. . .

Chapter Three

In Which It's Less of a Learning Curve and More of a Learning Cliff

. . .

The room was deathly silent, save for the occasional scratch of quill on parchment.

Then, there was a rustle of cloth, a creak of a chair, and a rather put-upon sigh.

BRING ME LEDGER NUMBER FORTY-TWO, Death intoned in a voice that heralded the fall of nations, albeit the ominous rumble was somewhat offset by the rather oversized, fluffy pink feather quill that Death flourished as it spoke, IT SHOULD BE THE GREEN BOOK WITH THE LITTLE SWIRLY GOLD THINGIES ON THE SPINE.

"Yes sir," replied Jaune, who had been quietly suffering at a small desk in the corner as he attempted to read through the book Death had assigned him. He would have had more luck if he had been literate in ancient Vytalian, but given that the last native speaker had died approximately four thousand years prior, the boy had about as much luck as an ancient Vytalian might have trying to decipher the modern internet. In other words, he had long since stopped trying and instead poured his efforts into doodling scenes of space huntsmen fighting alien grimm in the margins between paragraphs. The illustrations would add an entirely new layer of interesting implications for whichever unfortunate soul attempted to decipher the text in the future, seeing as it was actually a collection of prophecies regarding the apocalypse, but Jaune was blissfully unaware as he shut the book and darted towards the door of the study.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he crossed the threshold and thought 'LIBRARY' with as much force as he could muster. He found that if he just thought about where he wanted to go as hard as he could, he was more likely to get there. The irony was that, after Death had given him a tour of the place, Jaune found himself even more lost than before, because there had been so many rooms filled with so many interesting things that his mind had an infuriating tendency of wandering towards them whenever he was stepping through a doorway. This, sometimes sent him to the room in question, sometimes sent him to his original intended destination, and one time just left him suspended in a terrifying empty void until Death had dragged him, shaking and trembling, back out by the back of his collar.

His foot landed in a familiar plush carpet. Jaune cracked open an eye to see rows of bookshelves and his shoulders sagged a bit in relief.

"Okay, ledger number forty-two, four two, four two, green with gold swirly thingies. Wait. Or was it gold with green swirly thingies?" Jaune mumbled to himself as he darted between the towering shelves, scanning each one warily. The last thing he wanted to do was overlook the book in question and venture too far in. The library, as far as Jaune could tell, was infinite. The shelves stretched off into the darkness in every direction. Death hadn't warned him about anything dangerous in this particular room, but then again, there was a fifty percent chance that Death had a very skewed idea of what constituted as danger, and another fifty percent chance that Death knew perfectly well but decided not to say anything because it would funnier that way.

Fortunately, he needn't have worried, because he couldn't have missed the ledger if he tried.

Unfortunately, this was because the book took up nearly an entire shelf on its own and was about as thick as his head. It was, in fact, green with gold swirly thingies, and the gleaming numbers '4' and '2' were embossed boldly down the spine.

"Great," said Jaune flatly. He pulled it off the shelf and his arms promptly buckled under its weight.

The boy was made of sterner stuff than that, though, and it would take more than a fiendishly heavy tome to dishearten an Arc. Putting on his game face, Jaune mustered all the strength in his wiry frame and began determinedly dragging the book towards the exit, huffing and puffing the entire time.

In classic Jaune Arc fashion, he made excellent headway until the worst possible moment, upon which he failed spectacularly. The book caught on a rumple in the thick carpet, his fingers slipped from the edges, and the heavy hardcover ledger smashed down firmly on his big toe.

Jaune clutched his foot in pain and stumbled backwards through the door of the library, not even remotely thinking of the right destination.

There was a woosh, and Jaune found himself flat on his back on a cold marble floor. He cracked open an eye and felt all the air whoosh out of his lungs as he stared up at a vortex of glimmering stars that slowly rotated around the circular room.

He hadn't ever been in this room - or at least, this part of this particular room - before.

There were towering shelves, like the library, but these shelves were nearly entirely empty. There were only a few hourglasses in the entire atrium, but compared to the hourglasses he had seen in the lifetimer room, these were unspeakably more beautiful, each one intricate and unique in their own ways.

