Naught But A Remnant:
A Valed Threat
I apologise for how late this chapter is, and I'm sorry to say that there's a good chance that I won't be able to keep to the schedule on my profile. With that out of the way, onwards with the show!
Things were peaceful in the kingdom of Vale. Or at least, as peaceful as things could get for a kingdom constantly besieged by monsters that seemed more at home in nightmares then the real world. Citizens bustled purposely, cars and automobiles glided down the roads, all in all it was just a normal Saturday. Or it was, until reality fractured for a moment.
A swirling blue portal pulled itself into existence, bounded by a pentagram and simple circle. All near it almost passed out from the pain that tugged at the core of their beings, the portal didn't belong; it shouldn't be here their instincts whispered worriedly. The pain began to escalate, if that was even possible, while the effects were spreading throughout the four kingdoms were at the least suffering pounding headaches. The world was for a moment, Human, Faunus, Animal and Grimm, united in pain.
Then two bedraggled men were thrown from the vortex, smashing into walls and other people. The agony lessened ever so slightly. That was not the only strange thing to issue forth from the gateway to another world. A cloud of silver bullets shot out, only to hang in the air, before bursting apart in clouds of metal and energy. Suddenly the vortex seemed to shudder, barely able to hold its shape, writhing madly within the confines of the circle that bound it. The blue of the portal began to corrupt into a tainted red, vomiting the colour till only the pentagram and circle remained untouched. Occasionally blue crested in the swirling madness of the door to another place, like froth bubbling forth, but it was quickly submerged beneath the waves of sickening crimson.
A figure stepped from this hellish spell, even as the taint reached the runic writing and the circle. The pentagram turned a mottled black, as though entropy had set into the core of the shape. The liquid nature of the vortex began to clot, clumps of dark red haemorrhaging across the door that the demonic creature had used to enter their world, as though the gate was decaying, dying. Its lifeblood of energy was slowing and drying up the thing that had stepped through having dealt a death-blow to it just by going near it, his very presence like the plague.
The agony spiked, all united in a pain that threatened to almost spilt their heads apart, then it was gone, leaving only a nameless terror, and the first words the stranger had uttered as he had touched their soil. No matter how far away, whether a few feet from the once raging vortex, now sluggish and falling apart, or hundreds upon thousands of miles in the distance. They seared themselves into their minds, even the mindless and soulless Grimm fearing those words. There was a cold certainty in those lines, a tone that brought vivid images of carrion crows and the bloody aftermath of massive battles to mind. The voice that spoke them revelled in a sicking glee that told all who heard it that their fate lay in its hands. "The No-Life king has come" it whispered in the empty silence of their minds "Your doom has risen, your end approaches."
The demon for what else could it be, grinned a feral smile that promised pain and suffering to all that saw it. An aura of death pulsed from it, so strong that it was almost tangible. Then it collapsed in a spray of blood, the aura vanishing, the portal blowing away with the fragile breeze.
As if a spell was broken, those closest staggered to their feet, before stumbling away as best as they could. A certain group of four females however were running the opposite way to the panicked crowds, deploying weapons that marked them at the very least as Huntresses-in-training as they sprinted towards the downed thing in the street. Huntsmen and Huntresses from across the four kingdoms followed, many in town for the festival. Swords, maces, pistols, knives and even one or two scythes were being readied as they raced across rooftops or down alleys. The Huntresses-in-training came across the demon first, the adolescents gathering around with weapons cautiously aimed at the creature, or in the case of two of them, pointed at the visitor from another world.
The apparent leader, from the slight questioning glances being directed at her from the others, was a petit girl whose most distinguishing features were silver eyes and red highlights in her otherwise dark hair, advanced with a large red and black scythe ready to strike. Alucard noted idly as he burst off the ground towards her with unnatural speed that she was dressed in clothes that matched her hairstyles colours, and that she appeared to be among the youngest of them. What he only noticed with slight shock seconds later was that she easily evaded his blow; one should have been quicker than a human could react to. The blonde one in a somewhat revealing outfit shouted a distressed "Ruby" (quite a fitting name, he thought) despite the fact that this Ruby was perfectly fine (he hadn't wounded her in the slightest.)
