall, the way that he had held it close to him or up high where he couldn't risk stinging anyone since he had no targets in Menagerie that were worth pursuing. Even if he did find the Maiden on an off chance, he wasn't to kill her. His Goddess had wanted the girls' location, and she wanted her alive.
The old woman was the first faunus that he had ever met that was like him, though she wasn't exactly the same. She was a spider, but she claimed that she remembered seeing her father with an appendage that was somewhat like Tyrian's, one that required molting when the time came around every few years for it.
When she offered him an invitation for dinner, he accepted it, despite the fact that he knew he wasn't going to be able to eat. He was mostly just looking forward to the chance to be with one of his own kind.
There was a part of Tyrian that was sure that this was going to be his only chance that he'd ever be with another faunus like himself. If they were as rare as Watts said, then this was going to be a rare occasion indeed. One that couldn't be missed.
So he went for the dinner in hopes that he would find something in it that would be of some use. When he wasn't able to bring himself to eat, the woman suggested that he try to rest himself. She understood, after all, she'd seen a number of people that hadn't been able to get by without molting some time in their life.
The true help came after their dinner.
She taught him a number of things, mostly how to mix certain herbs together into a foul smelling paste that vaguely reminded Tyrian of some of the strange concoctions that Watts enjoyed playing around with in his free time.
When Tyrian applied that paste to his tail, as the woman suggested, he was left with a need to wait. First, he was struck by the way that it made the carapace tingle. It was almost pleasant, the way that the sensation reached up his spine and left him shivering in something near contentment.
For a few days, he was able to stay with the old woman with too many eyes. She would tell him stories about others in her family- some that had been scorpions like himself, and Tyrian was content to listen along with every story that she had to offer.
Each day, he would apply the paste first thing in the morning and right before he went to bed. It was enough to soothe his pains enough that Tyrian was able to eat again, and he could go back out in search of the maiden.
That small aid alone, the killing of the pain and the way that his tail was being broken down part by part until he was able to remove the entire dead husk all at once was incredible. It made him feel like he could actually get by without hiding that he was in pain, for just a little bit.
It was the easiest molting that he'd ever gone through over the course of his entire life. Tyrian was glad for it, because it meant that when the time came that he needed to go on and keep hunting, he was comfortable.
For the first time, he molted among his own people, in a place that it had almost felt like he'd belonged in.
Tyrian was glad for it.
He could take comfort in it.
He could carry the knowledge that the old spider woman with him in the hopes that it would make his life easier one day when he was older. In a few years, he was sure to molt again.
Just next time, he was going to be able to help himself.
In a few days, his tail hardened into a new cuticle, and Tyrian was able to go back to work, all in his Goddess' name.
There was no maiden in Menagerie.
Tyrian would adapt to the information that he was given, and he would continue his search.
Twenty-Four
Watts had been the one to find the maiden, deep within the northern tundras of Mistral.
A mishap had left the girl's power to transfer to another host when an attempt to capture her had gone a little bit more than wrong- the girl that they had been travelling with in hopes of turning into a maiden had been slain in action, just the same as the fall maiden had been.
They were back to square one, the Fall Maiden's power had gone to another host that they were yet to identify.
The occasions where Watts, Hazel, and Tyrian all traveled together tended to be few and far between, for a vast multitude of reasons. Typically, it had to do with the fact that the three of them weren't the best suited to go on hunts together.
On those few occasions where he was able to travel with Arthur and Hazel, Tyrian usually found himself enjoying the experience. It was a chance to fight side by side with men who had seen to it that he had grown into the hunter that he was today.
He was just a few years older than someone that had just left one of the many academies. That didn't matter- he'd gone through the process to get a license that made him look like a legitimate huntsman, and now he was able to travel with Watts and Hazel without being noticed.
Nobody would bat an eye at him fighting alongside them these days.
It would figure that the three of them would end up outside of Vale following the rumors that would hopefully bring them to the new fall maiden. They were yet to find another candidate for the task that their Goddess approved of- her Grace tended to seek certain qualities when it came to selecting those to fight for her.
But finding the maiden and where she was would be just as important as finding a girl to become the next maiden.
If Tyrian was considered eligible for the task, he would have gladly taken the maidenship on for his Goddess, but alas, he had no such ability.