Jaune looked down, and to his shock, found that the stars above were mirrored beneath the cold marble. No, that wasn't quite right - there were far more stars below his feet than above his head. In fact, as he watched, one of the stars near the bottom of the vortex slowly drifted downwards towards the middle of the room, where the funnel and its reflection met, and then kept drifting, down below his feet.

The entire room, Jaune realized, was a massive hourglass.

He found himself staring, transfixed, as the a sense of immeasurable weight seemed to settle over the stillness. It was easily one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, and yet, for some reason, watching as the pinprick lights slowly drained away into the cold ground filled him with a strange and ancient sense of sorrow. Almost unconsciously, Jaune reached out towards one of the falling lights, wondering if he could catch it before it -

THAT WOULD NOT BE WISE. A hand settled his shoulder and tightened its grip like a vice.

Jaune let out a girlish scream and nearly leapt out of his skin.

Death made an amused clicking sound.

Blushing to the roots of his hair, Jaune muttered, "You surprised me."

YOU DID NOT RETURN. I WAS CONCERNED YOU HAD STUMBLED INTO SOMETHING YOU OUGHT NOT TO HAVE.

Jaune bit his lip briefly and glanced around. The room certainly looked like one of those places might be very, very off-limits. Paling slightly, he asked, "...did I?"

There was a pause, and then Death shook its head.

There was an uncomfortable silence as master and apprentice stood side by side, watching stars trickle away, before Jaune marshalled what remained of his courage and said, "Then, if I may ask, what...what is this place?"

THIS, Death said without so much as a gesture, IS WHERE THE LIVES OF THE GODS ARE NUMBERED.

Jaune distantly felt his jaw drop. He numbly looked around the room again. The nearly empty room.

Seeing the unspoken question in his eyes, Death explained, NOT MANY FOLK ARE SUPER RELIGIOUS THESE DAYS.

"Do gods die when people stop believing in them?"

Death made a thoughtful 'hmm' before saying, THAT IS NOT AN ACCURATE QUESTION.

Jaune wanted to ask how, exactly, a question could be inaccurate, but there was a strange weight behind Death's words - more weight than usual, at any rate - that made the words die on his lips.

So instead, he swallowed dryly and turned his eyes back towards the stars above.

"Which god is that one for then?"

NONE OF THEM. OR ALL OF THEM, FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW. THAT IS THE LIFETIMER OF THIS UNIVERSE.

The words dropped like lead weights in Jaune's stomach. He looked down at the sea of lights below his feet. Then up at the much emptier seeming lights above his head. In muted horror, he said, "But...there are so few left."

Death shrugged helplessly.

IT IS CALLED REMNANT FOR A REASON.

"Is there anything we can do to fix it?" asked Jaune.

FIX? said Death sharply, and there was an edge of coldness in Death's tone that Jaune had never heard before as it turned its blazing starfire eyes upon its apprentice with a terrible force. IT IS NOT BROKEN. IT IS SIMPLY WHAT IT IS.

"Oh," said Jaune in a very small voice, "sorry."

Death seemed to relent and spoke in a softer tone, BETTER TO BE SALTED BY THE TRUTH THAN TO MARINATE IN IGNORANCE. Death paused before adding, AND AVOID SUPERFLUOUS METAPHORS WITH UNINTENDED IMPLICATIONS.

Jaune nodded mutely.

Death kindly patted the boy's shoulder.

NOW, ISN'T THERE SOMETHING YOU WERE MEANT TO BE DOING?

"Oh, right. The ledger," Jaune murmured, and ducked his head sheepishly before scurrying towards the door.

He did look back, just for a moment before he crossed the threshold, and saw Death pensively watching the life of the universe trickle away. Death's expression was impossible to read, but somehow, Jaune thought his mentor looked almost sad.

It was such a distracting thought that he didn't even notice he had stepped into library without trouble, despite failing to think LIBRARY at all.

At least not until he tripped over the giant book that he had dropped right inside the entrance.

. . .

"I'm really, really sorry about this," Jaune said, cringing.

"No, no, it's quite alright," the kindly grandmother said, patting him reassuringly on the arm, "Take your time, dearie. It's not like I have better places to be." This was, in fact, patently untrue, but she said it anyway to be kind.

