Thanks to TehGramerPolise for his help with this chapter.

Buzz Buzz Dear Sweetling.

Buzz Buzz You're a Rocketman, Burning Your Fuse Out Here Alone.

Buzz Buzz Dear Sweetling And I Think It's Gonna Be A Long, Long Time

Buzz Buzz 'Till Paying The Toll Brings You Around To Find.

Buzz Buzz He's Not The God They Think He is At Home. Oh No, No, No.

...

Buzz Buzz Drunken Revelries And Dancing Leprechauns.

They Bring The Bacchanalia In Clay Amaphoras.

Time To Taste The Sobering Wine Sweetling.

I fell for a long time.

At first I panicked, trying to bring up my Semblance, but whatever had enabled me to overcome Specimen 1347's ability to suppress it had vanished. Then I tried to look around for a surface to stab my scythe into, and that's about when I realized that there was nothing.

By that I don't just mean no walls, there wasn't a floor, there wasn't a ceiling, there was just… nothing- an endless void that surrounded encompassed everything. Yet some kind of gravity was apparently still present, because the sensation of falling never ceased.

At first, I kept thinking of ways to escape, ways to prepare for whatever was going to meet me when I finally reached the bottom. However, it became pretty quickly apparently that there might very well be no 'bottom'. No ground to smack up against or to land on.

Out of curiosity, I began counting the seconds, just to see how long I was falling… I stopped somewhere around an hour.

Still there was nothing in sight.

And still I was falling.

And falling.

And falling.

Maybe I'm dead, I thought idly, after all, I wasn't hungry, I wasn't sleepy, I was just kind of there amongst the empty space that surrounded me. If I was dead then this was a really boring afterlife.

I knew the thought of being dead should have bothered me more, but something about the emotions seemed… diluted. It was like they just couldn't gain traction, flashing into existence only to fade as quickly as they had come, leaving me as an empty shell.

I saw light out of the corner of my eye and I turned my head to see that my hands were emitting a soft, wispy glow. As I watched some of that glow detached and faded into the void surrounding me.

"Well that can't be good." I murmured, but it somehow lacked conviction, I was starting to feel sleepy.

"Mortal?" A deep voice called.

I frowned and turned to see a squat Faunus standing in front of me. Or at least at I thought it was a Faunus, as he had curled goat horns growing out of the top of his head; however, he also had short furry limbs ending in hooves. Dimly, I was aware that my surroundings had changed, I was now standing on a patch of grass, just as the figure before me was. Behind him was a large, rod iron gate.

"Pay the toll mortal." He demanded.

I frowned, "What?"

"You came here to see the Master didn't you?" He asked me, "Why else would you have brought tribute?"

I desperately tried to marshal my thoughts, "Tribute?" I asked him.

The Faunus sighed, "Typical." He groused, "First supplicant in a millennia and he's too faded to even think straight." He reached into the bag at his side and pulled out a small, yellow cube of what looked like a jelly candy, which he offered to me. "Here."

I took it from him and briefly debated for a moment before popping it into my mouth.

Oh Maidens above, my mouth exploded with every flavor imaginable and some that seemed impossible. After all… how do you taste a sunshine? Or a flowing river? Yet somehow even that coursed through my senses, scraping me clean and leaving me renewed and refreshed.

I shook myself and felt my thoughts clear and sharpen, "Right, tribute…"

The figure sighed again, "Yes, now pay up or toss yourself back into the void."

Something told me that would be a bad thing and I desperately rummaged through my pockets. Almost instantly, my fingers grasped onto something hot and metallic, I pulled it out to see that it was the silver coin that I had won all the way back at the Carnival.

On a hunch, I held it out to the man, who snatched it from me eagerly, "Very nice… the Master will be most pleased." He jerked his head, "Right this way." He said, and he opened up the gate and slipped inside.

The strange Faunus lead me along a gravel road that crunched beneath my feet. To either side were rows upon rows of grape vines, all of which were being attended by large creatures that looked like humans were it not for their bodies being made entirely out of wood. Treants.

Finally we arrived at the end of the road, where there was a large fountain in front of a giant mansion.

The Faunus man lead me past the fountain and to the large, double wooden doors, he pushed it open without much ceremony and slipped inside.

I hesitated, and quickly looked around for any alternatives; but all that I could see was the way I had come and endless fields of grapevines. "Well, here goes nothing." I muttered and I followed the Faunus man inside.

I've been in my line of work long enough to know that the mansion wasn't going to be the typical inside of a building; but even I was momentarily stunned by what I walked out into when I walked past the doorway.

I was standing at the top of a grassy hill that lead down into a large valley. The valley itself was dominated by a series of stone pillars. All of the stone was intricately carved with long lines and swirling circles at the top.

The next thing I was struck by was the smell; it smelled like someone was cooking every single delicacy I had ever tasted in my life and currently wrapping it up in a bun. The source of the smell seemed to be emanating from a gazebo in the center of the pillars. There a large, rotund man was moving with remarkable nimbleness between a variety of stove tops and ovens. He was wearing a pair of sandals on his feet and was wearing a large apron with runes woven in gold thread.

My guide as already halfway down the slope, and I did my best to ignoring my grumbling stomach as I followed him down.

As we approached I could hear that the rotund man was singing a song with a deep, booming voice. The language the song was in appeared to shift and change as I got closer. At first it was a high, lilting tongue that seemed to soar into the sky. Then it changed into a much more guttural language that seemed to sink into the very stones. Finally as we arrived it had shifted into something that sounded like the Old Tongue.

The rotund man looked up to see us coming and he shifted some of the knobs on the stove before he turned to us, his dark brown eyes bright.

