Chapter Eleven: Battle for the Dawn
A World Away
There were whispers in the dark: quiet utterings of change, of something once thought impossible. Where before the whispers were lamentations or outbursts, somewhere amongst the fury was a sound that had once been alien to the Grimm.
Hope.
The whispers carried to her ears', all the way from the pools of black blood from which the Grimm were forged. Even the newest among them, the ones built of ancient frustration and wrath, were sensing the possibility of erasing their pain and being made whole again.
And that simply would not do.
Salem stepped to her overlook, to watch the pools of black blood. They were pulsing now, but creating no new Grimm to spawn out and hunt man. There was more negative energy than ever pouring into the heart of Remnant, but for once, the wound in the planet would not react. Not when change was near.
If the Grimm were to change, she would lose everything. Her ambition would reach no further than the desolate kingdom she ruled over now. She needed the Grimm to subjugate the world, and whatever it was that promised them peace had to be eliminated. The light would never be snuffed out without a greater darkness.
The Grimm were to be that greater darkness, once they'd finished their transformation, as she intended. Now, they could very well find the peace they needed to let go of their hatred and cease to be her tools.
There was too much at stake. Salem would not lose her greatest weapons, and so needed to see to the matter. "Doctor Watts," she called. "Go to the pools, and listen."
Ruins of Beacon
Ruby had been summoned to Ozpin's office before, but she'd taken the elevator. When she ran up to its ruins during the Battle of Beacon, Weiss had aided her by drawing glyphs on the side of the tower for her to easily scale the surface. There had apparently been a pathway leading up made of arranged metal, but Jaune ripping a chunk off the tower had also broken most of the route up. Now she was navigating broken stairs through careful use of her speed and rapid propulsion from Crescent Rose, and the process was much slower than she wanted. Jaune was facing down a very powerful enemy, and for all she knew Nora and Ren –even if they had followed her recommendation and retreated- were surrounded by a lot of Grimm, including some strong enough to fight against their entire team. Every second she was delayed navigating an unstable staircase was a second her friends were out battling monsters without her help.
The last time she'd scaled this tower, she'd been too late to save her friend. That would not be the case this time. It never would be again.
Ruby finally reached the point where the tower was exposed to open air, and after navigating a few more unsteady steps, she finally found her path up and jumped, landing at the top of the crumbling structure. To her right was the frozen body of a massive Grimm dragon. Above her was a swirling puddle of black blood, held in place by four metal anchors and a raging storm in all directions.
And standing directly below that pool of black was a hunched man in a lab coat, with a mane of messy gray hair and a distinctly metal right hand. When he turned to face her, she saw another hunk of metal attached to the side of his face, his left eye replaced by a cybernetic implant, shining red.
She'd previously only seen him on a screen, but Ruby remembered the visage. "Doctor Merlot," she greeted.
Merlot had spent the day being calm and sardonic. Her presence broke the façade immediately. "You!" he roared. "The huntress who destroyed my creations!"
"Uh, well, technically, you blew up your own island," Ruby reminded him.
Merlot fumed, but quickly composed himself. "You're too late, girl. The Grimm will return to the heart of Remnant, and be reborn. There's nothing you can do to stop it."
No, she would not be too late. And she would stop it.
Ruby turned her attention to the green liquid in the syringe inside Merlot's lab coat, then to the Scroll in his left hand. Jaune had stressed that she needed to close the portal, as it was central to the baddies' plans. Merlot had used a strange green chemical to mutate the Grimm, however…
"What are you doing? Trying to mutate the Grimm all over again?" Ruby demanded, trying to sound more indignant than she actually was. She remembered the guy had liked to boast…
"Do you ever rush into battle with any knowledge of your enemy?" Merlot mocked. "This is just a tool. In its new composition, it's meant to be used on a human host."
That woman, Regen, was still human enough to bleed. So, presumably, she was still human enough to be injected… injected with a chemical that had made the Grimm obedient to a human's whims, and coordinated in their efforts.
