Chapter 6

Thus, Kindly, I Scatter

Part 2

Ashes, Ashes…

Λ

The masked man had spent the better portion of the day watching the sun. He kept his milky eyes, rotted and dead and no worry for going blind, turned heavenward beneath the eerie wooden visage upon his flaking, putrid face. Something about the glowing orb simply fascinated him. It called to him in a way that little else had over the eons of his existence. Perhaps the heat was it, or perhaps even the way that it sat above all and proclaimed itself supreme. Yet, more than anything else, he earnestly believed it was the light.

He could almost remember, yes, very nearly, that he had once had shared something very intimate with the notion of light.

He let this go, however, and gave up on the train of thought. There was witchy-work to do, as he so companionably thought of it, and the time drew ever closer to do it. He had made it to the city, as he knew he would, and they were shortly behind him. He could feel Basyl's task was finished. This made him somewhat sad and somewhat giddy. Now it was up to the latter, and he thoroughly believed the show should be fantastic.

The masked man dropped his gaze from the heavens and settled them onto the still sapphire mirror of the titanic lake. Its waters were just as calm as he'd left them, when only the previous day he'd stepped from their unmoving surface and onto the massive savannah below his perch.

Here, atop his vantage on the tallest of the white marble towers in the ruined city, he could see all. And it amazed him. That such a behemoth of a cityscape, stretching easily forty miles across from east to west and some seventy from south to north, could hide in a lake of only thirty miles across was nothing short of humbling, even to him. Even with his eyes, dead though they were, his uncannily powerful sight couldn't pick out the city from the mouth of the nigh-dead tributary from whence he'd leapt.

Oh, the marvels of his Master were ever ceaseless.

So he watched and waited with patience unerring. He had to, of course, for under the shaky hand of his Master, who rightly should know no cessation, the warping of reality had left time somewhat weaker. It was palpable, especially to one who knew what to look for, but he was sure they would notice nothing unordinary. So he simply waited and watched.

The breeze picked up while he did, tugging at the tail of the cloak that was stuck under his seated posterior. He sat atop the curved dome of the tower with his legs crossed as the breeze passed, leaning back on his palms and letting his hood slide off his tilting head.

It tousled the few gossamer strands of hair that still clung to his mostly decayed scalp. The silvery strands dipped toward the front of his face, tickling the exposed skull and cheekbone as they did. A horrid sight for most any sane individual, but for the masked man it was a welcome bit of reprieve. To feel that cool breeze, blowing off the sapphire waters of the lake and carrying the simple scent of purity, was nothing short of electrifying.

He took a deep, ragged breath, his lungs hitching as they filled full of the wonderfully freeing air, and billowed a puff of greenish haze as he released it.

He turned his gaze down again and, this time, fixed his sight toward the path the women would be coming from. He knew from which of the streamlets they would soon be looking his way; knew it well apart from the hundreds that there were. So he settled his gaze and watched, waiting for the real show to start.

Yet, there was something else as he waited. Something unusual, to say the least. Something that, to his wit, should rightfully not be there.

He had felt this sensation on a few occasions in his memory. It was not foreign but it was unusual all the same. It came every time that his task neared its end, when the subjects of his hunt came close. But it always seemed to appear when he was certain that they would fail his final marking.

He keened his dead eyes and peered intently toward the streamlet, feeling that sensation and watching for signs of their approach. The masked man was certain he had picked well this time, therefore it came as somewhat of a shock that his un-beating heart should be so moved. Still, while he continued to watch it continued to grow. The feeling became stronger and stronger as the weakened time passed, moments stretching and yawing into hours or perhaps even days, and he mused on it only further.

The sun began to feel somewhat hot to his skin. Another sensation to perplex him as he mulled the feeling in his un-beating breast…

Ψ

"I told you I'm fine!" the faunus protested weakly, pushing her partner's hand away from her bandaged leg.

The blonde gave only a muted, worried look in response, pulling her hand back and straightening herself. She sat on her knees, the leather of her jackboots digging into the soft meat on the back of them. Her lavender eyes spoke volumes of her worry over the injured faunus, making up for what her pursed lips did not utter in their silence.

"And stop giving me that look…" Blake continued, turning her own golden eyes away from Yang's.

Sleep had come well and welcome for nearly seven hours, more than either woman had known in years now, but had regrettably been sundered by the faunus' screams. At some point during their slumber, a dream, the details of which were already gone from her, had accosted the raven-headed woman's sleeping psyche and torn apart her restfulness. She had arisen quite immediately after it had reached the acme of its terror.

The screams woke her partner at once, sending both women into a battle-ready and controlled panic. Once all had been cleared, and once both were sure that no danger lurked in the early-morning shadows, the present roundabout had begun and carried through until now.

"Blake, I just want to make sure you're okay." Yang pleaded cautiously. She had held her silence for want of words that might convince her partner, but now abandoned it in the hopes that anything at all would serve better than nothing.

The look of hurt and alarm that Blake gave in reply, colored more by the remnants of her forgotten dream than by any real negativity toward the blonde, told Yang all she needed.

She sighed deeply.

"We're not gonna catch him if your leg's all busted up, or, worse, infected." Yang pleaded once more, trading her formerly cautious tone for a carefully played mix of sympathy and coercion, "Just let me put some salve on it, at the very least, huh?"

Blake stared with the same mix of hurt and alarm, almost looking halfway to madness, before suddenly pushing herself to her feet. She winced with the pain, a thin grimace that spoke more than a thousand dying shrieks to Yang's eyes. When she stood she swayed twice and caught herself both times. After that, she stood straight and well and leveled her eyes to her partner's, looking deep into those worried lavenders.

"I told you…" she began, forcefully, "I'm fine."

The faunus let her words trail off for a moment before she began toward the stream. It was only a handful of yards from the mouth of Basyl's cavern, where they had slept seven of the last nine hours and argued the last two. Her limp was pronounced despite her effort not to let it show.

Yang opened her mouth to say something in reply as her partner limped toward the pitiful flow of water, which still pushed steadily up the incline, but shut it again after only a moment's consideration. Instead she stood and, after quickly gathering up her coat, followed. Both women washed their faces in silence, and even splashed some water under their arms and on their necks, but neither dared to drink the water.

Something, somewhere deep in their minds, told them it was bad.

Ψ

When they first reached it, the sun had climbed to its daytime peak and fully settled there. The women had managed the last miles from the mouth of Basyl's cavern in a little under five hours, making fantastic time considering their condition. They hadn't bothered with breakfast, neither was hungry for a variety of reasons, and had only spared the bare minimum time for three different breaks. Two were for Blake to have a breather, which she tried desperately to play down, and one was for a necessary.

Yet, once they'd reached the precipice, neither spared any thought for either the passage of time or the heat of the midday sun. Too great a sight now lay before them for either to worry over the beads of sweat running down their neck and soaking into their shirts. Too marvelous was the grandeur of this place to spare a thought on their growling stomachs and aching muscles.

Neither had ever dreamed or imagined such a place could even exist.

First to catch their bewildered gazes was the mirror-surface of the waters some four miles below their feet, at the end of the nigh-endless drop upon which they now stood. The surface looked like a perfectly carved and buffed sapphire, so still and pure was the water. Its mirror-like appearance was only furthered by the manner in which the sun was reflected from it. The look this created gave off a sense that, were one brave or mad enough, one could reach another world by leaping into the blue surface. It looked much and more like a portal, perhaps, or some kind of teleport waiting to whisk one away.

Next, for the majesty of the waters was not the only thing here to amaze, both women were humbled by the sheer size of it all. The gargantuan bowl in which the lake sat, far too big for either to even try to comprehend, was of such enormity and titanic scale that the water looked infinite, even from their high perch. The walls, too, only further added to this feeling of nigh-infinite size. They were perfectly smooth as if carved by some long-dead god or another. They sailed down toward the water with the minutest of a curve and joined the sapphire surface in a manner that made it look as if the two were one.

The illusion might have held true were it not for the difference of color; the walls of the bowl being a deep ochre while the water within was of the deepest sapphire-blue.

"He's down there, somewhere…" Blake mused, first to break their shared silence, as her golden eyes continued to stare in bewilderment. Her goggles hung neatly from the scabbard at the small of her back, glinting an occasional bit of sunlight back toward the burning star above. Had she the forethought to don them, the faunus might've picked out the faint silhouette of the masked man on his perch so very far away.

Alas, in her own stunned awe, Blake had no such thought as to look for him.

"I'm sure he is…" Yang replied dreamily, not quite coming out of her own stupor when she levied the response.

They could only continue to stare for a time, watching the motionless surface of the water below, not quite sure it was actually water to begin with. In some far off part of their minds, both women vaguely noted not only their own little streamlet, flowing weakly between them and spilling into a cloud of mist over the edge of the drop, but the hundreds of others that ringed the half of the bowl they could spy. Each carried over its own edge, likely pushing upward as unnaturally as their own, and spilled over.

Some were stronger and maintained their form as they plunged into the lake, looking much like the trickle of a tap that one forgets to turn entirely off after using the latrine. Others, most of which were the ones closest to them, were clearly just as weak and broke apart into their own clouds of watery mist in their descent. However, regardless of how they began, all the streamlets made a most startling change on the way down.

Roughly two thirds of the way, whether misty cloud or tap-like trickle, the water changed to a breathtaking blue. From there, all the plummeting water coalesced into a solid, almost manufactured looking stream and joined the sapphire waters, leaving no disturbance whatsoever upon impact. It was as if the water simply fused into one massive body; no ripple or wave left the point of the streams' conjoiner.

"What is this place?"

Yang blinked heavily, almost sleepily, and turned to face her partner. The raven-headed faunus did the same, at nearly the same moment, and both stared at each other with looks of stupefaction. They had both heard the other say it.

"I don't know…" Yang said first, followed almost perfectly by Blake.

Both stopped and clapped their hands tight over their mouths. Blake's eyes were keen and piercing as they gazed into Yang's lavenders. The blonde's had lost their sleepy look, stolen away by the startling air that had come upon them so unnoticed, and looked into her partner's with a naked expression of shock.

"You heard that, right?" Yang asked, her words muffled almost comically by her interlaced fingers.