IT'S ALL IN THE WRIST, Death advised unhelpfully.

Jaune took a deep breath, carefully braced his feet at shoulder width, centered himself, tightened his grip, and took another swing. The scythe swished harmlessly through the kindly old woman, failing to disturb even a hair from her neatly wound bun. His swing carried on in a full circle, passing through an unfortunate bonsai that instantly wilted, nicking the whiskers off the old woman's rotund cat, who opened one baleful yellow eye to glare at him before going back to sleep, and finally ending in an ungainly sprawl at Death's feet.

"Oh dear. You didn't sprain anything, did you?" the old lady fussed, helping the poor boy back onto his feet.

"Only my pride," replied Jaune in a rather resigned tone.

"Well, as they say, tenth time's the charm."

"Do they?"

The grandmother placed both hands on her hips and levelled the sort of look at him that could probably convince violent murderers to pick up litter as community service. "They certainly do now," she said, giving his arm another reassuring squeeze, "Just have faith in yourself."

HMM. IS THAT A PUMPKIN PETE MASCOT PARADE, I WONDER, Death noted idly.

"What? Where?" Jaune's head turned sharply towards the window, despite the fact that they were in a log cabin half-a-day's walk from the nearest train station and surrounded by dirt roads in all directions. Death took advantage of the distraction to quickly to snatch a pebble from the pot of the now desiccated bonsai.

IT APPEARS I WAS MISTAKEN, Death, unruffled by Jaune's skeptical and somewhat betrayed glare. ANYHOW, AS PATIENT AS THE MADAM HAS BEEN, I BELIEVE YOUR LACK OF TALENT IN THIS ENDEAVOR HAS BEEN MORE THAN SUFFICIENTLY DEMONSTRATED. Death then held up the pebble with a flourish. AS SUCH, I SHALL BESTOW UPON YOU THIS RELIC OF UNFATHOMABLE POWER.

"...it looks like a rock," said Jaune.

A RELIC OF UNFATHOMABLE POWER, Death continued uninterrupted, WHICH WILL ENDOW YOU WITH THE ABILITY TO PERFORM THE TASKS AT HAND IN A TIMELY MANNER SO THAT WE CAN ALL BE HOME IN TIME FOR AFTERNOON TEA.

Jaune obediently turned his palm upwards and let Death place the small rock in the center of his hand. He cringed, half-expecting some sort of arcane backlash, but the pebble just sat innocuously in the center of his palm, looking and feeling exactly like what it was.

"Huh. Neat," said Jaune, before he gingerly picked up his practice scythe once again and gave the elderly grandmother a tremulous smile.

"Tenth time's the charm," she repeated with an eye-crinkling smile.

"Tenth time's the charm," Jaune echoed, then closed his fist tightly around the pebble in one hand and swung with the other.

There was a violent whoosh, and Jaune found getting intimately familiar with the floor once again. This time, however, he heard a chime of musical laughter, and looked up to see a tall and stunning woman, with hair like spun gold spilling around her shoulders like a waterfall and a smile that could outshine like the sun.

Jaune opened his mouth, and then clicked it shut again without managing to say anything.

'Well done,' said the woman, stretching her new limbs and celebrating her rejuvenated joints with an experimental bounce on the balls of her feet. The rest of her also bounced, and Jaune felt his throat go very dry.

"T-thanks," he somehow managed to stammer, "sorry it took so long."

She made a familiar eye-crinkling smile and reached over to give his cheek a grandmotherly pat despite her not at all grandmotherly appearance. 'You managed just fine in the end, young man. Hold onto that earnestness of yours, and you'll always find a way as long as you keep trying.'

Then she straightened and gave Death a polite curtesy before twirling on her heel in a whirl of golden motes of light. Jaune heard her voice echo faintly, 'Ebon, you silly man! Were you seriously waiting this entire time?' and then she was gone.

There was a moment of respectful silence.

Then Jaune said, "She was really pretty. Do all old people get young again when they die?"

THAT HOW SHE ALWAYS WAS. APPEARANCES JUST GOT IN THE WAY, Death answered, already turning towards the door.