The three of them had set up camp for the night in Forever Fall, where the leaves painted the entire world red and made it impossible to discern much more than the color alone. Tyrian had been trying to find a soft patch of earth to rest on when he'd felt that pain shoot up his spine and heard the audible sound of his exoskeleton cracking.
He hadn't been ready. They'd been expecting the molt to come in a few weeks, but it seemed that he had to deal with it now and on his own.
At first, he did his best not to mention it. Hazel had given him a look like he'd heard it, but said nothing. Watts had been off surveying the land from the treetops, and so that had meant that Tyrian was able to avoid a few minutes of ridicule as he finally sat down to rest.
Tyrian couldn't find it forever, and it turned out that some of the ingredients that he would have needed to make the ointment he'd been given in Menagerie were weren't native to Sanas. Going into a town to try and buy them wasn't an option.
So Tyrian mostly did his best to just hide his tail from the others. He kept it wrapped tight around his body, because that way it was going to be safe. When they were in villages, it meant that he could pass for a human, and so Watts and Hazel didn't think much of him keeping it so close to him.
But that wouldn't last, no, of course it wouldn't.
It was Hazel that noticed it, and Tyrian supposed that was something that he should have expected.
When it came to the three of them, there was a delicate balance that they kept. Watts was the brains of the operation, keeping them on task and always able to keep them from getting too distracted in their work. Hazel was the pathfinder, he as the strongest amongst them, and when it came time to negotiate or act diplomatically, Hazel was the man to go to.
As for Tyrian- he was the inexperienced one. None of them could ever forget that, but he found his use. As a scout, or in combat as the one to strike first and strike hardest on that first blow before the others jumped into battle. In gathering information and asking questions, even in diverting attention away from Watts and Hazel.
The balance that the three of them was comfortable, and so any interruption wasn't typically welcome.
Interruptions such as the one that Tyrian's tail had become, which only served to make it hard for him to focus on the tasks at hand.
Hazel noticed the lack of attention from Tyrian though, and the way that he seemed to squirm every time that the three of them needed to rest, even for just a little while.
Leave it to Hazel to only bring it up when they were alone.
The question was asked as quietly as Hazel could manage, just as most of his questions tended to be. The reality was that Hazel hadn't exactly asked a question. More accurately, he stated what he had observed and Tyrian knew better than to go ahead and try to lie to the other man about the matter at hand.
So Tyrian did his best to brush it off, to make it seem like he wasn't feeling bothered at all by what was going on. It was no mystery that Hazel thought less of him for the fact that he was hurting, and Tyrian had did his best to hide his injury for a reason.
Hazel agreed not to report it to Arthur for as long as Tyrian remained able to keep the crack, which had decided to form around the middle section of his tail, from bothering him to the point where he couldn't do anything. That was a promise that Tyrian was willing to cling to, and so the next part of his mission began to focus heavily on hiding his molting until it was no longer possible to continue on as he had been.
When they ended up in small villages come nightfall, Tyrian was able to get rooms of his own, largely because Arthur and Hazel didn't have much interest in sharing a space. They didn't even want to share the space with each other.
That was a good thing.
It meant that Tyrian was able to relax, at least for a night.
But he wasn't able to sleep. Tyrian knew that he wasn't going to be able to sleep, and so he spent most of the night awake doing his best to calm his head and comfort himself with a warm bath. It wasn't enough.
For a moment, it occurred to him that it had been a long time since he'd last basked in his Goddess' warmth when he had been aching and molting as he was now. He couldn't find comfort in the feeling of her hand on his head while he trembled through the , he was once again feeling as lonely as ever.
Oh, would she be proud to see him now? Would she be proud to see the way that he kept himself together through the entire process, would she be proud of him for being able to hide the injury and keep going despite it? For fighting and making his way through missions without letting it stop him?
Tyrian didn't know.
That was perhaps the greatest hurt that he could have possibly felt- the knowledge that his Goddess wasn't there. That she likely wasn't missing him. He missed his Goddess greatly. He missed her comfort, the sound of her voice, the softness of her touch.
It had been a long time since he'd last cried. Last time, it had been when the maiden and the candidate had both been lost, and that had been because his Goddess was disappointed in him. It was something that made his heart ache and had left him barely wanting to live.
Never before had he failed her so badly.
Those thoughts were impossible to deal with, and the fact that he was suffering through them when his body ached with a need for food that he couldn't stomach, and his tail was built up with so much pressure that couldn't be relieved.