"Well, okay, that's cool," Ruby acknowledged. "So, I guess I'll break the portal instead, then."
Ruby leveled Crescent Rose at the pool of black blood, only for Merlot to intercede, striking her with his cybernetic right hand. Ruby was pushed back a few inches… and while it had certainly hurt to be hit by a hunk of metal, she was surprised by how little pain she was in.
"Not much of a warrior, huh?" Ruby observed with a wry smile.
Merlot grunted and moved to attack her again, and Ruby dashed right past, easily evading him. She transformed Crescent Rose back into a scythe configuration and moved to counterattack.
Merlot smirked and pressed down on his Scroll.
And Ruby abruptly lost her footing, as she ran straight off the already small path of the floor, her feet briefly running on empty air before she crash landed against the side of Ozpin's old desk.
Merlot pressed the button on his Scroll again, and then reached over, pulling Ruby up by the hair. "Perhaps not," he admitted. "But knowledge of the terrain has its uses too."
Merlot flung Ruby against one of the intact walls of the tower. He wasn't so strong as to really hurt her, but she still struck the side of rock and metal with nothing to cushion her impact.
"For example, the metal in this tower is ferrous, and has been affected by significant magnetic interference," Merlot explained. "Invert its polarities, and there's no stable surface to fight on."
Merlot pressed down on the Scroll again, and rotated it ever so slightly. The chunk of metal beneath his feet lifted up, and the scientist ascended above Ruby's head, several other beams pulling up after him and encircling their battle site.
"So, by all means, huntress," Merlot requested, "Show me how great a warrior you are."
On the ground far below, Jaune was rapidly running out of things to do. He was continuing to attack with air bursts, disrupting the dirt and mud so as to slow Regen's march or directly fighting off the Beowolves and Creeps rushing to attack him. Regen herself was slow in her approach, and his disruption of the terrain made it harder for her to move.
But all he was doing was slowing her approach, and now they were moving away from dirt and onto stone, to the base of the tower where there'd once been a monument to fallen hunters and huntresses. He might be able to dislodge some of the debris and fling pebbles in Regen's face, but he doubted that'd do any more than annoy her. Swinging his sword had only contorted and damaged the steel without significantly affecting her in any noticeable way. So he changed tactics, putting all his weight behind his shield and bull rushing his opponent, slamming into her already bloodied head.
This actually managed to stagger her: perhaps because he struck on a wound, perhaps because he'd already worn her down from the fall from the tower, but for once when she was struck she was driven back. Regen was every bit as surprised as Jaune was, her eyes widening and her mouth agape, as though she'd never seen such an attack.
Jaune drew back and charged again, but Regen counteracted this time, swinging her arm in wide motion to meet his shield. The largely unaffected area had much more weight to counteract him, and it was Jaune's turn to stagger backwards, landing in a heap on the paved ground before the crumbling monument.
Regen kicked him while he was down, and the force of her strike sent him skidding along the ground, tumbling towards a crater left by an equipment locker, and a place he'd stood not long before, right at the center of a very bad day.
"Get up!" Regen roared, breaking her calm façade completely, the Grimm roaring around her, more breaking from the horde to join their alpha in the hunt. Jaune was feeling very groggy, knowing his Aura was running lower, knowing that good as he was at taking a hit, his opponent was too strong. If Ruby shut down the portal above, and Nora and Ren got out in one piece… well, he could think of worse places to mark his headstone. Most hunters died in battle after facing impossible odds as long as they could.
Just as it had been her fate, perhaps it was his.
Ren had mostly been acting as spotter, occasionally intervening to keep smaller Grimm out of Nora's path so she could focus on the larger, older specimens. But no matter how much lightning Nora called down, the horde's numbers kept growing, and when a third Goliath joined the pursuit, Ren realized the situation was becoming dire.