Jaune didn't quite understand, but nodded anyway out of habit. This was nothing new, since he had learned the hard way that it was better to nod and not ask. The explanation was inevitably abstract nonsense, or, when it was sense, it was the kind of metaphysical sense that no thirteen-year-old was properly equipped to handle. There was already far too much of it rattling inside his head; any more and it'd probably start coming out of his ears and displacing other important things, like common sense. Jaune already had so little of it that he feared losing any more would push him below the poverty line of overall mental wellness.

So he nodded, folded up his training scythe, and slipped the 'relic of unfathomable power' into his jacket pocket before following Death through the cottage door.

There was a whirl of disorientation as Death casually bent the fabric of space and time, and then Jaune found himself plopped straight into a thicket of thorns.

"Ow," said Jaune flatly without an ounce of surprise. This was just how things in his life generally went; he was used to it.

Death, who had been walking a few paces in front of him, stopped rather abruptly, and said two words that you generally never wanted to hear from the anthropomorphic personification of one of the fundamental aspects of reality:

OH DEAR.

For a single shining moment, Jaune wondered if his mentor was expressing concern for his current thorny predicament.

That small hope shrank as quickly as a wet slug in a barrel of salt because Death followed those two words with, IT SEEMS WE ARE MORE PRESSED FOR TIME THAN I THOUGHT.

Jaune thrashed weakly in a futile attempt to disentangle himself from the rosebush.

"What happened?"

TERRIBLE MINE ACCIDENT IN ATLAS, Death said, stroking its chin thoughtfully. I HAD THAT SCHEDULED FOR NEXT WEEK, BUT IT SEEMS WE OVERESTIMATED THEIR WORKPLACE SAFETY PROTOCOLS.

"That's...horrible," said Jaune, ceasing his struggle in favor of a horrified expression, "Are a lot of people hurt?"

THAT DEPENDS, said Death, ON HOW QUICKLY I GET THERE.

Jaune swallowed hard and tried not to feel ill. He tried very hard not to imagine being trapped in a dark mineshaft, or being caught in a dust explosion. A vivid imagination, unfortunately, was not one of the things that had been displaced by all the myriad of metaphysical truths crammed into his head since the start of his apprenticeship.

"A...are we going to Atlas then?"

Death looked him up and down before saying simply, WE ARE NOT.

Then disappeared. Waist deep in a rosebush in some indeterminate forest of Remnant, Jaune quite suddenly found himself alone.

. . .

It took Jaune approximately fifteen minutes to free himself from the thicket. Unfortunately, thorn bushes were one of the few plants that became even more troublesome after they died, and scythes were actually terrible at cutting through things that weren't solitary and at arm's length. The boy took a moment to lament his favorite pair of jeans, because one particularly nasty thorn had caught him in the knee and torn straight through the denim. He could see the entirety of his knobby knee through the hole, which probably meant that it was too big to be mended even if he had a needle and thread on hand.

He sat down on a relatively inoffensive patch of forest floor and began picking the thorns out of himself. This took approximately another fifteen minutes, as there were a lot of thorns.

Then there was nothing to do except wait. Jaune leaned back against the tree and listened for the sounds of the forest. It was utterly silent. This, unfortunately, was par for course, since there was always a dramatic sort of hush that seemed to settle over any place Death passed through. The only sound that ever followed, it seemed, was the racket of clumsy apprentice stumbling into things.

He checked his scroll. Two minutes had crawled past.

He rummaged through his pockets and retrieved a rumpled piece of paper with the names and times of all the people they had been scheduled to visit. He checked his scroll again. Another three minutes had gone by.

He tried to calling home and got automatically shunted to voicemail. His parents must have been out on another mission.

He looked at the piece of paper again, nervously noting that it was only ten minutes before Death was scheduled to visit the next person on the list. He made an agitated circle around the small forest clearing, but there was no sign of his mentor.

Just as he was about to pull out his scroll and check the time again, he finally heard something other than the sound of leaves and twigs crunching under his own feet Namely, the sound of someone else violently thrashing through the underbrush. He would know - he had been making the exact same kind of racket as he tried to free himself earlier.

Unfortunately, unlike his pitched battle with a rosebush, the other person's encounter with the thick underbrush was accompanied by the chilling sound of Beowolf howls.