Blake only nodded in response.

"You asked what this place was, right?" the blonde asked again, her voice once more nigh-comical.

Again, Blake only nodded her response.

"Why are you looking at me like that, then?" Yang pressed further.

Blake continued to stare, continued to wear a look of mixed dumbfoundedness and surprise, but managed a reply after a short time. Her voice trembled a tad, the pain in her leg groaning with something like a throbbing heat, but the blonde made it out all the same.

"You said it, too." Blake almost whispered, "You asked what this place was, didn't you?"

Both women were warriors. Both were well-trained and very much conditioned to ignore one of the more primal feelings of all living things. To them, fear was only a 'cuss-word' that bore no place in their vocabulary or thoughts. It was something to be forgotten, much like the dolls and dress-up-outfits of their youth, as it no longer had a purpose for them.

Yet, in this moment, both felt it anew. Seeping, snaking in and setting up shop, unnoticed and unexpected. From whence it came, neither knew; wherefore it came, neither cared. That it came at all was reason enough for concern.

"What the hell is he…" Yang mused, whispering more to herself than asking a question. She turned her gaze back toward the waters, the unmoving sapphire mirror some four miles below her now slightly trembling feet.

Ψ

Their bewildered watch was broken some twenty minutes in. After a time of staring in further silence, mulling over the queer exchange they had shared and the monolithic majesty of the lake before them, a realization had come to both. Their prey was down there, somewhere, and the two of them would have to figure out a way to cross this monstrous body of water. If they were to continue their pursuit of the masked man, then the lake was their newest obstacle.

Once that had occurred to them and thoroughly settled into their heads, the stupor of it all had broken off and mostly subsided. The strange unison of that shared question, the strange look and nature of their newest obstacle, all of it made way for the most present of concerns.

How to cross and where to go if they could.

Yang took a step back first and sat on her rump with a dusty plop. The ground beneath her was sand, as it had been since they'd found the river so many miles back, but her sudden seating stirred it into the air as if it were merely loose dust. The blonde paid this no mind.

Blake was next, taking a good four strides backward as the realization hit her. She limped brazenly, making no attempt to hide or downplay it in her dawning revulsion, before taking her own seat on the sandy shore of the tiny streamlet. Just as with Yang, the faunus' seating stirred the sand into the air like dust and, also as with Yang, the raven-headed woman paid it no heed.

"He's… down there… somewhere…" Blake whispered in both disbelief and horror. Proud faunus or no, she could not stymie the more animalistic part of her nature toward the present conundrum. The feline ears atop her head, hidden well under her tightly wrapped bandana, pressed to her scalp as though proclaiming loudly this very protest.

"Yeah. He is." Yang spoke up, pulling Blake's attention away from the horrifying prospect of what would undoubtedly come next.

The faunus turned her eyes to her partner, the golden orbs pleading nearly as much as her voice.

"There's no other way, is there?"

"Probably not." Yang replied ponderously, "But even if there was, we'd waste weeks or months trying to find it. Look at the size of this… thing, Blake."

The blonde swept her left hand toward the bowl and the waters within.

"If he's on the other side, we'd lose him long before getting there." She went on, "And if, for whatever reason, he's somewhere down there… somewhere in there… We'd never know from up here."

Both looked back to the lake. Both looked back to the sapphire mirror of the water. Both felt their hearts drop down into their stomachs.

"How do we even get down there, though?" Blake asked after a time of further staring, though she truly had no want to know if there was a way at all.

Yang was going to reply, had even opened her mouth and begun to pass the air over her vocal chords to speak, but was interrupted. The two women heard it, or, perhaps more truthfully, felt it in the pit of their minds. It wasn't like the last, a discordant and conquering presence, but it was equally powerful.

"Why not jump on in?"

Like a whisper, as though one's own thought had merely passed by the mind's eye, it came and went nearly unnoticed.

"Why don't we just jump in?" Yang suggested, not entirely realizing what she had even said.

Blake's dumbfounded stare, made up of disapproval and shock in nearly equal measure, gave the blonde pause. Yang tilted her head quizzically to the side and stared back.

"What?" she nearly blurted, "Did you expect me to know?"

"No, but I didn't expect that…" Blake responded, still giving her partner the same shocked stare.

"Expect what? For me to say 'I don't know'?"

Blake's look of shock took on more of a sense of stupefaction once more, losing the disapproving stare and gaining a hint of something akin to dismay. She drew her legs up, wincing at the bloom of pain in her thigh, and hugged her knees to her chest.

"Something's not right here…" the faunus mused.

The breeze picked up then, blowing strongly between the two of them and into the bowl of the lake. It was cool and crisp in a way much unlike the badlands, but carried something else with it. Another whisper, the same as the last they hadn't truly heard, that pierced both once more without their knowing.

"Everything's right in this place! Just look at my sapphire water! How could you think anything's wrong?"

"Yeah, Blake." Yang said, dreamily, "How could you think anything's off here?"

"I don't know…" Blake mused, "I guess I just spoke without thinking…"

The breeze continued to carry past them, picking up Blake's raven and Yang's golden tresses and playing with them almost impishly. Neither woman seemed to notice the haze they had fallen into, ignoring the tickle of their hair on their faces, and simply stared off into the sapphire waters. They now had a mesmerized look about them. Lavender and golden eyes both were glazed over, looking off into the distance without really seeing.

The sun burned as bright and strong overhead as it ever had, bringing the same consistent sweat to their flesh that the strong breeze now lapped away. Its heat and light were far and away from their minds, however, as both became further and further lost in that softly present whisper.

"It's really very nice down here, you know."

"I'll bet it is, Yang…" Blake whispered drearily.

"You said it, Blake…" Yang replied in much the same tone.

"It's perfect down here, in my cool, blue water, to get away from that nasty ole sun!"

Yang inhaled deeply, unnoticed by her partner, and sighed with a longing sort of moroseness.

"It sure looks good!" she agreed heartily, still retaining a dreamy dullness to her voice. Blake said nothing, just slowly bobbed her head up and down with a lazy smile across her pursed lips.

"The water's soft, you know? Why not jump on in, hm? It won't hurt you…"

Yang stood first, her eyes now sporting a very faint glow of blue, and took a step toward the edge of the drop.

Λ

The masked man's lips parted in a sick and gruesome grin. He still sat upon his perch, cross-legged atop the tallest of those snowy-white towers in the midst of the ruined city, watching with careful interest and listening to the faint whisper that his pursuers heard but did not hear. Their sleepy trance, gradually and unwittingly slipped into with the same ease one might don a favorite garment, was the moment he'd been waiting for.

Now, as he sat and watched, the grin of his discolored gums and long-decayed teeth grew ever wider. His lips parted fully and he opened his jaw, spreading his sickly teeth apart into a wide and mad smile. Along with this he began a veritable guffaw of his unearthly laughter, clutching his stomach and rocking back on the domed top of his perch.

"OH YES!" he shouted to the cloudless sky, where the sun kept its unmoving vigil, "COME, LADIES, COME!"

This short discourse, yelled freely and wildly toward the open heavens, was followed by another round of his raucous belly-laughter. He had to hold himself tight and strain his legs forward to keep from simply rolling off the top of the tower. Somewhere beneath him, bats stirred and madly fled through the empty halls of the city, disturbed from their rest by the demonic noise that was the masked man's laugh. The legion flutter of their wings echoed through the halls and out the windows of the tower beneath him, mixing with his laughter to create a truly hellish din.

The masked man sat up, cloudy tears streaming from the eyes beneath his now askew wooden visage. He still held his stomach, but had managed to pull the raucous outburst mostly under control. He stood when he was able, some few minutes later, and pulled the mask from his face entirely.

With hood down and mask off, he raised his arms to the sky and shouted.

"Come, lionesses! Come and show me your resolve!"

Three years now, and almost done. Three long years of this game, one of the longest stretches that he'd ever done the dance, and so close at hand was his finish. He could hardly believe it, standing there and watching the two from his far off vantage. They were edging closer and closer, readying themselves, unwittingly, to meet the last of his challenges for them.

So close now, yet still so far off he could barely contain himself.

"How are they, huh?!" he shouted madly heavenward, "Have I done well?! Have I, you sadistic ole hermit?!"

He stood that way for a time; head tilted back, eyes upturned and arms pointed straight to the sky in a V shape. Drool dribbled from the left corner of his mouth, seeping slowly down his cheek in a stinking mass. He stared intently into the bright orb of burning gas in the sky, looking past it and on into the darkness of the cosmos. Then, after the passage of something between ten minutes and an hour, he dropped his arms to his side and let his head roll forward.

With one swift motion of each hand, he placed the mask back upon his face and pulled the hood of his cloak up once more.

"Come on, you limey gits, and get a move on…" he muttered coarsely under his fetid breath, "I don't have all eternity here!"

The comedy of the statement, in that he did have all of eternity, was not enough to still the gradual souring of his mood. The sensation he had been feeling since first taking his perch atop the tower, the same that he earnestly believed had no right to crop up this time around, had only grown stronger while he waited and watched. Now, it had fully become a present and insistent emotion, burning and throbbing in the lifeless cavity beneath his bosom. It only continued to grow stronger as he stood there, ever watching and ever waiting.

While the masked man awaited his prey's final passage or failure, pity, of all blasted things, pumped strongly through his un-beating heart.

Ψ

"YANG!"

The shout didn't register to the blonde as she fell. Her ears were deaf and her eyes blind, though both sensory organs still gave her mind sight and sound. It was the woman's mind, in fact, that simply refused to acknowledge these things. Neither the blur of ochre earth that ran past her gaze nor the frenzied whoosh of the wind that beat her face. Nay, for her head was filled with the soft whisper that had seemed to come from the breeze atop the precipice; a sound she was now sure came from the sapphire mirror drawing ever closer to her.

The one who shouted, whose mind was hers once more after witnessing her partner's all but suicidal gesture, wasted not a moment. She came out of the haze after chancing to look Yang's way, just in time to see her walk oh-so-naturally off the edge, and spared only time enough for one shout. After that, the raven-headed faunus leapt forward and over the edge as well.

Her mind was only on catching the plummeting blonde. Whatever came next would come as it wished.