Worse, Grimm were marking positions around them, flanking them from multiple directions. They no longer attacked as a coordinated unit, but they were still blocking the path of retreat. Once Nora had finished calling down lightning into the back of a Nevermore and returned to the ground, she was genuinely exhausted, having run on supercharged electricity for so long even her stamina was starting to wane.
"Okay," Nora mouthed in between gasps for air, "Who's next?"
Ren moved to her back, facing the oncoming Grimm on their flanks. "Our route of escape has been cut off," he advised his partner.
"Not the first time," Nora assured him, catching her breath. "Won't be the last."
The Goliaths were so large there was no way to maneuver around them. When Griffons joined the various packs of Grimm on their flanks and ensuring aerial attacks in multiple directions, Ren realized the situation they were in. "We're surrounded."
Nora looked up at the portal above the tower within the cyclone eye, then back to the horde of Grimm marching ever closer. "Ren… are you scared?"
"Of course not," Ren answered. "I am with you."
It was a comforting thought for her, in the face of the darkness. Even if he hadn't meant it the way she wanted, she could think of worse things to hear in her final moments. "Boop," Nora agreed, raising Magnhild and preparing for the enemy's final charge.
The Grimm drew closer… Ren and Nora each steeled themselves for the inevitable attack…
…when above them, missiles loaded with Dust struck the clouds, increasing the ferocity of the rain and the frequency of the lightning bolts. Grimm on the ground were fried by electricity and blasted by wind. Nora pushed Ren down and shield him to absorb the impact of the discharge, while the Grimm around them were blasted and blown away.
Atlas ships moved through the dark sky, unleashing attack after attack, intensifying the strength of the storm with their every volley, but eventually shifting attention to the Grimm in the sky around them.
"Storm's getting worse," Nora observed, as more lightning bolts rained down. "What do we do?"
"Well, much as I don't want to defy Ruby's instructions, it's unwise to remain out in the open," Ren answered. "We make for the tower, and try to regroup with the others."
Nora grinned. "Suits me fine!" She held Magnhild high over her head, drawing lightning to the conductive metal, and set to work smashing a path through the smaller Grimm, clearing the way for Ren and herself to move forward while the Goliaths struggled to absorb so many impacts striking their backs.
High above them, Ironwood coordinated the ships, speaking to each captain through his console while his bridge crew continued to relentlessly fire. "All ships attack bogeys on the port quarter," the General firmly instructed. "Once you have a clear line of fire, resume the atmospheric disturbances."
The ships continued to punch through the flying Grimm, lighting up the sky with red, blue, and yellow and gradually increasing the intensity of the massive storm above them.
On the border to the Safe Zone, Hei "Junior" Xiong led his men, many of them joining the Atlesian soldiers and knights at the checkpoint to batter the oncoming Grimm. They didn't leave bodies behind, so there was ample room to maneuver. His men kept re-supplying the shooters on the roofs with ammo, and eventually started offering weapons to Atlas as well, as mobsters and professional soldiers fought side by side against a common enemy to hold their line.
Atop the tower, Ruby was constantly trying to jump up and reach Merlot, but his constant tinkering with his Scroll rearranged the metal planks or inverted their polarities at every attempt. Either she'd miss the small platform completely or her boots would slide right off when she did hit the mark. It was becoming increasingly frustrating and Merlot was clearly enjoying watching her struggle.
"What's the matter, huntress?" Merlot mocked. "You made it look so effortless when your raiding party destroyed my creations. If only I'd known you could be defeated by electromagnetism..."
Ruby was having difficulty finding the point to attack from, but gradually, she was seeing a pattern to utilize. Merlot's constant movement of the metal beams had been gradually lifting him higher, to the point he was several meters above the tower, winds raging in the circle around him, growing increasingly intense.