In other words, someone was in trouble, and that person was going to die sometime in the next five minutes if they were the next person on Death's list. Deep in the some nondescrepit woods, the chances of someone overhearing their plight and coming to the rescue were vanishingly small.

That is, if you didn't count the thirteen-year-old boy in torn-up jeans equipped with nothing but a training scythe and a pebble of dubious arcane power.

So, in a rather reasonable fashion, Jaune asked himself with a slight note of panic, 'What on Remnant am I doing?' Because he seemed to have temporarily ceded control of his limbs, and they seemed intent on carrying him toward the sound of howling murderbeasts instead of in the opposite direction like any sane person. Despite his fervent attempts to reverse directions, his body seemed intent on cheerfully barreling towards certain death.

He also noted, distantly, that the thorny bushes in his way had gone from fifteen minute affairs to split second hindrances as he swung his scythe and they parted neatly in two before him with no resistance. The same held true for pretty much everything else in his way as well; the scythe flashed forward in a shimmering blue arc, and everything gave way. Jaune had no idea how he was doing it, just that he was.

Perhaps, Jaune mused, while the universe made his life harder whenever he tried to do something sensible, it made up for it by making his life easier whenever he was about to do something really, really stupid. It would explain quite a lot.

He burst through a particularly thick clump of undergrowth and found himself in another larger forest clearing.

Three things happened roughly at once.

Five Beowulfs lunged at a fallen, bloodied figure on the ground with terrifying snarls.

The fallen woman snarled just as fiercely with a viscious glint in her eye.

She then slammed what looked like a stove lighter into a shining red crystal that was unmistakeably Fire Dust.

"Oh f-" Jaune began, before the entire clearing was swallowed up by a massive explosion and Jaune found himself blasted right back into the undergrowth that he had just vacated.

For a few moments, the world was nothing but a blinding flash of heat and light.

Then, gradually, the flash faded away, leaving Jaune seeing spots and hearing a high pitched ringing in his ears. Dazed, singed, and tossed headfirst in a thicket of thorns that was also on fire, Jaune said in a flat voice, "Ow."

He struggled free and was greeted by a blackened clearing that was also, unsurprisingly, on fire. The only thing left of the Beowolves were a few trails of black smoke rising up from the ground, and the only thing left of the person they had been chasing were a few charred bits...all over the place.

Jaune gazed calmly upon the scene, before deciding that surrender was the better part of valor and bent over to retch violently into the bushes.

'Well, I'm glad that plan worked,' said a woman's voice.

Jaune valiantly suppressed the remainder of his dry heaves to look up at the speaker. It was the woman he had seen earlier, surveying the fiery blast zone with arms crossed and a carefully bland expression on her face. She looked to be in good health, except for the fact that she was also translucent.

'Sorry for getting you caught up in that,' she added, 'Glad to see you're sturdier than you look.'

Jaune straightened and took a deep, bracing breath before managing to croak, "...R-Rachel Pine?"

She nodded curtly and said, 'That's me. Are you my ride outta here?'

"I, well, yeah," Jaune answered. He couldn't quite meet her eyes as he apologized, "I'm sorry I didn't get here in time to...to..." He trailed off, unsure of what exactly he had been planning to do even if he had made it here early enough to intervene. He wasn't even sure he was allowed to intervene.

The ghost of Rachel Pine, however, let out a brusque guffaw and said, 'What was a skinny kid like you gonna do? Don't sweat it. I knew what I was doing.'

"But...you blew yourself up."

'And took all of those bastards with me. You win some, you lose some,' she said with a nonchalant shrug, 'I did think I'd be more upset about kicking the bucket, but in hindsight, it's not like being upset will change anything anyhow.'

That was certainly one way to look at it, Jaune supposed, and he'd much rather be dealing with a surprisingly laid back ghost than a hysterical one.

"Then, I guess I'll...send you on, if you're ready."

'Yup. Hook me up,' the spirit said.

Jaune swallowed the lump in his throat and swung.

At first, nothing seemed to happen, just like the first nine times he had tried today, but then the familiar glow began to suffuse itself throughout Rachel Pine's soul. She held up her hands in front of her face, watching in mild fascination.