Both fell quickly toward the still surface of sapphire-blue beneath. It drew closer and closer as they went, coming upon them much quicker than Blake was sure it should. These thoughts had to wait, however, and were utterly ignored as the woman closed her stance to catch the enthralled blonde.

Blake pulled her arms tightly to her sides and balled her fists, leaning forward as best as she could manage. She had to squint her eyes to combat the rushing wind, briefly remembering and wishing she had donned the goggles she hoped still hung from her scabbard.

Much to Blake's passing relief, her motions were paying off. She quickly began to fall faster than the blonde and managed to get in front of her. Once she had a decent lead, the faunus reached behind herself and clutched the curved handle of her revolver with her right hand. The left she thrust out while twisting around to face the blonde. When Blake had come around to face her, she could see the slack of Yang's face and was briefly dismayed.

She put it out of her mind and made her play.

With a flick of her wrist and a titanic effort, she pulled the revolver free and slung it toward the ochre wall of the bowl. As she did this, Blake squeezed the handle with her ring and pointer fingers, depressing the two small buttons beneath each and eliciting a cracking pop from the weapon. The handle remained in her tight grip while the barrel, blade and cylinder all flew off for the wall with a bang.

Without waiting to see if her aim had been true, Blake curled her left arm and spread her legs, braking her descent hard and catching the entranced blonde in nearly the same moment. Both women shouted in pain; Yang for the sudden jolt through her gut and Blake for the arm that was wrested free of its socket. Yet, through the pain, Blake felt a surge of relief as her partner's weight filled her grip.

A moment later, just when the faunus began to wonder if her revolver had found its mark, the chord coming from the handle pulled taut and sent both women hurdling toward the ochre wall. Whether for better or for worse, neither could have said at that precise moment. All either knew, Yang in her gradually receding daze and Blake in her freshly blooming pain, was that their descent had taken a sudden and drastic change in direction.

The wall was now coming to them quicker than the fall had been bringing the sapphire water to meet them.

"Blake, hold on tight!" Yang shouted, unusually clear despite the rush of the wind against them.

Blake reacted instinctively, as she had only heard her partner on a somewhat subconscious level, and squeezed the handle as tight as her hand would allow. The wall continued to close in, now only some ten feet from them perhaps, when a sudden and loud crack pierced the faunus' sensitive ears. She didn't have to look down to know what had happened.

Once her trance had been broken by the sudden pain in her abdomen, caused by Blake's less than gentle catch, Yang was quick to make four out of two and two. Her lavenders had opened wide and fast, taking in the quickly approaching surface of the water and the passing of ochre. When she felt their descent change direction, suddenly and violently, the blonde wasted not a moment in her response.

Yang had slipped her hands deftly into the cesti on her hips and yanked them free of their hooks. Once the things had settled in place, she took quick and careful aim and let them loose at the ochre wall that quickly approached.

All of this transpired in only a minute or less, serving as a powerful testament to the prowess of the two. Once all was said and done, the blast from Yang's cesti stopped their flight toward the wall and pulled Blake's revolver free from the smooth earthen surface. Now only some few hundred feet from the sapphire surface of the water, both women plummeted in a freefall. Both found out, upon hitting that deep blue surface, that the whisper in the breeze had not lied…

The sapphire water was unusually soft, indeed.

Ψ

There was no splash, no violent displacement of water in an upward rush of countless droplets. No massive spray of sapphire-blue, breaking into countless trillions of tiny droplets and becoming a mist, issued forth. No loud clap of flesh meeting water, traveling at breakneck speed, sounded off. Nothing told of their impact, save for a delicate and almost inaudible slurp as the mirror-like surface parted to accept the two women into its depths.

And in they did go, with little thought spared as the water closed back overtop of them. Yang first, followed swiftly by Blake. Down and down into the sapphire mirror, which accepted them much like the air they had only just left.

There was an odd sensation of departure as this occurred, much like the feeling of fading into slumber under an anesthetic. Both women were stricken with it, sans the sleep, and both were nauseated by its unreality. Yet, thankfully, the odd sensation left as quickly as it came, quitting their consciousness and giving the two over to a more understandable sensation shortly thereafter. This one, in contrast to most of the last few days, felt real and sensible.

Blake and Yang both were suddenly made aware, as the brief vertigo-like sense of unreality left them, that, despite the air-like texture of the water, they could not breathe.

"Go on. Open your mouths and fill your lungs. Be at one and be at peace with my sapphire depths…"

And this time, they heard it true. Loud and clear as a crack of thunder in a lightning-riddled storm. They felt it also as the voice, which had been a soft and nearly unnoticed whisper on the precipice, came like the torrent of a tropical storm all around them. It shuddered them to the core and brought both from their torpor, pulling their senses to the here and now.

Yang's eyes flicked open at once, as did Blake's in short succession, and both were alarmed to see what was more of a void-like blackness all around them than an open expanse of deep blue water. Vertigo settled in again, this time coming from the realization that they could not tell direction in this blackness, and both began to panic for a second time this day.

Blake's eyes widened until they seemed they would pop from their sockets, her pupils closing to tiny pinpricks as her heart began to race. The raven-headed faunus started to kick, pushing herself in any direction she could manage as her mind began to empty. That primal sense she'd felt earlier, when gazing upon the vast lake before the whisper had settled in, was now the sole occupant of her head.

After all, cats are rather un-fond of water.

Yang was panicking as well, though, by comparison, to a much lesser and more controlled degree. For the blonde, the present surroundings were alarming but not something she found immediately insurmountable. With that sense of surety, a most familiar feeling began to wrap itself around Yang. It seeped into her breast and melted over her mind, pulling the woman together in a way nothing else, sans a few important individuals, could do.

The cold feeling of battle-lust crept into and over Yang, spurring the woman quickly to action. Her lavender eyes began to glow a vibrant red and her heart picked up its pace, beating hard and quick but not erratically as her faunus partner's now did. The blonde peered through the black depths as much as she could, looking quickly for any small indicator she could find to tell her what was what.

When the choking lack of air started to settle fully upon Yang's lungs, she got exactly what she was looking for. Her diaphragm hitched subconsciously and her lungs sputtered a gust of held breath into the blackness, releasing a torrent of bubbles from her briefly parted lips. She watched, with a sudden notion of possibility, as the bubbles rose toward her chin.

Wasting not a moment, and hoping that at least something still made sense in this place, Yang kicked her legs and spun herself around. With a corrected posture, head facing what she hoped was up, the woman swam for where she felt her partner must be. No senses told her the way, she could neither see nor feel nor hear the faunus' struggle, but she pressed in her chosen direction all the same. With her left hand reaching into the blackness, Yang was relived to feel one of Blake's feet kick her palm.

Yang grabbed hard and tight, wrapping her fingers around the faunus' boot, and turned her kicks downward. In only a few more moments, both were headed quickly for the water's surface. Neither noticed the fin that passed only inches beneath them as they broke into the blinding light of midday once again.

Blake's raven locks broke the surface first, pushed ahead by her blonde partner. Yang followed suit shortly after, holding and supporting the sputtering faunus as she tread the eerie water. Both gasped for air in greedy gusts and coughs, their lungs burning and their heads swimming much as their bodies.

"Blake… can you hear me?!" Yang shouted between hitches and gasps.

"Yeah, I hear you." Blake responded, her own breath short and staggered.

Yang could see, with a small pang of dismay, that her partner was far from alright. The woman shivered violently in her arm's grip and her head seemed to be on a swivel. Her golden eyes darted hither and thither, perhaps from panic or perhaps in actual search, and her heart beat hard in her ribs. Yang could feel the stressed organ beneath one of the faunus' small breasts, thumping hard into her palm.

"Well… we found a way down, at least." Yang said with a brief, snorted laugh.

"Great…" said Blake, "We're in, now how do we get out?!"

Yang set her own head to swivel, her own once more lavender eyes to travel, while Blake continued her panicky glances. Both scanned the entirety of their surroundings in search of any sort of break in the endless blue. Neither saw the fin, tall and curved like a sail, pop through the surface behind them. It was there and gone in only a moment, as if playing peek-a-boo with the women.

"Well… shit." Yang cursed breathlessly, her lungs only just beginning to settle. She could feel the goosebumps rise on her partner's flesh, where the faunus' arm met the crook of her own, as something caught Blake's eye.

"Yang…" Blake whispered weakly, hoarsely, sounding like a rusted door hinge.

"What?" Yang responded absentmindedly, still searching the horizon.

Nothing else came from Blake's lips once it happened. The poor thing's heart nearly stopped altogether. Yang turned her gaze toward the woman only just in time to witness it herself, and her own heart nearly gave up the ghost as well.

With a roaring splash, entirely opposite the reaction given when the women had plummeted into the sapphire water, a great and wide-open mouth pierced the surface. It was massive, perhaps stretching eight feet from pointed tooth on bottom to pointed tooth on top, and was lined from end to end with teeth. They were shaped like crude arrowheads, jagged and razor-sharp and wholly evil to look upon.

The skin of the beast was as black as sin, covered predominately upon the head with jutting mounds of white bone-like armor. They only saw the eyes in passing as the thing sailed over them, glowing red as hate and fiery brimstone. On its bottom protruded two more fins at the middle and one tiny bulge of a fin just before the tail, the first two pointing diagonally downward while the third was faced straight down. The tail held a large crescent of a fin, the top part being nearly thrice the length of the bottom.

It hit the water behind them and, with another alarmingly titanic splash, raced back into the blindingly blue depths.

"Fuck this!" Blake shouted. She began to wriggle and thrash violently in Yang's arm, abandoning almost all pretext of sanity in her panic.

Λ

The masked man's lips parted into another wicked smile. His eyes were firmly affixed to the scene playing out beneath his watch. The primeval's surface-break was magnificent, nearly beyond any words he could muster to mind, and he was enjoying every last moment of the women's shared terror. Basyl might have failed to properly administer the test, and that was most regrettable indeed, but he was growing ever more certain that this one would do as bid just fine.

He cackled, loud and wild with mouth wide open, and had to steady himself once more to avoid rolling off the top of the tower. It was just too much, watching the cat-like one flail like a fish drowning in air. He was certain his stomach would split open if he continued to watch, but continue he would even if it did. He had to be certain, after all, that these could stand the last storm and clear the final hurdle.