He couldn't hide it forever- Tyrian knew that entirely too well. Soon, it was going to split so far that he couldn't wrap the tail around him to make sure that it didn't get noticed. Soon, it was going to shed entirely and he was going to be left feeling as vulnerable as a newborn child.
When that happened, he didn't know what would happen. Outside of their Goddess' view, the three hunters were allowed to be as cruel to each other as they wished. What that meant was that Tyrian was bound to become the target of Watts' mocking, whilst Hazel ignored it in favor of a chance to rest.
All at once, it felt like Tyrian had an entire lifetime worth of bitterness that was building up in his chest. He knew that he wasn't going to be able to get around it either- what was to come once his tail finally finished shedding was simply inevitable.
But Tyrian didn't let that stop him on that mission. He was in Hazel's presence, which meant that to do such a thing would surely be considered unacceptable.
For the first time in a long time, Tyrian's response to any pain that he was feeling was to simply grin and bear it. Partially, it came from his need to be able to fit with the two more experienced hunters that he was left to travel with, partially, it came from the fear of what should happen should Arthur find out about the molting.
Tyrian hadn't forgotten that molt so many years ago when he had been sent to Watts' lab for examinations and study. He hadn't forgotten his tears, or his Goddess' comforting touch.
His heart ached in his chest every time he thought of it.
Days passed.
Some were filled with battles, while the same couldn't be said for others. With every passing day, he became more and more aware of the fact that he wasn't doing the absolute best that he could to hide what was happening.
Arthur had started to notice that he wasn't eating as much, and Tyrian was starting to feel weak. His aura broke easier.
His aura breaking in a battle ended up as the last straw. It had been nearly enough to shatter his dead armor around his sensitive tail.
The pain was instantaneous, along with the reaction to it. Tyrian knew that he'd shouted in pain, that he'd had to slink off to somewhere safe until the battle was ended, and once it was over, Arthur had approached him with a rounded shard that Tyrian was assuming had come from his stinger.
The next few days were nothing but ridicule as his tail had to try to heal. There were spots where the shattered exoskeleton had cut into the teneral cuticle underneath, and so when his armor finally came in, it already looked dinged and injured.
Tyrian didn't let this get him down. A few injuries were a sign of pride, and he would wear an injured looking tail with as much pride as he wore the dark scars that criss-crossed his chest.
He'd done well on this mission though. His tail had molted and shattered, and he hadn't done so much as murmured a single complaint about the pain. The pressure was relieved, he had new armor within a few days, and all that he had to deal with was Watts' near-constant teasing.
The world span on, despite his molting.
Tyrian was fine.
He'd learned to adapt.
Twenty-Eight
It had been two weeks since his run-in with Qrow Branwen and the little rose.
It had been a very long time since he'd felt so broken, so unwanted. If it were just one thing, he would have been fine. He would have been able to deal with all of this and he would have been able to just get back up and go back to serving and pleasing his Goddess.
But it was different.
Never before had he had to drag himself back to her with an injury so severe. When he'd told her of his failure, he hadn't been able to even bring up the fact that his stinger had been severed as it was.
Even still, her disappointment left him lost, unable, damaged.
Tyrian felt like he hadn't been able to stop shaking for weeks. He hadn't been able to calm himself down, h hadn't been able to remind himself that he was there for a reason and that if his goddess was truly upset, he would have likely been killed for his failure.
Nothing was enough to cure the ache in the stump on his tail. Nothing was enough to make him feel like things were going to be alright in the end. Hazel's advice failed him, his chest ached at every thought of his Goddess and he hadn't been able to get her words out of his head.
You disappoint me.
Oh, how he'd never wanted to hear those words from his dear Goddess. After everything he'd done, after everything that he'd given all in her name, how could she-
Tyrian knew.
He'd failed her, and he'd had the nerve to drag himself back to her despite that failure. But he couldn't just keep going- Tyrian had relied on his tail to be able to fight properly for his entire life.
Why, his Goddess had even seen to it that he was trained to better use it. She'd taken interest in him because of it.
In a way, it felt like he'd failed her in a way that was never going to be able to be remedied.
Without her, he had no purpose. No reason to exist.
Tyrian stopped eating. He stopped being able to do a lot of things as he was left shaking through his pain and doing his best to calm himself down and live again. Nobody commented on it, aside from Arthur's usual jabs, which came mixed in amongst medical advice and sharp reminders not to neglect the injury.
