Yang and Glynda froze.
Neither found themselves able to move, watching with horror as the young team leader seemed to die right before their eyes. The high pitched, drawn out beep rang in their ears, chilling them both with dread.
Weiss and Blake dashed back into the room with a doctor and multiple nurses on their heels, but before anyone could so much as move, Ruby took a ragged breath and the regular beeping came back again.
There was silence for a few minutes until Glynda spoke up in a quiet voice. "She should have died there, but she refused to give up. Her subconscious refuses to lose."
Several minutes later, after checking up on Ruby's condition and deciding she was stable enough to leave, the staff vanished from the room. After Glynda kicked the monochrome pair out again, the two blondes returned to their chairs on either side of Ruby, and the older woman spoke again.
"Ruby died in the dream." She said, giving Yang a hard stare. "She must've gotten caught by one of the violent monsters, or maybe done something that resulted in an instant 'game over', so to speak."
"But she's alright now, isn't she?" Yang asked, worry creeping back into her voice.
"She must be so determined to come back that even though she died, she refused to let that world win and somehow forced it to give her a second chance." After a moment, she added, "Yang, it is indeed because of you that she's here. However, that doesn't mean she or anyone else blames you. If she felt like you betrayed her, would she really be trying this hard to come back? She's fighting to come back to you."
"… Thank you, professor."
"I have no doubt in my mind Ruby can overcome this and wake up. We just have to give her time to accomplish that."
Ruby jolted awake, looking around in a wild panic. The same eerie, stone walls that she'd been forced to stare at for the past several hours greeted her again.
Did I… die?
The thought made her shiver. Am I stuck here forever? Am I dead in the real world right now? Standing up, she looked over at the shelves to her right, hoping to find something that could tell her for sure one way or another. In the darkness she could faintly see a white candle, and stepped over to pick it up and light it. Once it flickered to life and filled the small room with a warm light, she noticed the familiar glinting coming from something on the shelf, and picked up Blake's black Belladonna flower symbol.
As Ruby reached to put it on her belt, she gasped and stared down at it with a panicked look. All of the symbols that had previously been held on her belt were gone, including her own. Did I lose them when I…?
Something was nagging at the back of her mind, as if she'd forgotten something important. Ruby couldn't quite place what it was, though it did feel like it had something to do with a living person. Who was she forgetting? Wasn't there someone here with me? Her memories felt fuzzier now than they ever had before, and it annoyed her slightly. She had the feeling she was forgetting a lot of really important things, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember anything.
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Ruby made her way out of the room cautiously. She was met with the same dark halls yet again, and sighed, resigning herself to her fate of searching this place all over again.
Down the hall, Ruby opened the first door she saw and peered inside. Her candle illuminated a couple of shelves and a Weiss standing in the center of the room. She knew it could see her, and she stared right back at the eyeless thing for a split second.
"Nope." The girl closed the door and continued down the hall.
The next door she came to was only a few feet away, and when Ruby pulled it open, light bled into the hall. She gave the ladder room a confused stare, thinking about how everything on this floor had been in the same area. That thought was pushed away as soon as she noticed there was no opening in the ceiling, however, despite the fact she did indeed have Blake's symbol. So what do I need to do before I can move on to the next floor?
She turned back into the hall, and was about to head down the direction she still hadn't explored when she noticed a figure standing with its back to her, just outside of her candle's light. She stepped closer to illuminate it, and realized it was the ghostly Ren again.
"Ren?" Ruby asked, but he didn't turn. Confused, the girl walked up to stand beside him, and that was when she noticed Weiss standing a few steps in front of Ren. The creepy version of her partner was rooted in place by the unblinking stare Ren had trained on her, and Ruby realized she would have been attacked and cornered if he hadn't shown up and stopped it.
Then she remembered the last time she'd seen him, and turned back to him, suddenly feeling the need to make sure he was alright. "Are you okay? Something had hold of you the last time we met." His eyes didn't move from Weiss, but he gave a slight nod and waved her off. Then, when Ruby was just about to ask something else, his arm shot out to hold an item in front of her and she fell silent to inspect the object. Her eyes widened when she recognized the magenta lotus as Ren's own symbol.
She reached out and grabbed hold of the metal symbol, but Ren did not let go of it. He kept a firm grip on the symbol and continued staring at Weiss, but before Ruby could question him further, she heard his voice.
"Ruby, these symbols banish their corresponding monsters from here when you have them. As soon as I let go of this, I will vanish. Before that happens I needed to warn you. Everything will be harder now; since you cheated the rules of this place the monsters have redoubled their efforts to kill you. Even Nora is dangerous now, be wary of her. I had hoped to keep my symbol until the end so I could continue helping you where I was able, but you now need two symbols in order to open the next floor, and Blake's was the only one on this floor. Now, when I let go, that symbol is going to force me away so I won't be able to help you anymore, and Weiss will be set free. As soon as that happens you need to run to the ladder as quickly as you can, Weiss is extremely aggressive now and much faster than before and she WILL immediately come after you." Ren didn't speak verbally, but his words echoed around inside Ruby's head. "Are you ready?"
She nodded, and Ren's grip on the symbol started to loosen.
"Oh, and Ruby? Don't trust anyone."
And with that, her magenta eyed friend let go and vanished, and she bolted for the ladder room. She could feel Weiss's cold presence chasing after her, right on her heels, and wished she was able to move faster. Luckily the room was only a few steps away, and she darted up the ladder and onto the next floor as quickly as she could. Before the opening could seal itself behind her, however, she turned back to see Weiss had climbed after her and was reaching up toward her, her eyeless face morphed into an angry stare. Then the opening sealed up and all that was left was a pale hand sticking up through the floor, where it had sealed around Weiss's wrist.