"What's a little, toothy fishy next to me, eh!?" he shouted between caws and cackles, "Come on, ladies! What's a little, toothy fish! You've fled after me, from city to forest and through snow and wastes!"

He stopped his rant and hurled into another round of loud cackling. His milky eyes were now streaming the putrid substance that passed for his tears. A few more moments of this and he eventually managed to cease, at least somewhat, and straighten himself up where he sat.

"Oh, this is going to get very good very quick…" he mused.

He reached into his cloak and pulled out his ancient tobacco pouch, deftly removing and assembling one of his favorite vices. Once finished, he pulled out a match and put the little purse back in its hidey-hole. His milky eyes flickered brightly in the flame when he struck it, despite the powerful light of day from above, and with a few puffs the masked man filled his lungs with acrid smoke. He dragged hard, inhaling deeply and relishing each note of flavor.

"Time to set up the party…" he said, releasing the smoke in a cloud of green and grey.

Cigarette in hand, he stood and walked to the tower's edge. He carelessly stuck one foot out and leaned forward, falling from the tower like a stone. He landed only thirty or so yards below his former perch, thudding loud as his feet found the marble surface of one of the tower's many balconies.

The masked man stood and looked toward the commotion still raging in the sapphire waters, now a raging sea of fear and turmoil. His second choice was indeed doing well.

"See you gals soon." He said with a thick drawl before turning and disappearing into the tower's darkness.

Ψ

They were both frantic now. Frightened, panicked and thoroughly uprooted by this newest development. Had either woman tried, which, in their panic, neither bothered to, they could not have made any sense of their present predicament.

Here they were, in the most beautiful water they had ever laid eyes on. Here they were, in the midst of a lake, the size of which they could scarcely fathom, at the bottom of a gigantic bowl of ochre earth. Here they were, in the furthest reaches of what both assumed was still Vacuo, outside the scope of even the most detailed of maps known to Remnant.

And, of all things, a Grimm looking uncannily like a gargantuan shark was playing hide-and-seek with them.

Yang's heart beat with a fire she had not known in some time. Her mind raced along with it and sweat was now pouring from her brow, despite the cooling chill of the water. She put every bit of might she had into holding onto her partner, who now squirmed violently in her grip as though the very world were ending. To Blake, who thrashed around without thought or reason, it may as well have been.

Blake was a faunus, and a proud one at that. Her feline traits gave her an edge over most humans, and she found no shame to her status. Enhanced sight in the dark, sensitive hearing and an almost preternatural reaction speed; all were part of her racial heritage and close relation to the animal after which she took. However, with these also came a few weaknesses, the worst of which was presently facing her for the first time in memory.

Stuck in a bottomless lake with a toothy Fish-Grimm circling and leaping over them, Blake now realized just how much she, like her animalistic nature dictated, utterly despised the water.

"Blake, stop struggling!" she could hear Yang plea, but it was as though far away and through muddy water. Her mind picked it up and registered the sound, but her body refused any cease to its frantic actions.

"No, do please struggle. I like my food lively…"

The voice rumbled into them, much as Basyl's had, and both began to further crumble. The massive Grimm leapt from the water and sailed over them again, spurring Blake's panic on in a most fantastic fashion. Yang continued to hold, continued to tread water desperately, but was quickly losing the struggle.

When the dorsal fin pierced the sapphire surface again, this time headed straight for the panicking duo, Blake thought her heart had stopped for a moment. Her chest tightened and her hands squeezed uncontrollably. In that moment, however, a relieving feeling found the faunus. As her right hand squeezed, she registered the hard feel of her revolver's handle in her palm. She hadn't even considered that she might have dropped it during their dip into the lake, but now found herself beyond relieved to know it was there.

Yang felt her partner stop and go limp and, for a horrifying few seconds, thought the woman might have simply died of shock in her grasp. She opened her mouth to yell at her, for a reason the blonde wasn't entirely sure of, but was stopped when she saw the faunus' massive weapon break the water's surface.

"Yang, hold onto me as tight as you can…" Blake said commandingly, her senses largely restored. Her heart still thundered in her chest, as Yang could clearly feel, but her mind had gotten ahold of itself at least somewhat.

The dorsal was fast approaching, tearing a massive valley in the sapphire water as it came, and Blake wanted little more than to be anywhere but there at that very moment. Truthfully, there was nowhere the woman would have snubbed her nose at so long as it was not this wretched lake. She took careful aim and, without considering the fact that her weapon had been submerged in water, squeezed the trigger slowly and surely.

Only a metallic click greeted her for her troubles.

"I don't think your weapon likes my home, little girl. Perhaps your Dust does not make you as all-powerful as you believed?"

Blake's heart sank like a stone. The fin was only a handful of yards from them now, perhaps seven at the most, and closing fast. Her only real hope had petered out like the dust in her revolver's bullets, this confirmed by several more metallic clicks as she frantically squeezed the trigger. Once she had tried each chamber some three times, Blake's arm went limp and she very nearly dropped the thing into the sapphire depths. A feeling of warmth and strength stopped this, though, and pulled the despondent faunus' arm to her chest.

Blake looked around to see Yang's blazing eyes, once more the glowing red of battle-lust, and her heart skipped a few beats. Not for fear this time, but for vaguely rekindled hope.

"Your turn to hold on tight, Miss Kitty." Yang said, soothing and strong.

Blake wanted to ask, and might have if given more than a fraction of a moment, but Yang's action stopped any attempt she might have made. The blonde kicked hard toward her right, sailing both of them a yard or so left, and reached out her right hand. The dorsal flew by, and Yang briefly felt the open maw passing below the surface. She grabbed onto the scaly black surface of the fin as it went, nearly pulling her arm from its socket in the process, and both women began to sail through the water.

Blake's eyes had only a moment to register a white speck in the distance, somewhere around what had to be the center of the massive lake, before both were pulled under the surface.

Ψ

The water's soft caress was first to greet the women as they plunged into the depths. Next came the solid and powerful glow of the Grimm's eyes, a red radiance that pierced the dark like a spotlight. It lit their surroundings with an odd hue, turning the blackness into a bright purple up to some ten yards away.

The primeval swam powerfully and fast, pulling both deeper and deeper into the lake's depths. The women began to assure themselves that the end was fast approaching, either from drowning or from being eaten, and this was not entirely an unreasonable assumption. Escape seemed nigh impossible, as did the quickly vanishing prospect of possible triumph over the beast. With this in mind, Yang simply held on for dear life, squeezing the fin with her right hand while squeezing her partner with her left arm.

Both women's lungs began to burn as the thing dragged them deeper and deeper.

"Why do you pursue him?" came the voice, now as powerful as if a god were speaking to them. It pounded into their heads and further blurred their already skewed vision.

"You grasp as fervently to my fin as you chase after that rotting one. Why, though, do you persist? What do you believe there is to gain for it?"

Of course, neither woman could answer the thing with their words. They were completely out of their natural element, though the Grimm seemed not to care overmuch on this. Its insistent voice, the echo of a god by any other description, only continued to prod them as it dragged them to what was surely their watery doom.

"He baits both of you, as assured of his success as you are of your own. He waits in the hallowed city, patient and cunning, for your clumsy approach to find him. That rotting thing you think is a man is closer than you could fathom, little girls, and he waits patiently to dash you against the stones."

As it prattled on, Yang was certain she could see a light gradually strengthening in front of them. At first she believed it to be the primeval Grimm's eyes, glowing ever brighter for some unknown reason. But the light grew stronger and stronger, larger and larger, and the blonde knew that it must be something else. She could scarcely tell distance, but it was clear that the light was further from them than the Grimm's snout.

"I suppose I won't get to eat you after all…" the voice seemed to echo a sigh in their heads.

It was all so strange, so very surreal and incomprehensible, what came next. Blake's mind had all but shut down as they descended, if that was what actually occurred, and Yang was on the verge of following suit as her vision began to darken. She clutched tightly with both limbs, hugging the unconscious faunus to her as she put the last of her strength into holding onto the dorsal fin. Therefore, with her own consciousness quickly flagging, Yang only barely noticed when the three of them broke the water's surface.

In only a moment, they went from the blackest depths of the lakebed, which the blonde was sure was the Grimm's intended destination, to the bright light of day and open air. The massive, shark-like primeval burst forth from the placid waters and sailed some twenty yards into the sky. With the sun blinding what little was left of her sight, Yang barely noticed the thing buck and twist to fling them off of it. Her failing grip released immediately, pulled free by the centrifugal force, and both women flew toward something green in the distance.

They landed hard, hard enough to hurt, and skidded a good forty feet on the verdant grass. The impact knocked Yang out of her swoon and back into reality. Blake, while still mostly out of it, turned over and began to cough up the water she had swallowed. Only a few moments had stood between the faunus and a watery grave.

Yang only laid where she was, on her back with her arms and legs splayed out like a star. Her bleary eyes, back to their lavender shade once more, blinked repeatedly and stared into the ball of brightness hanging above them. Her lungs burned while rapidly filling with air, a fresh and cool sort she hadn't known for months. Her muscles ached and her head throbbed. She could no longer feel her hands, and only faintly hoped her cesti still rested upon them.

"I suppose it is not my charge to say, but I believe you both passed. At least somewhat…" came the voice from the depths, now only a whisper once again, "If your lives truly mean so little, go and find your rotting quarry. I'd ask you both hop back in and give me a snack, but I can see you're meant for more than my empty gut."

It stopped and Yang began to sit up in the brief silence. Her abs were already protesting, almost before she had even moved, but the blonde pushed through. Once upright, she took a moment to see her surroundings.

They were now in the midst of some massive savannah, the likes of which she was sure should not exist in the wastes of Vacuo. The verdant grass stretched out all around, stopping only some twenty yards in front of her where it broke off into the sapphire lake. There, another sheer drop met the edge of the grasses and went a good ten feet down into the vibrant water below.

"Look for the snowy-white city, hollowed-out marble ghost that it now is, and find your finality. He waits there for you both, on a throne of skulls. As for me, I go back to my slumber…"

After that, the whisper and the eerie presence receded, leaving Yang to tend to her partner as it left.