But how could Tyrian neglect it? How could he forget about it or fail to care for it when it was a pain that overtook his entire body, when he couldn't wrap his tail up around himself for comfort as he used to? Forgetting wasn't simple.
Forgetting wasn't possible.
Tyrian knew that he was supposed to molt soon.
He didn't care.
It was a distraction from what he was supposed to be doing with himself, which was recover and reteach himself how to fight without a stinger to rely on. He needed to reteach himself how to assassinate, to fight, to live without a part of him.
Tyrian kept his distance from the others because that was safest. They couldn't see how badly he suffered, even though Tyrian knew they'd heard. They couldn't mock him for it. despite the fact that deep down Tyrian knew he deserved it.
Anyone who failed their Goddess as he had deserved to suffer as he did now.
He should have expected to be summoned to her, he supposed. Tyrian didn't know what to expect, as he never knew what to expect these days. His tail wrapped as far around him as he could manage, and Tyrian couldn't ignore that it was too short. The pain he could deal with, he even ignored it.
When he came to her, she sat in a throne, overlooking the world that belonged only to her.
His Goddess didn't turn to look at him, and so Tyrian crawled towards her, remaining prostrate and reaching for a Queen who wouldn't acknowledge him as anything more than a creature to be crushed underfoot.
He never picked his head up to look at her. He didn't deserve to see Her Grace.
Tyrian stayed ready. When she finally acknowledged his presence, he did his best. If she got too close, he would edge his hands away so that he couldn't touch her because he simply didn't deserve it.
Her line of questioning was simple, and Tyrian was glad to answer every question because at the very least he felt like he was able to please his Goddess, even though it was miniscule and unlikely to mean much in the end.
The Queen asked him whether he was to be molting soon, and Tyrian gave the answer that he was sure that it was going to be soon. She gave him instructions to report to Doctor Watts throughout the process to ensure that his injury was treated, and then once he had finished sloughing off his old exoskeleton, Tyrian was to report directly to her.
So Tyrian did that. He went to Arthur to make sure that he wasn't accidentally exasperating his injury by trying to finish out the molt. It was the most painful experience he'd ever been through, in a way. There was almost a feeling of low pressure around the end of his tail which normally would have been unbearable, almost a relief from that pain.
The severed end meant that the rest of his exoskeleton was able to shed more easily, but Tyrian had to fight back his pain with everything that he could manage to be able to keep himself from simply sobbing and breaking down in pain as the shedding tail reopened his injury.
For close to seven days, Tyrian didn't rest. He didn't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, and when his old exoskeleton finally tore away, Tyrian was feeling weak and exhausted. He dragged himself to his Goddess, and rested at her feet in wait of whatever she wanted him there for.
Tyrian knew that he shouldn't have been surprised to be immediately greeted with beratement. A reiteration of his failure that left Tyrian unable to breathe and left him shaking from fear of whatever was going to come next.
It took his entire being not to cry in her presence.
What he was given was a second chance.
His Goddess' command was simple. He was to go back out, and he was to try and capture the little thorned Rose once again. If he failed, then he was going to have further punishments to look forward to.
That was much more than Tyrian could have ever hoped for.
But she didn't just pass down orders and order him away from her as she normally would have. He was given orders to see to it that the girl was brought to him alive, to see to it that he had finished his work, and to return to the Goddess when it was all over.
She didn't send him away without a gift to aid him.
Why, his Goddess never did when it came to the lonely work that she usually used with him.
There was no charm to protect, there was no promise of Grimm to intervene should things go seriously wrong and he stray close to losing his life.
No, all she did was give him the single gift that he would treasure for the rest of his life.
Tyrian knew that he was never going to be able to forget the way that her nails cut into the soft skin of his teneral tail. He'd done his best to hide the whimper of pain, and tried not to grow nauseous as his tail began to regrow in ways he'd never seen before.
For a moment, he stared at his tail and recalled a distant memory, of when he had first met his Goddess.
Once more, he had a stinger of gold, and the armor that had grown over was black, with reinforced plates of white along the tops of each scale.
This was the greatest gift he had ever been given, and the golden shine of his new stinger was one that he would never forget.
Tyrian knew that he was going to have to learn to adapt.
This was worth adapting to.
He had regrown, stronger and more resilient. More deadly, all because of his Goddess' love.
Tyrian would not fail her again.