What followed was rather humiliating. The blonde's hair set on fire and she began firing explosive rounds from what he had assumed to be gauntlets, the one who had cat ears (this was a different world he supposed) joining the volley with pistol rounds, while the one in white did something with her sword and his whole side was suddenly frozen in ice. He collapsed to the ground, not from their petty attacks, but from a wave of weakness that overcame him, something he had almost never experienced. More blood burst from his body, the dark magic that held it together waxing and waning abruptly and without warning, one moment he was at his normal strength, the next he was spurting blood and as helpless as a mewling kitten. What had the vortex done to him?
They froze him almost completely in ice, and he pretended to be restrained, even as dozens upon dozens of strangely-clad and armed men and women surrounded him and cut off any and all escape routes. Normally he would simply butcher the entire contingent sent to capture him with ease. Of course normally he never felt so…weak before, it felt as though he had been drained of his power somehow, the constant flow of energy that he had always felt abruptly halted. It was alarming, especially when the power the people that currently surrounded him was taken into account.
They could match his speed, or rather they could match his weakened, current form's speed. Fighting right now would be to no avail, as even temporally using his power played havoc with the diminished amount of dark magic holding his body together. When he had stepped from the portal, the magic surging through his sluggish veins had sharpened and proceeded to burst out of him, ripping anything in its path apart.
The ice was removed; no doubt as the swath of humans encircling him decided that the amount of sharp pointy things and gun barrels would be enough to dissuade him from doing anything to resist capture. Had he had his full strength, and not some watered-down fraction of it, he would've torn through them without a second thought, but he had to make do with what he had. Besides, he thought a feral, fear-inspiring grin stretching itself across his face, causing those nearby to shiver; Integra would love to hear about this place, especially if the powers he had seen could be harnessed.
Ruby Rose was normally a happy vibrant person, but something seemed off about the prisoner they were currently escorting to see Headmaster Ozpin. An aura of death and terror clung to the man and despite his rather dismal state at the moment, an air of ruined grandeur hung about him like a cloak. To those who had an eye for such things one could see the slight tension of the man, the rumpled clothes that smelt ever so slightly of blood barely disguising the fact. The dark madness that lurked behind the shattered glasses was even more evident, a swirling pit of horrors that one could lose themselves in all too easily.
The rest of her team clearly thought the same, for they fidgeted and mumbled, making sure that their gazes never fell upon their strange captive. The air was rife with palpable tension, the Huntsmen and Huntresses of Vale that surrounded the strange prisoner uncomfortable with the man's presence. The lunatic grin or the occasional dark chuckles certainly did not help to settle the nervous group.
It was with great relief that the capturers made their way to the Bullhead station, as the other Huntsmen and Huntresses could now foist full responsibility onto the unfortunate team RWBY and the few professors (of which there were four) that had also apprehended the apparent dimensional hopper.
The two others that appeared to have come with him, (based on their strange uniforms and eyewitness reports) were also being held captive, though they were in a far worse state, pale and cold to the touch as if they had some sort of fever. One of the two was missing his left hand, the article ending in a stump just below the elbow. It had been bleeding profusely before they had roughly bandaged it, knowing the importance of getting the prisoners to a secure location, and Beacon Academy would be perfect.
Most of the Huntsmen and Huntresses quickly dispersed, even as one of the many Bullheads that ferried passengers to and fro from Beacon descended. The professors, team RWBY and a few other students that were returning to Beacon after a day out to Vale (they were watching the strange group with interest, seeing as they hadn't been able to respond in time before they lost track of the "anomaly".) stepped aboard quickly. The professors and team RWBY wanted to deposit their prisoners to Professor Ozpin and his deputy Professor Goodwitch, while the other students were curious to find out more about what had happened. The agonising pain they had felt less than an hour before was still fresh in everybody's minds, not to mention the grim words…
When the older students, for team RWBY where the only first-year students there, attempted to gather information, the professors quickly silenced them, before making it clear that it was to remain private knowledge that Beacon Academy was keeping someone evidently against their will (even if he had attacked a Beacon student, who knew what had been happening inside his head while the Ruby Rose and her friends had surrounded the man, weapons drawn?)