Ϯ

Hours must have passed, surely, since the massive aquatic Grimm tossed the women onto the savannah. After Yang tended to her partner, who still slept on the soft grass, the blonde would have sworn that another seven or so hours had gone by before she saw the faunus' golden eyes flutter open. It was beyond unsettling, for this very reason, that the sun seemed to have budged not a single inch in the interim.

"Wakey wakey, Blakey." Yang cooed in a singsong voice, trying to put the unnerving thought from her mind.

Blake blinked several times in rapid succession, squinting in pain against the bright glare of the sun. She raised one shaky arm and draped it over her eyes, trying to shield them from that petulant brightness.

"Are we… alive?" she muttered weakly.

"Looks like it."

"What about that giant shark?"

Yang turned her lavenders toward the drop of the savannah, where the green gave way sharply into an infinite blue, and seemed to search for a moment. The water was still and undisturbed, making a titanic sapphire mirror once more. No sign of their tormentor.

"Gone…" Yang said, and sighed, "Back to wherever it came from."

Blake sat up, wincing as the pain in her leg and shoulder blossomed like wildfire. She clutched the injured shoulder and hissed.

"I popped it back in while you were out. Sorry if I wasn't gentle enough."

Yang's words were off, but Blake hardly noticed. Her body was practically on fire after their ordeal. Even still, however, she was quite happy to be done with it and out of the water again. Feline or not, the woman was none too fond of sharks just as most sentient beings. Still clutching her screaming shoulder, the faunus shivered at the thought.

"You re-bandaged my leg…" Blake murmured, more to herself than anything. Yang caught it all the same.

"Yeah." The blonde said, her voice still sounding off somehow, "It's not looking too good, either, but it should be fine if we can get you some help."

"Oh?" Blake said with a scoff, "And how would we go about that?"

Yang, who had affixed her gaze to the faunus', looked down and away. The words stood on the tip of her tongue, but she somehow daren't say them. Blake knew what they were, without having to hear them, and so answered despite the blonde's silence.

"We're not turning back, Yang." Blake said, low and commandingly, "We've come too far, and I don't think we could even if we agreed to…"

Both looked up, nearly in unison, and took in their surroundings.

The endless verdant savannah, green grasses billowing lightly in the breeze that carried playfully through. The infinite stretch of the sapphire, mirror-like waters below the drop, seeming to simply swallow up the horizon. And, far off in the distance where neither could fully make it out, what looked like a series of stark-white spikes jutting proudly into the sky.

"We're not in Vacuo anymore, are we?" Yang observed quietly.

"No, we're not." Blake answered, now rotating her shoulder slowly and wincing as it ground in the socket. She hoped it wouldn't get in the way when they finally found him, the masked man she now had every intention of seeing torn to pieces. Not just for Adam, oh no, but for they themselves as well. For leading them into this nightmarish lunacy and trapping them.

Yang waited a moment, letting the cool breeze tousle her flowing tresses. It must have been quite some time indeed since they departed the lake, as the full six feet of her hair was nearly bone-dry, which only gave her further disquiet over the unmoving sun above. Its brightness and warmth were not unwelcome, tempered as the heat was with the decently strong breeze, but she almost wished it simply weren't there all the same.

"Did you hear it anymore?" Blake asked, breaking Yang from her daze.

"Yeah…" the blonde responded idly.

"What did it say, then?"

Yang turned her face into the breeze, simply loving the cool and brisk sensation, and thought it over for a moment. In the end, she decided not to hide anything from the faunus. Why should she, after all? Love was supposed to be honest, if nothing else.

"Seek the city and beware the masked man." Yang said, summing it up nicely while keeping her face in that soothing breeze.

Ψ

They rested for a time, both without much complaint over the waste, before deciding it best to move on again. Much to their surprise, the women found that their hunger had gone away. Simply vanished, as though they had never had a need to eat in their entire lives. It was unsettling, much as everything else about the place, but they pushed it from their minds and went on.

Witchy-work was fast approaching, though neither knew it by this term, and so too were they.

With each forced step, straining against the aches and pains that told them not all had gone awry, the women pushed on through the seemingly endless verdant grass. It was soft and giving under their feet, which came as a welcome break from the badland's hardpan. No more did each step meet with all the resistance of a dusty boulder, kicking up clouds of choking desert dirt. Nay, for each footfall found purchase on what felt like soft down beneath their boots, caressing their feet despite the soles in between.

After what felt like a few hours of this forced march, wherein neither thirst nor hunger bothered either, the city began to come into view. Its haunted marble edifices, just as white as the purest snow, stretched up and up into the sky.

The towers were the first to come into sight. They were cylindrical and almost perfectly smooth, stretching so far into the sky that one would have to cock their head to see the tops. Even as far off as they were, the women were faced with this fact as they approached. Drawing closer still, step after achy step, they began to see the wall.

It stretched from one horizon to the other, with parapets shaped as though massive teeth every few yards. Bulwarks jutted forth from the unblemished surface at regular intervals, cutting structures shaped like a snowplow every hundred yards. Atop these, on the corner furthest from the wall, there flew banners of scarlet with gold borders. Each was decorated with a sigil depicting a white throne at the center.

The two continued their march, pushing on and on through the savannah, and began to truly understand the enormity of what they had come across.

Once upon it, surely some five hours further into their trek, the women could see that each bulwark, which stood only half the height of the full wall, must have been some forty stories at the least. Gargantuan, or perhaps even monolithic, to behold, though neither of these words could do the sight true justice.

Here they stopped, at the foot of the nearest bulwark, and simply stared up in silent awe.

Blake's quivering voice was first to break the silence, asking, "What now?"

"I'm… not sure…" Yang whispered her response, which carried loud in the utter absence of the wind. Here, in the shadow of the bulwark and the wall behind it, the breeze that carried to them from the other side found no way through.

"Well, we're not climbing that." Blake said, voice still shaky.

"Right?"

So they stood and looked up, mouths slack in their awe. They might have done this for some time more, in fact, were it not for the interruption that snapped them out of their newest stupor.

"SO, THE LIONESSES COME?!" a voice shouted, strong enough to shake the ground beneath the women and rattle the teeth in their heads, "ALL THIS WAY THEY'VE TRAVELED, ONLY TO BE STUMPED BY A WALL? HA!"

A loose bit of the wall crumbled away from the top, plummeting in a cloud of white dust onto the women. It colored the women's tresses with its stark whiteness, leaving Blake's looking grey and Yang's an almost silver color. Neither noticed this for they were far too preoccupied with clutching their hands over their ears in a vain attempt to halt the roar that now accosted them.

"WELL, COME ON NOW! I'M WAITING, GALS! LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED, WHY DON'T WE?!" the voice cried out before breaking off into a tittering madness that might have been laughter.

Then came a moment of respite from the voice's assault. The ground continued to rumble and a few more bits of the wall broke free, crumbling to dust in their flight. The women were nearly crying under the residual force of it, their teeth clenched hard and their eyes squinted tightly shut to try and weather it.

"TICK-TOCK AND SNICKER-SNACK, PLIP-PLOP AND CLICKETY-CLACK! COME, LIONESSES! COME, REAP!"

With this final call, the voice receded with a thunderous clap. The ground heaved greatly and rippled like water, knocking both women flat on their rear. The city, too, shook as though an image on the sapphire lake's surface; it bobbed and warbled with the last shout of the voice and a great crack ran through the bulwark before them.

Both looked heavenward and watched that crack grow, starting at the top of the white marble edifice and shooting down like black lightning. It split the structure perfectly in half until the last forty feet or so, where the crack veered and became two. From there it formed an arch and, all of this in but a moment, the carved bit before them crumbled backward with an earsplitting roar.

Come, reap…

Lavender and golden eyes were bewildered, the mouths below utterly lost for words.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained…

The two stared in awe, hands still clasped tightly to their ears, as a way was cut before them.

War never changes…

"Yang…"

"Yeah?"

"There's no turning back now, is there?"

The blonde swallowed hard. She was rather nonplussed that she could hear the whispering faunus as clear as day, despite the series of awfully loud noises they had just endured. She wet her lips to reply, for the dust had made them fearsome dry.

"No, Blake dear… No turning back now…" she said, almost sadly.

They sat there for a good half-hour, perplexed by all that had happened. More and more it seemed they had left the world they knew behind, forfeiting it for their pursuit of the masked man with nary a care given. The massive badland, the queer river and its unnatural tributaries, the titanic lake of sapphire and, now, this megalithic city that seemed to have no place in reality.

All of it sat heavy on their hearts and minds, but Yang was perhaps moved more than her partner. For, as she now began to believe, the Grimm in the lake had not lied to her. She now saw that the masked man must be baiting them, as the Grimm had claimed, and even more blatantly now since their retreat was no longer a feasible option.

For Blake, who had not been awake to hear the Grimm's warning, the thought process was similar but fundamentally different. Her heart began to race and ache under the course that ran in her own mind, telling her more and more than this was some sort of massive trap from the get-go. Adam, poor ole Adam, had only been the spark to start her own fire, surely. And in her flame, her partner's caught as well and was kindled by the suffering of a lover. Thus it started, and thus it went; thus it brought both to this ruined metropolis.

However it came to be, both women found their thoughts rounded to the same conclusion. The masked man had lead them here, by trickery of whatever sort, and now there was nowhere left to go but headlong into the unknown before them. This they both knew and this, in their own nigh-consecutively occurring time, they both accepted while peering into the blackness of the hole in the massive bulwark.

They stood and dusted themselves off, hearts and minds solidly set upon the same decision that had brought them here to begin with. They would find him, Yang for Blake and Blake for Adam, and they would enact what justice they could upon him. Maybe they would never see home again, maybe they would find themselves eternally trapped in this wrong place, maybe they might even fail; whatever came, they would stand true and see it to the end.

"Too far…" Yang whispered, reaching out her right hand.

"Too much…" Blake whispered, reaching out her left.

Their hands clasped, both wincing at the slight shoot of pain, and both women turned their gaze from the hole in the bulwark. They gazed into each other's eyes, lavender locked to gold, and gave smiles that neither expected to see from the other. Despite the circumstances, Yang's was wide and vivacious while Blake's was uncharacteristically bright and vigorous.

