The shadow slowly levitated towards the men. Making its presence known. It writhed as if it was forcing itself to move so slowly. It finally stopped around ten feet from the men. It grew downwards and slowly created limbs, adding heavy boots to its feet, a large coat on its back, and topped off the look with a hood.
"What is he doing?"
The shadow looked exactly like Lynx but with no colour. It stood there, face covered by the hood and coat staying still despite the cool breeze. The scythe wielder raised his hand and shot a fireball towards its face. The shadow fizzed slightly as the fire passed through it, and not a grunt was heard from Lynx. It stood there and did nothing. Ten seconds, twenty, one minute, two.
It raised its arm. The shadow itself began to speak in a voice that was impossibly deep and impossibly loud.
"You are pests, consider me the exterminator." Its face transformed into that of a monster. Suddenly Lynx disappeared as the shadow stepped forwards, crossing its arms before its face and splaying them. The shadow gained colour and it looked as though all of the darkness was housing Lynx. All of the shadows were thrown in a large radius around him. As it touched the villagers they dropped, dead before they hit the ground. The two huntsmen along with the swordswoman were all alive and staring at him.
"Wait, what happened? I've been unconscious? How did you-?"
"How many grimm have you killed?"
"What do you mean?"
"It was a simple question. How. Many. Grimm?"
They all looked at each other in confusion before crossbow spoke up. "I don't know for sure but between us, surely hundreds."
"Why?"
"Why what? Why kill the grimm?"
"Why?"
"Because they are evil-"
"No they're NOT!" Lynx swiped his arm at the three of them and where he had swiped was one clean cut. He created daggers upon daggers above his head and they all rained down on the gurgling bodies. He jumped onto the scythe wielder's body and swung his own scythe at it, splitting him into an uncountable number of pieces.
"You, are WRONG!" He resorted to just punching at it, crushing its untouched skull with one punch. Every hit on the remains of one body transferred to the others, even the mace wielder. As he took out his rage he made sure no one was left out, switching bodies every now and again. As he raised his fist high into the air, aiming for the woman's chest, a bird landed on it. Another landed on the woman's sword and he stared into its unblinking red eyes as he broke down crying.
Why, he sobbed, why does humanity have to be so evil?
Waiting to regain his power and watching the thieves pillage the discarded village, Lynx stalked off into the woods. He walked for tens of minutes before finally coming across a campsite. He sat down on a log surrounding a small pit of ashes and glared at a bird that landed in a tree across from him.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? YOU FOLLOWED ME DOWN HERE NOW WHAT DO YOU WANT?"
The bird flew down from the tree and landed on the log across from him before promptly turning into Qrow.
"Don't worry, I wasn't sent, and I wasn't followed."
"How can you be sure?"
"It's common sense for them at this point." Qrow replied bluntly. Deciding not to probe further Lynx looked down at his hands and summoned a ball of shadows.
"Qrow…"
"Yes, Lynx?"
"How long do you think it took me to destroy that first village?"
"Ughh… I believed it took around an hour, why?"
"It took me four minutes. Plus another ten to round up all of the people. That tried to escape."
"Fourteen minutes? Wow, that's,"
"Impressive?"
"Destructive."
"I could have done it faster but at that moment I wasn't thinking straight."
"That is seriously strong power, Lynx."
"Ever since I came here, to-to Vale, yeah. Ever since I came to Vale I have had this thing, usually my power regenerates after excessive use in a matter of minutes but I am still trying to regenerate the power I used on my clone during the fight. I feel empty. Like when I came here I disconnected from something and now I am just draining my battery." As he spoke the last sentence he looked to the side where a grimm was sitting and beckoned it to him. The beowolf crept towards him and Lynx held out his hand to stroke it.
The grimm growled and leapt at Lynx, catching him off guard and nicking him with its claws.