'Huh. Tingly,' she said.

"It shouldn't take long," Jaune said in his best reassuring voice.

They both watched on in silence as the golden motes of light spread up her waist, then torso, and her fingertips began dissolving into the ether as well.

'Oh, yeah, just remembered something. Mind taking care of a last request?' the ghost of Rachel Pine suddenly said, just as the last of her began fading out. Her voice was already distant, as if speaking from the other end of a long tunnel.

"Of course," said Jaune without thinking.

'Before this merry forest chase, I locked my son in the cellar,' she said, 'If you could let him out, that'd be swell.'

Then she disappeared.

In a rather flat voice, Jaune said, "What."

. . .

The best way to survive a Grimm attack, according to the Annual Mistral Farmer's Almanac, was to make yourself as unappetizing as possible.

Well, to be entirely accurate, the best way to survive a Grimm attack was to not be present for a Grimm attack, but since that clearly wasn't an option for most Almanac readers by the time they recalled this specific piece of advice, the second best way to avoid being on the menu was the think happy thoughts. It had yet to be scientifically proven as effective - if only because most survivors were too traumatized to recount what they were thinking at the time, and most non-survivors were unavailable for comment - but if you were going to die anyway, you might as well die thinking about something pleasant.

This was, unfortunately, easier said than done for Oscar Pine, seeing as he was currently trapped all alone in a pitch black cellar with nothing but the smell of last year's pickled vegetables for company. He didn't even particularly like pickles, and he found he liked them even less now that he was in one. The thought of being served up as an entrée that came with a side of relish, ironically, was not a thought that Oscar particularly relished.

'I am going to die, and all I can come up with to distract myself are pickle puns,' the boy thought glumly. He couldn't really come up with anything more dignified to think about though; the smell of salt and vinegar was too strong.

The cellar door suddenly rattled, and Oscar's heart lurched, because the Grimm were finally upon him.

Instead of bursting through the old oaken doors in a flurry of fangs and splinters, however, the Grimm instead muttered discontentedly to itself. There was a prolonged jangling sound, then a click, and finally a scrape and a creak as it went through half a dozen incorrect keys before finding the right one to unbolt the cellar door.

Light spilled into Oscar's dark corner of marinating woes, and he had to squint against the light before the Grimm in question resolved itself into the shape of a gangly, blonde-haired boy no more than a few years older than himself.

There was an awkward pause before the other boy firmly applied his palm to his face and muttered to himself, "Oh, great, that's what I get for assuming. It's not like mom looks old enough to have eight kids; you think I'd know better than to assume. Damn it. What am I supposed to do now? Scratch messages in the dirt? Write words on the wall? Way to plan ahead, Jaune."

Oscar took a wary half-step backwards. Mother always told him that to give people who talked to themselves wide berth. Doubly so if they were holding something sharp and pointy, like the menacing six-foot tall scythe that the other boy was casually leaning on like a walking stick. There was no telling what kind of nutcases decided to wander through their corner of the Mistrali lowlands, after all.

Oscar Pine was also, however, a very polite boy, and since said nutcase was between him and the only exit, he had double the reason to be polite.

So Oscar ventured meekly, "E-excuse me?"

The other boy blinked. Glanced over his own shoulder. Blinked at Oscar once more. Pointed questioningly at himself.

Oscar nodded.

"You...can see me? And hear me?"

"...yes?" answered Oscar. There was always a chance he was hallucinating, but given the choice between believing in his own sanity or someone else's, he preferred to live under the comforting assumption that the other party was the crazy one.

The other party in question frantically rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a rumpled sheet of paper.

"Your name wouldn't happen to be Ruddy Whittaker, would it? Or, Hugo Beet?"

"No? I'm Oscar. Oscar Pine."

The older boy scratched his head in bemusement and checked whatever was written on the page one more time.

"You're not on the list. I guess the whole notice-me-not thing wears off if I'm by myself. Huh, weird. I don't usually find out about these sorts of things without some kind of abject humiliation involved," he said as he folded up the paper and stuffed it back into his pocket. Then he sheepishly extended a hand and added, "But, uh, I guess I'm Jaune. Jaune Arc."