"Bird and Bear." Yang said.

"And Hare and Fish." Blake said, surprising Yang.

They turned and walked on into the hole, the darkness reaching out to swallow them both the moment their feet crossed the rubble and landed on the marble tiles within. A cold breeze blew from the inside. It was unsettling and unnerving; it felt dead and wrong somehow. But they ignored it and simply placed step after step, penetrating ever further into the dark with hands held tight.

Charyou Tree…

Λ

The masked man had come quickly to the exact point he had planned to. He wasn't sure how he knew it, as it felt uncannily familiar to him, but he was sure that he did. He knew it, seemingly, from another time and another existence. He knew it was the place he had to lead them to, for his own sake as much as theirs. Also, somewhere deep down where he almost couldn't feel it, he knew he belonged here. Disowned, disavowed and turned out once upon a time, yes perhaps, but he could simply feel that this place was home.

With that running through his head, the masked man crossed his legs and leaned against the back of the throne. He sat on the single feature in this otherwise empty room despite the wrongness he felt for doing so. It felt as though his presence alone on that throne was enough to corrupt it, to utterly ruin its intended purpose, but he gave hardly a wit. Leaning his head on his left fist, which shook for some reason he couldn't quite put his finger on, he let his mind wander as he waited.

There was only a little left to do by this point, and he could well feel such. They were here now; had he not just shouted a warm greeting to them? Yes, they were here and so was he. The pieces were set and the match already commenced. He would wait patiently while they fumbled in the dark, in this city which had once been only light, and watch the door at the far end of the room.

There were countless doors within the throne room. A veritable infinity of possible places to come from or to go to. But, of all the doors, he knew they would come from this one at the far end. He was not omnipotent, neither was his master for that matter, but he knew this much at least.

"Oh, such tediousness as is eternity; that my journey shouldst culminate to only more waiting…" he muttered, slipping into a form of speech he had not used in eons, "Oh, but faintly grasped ghost; to my breast I hold thee. That the end might come, unbidden or welcomed; I hold thee tightly..."

He watched and waited, tapping the armrest under his right hand with his bony fingers, as he felt the women draw ever closer.

Ψ

Their travel through the dark of the bulwark was odd, to say the least. Both expected twists and turns in some elaborate maze of a structure. What they found instead was a seemingly infinite stretch of dark, with nary an obstacle to halt their path. It was vast and straight, though neither could see to confirm this; they simply felt it with each step onward, their boot heels clapping loudly on the marble floor.

The trip through the bulwark's dark was both short and long, encompassing a stretch of time that neither woman could quite sense to measure. However long it was, they found their way through in due time and eventually came across a door.

It was no ordinary door, this they spotted before coming fully upon it. It was a great, black and ugly thing of solid iron, recessed into a frame of glowing gold that looked like fiery brimstone. The frame gave off a powerful light that allowed them to spot the door from some decent ways away and acted as a beacon to guide them through the last leg of the dark.

The women approached it with no small amount of fear in their steps. Their boots continued to utter muted claps with each stride that brought them closer to the glow-framed iron door. Yang could feel Blake's heart racing, the beat transmitted palpably through her partner's palm, and knew her own must be doing the same.

Nothing about this place felt right. Nothing at all…

"Guess we're gonna see what's behind door number one, eh Blake?" Yang said tonelessly, her voice carrying off into the dark like a phantom. Blake's only response was to squeeze the blonde's hand even tighter, bringing a silent wince of pain to both their faces.

They closed in on the door, their breath hitching cold in their lungs. The glow was warm but the surrounding dark was grave and vicious. It pulled at them not unlike teeth, tearing into the two and only furthering the rising alarm within their bosom. When at last they were upon it, and Yang reached out to it with her other hand, both thought they might faint with the suspense.

"Open sesame…" Yang said, and Blake mimed silently in unison, as she wrapped her fingers around the pull-loop of iron. Just as black and uncannily cold, it felt beyond foreboding to her touch.

With a deep breath, Yang pulled and the door swung open with hardly a protest. It turned silently on its ancient hinges and felt entirely weightless. The light that came from behind it, starting as a miniscule crack before turning into a blinding curtain, seemed to wash away every negative feeling that had gripped them during their trek through the dark. It warmed them and wrapped them in its glow when the door was fully opened.

And so passes the dark into light. As he said it, so it was. And he found it good…

They could almost hear the whisper, but neither managed to latch onto it enough to understand the words that weren't. All either woman realized was that they had passed through a veritable purgatory into some slice of what must be a portion of paradise, if only for the sensation it gave off alone.

They stepped through the doorway and into the bright light of day, immediately awed by the massive scope of the city stretched out before them. In a word, it was magnificent; in another, it was utterly tragic.

All around were great towers of purest white, stretching so high into the sky that they seemed to simply have no end at all. The walls of these behemoths were just as flat and smooth as could surely be possible, broken at perfectly set intervals by square holes that must have been windows. Here and there along the facades were busts of angelic proportions, depicting a number of vaguely human faces that instilled a sense of calm at a mere glance.

Under their feet as they exited the bulwark's dark, the women found they stood on solid gold. It glinted back slivers of the sun overhead, teasing their faces with the soft radiance and perfect color. This street, which must have been worth enough to outright purchase the entirety of Remnant, stretched on and on in perfect proportion, level and smooth in a way that no living builder could accomplish.

Across the street of gold, opposite where the women stood in their awed torpor, a fountain was affixed to the closest of the gargantuan buildings. The fixture still spurted its sapphire waters in a beautiful twin arch, surely pulled from the lake in which the city rested, as though it weren't untold millennia aged by this precise moment.

"By Dust…" Blake sighed in rapture.

"Holy shit…" Yang replied, equally affected.

But look, and see. Look and know the ruin. Look around thee, and know sin by its nature…

Again they heard it but did not. Both stared on and around when the faint, almost nonexistent whisper found their ears again, and though they did not fully catch or comprehend it they did turn their gazes to ground level. There, the women saw a sight that nearly shattered them. Looking around themselves, not upon the street or in the height of the buildings, they saw what truly filled the oddly empty metropolis.

They saw tombstones that littered the place like sand on a beach, and they knew it was not a metropolis at all; they knew, then and there, that they stood in the apotheosis of a necropolis.

Ψ

Blake openly wept and Yang only managed to hold it in by the grace of whatever had once made this place. Neither knew what so overcame them. The sight was not disturbing in its own right; they had seen many a massacred village done in by roving bands of Grimm. Yet, even still, their warrior's hearts were oddly softened at the sight and moved to despondence. It was almost as though a sense of finality permeated the very reality of the place, however warped that reality might be, and it stole eerily well into them. It stole in and stole away their composure, leaving both a nearly ruined mess.

"What the hell?!" Blake shouted between sobs.

Yang stood silently this time, her eyes reddening as she fought desperately against the tears.

"Yang, what is this place!?"

Still the blonde stood, flexing and clenching her fists tightly by her hooked cesti. The sense of rightness and comfort they had both found just outside the door was gone, replaced now with an absolute corruption and despair. It felt insurmountable.

And He cast them out, into the lake of fire and brimstone…

"We've got to get moving, Blake." Yang said at last.

And He knew them no more, for they had known him not…

The faunus looked up at the blonde from her crouched kneel on the golden street, eyes red as fire and streaked with countless tears. Yang was smiling in return, though it was plainly forced and undoubtedly painful. Her hand was held outstretched to the weeping faunus, and Blake took it gladly before trying for her feet.

And He cast them from his sight, forever and ever…

Yang pulled and Blake stood on unsteady feet, swaying slightly when her injured leg protested the movement. It had grown silent for a time, the wound under her clean bandages, and Blake had nearly forgotten it was there at all. Now, though, she knew it was and sorely wished it would just shove off.

Yang kept her grip on Blake's hand, and the faunus was glad for that warmth, while both cast their gazes away from the seemingly infinite tombstones that littered the city all around them. Neither wanted to see them, neither wanted to even acknowledge them. So they simply looked anywhere else, hoping to chance upon something that might point them to the quarry they had chased into the rabbit hole.

And so He left them, apart and alone and away from His gaze…

Much to their relief, Blake happened to glance upon something vaguely familiar in the utterly unfamiliar place. It was only around three, mayhap even four feet tall, colored a vibrant blue and square in shape. On the side facing the street, it had a door with a window on it that clearly had no lock. She walked quickly to the familiar thing, pulling Yang with her, and both were surprised, and more than a little unsettled, by what they found.

Still sitting in the window of the box was a newspaper, surely beyond ancient but with no signs to indicate its many years. Blake leaned forward, and Yang looked over her shoulder as she did, to read the headline aloud.

"The seals are broke and the Lamb hath cried. Rejoice, ye faithful, and rally to Him. The time is come, the time is come, the time is come." Blake droned, almost in a trance.

She felt Yang poke her shoulder and saw the woman point to a spot below the headline before she could turn. She looked and saw something more, something incredibly interesting and infinitely more encouraging. This, Blake read as well, in a livelier tone.

"Follow the streets numbered thusly to the Throne, and there lay thy gifted crowns upon His feet. As it is said, first Three then Seven then Twenty-and-Two and finally One; these shall place thee before Him."

Both stood straight after that, feeling a new sense envelop them. They had something now, at least, no matter how small it might be. A hint was a hint was a hint, after all, and it placed them at least somewhat back on the masked man's trail.

They looked around and saw that, indeed, the street was stamped at every intersection with a series of symbols. With hurried, almost frantic steps, the women hastened to the nearest intersection. They leapt over and bobbed around the tombstones in their path, doing their absolute best to ignore the unsettling things, and came upon it rather quickly.

Blake stared at it, as did Yang, and, though the symbols were beyond foreign to them, both found they could read them. This intersection was apparently the crossing of Three and Fourteen. Yang looked up first, her lavender gaze met quickly by Blake's golden.

"Guess we follow the gold to the prize…" Yang said, "Feels kinda backwards, huh?"

Blake thought for a moment before answering. Her face made a comical series of twists and scrunches, as if someone had passed wind very near her and it was quite awful.