"Atlas now," Merlot observed, turning his attention away from Ruby and towards the Atlas ships firing their Dust into the storm. "Will the surprises never cease…"
Ruby dashed up while he was distracted, but Merlot inverted polarities again, raising his makeshift platform even higher. Ruby slid off another beam and tumbled down, but took solace as things continued to move into place…
"I might have considered praising your tenacity were it not such a waste of effort," Merlot sneered at her. "Do you really think you can hit me with your little scythe?"
"You forgot something," Ruby called up, as she jumped up and bounced off one metal beam and moved straight towards him. Merlot scoffed again and adjusted his position higher, to the point he was barely below the portal of black blood.
Ruby transformed Crescent Rose and leveled it skyward. "It's also a gun."
Ruby fired straight up in rapid succession. Merlot raised his cybernetic arm to shield himself and take the impact, but the force of the bullet pushed him up, right into the magnetic field generated by his four anchors.
Merlot screamed something Ruby couldn't hear as he thrashed in midair, trying to bring himself back down. Ruby angled her sniper rifle and shot at the metal anchor nearest him, again and again, mingling the impact of her bullets with his thrashing, and doing just enough to dislodge the hunk of metal holding the portal in place.
The black blood lowered itself, enveloping Merlot. He disappeared within it, moments before the other three anchors gave way, the magnetic field breaking apart and the portal was pulled in multiple directions by the intense winds, black blood joining the rest of the particulate. The cyclone eye began to concave on itself, the sky above Ruby's head growing dark.
Ruby turned her attention to the ground, where she saw flashes of battle amongst the Grimm. With the portal apparently shut, Ruby turned her attention to the makeshift metal stairs on the tower side and began her descent, as the storm above her worsened.
Regen saw the tiny flickering light of Aura disappear; barely a glimpse hundreds of meters above her head. She looked up, away from the hunter she was battling, and watched as her portal collapsed above the tower, the metal shards falling away or being pulled along in the storm winds.
Merlot was gone. And if his serum was gone, she would have no way to control the plurality of the horde without the chemical to enhance her.
And more pressingly, with the portal gone… with all that she had built falling away…
Regen looked down at the ground as she heard the whispers growing more frequent. The Grimm sensed her despair and her anger, feeling her carefully managed ambivalence fall away and feeding on the negative emotion now emanating from her.
She had been moments –mere seconds- away from completing her ambition and rebuilding the Grimm and becoming their soul, their light in the darkness. Now, instead of taking Erzengel Schnee's plan and improving upon it, inflicting the ultimate revenge on her former colleague, now she had simply been reduced to the same shambling wreck as her other subjects. Her negative emotions called to the Grimm, and they whispered in her ear, and the pain –the never ending, constant pain- deep in her core would pull them into her.
Her plan ruined, the elder Grimm began to realize it in the fragmented emotions she emanated. There was no hope of being free of their pain now. They would remain as they were, broken and abandoned, with nothing but the same hate and fear to feed on as they'd known for so long. She had whispered promises in their ears, but failed to deliver. Now they no longer needed this hopeless shell as their alpha.
And for Regen, there was one reason her hope was gone. It was the frustratingly large source of Aura at her feet.
Regen freed herself from all pretense of control and unleashed her anger, the Grimm around her attuning to that feeling, feeding on it and sustaining it with their constant whispers.
Just as Jaune rose, Regen slammed her fists into his back, driving him deep into the stone. "You took it away! You ruined everything!"
Jaune rolled away before Regen could strike him again, as the storm above their heads grew increasingly intense. The winds were so strong even in his heavy armor Jaune felt his feet sliding along the pavement and many of the smaller Grimm were blown away by the gales.
Jaune briefly looked up and watched the magnetic field fall apart, the portal already gone. "Well, yeah. People were gonna' get hurt. Seemed like the only thing I could do."
"Idealistic fool!" Regen growled at him. "All this –all of this- was done to keep the Grimm away from the light and force them to live in pain and misery! All for some momentary illusion of peace!"