Not wanting to be rude, Oscar gingerly accepted the handshake. The newly-introduced Jaune Arc seemed like a nice person, even if his overall mental stability was very questionable.

The moment they shook hands, however, Oscar felt a chill race through him, and all the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, as if electrified. Jaune's grip was cold, colder than anything he had ever felt before, and Oscar involuntarily shuddered.

Luckily, Jaune didn't seem to notice as he continued blithely, "Anyway, we need to get you somewhere safe. Is there anyone you can stay with? Relatives, friends, local authorities?"

"My aunt," Oscar replied, still somewhat shaken, "she lives about two days northeast, near the train station."

The older boy nodded and put two fingers in his mouth to whistle. Then he stared up at the sky expectantly.

In a very dramatic fashion, nothing happened.

"Right," Jaune said with a sigh, "because that would be too easy. Walking it is then."

He took a step in the northeastern direction, but Oscar caught his sleeve. Oscar couldn't just leave his home behind without asking even if he was dreading the most likely answer. But he had to know. Swallowing a painful lump in his throat, he whispered, "...what about my mom?"

Jaune stopped. Then, in a very soft voice, he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't reach her in time."

Oh. Well. That was that. No point in staying then. Numbly, Oscar felt Jaune tug on his arm to lead him away from the cellar. The other boy's touch was still inhumanly cold, but it was gentler this time, and less foreign.

'Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it,' he chanted in his mind, 'It's not safe to think about it.'

He thought about it. It was all he could think about. A strangled rose up in his throat, followed by small, hiccup-like sounds as Oscar Pine did his absolute best not to cry.

And then, in typical fashion for how this day seemed to be going, Oscar heard a quiet, "Oh shit" before he was knocked flat on his back as Jaune full-body tackled him to the ground. This would have been rather rude, if not for the more rude intrusion of a terrifying roar and an even more terrifying set of claws that raked through the air above them. Oscar looked up. And up, and up, and up.

The biggest Ursa he had ever seen towered over them like Death incarnate. Or so Oscar thought. He was wrong, of course, as Death incarnate was not quite as tall and had noticeably less fur, but Oscar had no way of knowing that at the moment.

While his mind was busy coming up with grossly inaccurate similes, his body had been doing something more productive, as it had decided to scramble backwards away from the giant evil murder bear. Anyone with any shred of good sense would have done the same. It said volumes, then, that once Oscar had dared to glance at the only other person present, he discovered that the blonde boy had instead clambered to his feet and planted himself in between Oscar and the Ursa with arms outstretched.

"Y-You can't eat him! He's not on the list," stammered Jaune.

Oscar gaped. Even the Ursa seemed momentarily stunned by the blonde's abject lack of self-preservation.

Then it swatted him like a fly, and he went flying like a rag doll. He even bounced a few times before landing in a heap. It would have been funny if it hadn't been such a tragically stupid way to die.

Except he didn't. Even though the blow should have crushed every bone in his body, the older boy only made a small grunt of pain before he was back on his feet as quickly as he could get all his limbs untangled. He charged back at the Ursa with wild swipes of his scythe.

"You can't!" Jaune cried, sounding more desperate this time, "He's not supposed to die!"

His scythe passed though the Ursa like air and did nothing. It didn't even leave a scratch on the black Grimm flesh. The Ursa swatted him again, this time towards the house, and Oscar heard a wince-inducing cacophony of splintering wood and shattering crockery as Jaune hit the side of the house and kept going right through it.

Finally free of the strangely resilient annoyance, the Ursa turned its attention back towards its intended meal and began to advance.

"...Death," came a pained voice from the direction of the house. Then, "...now would be a good time help."

In a very dramatic fashion, nothing happened. Nothing good, at any rate.

"...please. Help!"

No one answered.

The Ursa let out a bellowing roar. Oscar clambered to his feet and turned to run. It was illogical. He couldn't outrun a bear. Yet even so, every fiber in his body screamed at him to run, so he ran.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jaune picking himself up out of the rubble. Then the older boy was running towards them again, despite looking like he had gotten into a fight with an Ursa and lost (which he had), despite being unarmed (his scythe had been lost somewhere in the debris), and despite being too far away to reach them in time (if he could run at all with his leg as beat up as it looked).