"Off we go, then." Blake said at last, a tad worried and a tad relived, "It does feel off, but why worry about that now? We're almost there, that much is clear, so we may as well get it over with."

Yang smiled wide and proud at this, showing off all of her straight, white teeth in a beaming grin. She leaned in and quickly planted a kiss on the corner of Blake's mouth, pulling back just as the blush began to creep into the faunus' cheeks.

"For good luck." Yang said very matter-of-factly, "Come on!"

Blake's hand was gently touching the warmth of her cheek when Yang took hold of it, pulling the faunus along with her and dashing down what was apparently the Street of Three.

But, in His infinite mercy and love, He mourned them overmuch…

Ω

Far and away from this place, where time was almost absent and size meant next to nothing, a certain couple were busy studying over the coursework for a Business Economics class. Such a mundane thing it was, the two sitting side by side on a posh couch and poring over a thick book on the subject. So unimportant and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, the relationship they did not yet realize even existed was at that very moment being nurtured, by their shared goals and concerns and camaraderie. But they were unknown at this very moment; they were nowhere near the minds of either woman, flaxen or raven-headed, as the two went about their mundane studies in their mundane lives.

And yet, both were, in this very moment, inexorably and inextricably bound up in the fate that now began to play out, woven of a fabric that had been created the moment the Throne was filled with its present occupant.

Neither woman knew this or even thought of such a thing while they followed the streets, tracing the path exactly as the newspaper had instructed. They ran and ran over the gold that wound through the city, laid in a perfect grid like no human or faunus could achieve, in the last leg of their mad pursuit. Both could feel him near, the man in the mask and cloak, just as he could feel them from his seat on the empty Throne.

They reached the last of them, perhaps an hour in or perhaps a year in. Neither woman could tell, nor particularly cared at this point, how much time had passed them by when they finally turned onto the Street of One. All that consumed either was the growing sense of resolution close at hand and the fleeting feeling of woe that seemed to choke the air as they went.

And so, in His grief and regret, He looked upon them again…

They could make out a structure somewhere at the end of the stretch of gold. Blake's eyes were undoubtedly the better of the two, but even she could not make out how far off the structure was. For that matter, she could only barely tell that it was something akin to a palace. Were it not for the massive banners of scarlet, bordered clearly with gold visible even from their present distance, the faunus would not have been able to espy even such a small detail.

Knowing that, whatever it was, the place in the distance was their final stop, both women pushed their muscles to the limit and tore off down the Street of One. Their footfalls were loud and hard on the gold, leaving small imprints in the soft metal when they passed over it. Each step, each maddened jaunt, brought them ever closer, their lungs beginning to burn with each ragged breath. Eventually it became clearer that, much as Blake had surmised, they were approaching a truly magnificent palace of godly proportions.

And so He looked, wishing only to find a single soul left free of corruption...

The whisper seemed to grow stronger and stronger as the distance from the palace grew less and less, until at last the two stood before its glory and finally heard the whisper in full. It seemed to carry from within and without the palace at the same time, originating as if a breeze and a voice, one in the same, echoing through the very fabric of reality around them.

The women shivered inadvertently, and mostly unaware, when their eyes came to rest upon and take in the magnificent sight.

It was made of a stone the likes of which neither had ever imagined. It shimmered and shifted, constantly changing both color and texture, and seemed to defy any sort of categorization. The banners that hung from the top, stretching down nearly to the gold street below, were possessed of the same stark-white sigil as the ones on the bulwarks. A magnificent throne of purest white, surrounded by scarlet and bordered with gold.

They might have stared longer, might have taken in more of the sight, but for what came from within.

"YOU TWO RELISH IN WASTING MY TIME, DO YOU NOT?" called the voice that had greeted them at the wall, and subsequently opened a hole by which they entered, "COME, COME, MUST I WAIT OVERLONG? HAVE YOU NOT USED UP ENOUGH OF MY TIME WITH YOUR INCESSANT DALLYING?"

It shook the very gold on which they stood, rippling it like water disturbed by a stone, but did not set into them as it had earlier. While still powerful beyond reckoning, the voice was not crippling or incapacitating.

"THE DOOR IS UNLOCKED AND YOUR PRIZE IS WITHIN." It went on, almost tauntingly, "COME, LIONESSES, AND HAVE YOUR RESOLUTION."

They stood there, some forty yards, or perhaps four hundred, between them and the massive door of the palace. Between them and their prey, whom they had now chased to a place that both were certain no longer existed within Remnant, sat only a mammoth flight of stairs and a stretch of gold street. Yang turned her eyes to Blake, and Blake did the same. They locked gazes for the briefest of moments, sharing what would be their last romantic glance in this life, before stepping off toward the door.

They went and arrived in short time, crossing the last distance in this place where reality was rotting much as their prey, and pushed the heavy doors open. The stone giants, made of the same unknowable material as the rest of the palace, swung open with hardly a sound or semblance of resistance. What they saw within was inexplicable. It transcended both women's understanding and utterly floored their minds as they crossed the threshold.

The massive doors clapped mutedly shut behind them, sealing off what was truly their last chance at turning back.

And so, in time unimaginable, He came to find one such soul…

ΛΨΩ

"And when He found that one, He wept for ages over the state of His children. Twisted and mangled and corrupted were their souls, and immeasurably more so their flesh, and for such He wept. He wept and wept and, after an eternity of mourning, decided to grant a final reprieve. He took the one soul He could find, nigh-free of blemish and rot, and gave it a single chance…"

The masked man's voice carried throughout the room which was not a room, bouncing and reverberating. It twisted into a thousand-thousand other voices, becoming hollow imitations of legions of others; some the women knew, almost all they did not.

All this he did from the massive throne on which he sat. One leg was crossed over the other, his left ankle resting on his right knee, and his faced was leaned onto his left fist. With his right hand slung over the armrest, the masked man tapped the surface of the throne with blatant boredom. Beneath his mask a glow of eerie purple had overtaken his eyes, shining through the skull-sockets that served as the wooden visage's eyeholes.

"Welcome, lionesses." He said amicably, standing from his seat as a lord might stand to welcome honored guests. He stepped slowly from the dais on which the throne sat, his boots clacking loudly with each footfall, and gave a garish bow to the women once he reached the floor.

Right foot out and heel planted, with toes turned toward the ceiling; left foot with toes pointed out to his side; left hand swung out wide and right pressed loosely to his chest. In this manner he bowed, and addressed them once more.

"I'm glad to see you've finally come, finally caught me, Yang Xiao Long and Blake Belladonna."

Both stepped back once in a bit of shock, flicking a quick glance to each other in their surprise, but held fast after. They were here and they were ready, as much so as they could be, and would neither show nor give any quarter.

"Now, now… Don't think to fool me, dear lionesses…" he taunted, quitting his bow and resuming a straight stance, "I know your fear, and it is not unexpected. You stand in the empty throne room, before Old Man Death… Is a little fright such a strange thing in response?"

He ended this last bit with a quick, tittering cackle. Neither woman much cared for it, and both thought him more than a little crazy for what he'd just said. And yet, standing where they were and knowing where they had just come from, knowing what all they had been through in the last few days, both women were more than a little tempted to believe him by this point. This fact, more than anything else, frightened them greatly.

"Would you like answers, my lady-warriors, or shall we cut straight to our waltz?" he asked.

Yang spoke first, bidding her heart to slow and her mind to be true.

"What is all this about?" she asked in return, fighting vainly against the tremble in her voice, "What is this place and what are you, really?"

"Why, like I said. I'm Old Man Death, come to take your souls!" he replied, cackling wildly no sooner than he'd finished. It was clear that he found this all to be a wondrous joke, a sentiment his guests clearly cared little for.

"Oh, come now, Sunshine!" the masked man barked coldly and tauntingly, "Can't have a little fun?"

Yang's lavender eyes told him that no, in fact, she wished nothing of the sort from this situation. They told him that she wanted nothing short of his rotting head on a platter, of any make so long as it held well enough to lord about. To this, he giggled once again. A sick and ugly sound it was, but the masked man simply couldn't help it.

"Fine, fine!" he cried out amiably, "If you won't believe my words, then believe your eyes!"

During this terse and unfriendly exchange, Blake had held her silence while her partner took the lead. When she saw the masked man move, however, the faunus wasted not a moment in drawing her weapon and leaning into a ready stance. She could see that Yang was clearly unmoved herself, but readied all the same. No telling what the mad sod had in store.

After giving his declaration, the masked man took hold of the wooden visage upon his face with his right hand and the hood of his cloak with his left. In a swift, undoubtedly practiced motion, he removed both and exposed a grisly sight worse than either woman had ever seen.

The face that greeted them with its grotesque smile, if it could truly be called a face at all, was closer to that of a corpse than any semblance of something living. What flesh remained upon it was discolored and blatantly rotten, flaking and sore-ridden from chin to crown. The eyes sat in lidless sockets, milky things that looked blind as well as long dead. The lips that stretched away from the mouthful of decaying teeth did so with all the elasticity of a strip of dried out leather. The gums revealed beneath were nothing short of putrefied, looking as though they would release his few remaining teeth at the slightest puff of breath.

"Well, ladies? Doth my visage make thee excited?" he chittered cruelly, puffing a green cloud with each word. He laughed too, a horrid sound that sent the few gossamer strands on his head to flittering in the breezeless throne room.

Yang's stomach began to turn circles almost the moment she saw it, and the woman quickly turned to retch at the floor. Her stomach was empty, thankfully, but this did little to stop the kneejerk reaction. Blake's response was little different, the faunus leaning over and gripping her knees as she did the same. Just as her partner, and thankfully as well, her stomach had nothing to give for the retching.

"Oh, don't be so rude! I've come to bring thee glad tidings, dear ladies! Wouldst thou not hear mine news?!" he roared, followed with another bout of his awful laughter.

"I've had about enough of your horseshit…" Yang said. She wiped the drool from her mouth, the only product of her dry heaves, and leveled her now-red-glowing eyes on the corpselike thing before them.

Blake, unnoticed by her partner, was beginning to flag. Her retching served only to aggravate the wound on her leg and, coupled with the sudden return of her hunger, sapped the will to fight from her. Yang was descending into her berserk state, eyes glowing brighter and hair beginning to radiate a vibrant yellow, when Blake dropped her revolver and fell to her knees. Yang turned to see what the racket was, but the man's words interrupted her and dragged her attention back to him.