Regen took a wide swing, and Jaune raised his shield just in time to counteract. "I will give you peace, Erzengel! I will turn your precious kingdom into a world of endless, empty black! I will mark my every step with desolation until there is nothing left of the light!"
The other Grimm around her were becoming distorted by the force of her emotions finally brought to bear. Regen continued to press her attack, knocking the shield from Jaune's hand with another swing. "You think you saved lives, Erzengel?! I will consume every soul and drown every last drop of Aura in darkness, just to ensure your failure is complete! Then there will be no more pain… no more suffering… just darkness… just endless black…"
She struck Jaune again, sending him crashing to the ground before the entrance to the tower. He groggily looked inside, to the broken elevator shaft. He wondered about that hidden room Ozpin had below ground… and about Pyrrha, and the moment she'd traveled up the tower for her final battle…
"Get up, hunter!" Regen snarled. Jaune might've been willing to comply with that request, but his body wasn't quite following that instinct, and his mind was wandering to the past.
Regen reached down to attack again, only to be struck by a bolt of lightning timed with the swing of a heavy mallet. Nora interceded, driving the Grimm woman back while Ren followed after, fending off nearby Beowolves and Ursa. Ruby soon joined them in the fray, firing one shot after another from Crescent Rose.
"Get up, Jaune," Ruby said gently in between shots. "We need you."
Jaune beheld a flash of light as another lightning bolt struck nearby. For a brief moment he thought he beheld a flash of red.
Get up, Jaune.
Jaune looked into the entrance to the base of the tower, where in the shadows illuminated by that lightning bolt, he saw her standing with her back to him, Milo and Akouo in hand, staring at the elevator shaft. For a brief moment she turned her head to look back, and he saw her green eye amidst that long red mane.
For it is in passing that we achieve immortality.
Jaune felt himself lying down on the stone ground, but in that moment he was back in the Emerald Forest and the initiation, when Pyrrha helped him unlock his Aura, healing the wound he received upon landing.
Through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all.
He was still in that moment, even as he rose to his feet on the stone ground before Beacon tower and picked up his shield. He could hear his friends battling their enemy nearby, and with each footstep he felt his pain lessening, as he felt Pyrrha's hands upon him and heard her speak the words.
Infinite in distance and unbound by death.
Jaune swung his sword into the wound on Regen's forehead. The Grimm woman cried out, as Jaune returned to the present, rain falling on his head and winds tearing rocks and clumps of dirt from the ground. He knew what he had to do, because Pyrrha had returned, however briefly, to show him how to defeat this enemy. The sacrifice she thought had been in vain wound find new life and new purpose in defeating another enemy of peace and stability.
Where Pyrrha had been prepared to sacrifice everything for the common good, at least Jaune learned from her example. And her placement.
I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee.
"Guys, move her into the tower," Jaune instructed. "I have a plan."
The others complied immediately, with Nora and Ruby moving behind Regen, striking her with Magnhild and Crescent Rose in unison, pushing her forward. Ren kept the Grimm on the ground busy at their flanks, while Jaune joined the girls in herding Regen inside, alternating between shoving her with his shield and striking her wound with his sword.
"You may want a good landing strategy," Jaune advised the others as Ren followed in at the rear, still fighting Grimm at the entrance. "It's a long way down."
Jaune slashed and Regen drew back, standing right at the edge of the smashed elevator. Jaune bull rushed her, shield first, and drove her over the edge, sending both of them into the darkness.
"What's gotten into Jaune?" Ruby wondered as she watched him descend.
"Don't know, but it's working, isn't it?" Nora blithely replied.
"Wherever he's gone, we should follow," Ren advised as he continued to block smaller Grimm at the door. "Though we may want to provide a suitable method of coming back up."
At least that hadn't changed about Jaune. Ruby quickly reached for her backpack and pulled out rope. Nora found a place to anchor it, and Ruby tied it to Crescent Rose and descended. Ren broke his position and followed after, and Nora swung Magnhild at the Grimm to clear them from the door before jumping after her friends.
