The sounds of water droplets hit small puddles in what could've been a very small space. Drip, drop, drip, drop, the small specks of water went, echoing throughout the enclosure.
The sounds only welcomed more sounds too. The sounds of chains rapped, followed by the sounds of more shortly after. Then moans followed. Moans pain, confusion, worry, hard to tell. But as each of those entrapped brought themselves to some modicum of sense, the moans died down, replaced once again by the sounds of chains, this time harder and louder.
"Can you stop that?" a cold but familiar voice cracked. It wasn't immediately clear who this voice belonged to. It was simply too dark, actually, it was pitch black. "My head feels like hell."
"Weiss~?" another voice broke, dreary and tired. This one was childishly high, barley matured from the way it sort of cracked. "Wha-...where are- what's going on?" she then asked.
"Agh~" a third voice broke, pain was all that could be determined was the cause of this break, which was followed by a very timid and shocked statement. "I can't feel my legs."
"Blake, is that you?" the childish voice asked.
"Ruby? Where are we?" asked Blake back.
"I~ I don't know, a dungeon...or something, it's too dark to tell." There wasn't any real knowing whether or not this was even true. But where they were wasn't even at the top of the new list of things she was concerned about at the moment. She asked them both, "Where's Yang? Have you seen her?"
"I think she's in here with us," said Blake, though she sounded unsure which wasn't confidence inspiring for any of them. "Last time I saw her we were back at Beacon."
Now that they were getting acquainted with consciousness again, they soon found that they were actually shivering. Shivers of fear, cold, dread, it was all very chilling. Goosebumps travelled through their nerves as they sat along a small, stone corridor. The cold they felt on their wrists turned out to be shackles, holding their arms up semi-high above their heads.
Then came something none of them expected.
"Agh!" a fourth voice broke out followed by the very violent shaking of the chains that held whoever this was in her place. She was inhaling and exhaling very rapidly, out of pain from whatever happened to her. "I can't feel my arm; what happened! Where are we?"
"Yang!?" Ruby exclaimed, she didn't know wether to be happy or very concerned, but at least she was able to confirm her whole team was here. Then Weiss said:
"Welcome to the club- agh~" it sounded like she winced. The sounds of chains echoed again, maybe she was clasping her head in her hands. Then she realized something. "What do you mean you can't feel your arm?"
"I mean I can't feel it anymore…" was all Yang said.
"You tried to help me, remember?" Blake said, they could all here the dread and regret in her voice.
"What was I supposed to do—let you get killed by that psychopath in the mask?" argued Yang. But she knew this was a losing argument. There wasn't any point in arguing. The best they could do right now was try and figure out how they each got here.
Ruby started. "Ok, let's all try to figure out what happened—Weiss?"
There was a long period of silence, too long to be any kind of good sign. But Weiss finally said something.
"All I remember was helping the other students fight the Atlesian drones…" she paused, the slight shifting of the chains suggested she was rubbing her head again. "Then...I jumped in to save Velvet- agh- and I think I got hit and sent flying somewhere."
Weiss couldn't see it, but that gave Ruby pause for thought. I didn't see Weiss again after...then she remembered. "That was after Penny was destroyed." She couldn't see, but Weiss nodded.
Her attention shifted to the direction she thought Blake was at, which was just about ahead of her to the left. She asked, "Blake...you said you couldn't feel your legs?"
"I-...I was stabbed, I felt it hit bone- it hurt so bad…" from the sound of her voice it didn't seem like it stopped hurting. "Then Yang tried to help, but-"
"Then I lost my arm," interjected Yang. This drew an unseen, worried glare from Ruby, but she knew there was something she wasn't telling them yet.
"What else happened?" she asked.
"The bastard brought the building down on top of us; he left us to die."
The statement drew a wide eyed glare from Ruby. She remembered hearing of one of the building come down, she was worried sick that Yang might've gotten caught up in that-now she was terrified to hear her fears came to life.
"What about you, Ruby," Weiss asked. "How did you end up here?"
Ruby thought about it, but honestly she had no real good answer for that question. So much happened that even she didn't have answers to. She sorted through all the fuzz that clouded her mind as she tried to remember what happened for her to end up here. But then the worst possible thing she had ever witnessed finally came to mind.