Ruby gave a frightened squeak and backed away into the corner, sliding to the floor and curling in on herself, fully unnerved by the sight of the hand. Something about seeing Weiss's hand sticking up through the floor like that made her want to hide under her unfortunately absent cloak forever and never come out.
She must have fallen asleep there on the floor, because the next thing she knew, it was dark and she was shivering. Her candle had gone out long ago, and without it the dungeon felt colder than ever. Since when is it even possible to sleep inside of a dream, anyway?
At first she thought it was the cold that had awoken her, but a sound echoing in from the hall told her otherwise. Eerie giggles bounced off the cold stone walls, some sounding louder than others and all varying in pitch. It sent chills down her spine, but even more so when she realized it sounded a lot like her own voice.
Ruby wanted to stay right where she was, curled up in the corner. But her feet seemed to move of their own accord, forcing her to stand and walk out into the dark hallway. The giggles and slightly insane sounding laughter continued to echo down from the room at the very end of the hall, and Ruby found herself walking closer and closer until she was standing in the very room it was coming from.
Now the laughter was accompanied by something Ruby could only describe as a faint squelching sound, and a little ways into the room she could just slightly make out the dark figure of someone who seemed to be swinging something toward the ground repeatedly. She glanced to the side and noticed a candle on the floor by the entrance, and again her body moved without her telling it to, picking up the candle and lighting it.
Light from the flame filled a large area of the room, just enough for her to see there were actually two figures in the room. A dark haired male was on the floor, completely limp and his green coat was barely recognizable as that color through all of the red staining it. Above him was someone in a long red cloak, which was torn beyond repair at the end, the fabric fraying into long strips of useless fleece. The cloaked figure was holding two bladed green guns, however those were also barely green anymore, covered in more and more blood with each time the cloaked figure stabbed their blades into the person on the floor. The figure continued laughing maniacally, not caring that their victim was long dead or that blood was splattering onto everything with each hit.
Ruby gasped at the horrific scene, unable to stop herself, and the figure went silent as it turned to investigate the noise. It spotted her at the same time Ruby recognized it, and she made a loud sound of terror as she found herself staring into her own eyes. The cloaked figure looked exactly like Ruby herself; except for the fact its skin was a dead grey and its hair was flat black, only colored red by the blood splattered in it. But what really bothered Ruby was the completely insane look in its eyes, and the wide grin similar to the one Pyrrha's painting had held.
The guns in its hands were also no longer green. They changed to a poisonous looking black, the edges of their forms twisting and swirling like an evil mist around the Dark Ruby's hands. The blood on them also seemed to evaporate, or maybe it was consumed by the dark weapons.
"Why hello Ruby. Wanna be frieeends?" The other Ruby started laughing again, and lurched toward her. As the dark version of herself grew closer, Ruby noticed the familiar glinting as her candlelight caught on the reflective surface of the red rose on Dark Ruby's belt.
She gasped. "You have my symbol!"
"What, this?" Dark Ruby teasingly passed a hand over the metal. "Nope, 'fraid it's mine now. That's what you get for not staying dead."
Ruby just blinked in confusion. Dark Ruby sighed overdramatically, waving the dark weapons in her hands about wildly while she explained.
"You died, remember? When you came here, I got your cloak. When you died, I got your symbol. Now all I have to do is kill your sister and I'll have your weapon, too. But you cheated, and came back. You've messed up the rules of this world, so I guess that means I need to kill you again and make sure you stay dead." Dark Ruby's laughs got louder and she ran forward, black rose petals spilling from her cloak as she used Ruby's own Semblance to speed toward her. Ruby found herself backed up against a wall, and clenched her eyes shut as she braced herself for the hit from the dark weapons the other version of her held. But it never came, and she slowly opened her eyes to see Dark Ruby had just vanished.
After a few minutes of standing there with a dumbstruck look on her face, Ruby shook her head and looked over at the body on the floor. It was a gruesome sight, their flesh was torn to the point they didn't even look human anymore, some of the bones even being visible through the mess of red, and the blood splattered multiple feet away in every direction. Ruby didn't want to look at it anymore, but something told her she needed to see this person's face.
Walking closer, she ignored the blood that was splashing up onto her boots with each step. Once she stood beside the body she crouched down, and gently turned them over so she could see the face. The pink streak in their hair and the glassy magenta eyes left her with no doubt of who it was, and she gave a choked sound of distress.
It was Ren.
As she fell to her knees in the pool of blood beside her friend, all she could really do was hope was he died long before he had to suffer too much pain. Dream or not, the people and monsters in this place were real beings and conscious to a point. Maybe the monsters here weren't Ruby's friends in her own world, but maybe they were, somewhere else, in some crazy complicated alternate dimension thing. I must be losing it. I'm trying to find an explanation for everything here, and where it all came from. Regardless of where they came from or if they're real or not, though… Ren didn't deserve this. Ren wasn't on her team, and they didn't talk much, but she still considered him a friend. And she hated seeing what this world had done to her friends. She couldn't get the image of herself murdering her friend out of her head.
And for the first time since she had woken up in this nightmarish world, Ruby cried. She cried for her friends and all of the pain this place had brought, to her and to others before her. Sitting there alone in a pool of her murdered friend's blood, she cried until she could cry no more.
Eventually, the girl pulled herself together, wiping her eyes with her sleeve and standing up. She stood slightly taller than she had previously, a renewed determination sparkling in her angry eyes as she snatched her dying candle from where it had been forgotten on the floor, and stormed out of the room. I'm going to get out of here, and not a damn thing can stop me.