Jaune and Regen impacted far below into a heavy steel floor, actually managing to crack the frame with their impact. Jaune immediately leapt off his foe and led her into the underground chamber, where her destiny waited.
Regen pursued him, blood completely obscuring one eye, the other an even darker red as she angrily, frantically chased her quarry. She was so blinded by her anger that she could not even comprehend where she'd been taken, or where Jaune had led her. Where once she'd been in control, now she was raw emotion, as reckless and aggressive as a newly forged Grimm.
The others soon joined them, and unlike Regen, they were taken in by the sight of the vault, examining the steel and marble, and the scars of battle lining the floor. Jaune sympathized –he'd been in that same awe before- but his motives had changed this time. Before, he'd been assigned to keep the enemy out, and he'd failed.
This time, he'd brought the enemy deeper in… and he would succeed.
Eventually, after constant retreat, he slashed at Regen's wound, and she reached up to catch his sword, screaming in such fury that whatever semblance of her humanity had clearly been supplanted by raw, animalistic rage.
Jaune fell backwards, knowing this was the hard part. But he was confident now, because Pyrrha had given him what he needed.
Jaune drew upon his Aura and pulled his heavy foe backwards, gradually hoisting her off her feet, using both their momentum to roll her over his head. Regen broke from her primal scream to look on in confusion, as Jaune hoisted her up for the briefest moment, and flung her over his head, towards a contraption a few feet behind him, at the rear of the vault.
Regen crashed into some sort of tube with its canopy open; a cold and sterile machine built to fit a human body just like hers'.
Jaune pointed at the console before the chambers. "Nora, nail it!"
Nora broke from her amazement and complied, leaping forward and gladly breaking machinery with her hammer. Jaune pushed the chamber canopy down over Regen's head, sealing her within just as the machine's life support kicked in, seeking to safely preserve the life of its occupant.
Regen was still perplexed, but gradually realized what was happening and pounded her fists against the canopy, gradually feeling her strength fade away, gradually feeling the cold wash over her and the dim light growing dimmer….
Sealed in the Atlas chamber, Lila Regen's attempts to escape became muted, and eventually her arms fell away and lay still. As she had been for eighty years, save a brief moment of ambition and hope, Regen was once more frozen in time.
Once he was sure the threat had passed, Jaune turned his attention to his friends, still looking around the vault in surprise. "So, yeah," Jaune began, nervously rubbing the back of his head. "This is a place."
"I can't wait to hear this one," Ruby wryly noted.
"It's a long story," Jaune told them.
"Well, we're gonna need to hunker down for a while," Nora pointed out.
"Yes," Ren agreed. "It will be some time before the storm layer collapses, and it would be prudent to remain here to ride it out."
"So come on, Jaune," Ruby invited as she looked at Regen locked in her tube. "Tell us a story."
High, high above them, the Atlas ships broke formation and departed, buffeted by lightning and hail on their way out, nearly torn apart by the winds. The Grimm on the ground were destroyed one by one by the force of the storm, with only the oldest and strongest among them able to endure through the night.
At the border to the Safe Zone, the lines held, and the Grimm eventually retreated. When the storm winds hit, Junior lent the Atlas soldiers the use of his club as shelter, and together they rode through the night, holding the walls and roof together until it passed.
Hours later, Nora ascended the rope line in the elevator, eventually sending the all clear to the others. Ren followed, then Ruby, then Jaune, then Jaune again after he slipped and the others had to help pull him out.
The four stepped out into the dim morning light, the ground still rain sodden and waterlogged and the skies still overcast, and Beacon still in ruins around them, but the day having finally returned, and light piercing through the darkness once more.
The larger Grimm were still prowling around, so they made a discreet exit, following a trail of discarded Dust and the wreckage of the Atlas ships out of their former home, into the forests and back towards Vale, where life and light awaited them.