"I...I saw…" every part of her being now fought against her will to speak. The memory felt like it was seared into her mind, every detail was so vivid she could even recall the smallest spec of dust floating by at that point in time. But before she could say any of it the four were suddenly bombarded by the intrusively bright sign of light filling the small enclosure.
"Ah~ you are finally awake," said a man, his tone was unsettlingly calm. "Well, what are you two standing around for-get them up." Clearly he was talking to different people, because the next moment the still somewhat blinded team were unbound from their chains and dragged out of the hole. They were then thrown against the ground very roughly at the feet of a man who had a very jagged mustache.
"Now you're back in the real world, let us not waste any time...her Highness has been waiting for a long time." He snapped his fingers, ordering his subordinates to forcefully pick them up again.
As Ruby's vision cleared she was horrified to see it was Emerald and Mercury dragging them along. Could they have been a part of everything, she asked internally. Her terror would be made worse once she laid eyes on the rest of her team; Weiss' hands and face appeared to have horrible cuts on them; Blake had a large wrap around her stomach, rouged and hideously stained with old blood, the same stains were coming from her back too; and true to what she said earlier, Yang's arm was completely gone and lazily wrapped in dirty bandages, but she failed to mention the massive amount of cuts and scrapes over her right eye. Now that she was getting a better look at all of them, she and her team were all wearing the same dirty rags. She herself seemed relatively fine as far as physical injury was concerned, but that didn't take away from the fact that her head now ached from the light.
The six travelled through the large complex expediently, Watts taking point while Emerald and Mercury struggled to drag their prisoners along to keep pace. Emerald appeared to be annoyed that she had to be the one to carry Blake and Yang. "Hey, why couldn't you take the two cripples here?" she asked him.
"Because there's a greater chance for these two to run away," said Mercury, which wasn't entirely impossible as Ruby and Weiss appeared to have no problem walking.
Emerald, however, rolled her eyes. "It's not like they'll get far even if they did."
"Enough," said the man, growing annoyed with the needless chatter. "No more talking until we reach the chamber-the prisoners here have more sense than you do it seems," he then said pointing out that none of the girls have said a word since they were taken out of the hole. Emerald only let out a small growl at the fact.
They soon reached a large doorway into a chamber where laid an altar of sorts. The entire enclosure was black brick and lit with ornate fire pits spewing out red flames. The whole rest of the room seemed empty aside from the short platform in the direct center of it with a very ornately crafted chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Standing atop it all was a figure, no, a woman in a long black gown. Her skin was white as death itself and plagued with black veins underneath. Her eyes were the most frighteningly bright red surrounded by voids of black. Her hair white as snow.
The man knelt down and Emerald and Mercury followed suit, forcefully shoving their prisoners onto their knees as well. The woman stepped down from the altar.
"Rise," she said. The man, Mercury, and Emerald all did as told, but the two kept the other four from standing as the woman approached.
She reached her hand down to Ruby's chin, examining her very carefully. She would take in every inch of her face for about a minute before saying finally, "You hurt a dear friend of ours, Ruby…" then one more person stepped through the door.
Ruby was forced to turn around to see a very badly wounded Cinder. She wasn't like this last time Ruby saw her, and now she wondered what happened that night at Beacon. Cinder wore a carefully designed black mask over her left face, but that wasn't even the worst of what had been done to her; her arm was completely black, deformed, and...almost grimm-like. With her one good eye she glared at Ruby with a rage that was unprecedented in every way, Ruby felt strong shivers down her spine as she walked passed her and taking to the taller woman's side who said, "Cinder has been very...adamant about what she wishes to do to you, but rest assured that you won't be killed by her-I have plans for the five of you."
Five? Ruby only counted four; herself, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. Who else could she be talking about?
"Bring them forward," the woman said. Emerald and Mercury hastily brought them up and took them up to the altar. "Watts, stay with Cinder."