"Calibos, qui estis ut introducerentur in conspectu meo?" He asked my guide.

The Faunus man bowed low, "Magnus Dominus, et ego mortalis adducere qui sunt amissa ad vacui. Et transtulit in thesaurum pretiosissimum donum tibi."

He then offered the silver coin and the man's eyes widened as he took it and examined it, "Per ... Iovis tibi gratiam referam. Derelinquas me, ut locutus est illi."

The Faunus man straightened and went back towards the hill.

The rotund man stepped forward and eyed me up and down, "Statum nomen tuum, mortalis."

"Uhh… Sorry, I don't follow."

The rotund man frowned, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I felt something indescribably massive and powerful focus its attention squarely on me.

"Bah," The man finally said, "I had been told that the educated on your world were still taught the proper tongue. Which means that you are either uneducated, or you are not from the world that I believed you were from. One is far more interesting than the other."

"I'm from a world called Remnant." I told him.

The man lifted his eyebrows, "Oh? You are very far from home then." He examined the silver coin once more, "Do you know what this is?"

I wracked my brain and then remembered the term that the turnstile had used, "A sesterce." I replied.

The man nodded, "Indeed, the currency of an empire you humans built that I was rather affectionate towards. Of course, it eventually collapsed, but not before it had spread across the stars; no doubt that's roughly how this came into your possession."

I blinked, "Did you say across the stars? As in other worlds?"

The man seemed to ignore the question as he turned back to the stove, he reached over and took one of the pans and shifted the contents a little before nodding and putting it back down.

"In any case, you have come a long way to pay me tribute." He said, "Ask me of a boon and if it is within my power it shall be yours."

I scratched my head, "Um… honestly I'd take getting back to my own world. They kind of need me there."

The man nodded, "More so than you probably even realize." He told me.

Oh well that boded well.

The man stuffed the coin into his apron pocket then clapped his hands together, then rubbed them vigorously.

"Alright, one journey across vast distances of space and time, coming right up." The man parted his hands and I blinked to see a pair of eggs had appeared in both of them. He walked up to another stove where an empty frying pan was sitting and he quickly broke both of the eggs, pouring their contents into the pan.

The air was filled with the sound of sizzling and a heavenly smell as he began dexterously shifting the pan around.

I waited for a minute, expecting at any moment to disappear, or even for the man to say anything, but he simply continued to cook the eggs, occasionally putting a pinch of a spice that I couldn't identify into it.

Finally I cleared my throat, "So uh, I don't mean to be rude, but the sooner I can get back the better."

The man turned his head and frowned at me.

I quickly held up a hand, "Not that I would want to interrupt what you're doing but-"

The man's face suddenly became bemused, "And just what does it look like I'm doing?" He asked me.

I blinked and looked at the frying pan and the rather delicious looking omelet that was being cooked in it.

"Making an omelet?" I ventured.

The man let out a booming laugh that seemed to shake the ground on which I stood.

"Oh by Jupiter's beard." He said, still chuckling, "I sometimes forget just how blind you mortals are." He twisted the knob on the stove and turned to me, "You see me cooking an omelet." He said, "Because your mortal mind can't actually comprehend what I'm doing, so it gives you the closest thing it can approximate."

"So you're actually…" I began.

The man nodded, "What you're actually watching is me making the spell that will send you across the void in one piece."

I looked at the object in the frying pan and decided that I had seen far stranger things and shrugged, "Alright."

The man grabbed the pan and gave it a single flip and the omelet landed in his hand. He blew on it and then held it out to me.

I looked at it, then back at him, "Am I supposed to…"

The man shrugged, "It's an omelet isn't it?"

I looked at the omelet in his hand and took it, and it felt very much like an omelet, then I took a bite.

I staggered and fell to my knees, retching as I felt as though I had left my stomach somewhere far away.

It took me a while before I felt well enough to look around at my surroundings.

At first I was nearly blinded by light, which I gradually realized was all around me. While beneath my feet was wood, everywhere else I looked there was a reflective surface; a lot of them were mirrors, some of them were simply slats of polished metal, and others were various pieces of silverware.

"Oh don't tell me." I whispered.

"While it is meet that one should seek to find me in my domain; in the place where only my most devout admirers may gaze upon me." A voice called out, "However, it is also meet that they should knock."

I slowly, cautiously, turned to where the voice was coming from and fell to a knee, my head bowed, "My lady," I said solemnly, "It was not by my own choice that I should intrude in such a manner, but I must admit to being pleased to be presented with the mere possibility of the privilege of gazing upon you once more."

I heard the sharp sound of nails on wood and I caught a blur of movement out of the corner of my eye as something appeared in front of me.

"Birdman." The Baba Yaga said, her voice surprised, "We meet again."

"We do indeed my lady." I replied smoothly.

"It has been a goodly time since our last meeting." She said, "I would have been disappointed if one with such good sense and manners as you were to have died like so many others in the past few years since your disappearance.."

The skin on the back of my neck began prickling, "My lady," I said, "You leave me bewildered with your words almost as much as your beauty… what do you mean by them?"

"You have been gone a while, birdman." She told me, "In your absence much has occurred; but it would be easier to show you this."

I felt a strong hand grab the back of my neck and there was a feeling of displacement. The next thing I knew, we were standing in what appeared to be the edge of the forest on a cliff.

Beside me, the Baba Yaga pointed, "There birdman, look and see."

I frowned as I followed her instructions, looking out.

"Oh no." I whispered.

For miles and miles the land stretched out beneath us, the Kingdom of Vale; a lush forested paradise.

At least, it used to be.

For all the eye could see it was covered in the black, tar-like substance of Specimen 1347.