The Bullhead pilot was directed to land as close to Professor Ozpin's office as possible, which the middle-aged man had responded to with gusto. He had hovered the Bullhead just inches from the front doors, allowing the professors to elate, who then summarily dismissed team RWBY, to their evident relief. The whole display garnered curious looks from the few students that were in sight. Luckily, most of the attendees of the prestigious Beacon Academy were in their dorms or still scattered around the city of Vale (a few had even gone to visit Signal several miles from Vale itself), meaning the professors could quickly take the main prisoner to see the Headmaster of Beacon, while the other two were escorted to the Infirmary by other faculty staff, notified during the uncomfortable Bullhead journey.
As the professors bustled the apparent manic towards Professor Ozpin's office, the smile began to grow even larger and sinister, shadows falling in unnatural places, creating a visage that was highly disturbing. The occasional giggles were soon replaced with almost constant guffaws that spoke of madness and despair, of the dark places of the world that the sorry excuse of a man between them (at least to their eyes) had seen.
It was with relief that the professors handed the crazy but reasonably harmless (once again a miscalculation that the faculty members really shouldn't have made) prisoner over to Ozpin's second in command Miss Glynda Goodwitch. She certainly seemed to live up to her name, with her severe white blouse, striking blonde hair and tattered black cape. The time honoured tradition of too low a paygrade to handle certain situations came to mind.
The lift rose silently, Miss Goodwitch keeping a wary eye on the man in the bloodstained crimson clothes that occupied the same space with her. The slightly darker patches had been discerned by her watching eyes immediately, and as the man seemed to slip even further into insanity, and she became even more cautious. There was an aura about him that the others may have been able to dismiss as simple madness, comforting themselves with lies, she knew better. It was the miasma that spoke of slaughter and an innocence gladly surrendered to darkness, which screamed of danger, making those around feel an anxiety that was unrelenting. She knew it well, for the older Huntsmen and Huntresses projected it unconsciously, hell she had before she had worked at Beacon Academy. She and all the professors had trained it out of themselves before they began to teach classes, to keep it from driving their students up the wall.
But she had never encountered such a strong one, and in the confined space it was stifling. Already she had begun nervously fidgeting, her eyes increasingly drifting away from the figure across from her. She was always calm and composed, how was this happening to her?!
A bell chimed, and the doors slide open, much to Miss Goodwitch's gratitude, as she too could not wait to get away from the laughing twitching captive. And then he saw professor Ozpin.
The silver-haired Huntsman that had steered Vale through countless disasters stood from behind his desk, his features giving nothing away. He appeared surprised, in reality; he had been made aware of this the moment that the man had been taken into custody. The captive hungrily eyed Ozpin, and Glynda for a moment thought she saw desperation, sorrow and perhaps hope? Then the moment was gone, and the man's demeanour changed instantly from his earlier manic actions. He straightened up; gaining control of himself with such precision it was clear military training had been in his past. His almost ravenous expression turned to one of polite boredom, as though he could not care in the slightest about what was happening around him. The most startling change was the man's voice, for before there had been an undertone of madness, now it was completely level, no indication whatsoever that insanity lurked inside the man's head.
"Professor Ozpin, I presume?" the man questioned. How did he know that? "Indeed I am, and your name is?" Ozpin replied in that language known as statesmanship that Glynda frankly detested. The man was a prisoner, and in her opinion should be treated as such. "My name, well that's simple. I am Alucard…" and now that insatiable madness returned in the wide grin "the No-Life King."
In the editing process, the original author's note here got deleted, so basically this is just too say that I am horrible for leaving you on a cliff-hanger while I ponderously write the next chapter yadda-yadda, evil-smevil. (This point is now moot because I have updated, but still I must buff up the word count in any way I can-emm…You guys can just go onto the next chapter and leave me to my raving here alright?)