The Altar was designed exactly as it was probably intended for. There were spaces for several pedestals to be placed from the cracks that laid intricately on the platform, and five were set up along the furthest edge. The girls saw the pedestals but the woman was too tall for them to see who laid on the middle pedestal. It was here that Ruby could now remember it all...
Ruby approached Sun near the landing spot of the transports taking people to the Safe Zone. She spent the past half hour looking for her sister and friends but saw no sign of them anywhere. Not even Weiss.
"Weiss was hit by one of those mechs, she was sent flying but none of us know where she is," Sun said. "Coco and the others are trying to look for her."
"What about Yang and Blake?" she asked, still as worried as ever.
Sun dropped his head and she knew he couldn't answer for that. But he still tried to be of help in some way. "I thought I saw Blake near the Mess Hall, she might still be the-" he stopped himself when he noticed the giant Grimm circling the tower. "Jaune and Pyrrha are still in the tower. We have to get them out!"
"You take care of the others, I'll find them and hopefully the rest of my team," said Ruby, she was already running towards the tower.
"By yourself!? Hey, wait!" yelled Sun, but it was too late. He resigned to tending to the wounded.
She ran as quick as she could through the main courtyard. There were still a number of students fighting off Grimm but none of them were the ones she was looking for. Every sense of her body was dialed to eleven as she really began to worry about her team. She had no idea where they were, what happened to them, nothing. Some Grimm would migrate towards her, but she'd cut them down with superior efficiency.
Her scroll began to vibrate as she finished off another Beowulf. Jaune's face was flashing on the screen. Naturally she took the call without hesitation.
"Juane, where are you?" she asked.
"Ruby, I tried calling Weiss but she wasn't picking up…" he spoke frantically, making Ruby even more worried. "Pyrrha is fighting that woman at the top of the tower, you have to help her!"
Ruby looked up, she saw what appeared to be flames bursting from within the headmaster's office. She said, "Jaune…"
"Don't worry about me!" sounds of sobbing were heard from the other end of the line, then he said, "please...help her." Ruby wanted to say something, but the sound of him screaming came and a loud thud followed, then the call ended.
She looked up to the tower again, the Dragon Grimm had taken flight once again and came barreling towards the tower. It smashed it's head against the top and sent large chunks of debris falling down. Whatever was happening Ruby knew Pyrrha wouldn't last long, how am I going to get up there though?
She looked around, there wasn't anything she could use to climb up. If Weiss were here she could use her glyphs for me to climb, she thought. Then a Griffon came flying at her, pinning her to the ground. She struggled for a moment, trying very hard to reach her scythe but couldn't. Before the creature tried to bite her head she took the opportunity to put her leg against its neck, then pried herself out from the creatures hold.
Ruby picked up Crescent Rose off the ground and brought it ready to fire, but then she had an idea. A really, really risky idea.
Using her speed she swept herself onto the Griffons back, it reared itself onto its back legs in bitter protest as she struggled to secure her grip on the deathly ragged feathers of the beast. After a few seconds of wrestling on top of it like a trainer breaking a wild horse the Griffon finally took to the air, going straight up as fast as it could possibly fly.
Ruby braced herself as she continued to ascend higher and higher into the air, she didn't want her hands to slip and send her falling back down. Nothing but pure adrenaline was running through her veins as she white-knuckled the Griffon's feathers. Each time the beast flapped its wings she dug her heels deeper and deeper into its sides, ignoring the aching pain it caused in her ankles. Thankfully, after a few more second of flight she would finally reach where she wanted to be...she forced the beast to real backwards, and she took a deep breath. She loosened her grip and allowed herself to fall.
She landed on her feet with expert precision, scythe ready for whatever was going to happen. But that didn't matter. It was too late.
Cinder fired the arrow, and Ruby screamed...then suddenly everything went white.
"Pyrrha…" Ruby couldn't help the slow tears that rolled down her face. She and the rest of her team looked in pure horror as they began to wonder what was going to happen.