"Time is short and I'm done playing around." He said, abandoning his air of false friendliness, "Now we dance and now I decide. Come, golden warrior. Come, chosen candidate…"

Now, he too took a ready stance, posturing himself clearly to fight.

"Defy me or be ground beneath my heel." He all but whispered, launching off toward Yang in the blink of an eye.

She saw almost no motion when he sprung upon her; not the drawing of his weapon, a truly disturbing and unsettling device of death, nor the changing of his features. All Yang managed to comprehend was that the fight had begun, and she moved quick as she could manage to keep step with her death-waltz partner.

His face lost its ghoulish look, shedding the corpselike appearance and replacing it with what could only be described as the face of a devil. Horns sprouted from the crown of his soot-black skin, jutting out and curling upward. His eyes turned from milky to a bright orange, the newly apparent pupils elongating into catlike slits. His rotted teeth became fangs that popped through the flesh of his lips.

All this in the brief moment of his crossing the throne room floor, swinging his newly revealed weapon at the blonde with inhuman speed. She ducked, by some miracle, and barely managed a roll before he followed it up with a downward stroke. Yang narrowly avoided the blow that clove a massive gash in the stone floor.

"She has speed and looks!" the devilish thing shouted, mixing a hellishly deep chortle in with his proclamation, "Maybe the blonde bitch does have a chance after all! How do you like that, huh? You enjoying the show, ya old hermit!? I hope you are, cause I sure am!"

Yang watched him yell this at the ceiling, drawing her own weapons while the devil-thing seemed to be consumed with a brief bout of madness. She spared a glance toward Blake while the cesti deployed, crawling up her arms and latching into place, and was briefly dismayed to see the faunus writhing on the floor. When she flicked her red eyes back to the demonic thing, he wasn't where she thought he stood.

"Remember, Yang… Don't take your eye off the ball!" she heard her father's voice call from only a few feet behind her. Without thinking, the women pointed her fists behind herself and squeezed the triggers in her cesti harder than necessary, clenching her abs and throwing her weight forward in the same motion.

The things belched their fiery fury and sent her sprawling ass-over-teakettle. Yang barely managed to turn the wild motion into a series of deft flips at the last moment, once more avoiding a deadly swipe from the devilish man's unnatural weapon. All in all, she made seven full flips before landing on her feet and turning to face him again.

"Not bad, not bad…" he said, clapping nonchalantly and taking garish steps toward her, "So, warmed up now? I thought I'd be a gentleman and let you stretch first, Sunshine, before the real romping got started."

He sneered evilly at her, showing off the pearly-white fangs that now inhabited his mouth, before leaping into another mad dash. Yang finally managed a look at his weapon before he was upon her, sparing no time to marvel while she tried to assess it.

Much like her partner's, it was a revolver with a sickle-blade attached beneath its barrel. However, the similarities ended there. This one was wrought of some abhorrently black metal with veins of red coursing all throughout it, glowing and pulsing with some sick semblance of life. The barrel was twisted and looked as though it couldn't possibly fire. The sickle-blade beneath was much the same, pitted, scared and cracked all across its curved length. Yang knew differently, but the pitiful thing looked as though it would have trouble cutting butter even if heated red-hot.

"PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" the demonic thing screamed.

Yang ducked again, pulling her thoughts together, and tried for a counter once the blade passed safely over her blonde head. She didn't see the knee coming, so fast was the demon's movement, and was caught completely off-guard when it smashed hard into her teeth. She felt a number of them crack and shatter, a few of which were even tossed down her throat, and went sprawling almost immediately. The pain that bloomed in the wake of the strike was nothing short of divine.

She hit the ground and rolled, coming to rest only a few feet from her partner. The devilish man wasted little time in pressing his attack. He fell upon the wounded blonde in but the blink of an eye, barely missing her head with a savage stomp. Yang jerked her neck with not a moment to spare, saving herself from the fatal strike, but had no time to dodge the kick that came immediately after. It landed hard against her temple and very nearly did the trick.

She rolled again, this time onto and over her partner, and was nearly gone when she came to a final halt.

"Damn, damn, damn…" the demonic thing cursed, tutting loudly as he approached the blonde to deliver a coup de grace. Yang didn't move, couldn't had she wanted to, but merely laid on the cold stone floor, bleeding copiously from her ears and nose and eyes while he came upon her.

"You both had so much promise, blondie…" he said solemnly, crouching on his knees and grabbing a handful of her flaxen locks, "You had so much more than the cat, too, you know? Why'd you go and let me down, huh?"

He stood then, while Blake watched in waxing horror, and dragged Yang roughly to her knees with the fistful of hair he held. The faunus tried desperately to move, finding that no amount of effort would produce even the slightest budge in her taxed muscles.

She closed her eyes tight, wincing in pain and tears and utter despondence, as her soul very nearly gave up.

"I guess this is the end of the line, eh?" he said, leveling his orange eyes with Yang's swollen reds, "Pity, but only the best can pass. Nothing personal, honestly, and maybe someday you'll get another shot. Might have to be recycled a few thousand times, but just maybe…"

Blake willed her eyes open again, barely winning the inner fight, and watched the worst thing she could have imagined seeing. The demonic thing had his weapon pushed to Yang's throat, as though the end were but a moment away, and his other hand wrapped around her chin. Yet, something seemed off.

The faunus watched, for she could do little else, and eventually realized that the demonic thing looked frozen. It was as though he were a statue, standing there and staring into her partner's eyes like something truly incredible was to be found within. And, of even further note, his own eyes seemed to be possessed of a different glow while he did so, now a color entirely different from what he first gave off.

The demonic thing's eyes, orange though they were, and orange though they had glowed until just a moment prior, now shined with a weak but clear silver light.

"You, then…" he muttered, and let Yang's chin go. He let go of his odd weapon as well, which disappeared the moment it left his hand, and stood straight with his arms crossed over his scaly chest.

"Silver eyes, is it?"

The blonde still sat on her knees, not of her own volition but by some strange force that held her there, while the man let go of his demonic appearance and assumed the look of a corpse once more. Blake wanted to look away but would not allow herself to. She forced her eyes to stay affixed to the corpselike man, who she now thoroughly believed was Death, and tried yet again to move. Anything at all, even if only enough to lift her head, and she would have been somewhat more satisfied.

Yet again, however, no movement came for her effort.

"Listen to me, pussycat." Death muttered, reaching out with the last two fingers of his right hand, "It's your turn to take center stage, alright? Not for long, oh no, but long enough…"

He trailed off as his fingers touched the blonde's forehead, producing a strange glow of black at the point of contact. Blake could only barely make it out, but she was certain she saw an upside-down cross when the light receded and Death pulled his fingers away.

"Take a message for me, of everything you've seen and done in these last few months, and let that one with the silver eyes know. Think you can manage that, pussycat?"

He turned his rotting face to her and gave a sour grin.

"Maybe it wasn't blondie here that I wanted after all…"

He stood then and lifted Yang almost effortlessly with one hand. He tossed her over his shoulder and turned toward Blake, crossing to her and doing the same. Then, with both women slung over his shoulders, which were oddly broad and powerful despite his corpselike appearance, he walked over to one of the thousands of doors that lined the throne room. He picked one, one that looked like a rickety bit of wood with a rusty old knob made of glazed iron, and kicked it roughly open.

Almost immediately, the desert sun burst into the throne room and filled it with heat and light. The dry, arid air followed suit shortly after and, though she wasn't sure how, Blake recognized that the door must open onto the little ghost town they had passed through before entering the badlands. It had only been a few days into their pursuit of the masked man, or Death as she now acknowledged him, but it felt like eons since she had last glanced the arid ruination.

"Best of luck, pussycat." Death said, almost companionably, "I guess I'll have to figure out another way to get my message to her if you both die in the desert, so try not to, ok? You've both caused me plenty enough trouble as it is…"

With that last bit, Death threw both women through the door and into the deserted town on the edge of the great Vacuo Badlands.

Ω

Even until her dying day, Blake would never be able to recall exactly how she managed it. The whole ordeal after the unholy encounter with Death was like a waking dream; it stood somewhere between lucid sleep and drowsing consciousness. Yet, somehow, she did indeed manage. She did it, even if she would never truly know how.

The faunus woke in the dusty hardpan of the ghost town's main street, only a few minutes after being tossed like a useless rag through the door. She felt her partner's weight on top of her, and the vengeful return of her own ravenous hunger, while she took choking gasps of breath.

After a time, Blake had managed to force herself to set out toward civilization. Her mind was all but gone, a reaction to the ridiculous pain that racked her entire being. She trudged relentlessly, for nigh unto two straight days, with the deathly wounded blonde slung over her back. Blake carried her like this almost the entire way, just as they'd both been taught at Beacon to do for a wounded comrade, only resorting to dragging her partner when a small city at last came into view.

At the sight of it, the faunus lost nearly all that remained of her strength and vitality. Some sick perversion of relief crept into her and sapped it away, bringing her crashing to her knees. Yang rolled over top of her and onto the dusty hardpan, giving only a faint oomph to indicate she still lived.

Blake stared at her absently for a moment, there but not at the same time, before standing on shaky feet and grabbing the blonde's left hand. She clasped it in both of hers and dragged the woman for the last few hundred yards, collapsing and passing out the moment they were spotted by a passing patrol.

The last thing she heard was the clamoring din of bewildered huntsman, none of which expected to find Blazing Sol or Nightshade in this godforsaken waste in such sorry condition.

Even as sleep took her, a sleep befitting the dead to boot, she still vaguely registered the feeling of being carried. Of course, in such sorry state as they were indeed in, the woman found herself hard-pressed to believe she wasn't being spirited off to whatever came after this life. It seemed a more than possible likelihood, and so she merely said a brief plea to whatever might be that it wasn't so. Blake drifted off with that thought, and would not awake again for nigh unto a week.

And when she did, a certain icy-eyed woman and a certain silver-eyed woman would be headed off for a night out; one that, unwittingly, she would utterly shatter with the news she had to deliver.