"Stop," he yelled, "stop, stop!" No one listened to him though.

Then Oscar stumbled. The Ursa leapt.

Suddenly, Oscar heard Jaune's voice from everywhere and nowhere at once, ringing in his ears like a funeral bell.

STOP, Jaune screamed, and the world stopped in a flash of purple.

Oscar turned to find the Ursa suspended in mid-air, its claws and fangs mere inches away from tearing into him. It was completely still. Everything, it seemed, was completely still. There was even a strange staleness to the air that made it hard to breathe, and all the color of the world seemed muted, somehow.

Jaune's hand came down on Oscar's shoulder, even though Oscar hadn't seen the older boy cross the distance between them. The scythe had somehow found its way back into Jaune's hand, and its blade seemed to shine with an eerie blue light that definitely hadn't been there before.

"Let's go," said Jaune, and Oscar could only describe what happened next as: they went.

They were standing outside his ruined house one moment, then with a strange lurching feeling in his stomach, Oscar found them standing outside an entirely different house altogether. If he squinted, it looked familiar. He thought he recognized those petunias growing on the windowsill somehow.

His suspicions were confirmed with the door cracked open, and the shocked face of his aunt greeted him from within.

"Oscar? What are you doing here?" She then noticed the scuffed up dirt marks all over him, and the puffy redness of his eyes. Confusion shifted to alarm as she demanded, "By the gods, what happened?"

"I...Jaune brought me here," Oscar answered, partly because he was just as confused, and partly because he couldn't bring himself to recount the parts he wasn't confused about.

Strangely, his aunt only seemed more puzzled as she asked, "And who is that?"

"Oh, um, right," Oscar mumbled, "Auntie, this is - "

He turned to introduce his aunt to Jaune, and vice versa, only to find himself standing alone. There was no one else in sight, despite the flat farmlands stretching in every direction. There wasn't even anything to hide behind.

He could even still feel the lingering chill where the other boy had gripped his shoulder. There was nowhere for the other boy to have gone, and yet -

He was alone.

. . .

Elsewhere, in a place that was neither here nor there, there was a dialogue between mentor and apprentice. This was not the first of their dialogues, nor would it be the last, but it was, most certainly, a first. The beginning of something, so to speak, the moment at which the first pebble of the avalanche that mortals sometimes liked to refer to as destiny began to move. There was nothing particularly notable in this conversation, except, perhaps, the people involved, and the reasons why they were involved in such a talk. It went something like this:

"You were late."

I WAS NEITHER LATE, NOR WAS I EARLY. I ARRIVED PRECISELY WHEN I MEANT TO.

"You couldn't have stopped time and pulled us out of there before I got thrown through a house?"

I DID NOT DO THAT.

"Well, obviously, seeing as I did get tossed through a house. I have splinters...everywhere."

THEN PERHAPS NEXT TIME YOU ENCOUNTER A LARGE ANIMAL, YOU SHOULD NOT PURPOSELY PLACE YOURSELF IN THEIR PATH.

"I...I had to. It was going to eat Oscar. He wasn't supposed to die."

IF YOU HAD JUST LEFT HIM LOCKED IN THE CELLAR, HE WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN IN DANGER IN THE FIRST PLACE.

"Wait, what?"

HE WOULD HAVE SPENT A FEW HOURS THINKING ABOUT NOTHING BUT PICKLES. LONG ENOUGH FOR THE GRIMM IN THE AREA TO DISPERSE.

"Oh. Then...it was my fault. But I couldn't just leave him locked up in there."

AND SO YOU CHOSE TO ACT.

"Why didn't you stop me?"

There was a pause.

WHY SHOULD I HAVE? YOU TOOK RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS. I SAW NO REASON TO INTERVENE.

"But you saved us, at the end."

NO.

"Pardon?"

I DID NOT DO THAT.

"What? But-"

IT SEEMS THAT YOU ARE NOT ENTIRELY LACKING IN TALENT, NOR THE WILLINGNESS TO ACT. YOU LACKED ONLY THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO.

"...oh."

There was another long pause.

Then.

"...thanks."

. . .