The girl lied dead on the pedestal, standing upright, and appeared to have been for several weeks. Her skin was shriveled and splotched with patches of a sickly greenish-purple. Her once strikingly beautiful red hair was reduced to a few patches of length. But the worst of the decay was at her chest. Black, rotting, and oozing of mucus and whatever else her corpse secreted after death. There was something else that Ruby noticed; there was what looked like burn scarring coming from her back, just arching over her shoulders, barely visible from the decay of her flesh. She didn't know much about corpses after death, but just from this she knew that her team were here for several weeks at least.
Ruby looked behind to see two more figures arrive; a very tall, and very strong looking man in green and a scorpion Faunus with a wild look in his eyes. She looked back to Salem, who now bore a slight smile of pleasure.
"Thank you all for coming," she said. "We have done well these past few months, and now, thanks to Cinders efforts, Beacon has fallen." She then looked down to the four girls before her, and commanded Emerald and Mercury to turn them around while she continued. "But it was not easy to get here, these girls before you have been a hindrance to our plans for just as long a time—and I think that kind of effort should be...rewarded."
Hearing that word made Ruby's skin crawl, even more so once the psychotic Faunus below started laughing uncontrollably at whatever she could have meant by that. As she looked to the rest of her team they too were scared, even Yang was appearing visibly sick when this would be about the time she'd be fighting like hell to free herself.
"They weren't the only ones to nearly ruin everything…" just then, the pedestal holding Pyrrha appeared to move forward on its own, bringing itself to view for the others to see. "Pyrrha Nikos, Ozpin's choice to become the next Fall Maiden, and a worthy opponent to fight our Maiden from what I hear." At this, Cinder seemed to actually start slowly combusting with rage, probably from the fact that this woman was really praising them for fighting her. But that didn't stop the woman from carrying on.
"These five girls and their capabilities would make an excellent addition to our cause...wouldn't you say?" There seemed to be no protest of any kind from her constituents, probably either out of silent agreement, or very real fear—though the scorpion faunus seemed rather ecstatic.
The pedestal slid back into its place. "This room hasn't been used in several decades...I think it's time it saw some use again."
"You forget, Salem, that we haven't lived as long as you have," said Watts. Ruby noted that the woman's name was Salem. "What is this room for, exactly?"
Salem threw him a glare that seemed to glow with anger, but then her expression softened. "How could I forget," she said, her tone came off as sarcastic as was annoyed. "This room is the oldest in this entire castle—I simply called it The Altar." She turned to face the dead girl and Emerald and Mercury forced the four captives to watch as well.
Salem raised her arm forward towards Pyrrha. Suddenly the air inside the room felt like it began to shake with an unknown source that surged through. But that wasn't all. A black sludge trailed in from the fires lighting the room towards the altar, and towards Pyrrha's pedestal. From bottom to top the sludge engulfed her corpse and then more sludge shot from the chandelier, pulling the now cocoon-like vessel into the air and suspended. The chandelier crystals began to glow a deep red, and the vessel did too, the faint silhouette of her body just barely visible from within.
"This body," she started, her voice reverberated throughout the room like an echoing boom, "empty and forgotten, damaged and rotten, a light snuffed out and soul long gone…" the fires of the room immediately went green and burned with even greater intensity, "this body...shall be reborn."
The green flames suddenly began to trail along the sludge on the floor, soon going up and past the vessel all the way to the strands of sludge holding it up. The vessel above appeared to become crystallized. Then the strands of sludge holding it up began to snap, one after the other. When the last strand let loose the vessel fell back down to the altar, it shattered on impact, and something came out of it...but not quite alive yet from the way Salem was looking at the newly formed body that lay lifeless on the floor.
Salem walked towards the limb body and like a mother and child she knelt down and caressed her newly formed dark red hair. Suddenly the whole body began to twitch, cracking sounds followed as it tried to move its joints. Salem backed away with a proud smile on her face as the body came to life. Slowly it began to stand up, its muscles struggling to hold itself up causing it to contort andbend in painful looking ways, but soon enough it would find its holds and straighten up.
This figure had features that looked very much like Salem's; her skin was like hers, deathly white with black veins. This figure wore bone armor in place of what the previous owners body wore, and a molten-like glow came from its chest like a fire in a furnace. It still looked like Pyrrha, but if she was dead just minutes before, now she was gone completely…
Her eyes opened...black, and green.