"What are you-"
The beowolf launched itself at Lynx again and he instinctively swiped with his arm, causing a dagger of shadows to impale the wolf through the abdomen. The dagger disappeared as he stood in shock of his own actions. But before he could feel remorse for what he had done to it he say something. There was a glow coming from the hole in its side. It attracted him. He stepped towards it, captivated by this glow and crouched by the animal as it whimpered.
"Lynx, I though you said that you were cool with these?"
He put his right hand on its side before raising his left.
"Hey, what are you-"
Lynx put his hand through the skin of the beowolf and blood coating him only egged him on. He pushed through the flesh and came to a halt as he saw the source of the glow. It was a mass in the centre of the chest that was made of pure darkness. He lifted it out of the cavity.
In his hands was a surprisingly warm (for the nature of the grimm) heart. Lynx looked at the object with a look that wouldn't look out of place on the grimm themselves. Without even knowing what he was doing he raised it to his mouth and bit, the warm black blood spilling down the back of his throat. After the first bite he stood up with newfound energy. He looked down at his arms and saw his veins turn black and his skin turn white.
"L-Lynx? What's happening?"
Lynx looked at the darkening sky and felt power surge over him. His veins had a slight tinge if crimson and his eyes were turning from faint grey to red but the changes came to a halt and slowly faded. His skin going from pure white back to its regular pale complexion.
"That, felt good."
"Did you see what that kid did to those huntsmen?"
"Yeah, unfortunately I was on the loot squad. There was actually more blood on the outside than on the inside of their bodies. It was pretty sickening."
"I heard a report from Raven that he can control the grimm, and what is weirder is that he knew. Out of all of the people and places she has scouted out, he was the only one to notice her. Apparently after his tests he went into the wilderness and made sure that she knew about his knowledge of her."
Lynx, after his first two weeks at the camp, noticed that he was feared. This was strange, considering the nature of their lives. He decided that it was due to the very obvious birds that followed him wherever he went, how they didn't think he would notice that the twins could never be seen together, though that may have been due to their hatred of their counterpart.
He was walking through what had become his regular routine, waking in on a flat rooved building, taking care of hygiene, eating and watching others train, then finally going into the woods to practice with his magic. He had noticed that his high from eating the heart was fading and no matter how hard he trained he couldn't keep or regain any power. Even whilst not using his powers he drained his power. Fearing that he would be forced to take another grimm, he tried as hard as he could to ebb the flow of darkness from within him. Though he had noticed one good thing about his lack of power, the sun no longer caused him the irritation that it had previously.
He found himself in the clearing that he used as his training area, trees were sliced down everywhere and some stumps had been torn from the dirt when Lynx had decided to test how much strength he could wield. There was a log lying to one side of the clearing with a small indent in it that was as long as his body and was moulded to his comfort. He decided to lay in it and watched a circle of birds above him, flying in mismatched patterns as he toyed with them, making a few fly into barriers or pulling on a wing.
He heard a bird land on his log and sighed as he closed his eyes.
"Qrow, who struck first?"
The bird cocked its head to one side and a faint pop and a small scramble was heard as Qrow transformed and found comfort on the log.
"Struck what first?"
"Don't be dense. The grimm, everyone is terrified of them yet the grimm are terrified of mankind."
"The grimm are scared if us? That puts a new perspective on things."
"Answer the question." Lynx scolded, in a burst of anger. He held his hand over his face and saw it was trembling before letting it hang limp off the side of the log.
"The grimm, why? This is common knowledge."
"Not for me." Lynx mumbled. "So, humans and the faunus spawned into this world, completely unable to defend themselves. And the grimm, creatures that I have been taught to love, tried to snuff you off of the planet?"
"Yes, that is accepted by everyone on the face of Remnant."
"Someone's got some explaining to do."
Sorry for how delayed this was, I had no motivation to do this without a deadline so, I have decided that there will be one chapter per week, to give me time and to motivate me at the same time.
~ThatOneGuyQ23